Truly stunning numbers of salmon had been racked up at the Miles Lake sonar on the Copper River, and my netting anxiety was growing as each day passed and we didn’t have a solid plan in place to get down there and catch fish.

Years ago, Sam McCallister and Mark Hem had advised us that if you really wanted to get your fish (i.e., bring back your limit), come down after the 4th of July. The only problem with that is your chances of getting a king salmon are much lower if you wait that long. We’d ignored this advice last year and gambled and lost: we’d worked hard for a long day and didn’t get our limit. And no king, either. For the first in many years, we’d had to eat salmon sparingly to make it last through spring.

Thus my netting anxiety – we really wanted to get our fish this year. You could still keep a king, and it was looking like there were a lot of reds in the river, so I made a command decision to go for it even though Rose’s work schedule couldn’t set her free during the week. Last year we’d lost more than one fish through newly broken holes in our nets, so the night before leaving I replaced the old ones with new ones. Getting seventeen years out of the old nets was unexpected, and I wasn’t sure about the deeper bags and springier cord on the new ones, but it was time for refurbishment. Nothing sucks more than losing a nice fish when you’re working hard and catching very few.

I zoomed down on a Monday (29 June) and had an uneventful but beautiful drive down to O’Brien Creek. I stopped just below Summit Lake to look at some fine reds that had made it up that far already and again at Glennallen for gas. At O’Brien Creek I dropped my life jacket in line to catch a charter the next morning, then walked around a bit to see how the day’s fishing had been. It had been good, and quite a few people were sweeping for fish near the creek and doing well, too.

Despite trying, I had a poor night’s sleep, not being used to motor noises of people driving in and out and doors slamming all night long. When the fish are running, people fish at all hours. I prefer our way of doing it, but many don’t. Up at 0345, I made coffee and got my day’s gear together and was in line at 0430. Boat loading began at 0445, and I made it onto one of the first two boats. I was dropped off at a steep nook with very little purchase but with a good, wide upriver backflow. I had myself tied off and with my net in the water by 0515. And a good day’s fishing began.

It took a few minutes for me to figure out how to best fish this spot, but pretty soon I was hauling them in at a good clip. Twice I even got doubles – two fish in the net at the same time. This was good, because to fish this spot most effectively you couldn’t brace the net on anything, which is hard on the arms. We’ve found that earlier in the year the reds average smaller than they do later into July and August, and I was catching some small ones. However, given the catch rate I decided I could throw them back.

Despite the steepness of this spot, I was able to sit. But it was a carefully orchestrated dance to haul in a fish, climb it up onto a stable place, club it, take it out of the net, clip the tail fins, clip a gill to bleed it, then place it in a rock nook (temporarily) or onto a stringer, and then climb back down to dip the net in again. The river roared, a Hermit Thrush sang, and occasionally fish fins could be seen breaking the water. It was a cloudy but dry morning, perfect for dip netting. And, oh, lest I forget: it was just beautiful.

There were new limits established this year. A head of household can keep 25 salmon, including one king, and you can keep another ten for each household member. No more supplemental periods exist, so our limit was 35. I had 25 on the stringers by 0800, when things slowed down considerably. At about 0900 I was still four fish shy of the limit when Sam McCallister came by and told me to hurry up. While he went further downriver to pick up others who had limited out, I did as he suggested and picked up the last four before he returned to pick me up. I’d wound up throwing back about ten fish, so this was probably the best fishing we’d ever had in terms of raw numbers. Although I never did tie into a king or even get a king-sized bump, this was just what we’d hoped for, a freezer filler.

It always seems like it takes longer to clean your fish than it does to catch them, and this had been a great day. Picking up 35 of these beauties in about four hours is good fishing, and it didn’t take me that long to get them gutted, rinsed, and layered into coolers on ice (though the barrels full of fish did seem to be bottomless at times). I was on the road home by 1230, and we were eating fresh, smoke-grilled salmon by 1930. It doesn’t get any better than that!

P.S. Although I hauled my camera along, I was always too busy to take a picture. But I need to add one, and this is the only one that really counts:

Copper River red salmon in the freezer