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Fisher people be warned, this next story may not be to your taste - yuck. OK, we're going to go salmon fishing on a scenic river in Alaska. But this is not about hooking a prize fish in the remote wilderness. It's about crowds and slop buckets and giant contraptions called dipnets. Alaska Public Media's Annie Feidt has the story on the lengths that some Alaskans will go to in order to fill their freezers with sockeye salmon.
ANNIE FEIDT, BYLINE: Novena Registe is sitting on a cooler on the beach at the mouth of the Kenai river, relaxing in the sun after a long day of fishing. Registe started dipnetting ten years ago to feed her family. Now she does it for a different reason.
NOVENA REGISTE: It's when that fish hit that net and you pull it out, it's a special feeling that no one can describe.
FEIDT: Try to describe it.
REGISTE: (Laughing) It just makes you feel so good that, you know, yes, I got it.
FEIDT: To get that fish, Registe stands in frigid water holding onto a ten-foot pole attached to a net the size and shape of a kiddie pool. It’s not easy, but consider this - in a store, salmon can sell for $20 a pound. Here, each resident is entitled to harvest 25 sockeyes for the price of a $25 fishing license. Registe opens up her cooler to show me the seven fish she's caught so far - the biggest resting on top. Oh, wow.
REGISTE: Mhmm.
FEIDT: That's a beautiful fish.
REGISTE: It is actually. The top one was my last one.
FEIDT: The crowds on the Kenai, three hours south of Anchorage, are not for everyone. When the fishing is hot, dipnetters are standing shoulder to shoulder in the water. But it's not hard to find people who love the carnival-like scene, including Monica Workman.
MONICA WORKMAN: This is truly the Alaskan experience. And, you know, we own a boat, and people think we're crazy because they're like, why don't you just take your boat out? And we're like, no way.
FEIDT: Workman is dipnetting with her husband and two kids. They all have a job to do. Her husband catches the fish. Her son bonks them on the head. Her daughter slices the gills, and Workman guts them. This year, they brought along a friend, Robert Carter, who's in his 70s but dipnetting for the first time. It hasn't been an easy initiation. Carter has patiently held his net in the water for most of the day without catching a single fish. And then finally success.
WORKMAN: Pull it. Pull it before you lose it.
FEIDT: He drags the net onto the beach to inspect his catch.
ROBERT CARTER: He's a monster.
UNIDENTIFIED BOY: He's tangled up.
UNIDENTIFIED GIRL: He's huge.
FEIDT: Carter holds his dipnet in one hand and his fish in the other and poses for a celebratory picture.
CARTER: Oh, I want a fancy picture.
WORKMAN: That's right.
CARTER: Happy fisherman - that was unbelievable.
FEIDT: Carter has no time to talk more about his first dipnet experience. He needs to get back in the water to catch another salmon. For NPR News, I'm Annie Feidt in Anchorage.
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