Kenai Sockeye

By 6:35 a.m. DeeCee had hooked her first salmon. Our guide, Mike, gave instruction on how best to wrestle the feisty fish boat side for netting, and for some reason yet to be determined, she followed his instructions perfectly. A few minutes later a nice 24-inch sockeye was in the boat.

When she posed for a picture holding her first Kenai River sockeye she grinned and asked, “Do these pants make my fish look big?”

As we all laughed, the smile on her face said it all. Let the fun begin.

In the meantime, I’m using AI to analyze the video of the event trying to understand why Mike’s instructions to my wife were followed so precisely. Similar attempts by me have never yielded comparable results. Not by a longshot.

On an early August morning, our blurry-eyed crew filed out the door, piled into a van and headed down the road to Bing’s Landing on the Kenai River not far from the town of Sterling. Upon arrival, we were greeted by our guides Mike and Murray Fenton as they readied their two water sleds, impressive 20-foot Predator, Willie Boats which would prove to be incredibly comfortable and roomy for our crew of 4 anglers each.

In addition to our guide Mike, my wife and I shared a boat with Bill Kirgan and his spouse Mary Ellen. Bill is the current president of the Conservation Federation of Missouri and has travelled to Alaska many times before. These folks were responsible for organizing our trip and hosting us in countless ways including the selection of the Fenton Brothers as our Kenai guides.

The rest of our all-star crew in boat number two included Scott and Sara Pauley and Dave and Gunilla Murphy. Scott is a pro bass fisherman and long-time ambassador for Missouri tourism. Sara and Dave both have a gaudy list of accomplishments when it comes to hunting, fishing, and conservation that I’ll not try detail here so not to aggravate my own feelings of inadequacy. And days earlier I watched Gunilla operate rods and reels on a halibut charter with the calm intensity of a fish assassin, so let’s just say Murray Fenton was in the company of a high-caliber group of fun-loving anglers.

After a quick tutorial and seat assignments, we shoved off and started the 10-mile trip up the Kenai River to lower Skilak Lake. The Kenai River is a magnificent 82-mile melt-water river well known for its salmon runs of kings, coho, sockeye, pinks, and trophy rainbow trout and dolly varden. For this day, our timing was perfect for the early August run of sockeye.

A couple days earlier we hiked a trail down to the confluence of the Kenai and Russian Rivers to observe fishing activity. In a place known for combat fishing, skirmish lines of hopeful anglers, rods in hand, waited for the run due to arrive at any time according to downstream fish accountants. As we watched, a few folks landed a fish now and then, and it was especially fun watching a couple young kids with their mother splash around in their waders, poles in hand. While I’m sure they were having fun, there was also a feeling of importance to the whole family outing. This was no catch and release affair. It was a quest for food, and by the time we marched back to our vehicle my own dream of a box of frozen fish was now heavily stoked.

The boat trip to Skilak Lake was impressive. Even at this early hour, we passed lines of anglers at various locations along the shore lining (flossing) for sockeye, the art of floating a line and hook into the open mouth of the fish. In this land of extended summer daylight, it wasn’t clear if they had recently arrived or had fished through the night. Many of the fish camps and cabins showed signs of life. Boats heading out, fish being cleaned, anglers pitching and drifting. In between, long stretches of picturesque shoreline with a distinct wilderness feel.

Arriving at our destination, a few other boats were well spaced and in position for the drift as our guide shut down the motor, started the kicker, and demonstrated our line deployment strategy as he handed rods to each of us. Our method was an interesting and effective combination of back-trolling in the current as the fish swim upstream, a technique originally developed some years earlier by the Fenton brothers and now widely copied.

For the first few hours fishing was good including a few exciting hits, misses, and lost fish. As the day unfolded, we had to work harder for fish but by the time we called it quits we were only two shy of a limit for our boat. We had taken our fair share and no one was disappointed in any way. We motored to a nearby gravel beach for a group picture, and Mike and Murray fileted our fish hoping no bears would decide to join the wrap-up. Salmon carcasses, many egg-filled, were hauled out to the current and returned to the river, and a satisfying day of harvest was complete.

On the journey back to the ramp, we again passed scores of anglers lined up flipping and drifting with hopes of catching fish for the freezer or dinner. For as many as we saw in the morning, there were now double the number, and I couldn’t help but feel I was part of a grand riverside festival. A moment in time where the journey of these fish converge with the needs and desires of people. A feeling underscored further when we dropped off our fish for final prep, freezing, and boxing for the journey home. The matriarch of Alaska Redfish Lodge, a pleasant senior woman born in Wisconsin and now from Minnesota, greeted us and even at this late hour in the day, eagerly engaged us in conversation and banter with a few fishing stories to boot. It was clear the folks at the lodge and the Fenton brothers held each other in high regard, and all in all, everyone was eager to serve us in the best possible way. This is what they do, and now was the time for doing it. And we were happy to be there.