Alaskan Salmon
Year 2019 - endless summer
High temperatures, extremely large amounts of water in the Kenai River, but fed up with salmon!
would you rather go straight to the photo album?
2019 started on June 20th - Cosmo was part of the party again
​
It started "on time" from Frankfurt, and so I was even able to take a plane earlier from Kenai to Anchorage with Cosmo.
​
It's always a bit of an adventure: 10 seats, all by the window and the pilot can
to watch. First they put the empty box on the plane, behind the last seat - then I first with Cosmo on the plane, dog in the box - tie the box and off we went.
​
The last stage - as always a bit "lumpy" - takes about 20 minutes and saves us 3 more hours of driving over the Turnigan Pass after the long flight.
When we landed in Kenai, my friend Jeff had already parked our Suburban at the airport, so all we had to do was get in and drive the last 30 km home. . .
As already mentioned: In 2019 there was plenty of salmon
​
The "first run" into the Russian River was the start.
The inflow was released for fishing a week earlier, and taking 3 salmon a day was allowed - as always. That changed suddenly. on the 2nd day were already 6 and on
Day 4 9 salmon free per day.
Fish and Game's quick raise gave hope that the late run in the Kenai River would also be good.
This was also confirmed - it was an incomparably good run, with - in the end - 1.8 million reds, compared to 2018, where it was just half.
It was a great year if it hadn't been for the high tide. Due to the unusually high temperatures and the resulting heavy snowmelt, the level of the Kanai River rose sharply. Getting to our island was adventurous and almost impossible without a stick. It was not until August that the water receded and returned to the usual level.
​
vacation and fishing
​
No problems with the fishing - it was great. Due to the high water, it was relatively calm on "our" island until the run really went well and 60,000 to 90,000 Reds per day moved into the Kenai River. The flood didn't stop anyone anymore, it was simply "crowded" and unfortunately not always pleasant contemporaries stood by the water. It was nice that after a few years I got in touch with Richard again, who was also back in Alaska. Somehow we had lost touch - there was a lot to talk about and it was really a great and pleasant time. It was just as pleasant to meet a men's tour from Aschaffenburg, who were there almost every day with their grandfather, father, uncle and sons. This allowed us to share our fishing spots and take turns, which often made things a lot easier. When Renate came along in August, the fish were still doing well for a few days, but the Reds were slowly becoming exhausted and the Coho salmon were still struggling. It became calmer by the water and the water level was back to normal. Too bad Steven didn't have much time in 2019 - but that's just the way it is when you're not on vacation in Alaska, but have to work. We were able to deepen other friendships with "residents" and win new ones.
​
Excursion to Fairbanks
​
It was a great time again in 2019. I had made full use of the 90 days in the USA - Renate was there for the last 6 weeks. The weather was consistently sensational, but not such a good thing for Alaska. Temperatures of around 40 degrees were the order of the day for a long time and even in August we had much too warm weather for the most part.
There was no sign of rain and so unfortunately there was a big forest fire, which spread more and more along both sides of the highway. The fire was about 10 km away from us and often took away the sunlight from us. Unfortunately, many thousands of square kilometers were affected and driving to Anchorage was very difficult and often impossible.
​
Since I had already filled our freezer when Renate arrived in August, we were able to drive to Fairbanks for a few days, past Denali - the highest mountain in Alaska. That's a whopping 500 miles (800 km) easy. After a 10 hour drive we reached Fairbanks and were happy to be able to stay in a motel at 8 p.m. We had planned a little more, but lost sight of the distances a bit and so we ended up in Anchorage via Palmer and Wasilla after 3 days of shopping. We will definitely repeat this tour at some point and plan more than 3 days for it.
A downer on this trip was that we had to go through the fire. Unfortunately, this was only possible on the way there and back with a pilot car, which guided us 50 km in one lane through the burnt country. Not a pretty sight, only burned trees and fire nests to the left and right of the highway. (I refrained from taking photos here)
​
For the good end
​
After a great time, full of salmon fishing and lots of meetings and fun with friends, we packed our seven things on September 17th. Renate, Cosmo and I and a few boxes of frozen salmon fillets were on the way to Germany-Home, which we reached on time around noon on September 18th.