Buskin Reds at Dawn

A rare selfie - it caught dawn as I left Kodiak

Yesterday I got up before sunrise and with Dawson, Joe, Max and Mike helped set a subsistence net in front of the Buskin River. It was a beautiful sunrise.  Right away we caught some red salmon and a great big king, but after that things slowed considerably and we only caught one more fish in 4 hours.  Of course immediately after we pulled the net a school of jumping red salmon showed up right where the net had been moments before.

We set our net right next to shore and Dawson's wife and kids joined us on the beach.  The kids would paddle out to the boat in the inflatable and look at the net on the way.  Mike's boat was anchored in very shallow water immediately off the beach.  You could see schools of needlefish and herring swimming by - I tried and failed to get photos of the fish.  Then I tried to take a picture of the wave-textured bottom below the boat, and I did not know it, but I caught a sculpin in the photo.  I only saw him in the photo when I downloaded the pictures onto the computer at home.

Then back home we processed all the fish and I canned up a batch.  Salmon for the winter.  The first stored food of this years abundance!  Patrick

Look closely for Mr Sculpin