My First Salmon! (By Callum) 9th June 2010

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Today me and my Dad went to the Anchor River on the Kenai Peninsula to fish for salmon. The night before we read through the regulations, and found the river is only open for fishing a few days a year so we wondered if it was going to be busy. When we got there, there were heaps of people on the river! Then we drove down near the river mouth were there were a few pools with a bit more space.

We saw a lady called Julie catch a King (Chinook) salmon about 20 lb! Then later on we saw another man called Bill land a King salmon that weighed 17 lb! Those fish were caught in the same pool so I went and had cast in there and about ten minutes later I got a fish on! It jumped once then swam downstream a bit and sat in there. It was really strong and quite heavy and my rod was bent right over, then after about ten minutes I finally got it up on the bank! The river bank was soggy mud so my shoes got stuck in the mud and I landed the fish in my socks! It was an 8-12 lb jack King salmon! (65 cm long) it was a hard fighting fish and my arm was sore afterwards. I was happy that I caught a fish because we only saw about 7 fish landed that day out of the 30-40 people that were fishing there.

Later that day me and my Dad took Lachie and Kelsey to the fishing lagoon - which is a pond on Homer Spit that joins into the sea. Alaska Fish and Game release baby king salmon in the pond and they return there to spawn a few years later when they are about 8-25lb .We did not catch anything there, so Dad got SKUNKED that day!

Back at our tent that night we cooked my fish, and all had fresh grilled salmon for dinner.

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