Fish'n in Kenai #1 ~ July/Aug 05

In July I flew up to the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska to commercial fish for salmon. It was gill net fishing (set net) and lasted about 5 weeks. My best friend Amanda, whom I met at Friend Ships, had fished the season of 2004 and asked if I wanted to fish the 2005 season with her. I arrived in Alaska not really realizing what I was getting myself into. I was not much of the fishing kind of a girl prior to arriving. I think I had caught one catfish when I was a little tyke and had someone else take it off the hook for me. The first day out Amanda showed me how we were to remove the fish from the nets; I thought there was no way I was going to survive the salmon season. After about a week I got used to the fish and gurry and actually really started to enjoy it (and when I say enjoy that word is used very lightly). It was a lot of hard work and we were pretty much fishing around the clock so of course it was very exhausting. I was able to meet some very cool people and make some good friends.


(Amanda, Mark, Bill, Danette, Ryan)

We only had one man over board, but unfortunately it wasn't fatal. No, just kidding. Amanda and I were both freaking out because he ended up at the stern and the prop was still a spin'n. We were able to shut the prop off and the guy back in the boat, then all but one of us had a good laugh.



(Amanda and our first message-in-a-bottle. And our Christmas tree.)

We fish all four tides in the day. But usually the low tide is to low to be able to push our boats out into the water. So we'll push-out and get on our buoy several hour before we can actually pick the fish. Now this leaves Amanda and I with more spare time than should probably be allowed to the two of us. So for entertainment we send out messages in a bottle, decorate Christmas trees, go swimming or something. The tide goes both ways so we were able to make friends with both our neighbors. I won't mention the name of the sight to our port side looking toward the water for fear of them tracking me down and making me tell our Sturman secrets. Just kidding. But anyways, we were able to make some pretty cool friends from our messages and had a lot of fun.

The coolest guy ever, Fred, who is the owner of the fish site, had a big cook-out and we invited the guys from the next site down the beach over. We had a good time and I beat the guys in "tying bowlines the fastest"... Yay, go Danette! (a pat on the back for me)


(Amanda and I in our hott slickers! *Super Staz*)

When the fishing season closed, I went up to North Pole, Alaska and spent a couple of days with my cousins Adam and Kim and their kids Lydia and Ben. It is always good to see them.