Home Is Where You Park It: Day 52 of Our RV Journey to Canada & Alaska 7/03/14 - Learning More About Ninilchik's Commercial Fishing & the Alaska Dept.of Fish & Game's Weir

Late this morning Bob & I drove to the Ninilchik's post office to mail a package to our grandchildren and mail some postcards. Then, we drove to the Ninilchik River to see if we could find a place to fish that is easily accessible on foot. A lot of places you have to climb down & up steep banks. We decided to try a certain spot tomorrow morning around 9:00. Bob was told that the best time to fish salmon in the River was about an hour after high tide. With tomorrow being the Fourth of July, Bob is a little apprehensive about our getting to go salmon fishing because he thinks the Rivers will be packed with fisherman. So, we will go check out our fishing spot and if it doesn't have a lot of fishermen, then we will go nearby and purchase our "out-of-state fishing license" and salmon stamps. Hopefully, we will get to fish tomorrow, but if not, in the near future. I took a few pictures of the river and area where we hope to fish.

part of the trail leading to the river

had a rocky base

Bob standing by a dilapidated walking bridge that

was on the trail.

on the trail was some wood steps with rebar

rods sticking out several inches..

(that would make a fall uneventful)

the streams run fairly fast

We went to the Ninilchik General Store to get some fishing supplies & bait. This store sells groceries, fishing, hiking, camping supplies, Alaskan gifts, etc. The groceries are very expensive and a lot of the items don't have a price on them .... not a store I like to go to.

Bob & I returned to the campground. Early this evening, the four of us went to Roscos, a restaurant in Ninilchik, that we were told had good food. After eating dinner, we went for a ride.

We decided to go see what was going on at the fishing harbor since high tide would be sometime after 8:00 tonight. The boat harbor had only one boat in it and it appeared to be broke down. Last night when we first got there, the harbor was full of boats parked side by side in many rows, but later one by one were leaving the harbor and going out into Cooks Inlet. We talked to someone that worked at the harbor, and he said that the boats went out to Cook Inlet around high tide last night, and basically found a place to set anchor to spend the night. Sometime this morning they were allowed to begin fishing for salmon for a specified number of hours. After the allotted time, they had to quit fishing. They are allowed to fish twice a week; I believe he said Monday's and Thursday's. He said that the boat's average approx 2500 lbs. of salmon on a good day.
As we were parked looking out in to the Cook Inlet, we noticed a commercial fishing boat was going into the harbor and was parking at a boat ramp that has a tall boom & hoist on a deck above it. This is where commercial fishing boats get ice &/or supplies lowered to their boat. It is also one of the places where they take their day's catch to weigh, sort and sell to the fish processing plants.

harbor when we first got there yesterday evening

before the fishing boats started going out

harbor tonight when we first got there..and actually

there was only one broken down boat in the harbor

one of the first commercial fishing boats to return to

the harbor with their catch for the day

We got out of the truck and were able to get real close to where they hoisted the large bag containing the day's catch out of the boat and dropped the bag into a large, but short, bin where they dump the bag of fish into. There was a scale on the hoist that weighed the bag of fish while it was in the air. The workers at the large bin of fish sorted the fish out into three huge insulated containers. It appeared that they sorted them by size but not really sure about that. If there was any ice that was in the bag of fish that was brought in, they would weigh the ice so that they could get a more accurate total weight of the fish. Another fishing boat came in, and we watched them hoist up, weigh and sort out their fish too. It was neat getting to experience watching all of this so close.

The person we talked to about the process told us that some of the commercial fishing boats have a tender (boat that has a boom & hoist) come out to the waters where they are fishing. The tender brings them supplies and/or picks up that boat's catch so far. That way, they don't have to spend their precious time coming to the harbor to take their catch.

A tender is alongside a commercial fishing

boat to pickup their catch.

After we left the harbor area, we went to another beach area on the Cook Inlet where boats can launch themselves for a price, or a big tractor (for a larger price) will launch & bring them back to land when they're done boating. There is also a campground area right along the Inlet. There are also clamming beds in the area, however, they are not allowing clamming for some reason. The old Ninilchik Village looks over the Cook Inlet and further up on the bluff, a lighthouse-type building and the historical Russian Orthodox Church can be seen.

a bunch of eagles seem to like this area

launching area

Leaving this area, we headed on to see if there was any fish in the fish weir that is set up on the Ninilchik River fairly close to the campground we are staying at. When we got there, an employee of the Alaska Department of Fish & Game was there, recording different details of the salmon, clipping the fin on some for identification purposes & sorting salmon that had swam in to the area that traps the fish. He had 30 salmon that he documented, etc. while we were there. He sometimes checks the trap as often as every 20 minutes during peak time. Some of the wild salmon, were put in a separate area after he documented it so that they could calm down. When he was finished he opened a gate and released those salmon to go on upstream. They also pick out and separate a total of 12 male and 12 female wild salmon during this time they are using the weir, so in a few weeks they can use them to milk and harvest the eggs. The reason he separates the wild salmon from the hatchery salmon is because they don't want them to interbreed because of diseases hatchery salmon might have. He talked to us and answered questions about the process while he was doing his job. He was very informative. Like Jesse stated earlier tonight, "I didn't think we would learn so much on our trip to Alaska."