Northern Lights

[Kung Wu]

Like super duper stunning.

[shock]

filedata/fetch?id=1301210&d=1623733684&type=thumbfiledata/fetch?id=1301211&d=1623733685&type=thumb Took my grandparents down the Copper River today with a buddy of mine in his jet boat. Caught 22 red salmon (chinook), set out some bear bait, and had a good time.

[WuDrWu]

Thank you for sharing, that is SPECTACULAR.

What do those 22 Chinook produce for you? What kind of time/process did that take? Freeze/smoke etc?


(Sorry for all the questions....just really intrigued by that lifestyle).

[Rocky Mountain Shock]

filedata/fetch?id=1301210&d=1623733684&type=thumbfiledata/fetch?id=1301211&d=1623733685&type=thumb Took my grandparents down the Copper River today with a buddy of mine in his jet boat. Caught 22 red salmon (chinook), set out some bear bait, and had a good time.

There better be a YouTube video coming soon.

[shock]

There better be a YouTube video coming soon.

No video today. My grandparents were visiting so it was all about letting them experience it. There will be more opportunities. This was also about my buddy and I feeling each other out as hunting partners. It went well and we are already planning a shared bait station for next year.

[shock]

Thank you for sharing, that is SPECTACULAR.

What do those 22 Chinook produce for you? What kind of time/process did that take? Freeze/smoke etc?


(Sorry for all the questions....just really intrigued by that lifestyle).

Took us about an hour to catch them with dipnets while floating. The nets we use are 4ft diameter with 16ft poles. You put that straight down in the river and slowly float backwards. A good boat pilot will put you right on top of the runs and we were catching 2 per net per drift.We get them out of the net, pop a gill and throw them in a tub. Later on we will rinse them and throw them in a cooler.
When we got them home (30 minutes) I filleted them. Took me about 45 seconds to a minute per fish. I took mine and bagged them up for an elderly couple in the community. My wife and I still have about 100 jars of salmon from previous years. My dad took his and started a brown sugar brine. This morning he took them out and rinsed them until they didn’t taste salty and laid them out to dry. When they have lost the surface moisture, he will put them in the cold smoker. We use a wood framed box with sheet metal siding. The salmon lay in there on oven racks. The box is on stilts above an old wood stove. We use a few briquettes with a can of dry wood chips. After the salmon have smoked for an hour we take them out. These fillets will be cut in half and froze. If we were canning, they would be cut in half and then into 1.25” strips and put in wide mouth pint jars and pressure canned.
That’s it. Not much to it. I prefer to use a fish wheel to catch mine, but I lost access to the wheel I was on when I left the clinic. You can also dipnet from shore but that’s really dangerous.

[shock]

Here are some pictures from last nights light show.IMG_2289.jpeg