Dipnetting on the Kasilof

On July 19th I headed down to the Kasilof River with a friend, Rudy Howard, to go dipnetting for red salmon. Dipnetting you say- what is that? Alaska has a personal-use subsistence fishery which allows residents to net their catch. Dipnets come in all shapes and sizes but most have a hoop, which cannot be larger than 5' in diameter, and are on poles ranging from 5-20 feet long. The picture above shows a person entering the river with their net.
Basically you stand in the river, at times up to your chest and wait for a fish to swim into your net!

On the right is a photo of Rudy (middle) waiting for the fish. You need to wear neoprene waders if you want to seriously fish, the water is very cold. Rudy was in the water for quite a while.
Dipnetting is not a solitary sport... at times it gets quite crowded once the fish start running as you can see in the following pictures. You also tend to fish with the tides. The incoming tides seems to be the best.
Unfortunately for us while we were there the Dept. of Fish and Game decided to have an emergency commercial opening so many boats were setting their nets just outside the mouth of the river which made it hard for the fish to get to us.

These were taken about midnight as the sun was setting! We fished until 2 am. We decided that my legs wouldn't do well with the current and in the muddy bottom so Rudy did the dipping while my job was to bonk the fish and gut them. As well as make the coffee. We took the Westphalia down so we spent the night. The next day we dipped some more but the commercial nets were back in the water, it was raining and it was crowded (many people went to the Kasilof because the Kenai was having a weak run of reds) so we headed home. The fifteen fish we got are being smoked for us and we look forward to doing it again next summer!!
Another look at the shapes of dipnets.