{"id":2091,"date":"2022-07-20T02:56:51","date_gmt":"2022-07-20T02:56:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/?p=2091"},"modified":"2022-07-20T03:30:34","modified_gmt":"2022-07-20T03:30:34","slug":"week-9-salmon-fishing-and-hidden-lake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/index.php\/2022\/07\/20\/week-9-salmon-fishing-and-hidden-lake\/","title":{"rendered":"Week 9: Salmon Fishing and Hidden Lake"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The weather took a dramatic turn for the worse: cool with rain\/drizzle\/low clouds most every day, continuing into 10 day forecast. It’s hard to motivate for a long wet hike with no views. We decided we really needed to get out of the van for a few days, and booked four nights in a fishing lodge half way between Soldatna and Kenai, and I booked a half day Sockeye Salmon fishing trip. The lodge was really nice, and a pair of moose came right up to the deck our first night there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I knew nothing about fishing for Sockeye, and it’s really a unique style of fishing. Sockeye only eat plankton, so bait\/lures are not useful. You just pull an empty hook past them and hope they run into it. The limit is 3 per day, and my guide and I caught our six in about four hours. (We actually caught around 18, but all but 6 got away). I must say, Christine’s Salmon Chowder is amaze balls. There is a lot of luck involved in picking the right day to go out, and each day the number of salmon vary a lot. The week that I went out the daily totals<\/a> of salmon entering the river from the ocean were: 21,400, 20,600, 8000, 9600, 5500, 5200, 18,700, and 45,600 (they use sonar to count the fish as they enter the river). I went out the day there were 20,600, and I met some folk who went two days later and only caught two fish between six guys. Alaskans are also allowed to go ‘Dip Netting<\/a>‘ the last three weeks of July, where you just stand still with a net and wait for a salmon to swim into it. Crazy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next we wanted to go to Kenai Fjords National Park, but the weather forecast was for rain, so we decided to hang out for a few days at Hidden Lake Campground <\/a>(on the way from Kenai to Seward) and try to do some hiking\/kayak between rain showers. Hidden Lake Campground is an incredibly nice campground managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service<\/a>–and only $10\/night! I managed to both hike and kayak, but I got quite wet from the rain doing so. The trails in the area are extremely well maintained. I also decided to get my 2nd COVID booster on the way (before SalmonFest) and felt pretty crappy for a couple of days. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A collection of photos from the week are here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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First catch of the day!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Total haul. We squeezed about half of this into the freezer in the van, and will be eating it over the next month. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Greener than green hike near Hidden Lake<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The weather took a dramatic turn for the worse: cool with rain\/drizzle\/low clouds most every day, continuing into 10 day forecast. It’s hard to motivate for a long wet hike with no views. We decided we really needed to get out of the van for a few days, and booked four nights in a fishingContinue reading →<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","no-thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2091"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2091\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2106,"href":"https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2091\/revisions\/2106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travel.bltierney.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}