The Alaska Adventure: September 2014

A REAL REEL. Last Saturday I got into a fight with a fish. Now some of you will likely know this story well - I am certainly not the first person to have such a fight. However others of you, who, like I did, consider fishing to be as exciting and as athletic an endeavor as, say, golfing (sorry, Dad!), will perhaps discover a new perspective.

So our buddy Chris had invited Team Leslie down to the banks of the Kenai River for some good old fashioned rod and reel fishin'. No mega huge, 8 foot in diameter, dip nets like earlier this summer; no, we had to bait 'em and hook 'em and fight 'em - we had to really earn our fish. And it was hard! I had no idea. Unlike the mellow cast and subsequent gentle tug of a pond trout (the only other fish I've successfully snagged in this fashion), these Silver Salmon were out to drag us down the river as they made their great escape.

A play by play:

We met at a lovely riverside park in Kenai a little before low tide - even a mile or more up river from the mouth, the river is tide-affected and the lower it goes, the less water the fish have to swim upstream in... and the greater chance that they'll be caught! Chris brought extra gear to share and we trudged out onto the slippery banks in hopes of some fun and some luck. Chris helped us choose a proper weight and Indigo unclicked and clicked the metal clasp to secure it to our line. The idea is that we wanted our hook to stay suspended midway out in the river and not just get completely taken down stream by the current. The weight had a funky pointed shape to help it dig into the river bottom and stay put, while still being smooth enough to let go when and if a fish came along. Next, I grabbed a huge hunk of gummed together salmon eggs from the bait jar and slid the gob onto the end of my hook a few times over, taking a bite of slack line and pulling it tight around the eggs for good measure. (I always find it ironic that we bait these fish with their own babies... "rock-a-bye breakfast...") Then I hauled back and cast the whole kit and caboodle out into the river and felt the vibration as the weight hit bottom, rolled, and settled. Then I put the sturdy rod into a sawed off piece of PVC pipe attached to a piece of re-bar that had been hammered into the river bank. Then I drank a can of cheap beer (we Alaskan fisherpeople are classy folk), chatted, and enjoyed the sun on my face. We watched as the Humpies, old spawned out fish, came half floating and half swimming down stream, scales dull and dark, ready to become food for a new generation (what is up with fish eating their babies and their elders? "I'll take a side of tartar sauce with Gramps..."). Indigo dug in the clay-rich banks and made a royal mess of herself while J popped open a camp chair and joined in the classy fest.

Adding the weight.

And then my line went slack and started to move. My pole bent over like a tree in the breeze and then sprang back upright. At the very least, a fish had taken my bait! Chris joyfully yelled for me to grab the rod out of the pipe and "play her a bit." I had no idea what that meant so immediately began to reel in the line. "No, no... if you make it too tight, your line could snap and you'll lose her! You've got to let her run it out a bit, then reel a bit, let her run, and so on... just feel it." Now as many of you know, I am much more of an academic than an intuitive learner - I can read all about it and get it right on a test, but ask me to wing it physically and I'll fall over. At this point, the fish was pulling so hard that I jammed the bottom of the rod between my knees to give me more leverage and I used my full strength to hold on. You could see the fish streaking beneath the water, up and down river, criss crossing other folks' lines, giving a mighty splash every minute or so. "She must have completely swallowed the hook! That's good! She can't come free now unless the line snaps... Just play it out..." Slowly, very slowly, the combination of verbal guidance coupled with the feel of the line alternating between taught and slack worked its way into my muscle memory and I began to walk the bank a bit on the taught, and reel on the slack. For the first time, the phrase "sport of fishing" seemed very appropriate - no Giligan-Hat-wearing, lawn-chair-reclining wusses here - this was a run around and sweat like you mean it sort of activity and I was in it to win it.

Nobody timed it, but after what seemed like the better half of a football game, I gave a final tug and my silver flipped and flopped her way onto shore.

The competitors...

It took another 10 minutes for Chris to untangle the line from that of our neighbor who was very patient and graceful about the whole situation. I think Indigo's gleeful shouts of, "Mama got a fish! Mama got a fish! Mama!!! That's your fish! You got her all by yourself!" softened his heart a bit. Meanwhile, we thunked its head, slit its gills, and fed a rope through the gills and out the mouth - which, if you remember how toothy these suckers are from past pix, is quite the daring feat.

And that was how I caught my first big river fish with a rod. Can you tell I'm a bit proud?

Now I will say that this fish was indeed a female, and she did have an impressively large sack of eggs in her belly when we cut her open. As an egg-bearing female myself, I do find it unsettling to think about the life cycle of my fish... how hours before, she had successfully navigated the great Pacific Ocean, found the mouth to her home river, and begun what she thought was the final stretch of a many year, many mile journey, back to her birth place, to lay her own eggs. And then some Yahoo on the side of the river goes and ends that beautiful dream with a fair deal of fumbling and squawking, all in the name of a tasty dinner. Time will tell if this fighting fish becomes the first of many for me or not. For now, I admit, our dinner tonight was quite delicious. Thank you, my fish.

IN THE BUCKET. The end of August marks the beginning of berry season here in Alaska, with blueberries being the first juicy morsels to grace the hillsides. In the past two years, Team Leslie has done our fair share of picking; in fact, one of the original blog posts chronicled our gun-slinging venture up into the alpine to find these blue treasures. So Sunday, Indigo and I charged a "secret stash" outside of Seward. Armed with berry tins from Great Grammy and guided by a hand-drawn map from friends who had discovered the patch the week before, we tromped through swampy meadows and thick forest before coming upon the most prolific blueberry thicket ever. Indigo's face lit up as she yelled, "Mama! These are like grocery-store-sized berries!" And ker-plunk went our buckets!

A ski-hill-sized swath of wild berries!

Big ones, too!

And lest you think we're one hundred percent au natural up here, we did manage to cap our weekend with a trip to one of the many "burger buses" here in AK... Cheers to the bounty of Fall in all its forms!

"I didn't pick 'em or catch 'em, but I'll eat 'em!"

FALL. I recently talked to a friend from the Lower 48 who asked, "How's the end of your summer going?" to which I replied, "What?" Indeed, J and I have been back in the teacher seat for a month and Indigo has officially been rocking it as a Kindergartener (!?!?!) for the past three weeks. Alaska likes to jump start the whole Fall thing in mid August, and honestly, after three months of midnight sun and non-stop adventuring, the cool temps, back-to-school loafers and thought of hot soup sit rather nicely. Besides the fact that people will start putting up their Christmas lights by the end of September and we'll likely have snow the month after that - better enjoy this autumn thing while we can! (Confession: None of us actually wear loafers. They would get thoroughly ruined on bike commutes and at recess. But back-to-school camouflage rubber rain boots didn't quite paint that crisp imagery I was looking for. We do however eat lots of hot soup.)

About to take off for the first day of school!

SUMMER. So, as if to spite the flow of big yellow school buses and the wispy white fireweed plants going to seed, the past few weekends have produced some very sunny days; after tossing our backpacks and lunch boxes in the corner, it's pretty easy to head on down to the beach and pretend it's vacation time all over again: