We returned on monday from our annual dipnetting trip to Chitina. We had permits to net around 210 salmon, but only came home with 175 or so. The dipping was slow, but we've got enough salmon for the year now. The limit for a household is 30 salmon, one of which can be a king. The rest of the fish we caught were reds, and we had to release well over 20 kings, most of which weighed 30+ pounds, and one as large as 60 pounds. The biggest kept king was caught my your's truely, and probably weighed in right around 50 pounds.

We dipnet these salmon out of the river using long poles with nets attached. The salmon are swimming upstream, so we find an eddy, which the salmon use to take a break, and get the poles in the water. When we feel a bump or wiggle, we yank the net up and hope there is a salmon in there.

Here are a few pictures of the trip...

My two kings (I had two permits to fill as I was a proxy for my inlaws).



Group Photo, from left to right it is my godfather Glenn, me, my dad, my brother Jon and other brother Roye. My dad also had 2 permits which is why he has two kings.

 

Here is my dad with his first king of the trip...


And my brother Roye with his first king ever. We nicknamed this one jaws because half his snout was torn off, he had the biggest teeth of any king we'd seen, he was blacker and more scarred up than any king we had taken out of there as well. This guy looked like a scrapper!


Here's my other bro Jon chillin' and waiting for a bump on the net. He was the only one to fill his permit in the first day. The boy cleaned up and went home early. For those of you that don't know, this is JDPollen on the forums.

 

And lastly here is a picture of some other dipnetters. These guys are using a "sweeping" technique where they go waist to chest deep in the river and sweep there net in the main current. This river is unforgiving, and lots of people have died from loosing their footing or falling in. The chance of surviving a fall into this river and being swept downstream is fairly slim, but these guys risk it all for a limit of salmon.

Roye titled this photo "Statistics"

 

man, those are some ugly fish!!

 

I'm jealous... last year I pulled 103 Reds and 1 King (53 lbs) out of the Kenai in 7 hours... it was a blast. This year, I'm only a half mile from the Tigris River, but I don't think the fishing would be that good Bring a whole new meaning to "combat fishing."

 

Never knew Salmon were so damn ugly.

They do taste good though.

 

That's a good looking boat, what kind is it?

 

I so wish I was back up there

 

Ahhh, good times. Not the greatest shot of me, but hey, at that point I had about 20 salmon in the cooler so I aint complainin'. I had more fun catching salmon and tickin' Roye off since he was hardly catching any!

I'm looking forward to the Quartz lake fishin' trip this weekend. I don't think I've ever been on your boat out on a lake. This outta be fun, we need to get some water skis or intertube and a long rope.

 

That sounds like some kind of sexual perversion...

"Yeah, so then I rolled her over and gave her the old "salmon dipnet"...

 

i love catching salmon my sister lives on the salcha river i didnt make it up this year though

 

Thanks, it's a Sea Ark Predator. It's made for extreme shallow water running, but it works in most bodies of water. It has a 175 horse Mercury Sport Jet outboard motor that is modified to be an inboard. The bottom of the boat is tunneled with a jet unit, so I can run in a couple of inches of water on step and not hit bottom or suck rocks. The issue I have with choppy water is cavitation. With the jet unit above the bottom of the boat, it can suck air real easy if I get into 2'+ seas or chop. I don't run the ocean with it, so no biggy.

Here's a couple of shots from shallow water running from our annual caribou hunting trip...