Kenai Alaska

[Catbird]

All I can say is What A Trip! Alaska has to be the most beautiful country I have ever seen. My time in Alaska was a trip of a lifetime...but not the only trip of a lifetime because I plan to go back even if I have to hitch-hike and eat berries and sticks!

Van and Claire Swan were excellent hosts and some of the best people I have ever met. Claire cooked up some excellent grub from spaghetti to cod, salmon steaks, fried bread, salmon dip and crackers, you name it it was on the table. She was very knowledgeable about her tribe and an excellent spokeswoman.
Van is a commercial net fisherman and even though his boat wasn't in the water for the season yet I did get to tour it in dry dock and with his explanation of the workings on the boat I got a good taste of what it would be like. He has to be the most experienced fisherman of all types of fishing I have ever met. I greatly enjoyed all of our early morning talks over coffee and late night talks over drinks setting around the card table in the garage. It was amazing to see the endurance and activity this man does every day at 78 years old. I just hope I can be in as good of shape when I reach that time in my life. He made my trip to Alaska and I guess the best way to explain it was it was a trip to meet and spend time Van Swan and it just happened to be in Alaska because that is where he lives. I am proud to say he is now a great friend and I am looking forward to planning a trip back to visit him again.

Lynn, the Captain of the Inlet Trawler, is an great halibut fisherman and I learned a lot fishing with him. I never once felt any danger on either trip and he is an excellent captain. Even though he has all of the up to date bells and whistles on his boat the are just for backup. He navigates with only a compass even in heavy fog and always knew exactly where we were and where we needed to go. He has an excellent way of finding the fish. He knows Cook Inlet just like the back of his hand. Lynn also supplied the RV that we used for sleeping quarters in Van's heated garage.

Jim Jr., Van's nephew took us King Salmon fishing on the Kenai River in his boat. He has developed an excellent way of back trolling that I plan to try on the Ohio River. He can also do this while holding a rod with his feet and leaning it against his shoulder fishing over his back downriver. He also serves up some mean hooligan sushi though I was the only one that tried it.

Scott, one of Van's mates, took Jason and I trolling for Kings out of Homer's Spit (a developed sand bar) on his 18' boat. I wouldn't of thought that the boat was large enough to handle 4' swells but with him as captain it was. He knew exactly where to fish and put both Jason and I on our first King Salmon. We boated 3 Kings and 1 Halibut which is a good day of trolling on Cooks inlet. I also enjoyed listening to him talking about his other boat which he uses while diving for sea cucumbers and geoducks (pronounced gooeyducks)
clams in the middle of the winter in 40-60 ft. of water on Cooks Inlet. I also enjoyed his talks about his family and his hunting experiences.

You will have to wait on my photos and video clips because we loaded them in Jason's laptop and I don't want to ruin the surprise.
__________________

[doughboy]

Sounds like you all had a great trip Dale, glad to hear it. Some day I hope to make a trip to Alaska its one of those places you can dream about

[jason454ci]

If I had to sum this trip up in just one word that word would be "unbelievable". I tell ya guys that had to be the most fun I ever had with my clothes on. It also had to be one of the fastest weeks I have ever had. It sure did fly by pretty quick.

I started off by meeting up with Dale (Catbird) at the airport here in Columbus, Ohio. Who was running just a little late. Good thing the state troopers must have been having their morning coffee at that time. Then it was from Columbus to Atlanta for my first ever flight. I was just a bit nervous about that but that feeling soon went away. From there we was off to Seattle, where we was greeted by slightly cooler weather and rain. Then we arrived in Anchorage where we met up with Bob Schoemaker of Where I Fish.com and the wonderful Alaskan climate. Oh and by the way just because it is sunny and 80 here doesn't mean you should wear shorts and a t-shirt when you leave. Did I mention it was COLD there.

A nice 2 1/2 hour drive through some of the beautifulest country I have ever seen brought us to our destination of Kenai, Alaska. Upon our arrival we where met by our outstanding host for the week long adventure, Van and Claire Swan and their wonderful lab Cookie. After getting settled in we got acquainted with Van and Claire over a nice moose meat meat loaf dinner that Claire had prepared. Let me tell ya these are two of the nicest folks you could ever have the pleasure to meet.

Then it was time for the first of many card table chats out in the garage. Boy I sure did learn alot about commercial fishing and life in Alaska in these great chats we had. My biggest question was "what time does it get dark around here"? Well it turns out what they consider dark up there in the summer time and what dark is around here is two totally different things. Kinda hard to go to sleep when it never gets past dusk I tell ya.

The next day we set off to go get licensed up so we would be legal to fish. After we got that taken care off we found out the weather and tides were not in our favor to go chasin after the fish, but that was okay. Van took us out and gave us a nice tour of the local area. He showed us an area on the beach of the Kenai river where the local native Indians have a net set up to catch salmon. That was pretty interesting to learn about. We stopped by the boat yard to take a tour of the Fair Weather, Van's commercial fishing boat. Then we went off to see if we could spot some of the local wildlife on some Indian grounds called Spirit Lake. We got the chance to met up with a cow moose and got some pics and video of her. She was pretty tolerant of us for quite a while before she headed off into the spruce trees. It was a great experience to say the least.

The next morning Lynn Shrader stopped by to gather us up for our first halibut trip. We went down to pick up his boat where he stores it and headed to Deep Creek to launch into Cook's Inlet. They use modified log skidders to launch the boat for you because of the difference in water levels do to the tide coming in and out. After a nice ride out into the inlet Lynn used his special fish finding skills to pick a place to anchor up. Not long after dropping our halibut rigs with five pound sinkers attached down to the bottom of the 150 feet of water we was sitting in the action was on. Pretty soon we all had halibut to the boat. Some we keep and some we turned loose. A few pacific grey cod where also caught. Let me tell y'all something, it is a heck of a workout cranking them fish off the bottom up to the boat. Even just pulling an empty rig up with the five pound weight on there will wear ya down. Now should ya happen to catch a hold of a broken off rig and two fish at the same time it will darn near kill a man. After a while we had our 2 fish per person limit so we headed back to Vans for some fish cleaning.

As we cleaned fish Claire was busy in the kitchen cooking up some fresh caught king salmon that she had got earlier in the day along with one of the cod we had brought back. Her fried bread went wonderful with the delicious fish. We went in and enjoyed the nice dinner after we finished cleaning the fish. By the way you get four fillets off of the halibut.

Our next fishing adventure was with Van's nephew James Segura Jr. He took us out back trolling for king's on the beautiful Kenai river. It was a pretty slow day as none of us had a hook up. But we did get to see a 30 pounder landed by a boat close to us. James showed us a great time and it was a pleasure to get to meet him.

The next trip for Dale and myself was out off Homer with Scott Sabin who is one of Van's deckhands when the commercial salmon season rolls around. This was not a planned trip at all. He had stopped by Van's that morning to barrow a ladder so he could finish working on putting up his ceiling. He was giving us some information and directions to a bank spot on the Kasilof River where we were going to go try for some king's. Well one thing lead to another and Scott decided that ceiling would just have to wait until tomorrow. So Dale and myself found ourselves on the road for the 80 mile trip to Homer with Scott. At first sight of his 18 foot boat and the big water we where going to fish in Dale and myself were thinking what have we got ourselves into. But Scott knows his boat and knows how to drive it in any condition. He made the ride through the 4' waves smoother than you could imagine. After a while of trolling it was fish on for Dale who earlier won the rights to first fish by winning the coin toss. After a nice fight on an Acadia rod outfitted with a casting reel he had a nice looking 20 or so pound king in the boat. Next up to fight was Scott when his rod got a hit. After another great fight he had a 15 or so pound king in the boat. Finally after thinking of how I was going to Bob and Van how I was the only one to get skunked my rod popped up off the down rigger. After a great little drag peeling fight on the Acadia spinning combo I had my first ever king in the boat. It was a small one in the 10 pound range but I was happy as could be. Scott and Dale also managed to hook into a couple black sea bass I think they were. Scott also got a halibut that found his way to the cleaning table also. It was alot of fun to hear Scott tell us about the commercial diving he does in Southeast Alaska in the winter for sea cucumbers and geoducks. It was a great pleasure to meet him and to fish with him.

We got to sneak in one more halibut trip with Lynn and a couple friends of his that came in from Montana, Bob and Chuck. The weather just didn't want to cooperate with us all that well. We did manage to bring a few fish to the boat but was being a little selective on keepers as we where hoping for some bigger ones. But all in all it was still a great day out on the waters of Alaska.

Before we knew it tuesday had rolled right up on us. In the afternoon it was time to bid a farewell to our host for the week. On our journey back to Anchorage we stopped by the local hardware store which has a great tackle selection to do some looking around and souvenir shopping. We also found a wildlife conservation area on the way back and viewed some of the native animals. Soon we found ourselves having launch by the airport before ending the greatest fishing trip I have ever been on.

A big thanks goes out to Van and Claire for having us as their guest. I am so glad to have got the chance to meet them. Also I would like to give a huge thanks to Bob for setting this up and giving me a chance to go along with him on this trip of a lifetime. Also a big thanks to Dale for getting me involved in this trip in the first place. If it wasn't for these two I would be sitting here right now reading about the great time they had on their trip to Alaska instead of putting my memories into words. And last but certainly not least a thanks goes out to everyone in Alaska that took us out fishing and everyone that we met that truly made this a "trip of a lifetime."

So when do we go back again?