Fishing Adventure: Part 1

Last week (Tuesday and Wednesday, John's "weekend") we went fishing on the Russian River. John had to spend Monday in Whittier for work, so I drove down Monday night to meet him. Since he was already halfway to where we were going, it seemed silly for him to drive home and then head out in the same direction the next morning. So we stayed in the luxurious accomodations provided by Princess (if you've ever been to Whittier you know that I'm being sarcastic). If you've never been to Whittier, let me tell you a little bit about it. First you have to drive an hour out of town to get there, then you have to pay $12 to drive through a really really really long tunnel (through a mountain) that is just wide enough for a train to fit through (you drive on the train tracks). There is only one building where people live there. The inside reminds me of bad college dorms. The condo we stayed in was ok...straight out of the 70s, but it was free for us. Princess has two condos in the building for employees that have to stay overnight (they turn their ships out of the port there), apparently we stayed in the nice one.

We got up early Tuesday morning, battled road construction, lack of coffee, and motor homes on our drive to Cooper Landing. We parked at the Russian River Campground ($11 for 12 hours), which turned out to be extremely convenient. There is a bank preservation project in place, so there is a boardwalk running most of the length of the river. The trail was just down the hill from the parking lot, and we found a spot to fish less than a 10 minute walk from where we parked.

Now, I haven't been fishing since I was maybe 10. And even that was probably with a stick and some fishing line in the creek at Chickaloon. This fishing was very different. Not to discount John's outdoorsman knowledge, but he went fishing a few times last year and caught nothing. Needless to say, we were quite the pair. Everyone around us was catching fish left and right, we caught nothing. The fish were swiming up the river in front of us by the hundreds, and we still caught nothing.

We thought maybe we should try a new spot, so we walked toward the confluence of the Kenai River and the Russian, this is what we found there...
Needless to say, we went back to our quieter spot.

After a few more degrading hours we decided to call it quits for the day. The most exciting thing that happened was we saw a bear, a black bear thank goodness. At first look, this bear does not appear to be terribly ferocious, but it was. It made a little kid cry by doing nothing other than walking up and down the opposite bank. It apparently didn't think the fishing was very good either because it disappeared without so much as a nibble.


The good news is that our accomodations we much more luxurious on Tuesday night. John got us a room at the Kenai Princess Lodge in Cooper Landing. Day two was much better. After a little coaching from some very nice men who were catching fish left and right, John started catching fish...FINALLY. I caught nothing...and then my pole broke (I'm pretty sure it was close to the same age as me, I was borrowing it from my dad).

First there was one fish...

Then there were three...

Hooray, five fish!!!
And for your viewing pleasure...a video of John killing the first fish...



We got rained on and hailed on and after five fish we were done. At first we were disappointed that there were only five fish, but after we had to carry them back to the car and then gut, fillet, and vacuum pack them, we were glad there were only five. This week, we're going back for more...