Moose Hunting!

My brother and dad both drew cow tags, so I flew up to Fairbanks to help them fill the tags.  They both drew tags for the area around the end of Chena Hot Springs Road.  So we got started at 5AM on our first day our first day.  Here we are driving up the Steese highway just outside of Fairbanks.

  On our first day, we rode 4-wheelers.  Dominic took us up a very steep trail which freaked out both my Dad and I to the point that we got off the wheelers after only a little ways up the mountain.  That was the best move for us, as we both almost rolled the machines in the short time period we were on them.

After that, we decided to hunt on foot for a while.  No moose, but I take a cool pic of a spruce grouse.

We finally connected on a cow moose in a super convenient spot right next to the road.  So...success!

Teaching Rachel how to snag salmon

So I took Rachel out to Amalga to learn how to snag fish.  She didn't quite catch on to the casting part, but she did catch on to the landing of the salmon part.

This is the salt chuck area of Amalga Harbor.  The hatchery fish school up here as they try to go up the stream.  But they can't really run up the stream because there's a fence keeping them out.  If the fence wasn't there, too many fish would enter the stream and overwhelm it...

Rachel's first salmon!

Shrimping & Crabbing

Finally.  Some successful shrimping (spot prawns).  The first time I went out this season, I caught scaled crabs...and about 30lbs of snails.  So I moved my pots.  On one, I caught about 50 sea urchins or so.  In the other...shrimp gold!  Also, I caught a whole bunch of dungies the other day.  Came close to my personal use limit (20).  I don't think I'm going to do that again, as I was shelling crabs for a couple of days afterwards....

Taking the girlfriend camping

Rachel was game enough to go camping with me.  I wore her out with all the putting out of crab pots, shrimp pots and dealing with the boat....My friend Deven lent me his 14 foot inflatable, which was nice, but a little too large for us to handle.  All in all, the trip was a success!

First and Only Kings of the Season

So I finally connected after missing hook-ups at Dupont (while fishing for dollies) and from the DIPAC dock (sometimes the fish just don't hook up...)  After getting these guys, I promptly lost the floor to my boat, which effectively ended my season.  For some reason, I didn't hook any more.  Oh well...