Dipnetting

Each July thousands of Alaskans converge on the Kenai Peninsula to fill their freezers with sockeye salmon, better known as "reds."

An Alaskan resident is allowed 25 reds and an additional 10 for each member of the household annually

Dippers wade out as far as they can an extend their net as far as they can into the channel. Occasionally the fish are thick enough that they swim in between your legs. The day we were there, approximately 250,000 reds made it past the gauntlet of commercial boats, dipnetters, an seals into the Kenai at the sonar counter...one of the largest single day counts on record.

The nets are about 5-feet in diameter and once the fish hits the net you flop the net down against the bottom to pin the fish between the sand and the net. It's not quite a gill-net, but the fish get tangled up and stuck in the net.

Each fish weighs about 8 or 9 pounds on average. Occasionally a Chinook/king will swim into the net and that is quite a tussle - this year they all have to be released. When fishing is hot it isn't uncommon to get 2 or 3 reds in a single net. Starry flounder are caught commonly as well.

You are required to record your catch and clip the tail fin before leaving the beach so you can identify it as a dipnet caught fish.

The problem with catching that many fish is getting them off the beach, 8 or 9 pounds times 25 fish equals a lot of weight. After filleting, 25 Kenai reds nets about 80 pounds of fillets.

People camp out on the beach overnight since dipping ends at 11pm and starts up again at 7 am. Everyone has a special method for their getting several hundred pounds of salmon off the beach.