From River to Ocean | Salmon Fishing in Alaska

welcome back to the channel we are on a grand adventure today this is a summer trip that we like to take annually alaska is a huge state as you may already know it's fantastic in the summer there are salmon everywhere that's the purpose of our trip today we're doing some fishing some exploring we are down on the kenai peninsula this is a favorite spot of mine to stop but we timed it a little bit too early and there's no salmon spawning yet so there's nothing to look at here but the direction we're headed there are plenty of fish we're going to get going it is raining unfortunately but we are still going to have fun well we thought we were escaping the rain coming down here but it followed us so it's raining right now it's supposed to clear up we're heading to a little toll booth right now you have to pay to go through this tunnel we're going to a town called whittier this is the only way in and out of this town besides boat i guess or airplane this is the only way to drive in at this town so let's pay our toll we gotta wait i think about 20 minutes before we can go through here we go 12 30 sharp they're letting us through and this tunnel is long it didn't exactly say but i believe it's almost two miles long it's a single lane so traffic goes through the way we're going it also comes the other way and the train also goes through this tunnel it's a it's a pretty cool little tunnel okay this is whittier we made it we have actually never been here when there's this many people here it is full-on tourist season so there's a lot of folks around and i think we're going to start our adventure down at the boat harbor so i'm thinking the jet skis looks pretty awesome right about now we've only been to whittier twice this was our third time and once was in the winter that was pretty neat this is totally like a hot spot destination because there's a lot to do from here i've never done really anything around here that you can do but there's waterfalls glaciers they can take you out for fishing there's ferries a whole bunch of stuff and a whole bunch of boats and we are actually here for some fishing so that is what we were heading off to do seabiscuit literally called seabiscuit oh wait what the heck we went the wrong way here's what's going on we don't know where we're going one road in this town and we're lost oh my gosh i gotta leash this one what are you saying get a fishing gear off let's go fishing in the rain pink salmon fishing that's what we're going for they also call them humpies we have our we call these our pike fishing poles these are pretty good poles they're pretty strong and they have 10 pound line on them these aren't the craziest fish when it comes to fighting so we should be able to bring them in no problem with these and we're using spinners we got a few different kinds i think i'm going to start with this really cool one right here a little squid on the end so arrow one of the meps so she's got a pink meps with a little uh black feather on the back and this place is called emerald cove we actually came out here last year but it was about a month later in the season and this place was just full of spawned out pink salmon i mean like thousands it was probably one of the most crazy things i've ever seen right now since we're earlier the fish are going to be fresher so they're not as spawned out they're more just straight out of the ocean they're going to taste better the only thing that sucks though is there's less of them in here right now so we're going to use our spinners this time and hopefully we can entice one of those things to bite they're out look to the channel to the left we're hoping to catch this place at high tide but we're actually here at low tide so once the tide comes in these fish are going to come in and there should be a lot more in this cove it's the third one i've hooked i'm hoping i can get in i found the technique they're not liking a smooth spinning motion with this spinner they're liking a real sharp jerk and that's usually what gets them and it's it's working that's the biggest pink i've ever seen [Music] nice fish okay okay he's a strong one so that is a pink salmon or a humpy that's a male you could tell by that hump that it's starting to form on his back and throughout the spawning process of these fish that hump on his back will get absolutely huge and this is the first fish of the trip a nice pink salmon we're gonna keep this one [Applause] okay so that's a female pink salmon looks a lot different than the male and you may notice i hooked this one in the back a lot of creeks like our local one you have to put these ones back but since we are in salt water in this certain area you're actually allowed to snag these fish we're not trying to snag them but we did snag this one but we can keep this one well i switched from mine which was a single hook to ariel's which was a treble hook and it was a pink one and they were loving that one i was getting all kinds of bites unfortunately i snagged on a rock and i thought it was a fish so i went to set the hook and it snapped it off so we have another one here it's got a little bit of pink this one's pink and silver i think this is a vibrax number five i'm gonna give this one a go and see if we can catch another one they're jumping out here like crazy it's just insane we have to tire this one out a little tanks are they're not the most sought after fish here in alaska out of all the species of salmon we have they do taste good they taste great they're really good canned and smoked they're great for dog food and they are like an absolute blast to catch because you get a lot of action i've hooked probably 30 fish and i brought in two arrows got one that's a nice looking pink in his mouth big teeth cool colors all right we are having a total blast out here we are actually allowed six fish each but we do not need to keep that many because we are here for the experience and we have more fishing to do i wanted to point out something that's really cool about these pink salmon is their black spots on the top of their body and on their fin not all salmon have that we have five different kinds here so that's a good identification way if you can't tell by the hump that they get it's really neat out here today we got to see some wildlife there was a mom sea otter that's feeding her babies really really cool to witness that that's a first for us we have to hurry up because we're gonna try and catch the tunnel on the way back we have more things to do and it is starting to rain again [Applause] [Music] [Music] it's 504 we made it here just a couple minutes ago just in time the light just turned green and we're going to head through the mountain to the other side coffee time part one got our little stove that we always bring with us but we've got something new we're gonna try today these little uh thermoses but they have built-in french press sounds kind of weird but i'll show you what i mean so it's a thermos and you got like a little plunger with a screen on it um so what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna fill this up with hot water put our coffee in there we'll put the cap on to keep it hot and maybe like 10 minutes or so we'll put cream and sugar and we'll use this to plunge the coffee grounds down to the bottom i guess and we'll put our lid on and we'll have some java we need it it's been a long day i think it's like five o'clock already and we got a lot of plans and excitement for this trip so we're just gonna keep on going check out this salad this has like 10 different ingredients from the garden that's gonna be our lunch dinner that's something that we do to help keep these types of trips a little low cost is bringing the majority of our own food and we also like to sleep in what we call is our tundra inn so that will be our home for the night first time using these i think the ideal way would be let them sit for a while and then when you push the little plunger down then put your cream and sugar but we're gonna get in the truck and go and we're not gonna stop again so i'm gonna put the cream and sugar in now and we'll just take the little plungers in the truck there we go let's pack back up we're gonna hit the road coffee well we have officially made it to alaska's kenai peninsula been raining on and off pretty much this whole trip but there is blue skies ahead and we have about an hour further to go to our next stop which is the town of cooper landing and we're gonna go see if we can see some wildlife there eric and i are at the russian river and we are headed to the falls the falls is where you can see salmon jumping and sometimes you can see bears which we're hoping and kind of not hoping to see bears i guess so we'll see what we can see this time just bandit is accompanying us beau is not fit for this hike i think it's a little over two miles getting there well it has turned out to be an awesome day if you can't tell i'm now in a t-shirt it's probably getting close to i don't know 8 30 maybe i forgot my watch back at the truck but so we came around a mountain the skies cleared it got warm this is awesome i think we're over halfway there so we talked to some people that were hiking out they said there was a bunch of salmon jumping up the falls and they said it was just awesome so looking forward to it we made it and it's super loud down there so i'm not sure that you're gonna be able to hear us or not no bears today we got really lucky last time we were here and i'm pretty sure it was really late at night around the same time and we saw a beautiful young brown bear which was scary but fun to see there's not as many fish jumping today it's a little bit earlier we came a little bit later in the season so we're going to keep heading up and see what we can see there's probably a bunch of people fishing down the river come on bennett the old conehound this is such a treat this is probably my favorite berry and we don't find it very often this is a currant a red currant to me these taste just like a really good pomegranate it's just like a pomegranate yeah okay let's go let's see hold on watch watch the top she might go up there oh yeah we need to go let's go she's coming faster come on now now let's go open it we need to go [Applause] well we are out of danger and i guess we got what we asked for which was to see a bear saw a brown bear with lovely three cubs that's like the actual type of bear i imagine you don't really want to see we were kind of taking a different trail back and it's getting late eric spotted the bear first and she seemed a decently safe distance to get our camera gear out but it was the strangest thing she was coming like straight towards us straight towards our cameras and so we knew we had to go we obviously can't stick around and started heading back and we were like hastily heading back and every time you turn around this bear was still there behind us with her three cubs thankfully we ran into some fellow alaskans and they handled a little better so the bear kind of got scared and went back down the river but me and eric and bandit were like let's get out out of here it was amazing i don't think we've ever seen no we have not ever seen a mom with babies like that so pretty cool and scary as hell at the same time now it's getting to be the evening and we get to walk back the two and a half miles to the truck and we know there's other bears out here but hopefully they're along the river eating salmon and not thinking about eating eric that was a hike i think we probably did close to six miles seeing that bear was just crazy i saw it really far away and it's getting kind of dark and i didn't have my sunglasses on which are prescription and i was like is that a bear a huge stump and it moved and i was like that's a bear and she was just like pushing us up the trail back to kind of where we came from and crazy situation but we made it back we're exhausted our coffee has finally cooled down enough where we can actually drink it it's been like five hours so we got some coffee going it's probably like eleven o'clock we're going to go to a little bit of a different area in this campground it's called russian river campgrounds a little bigger parking lot that we like to go to and we're gonna make some food and hopefully get a little bit of sleep fortunately these waders leak very bad so they are full of cold ocean water from whittier good morning it's probably about eight o'clock now except for a few hours in the truck and we're going fishing so we are at the russian river and we are using russian river flies we are going to be fishing for sockeye and sockeyes don't usually bite lures so the technique that we're using is called flossing we just drag the flies right along the water with a little weight or two and what happens is it will hook the fish in the mouth and then you can retain that fish and we switched our pull out for our heavy pole and 25 pound line i'm actually using two weights today because the water is a little deeper and moving a little faster we're gonna head down there and see if we can find a spot to fish there we go you got your flyback okay do you put one back like that when it spawn that much [Music] see past the rock that's a nice one nice silver go russian river sockeye do you want to get that to shore that took like what two minutes found a good hole so it's our third time fishing here and our experience the best thing to do with these fish is let them fight we came here the first time really new to alaska we were hooking them left and right it was a huge run and we were losing like every single fish they were snapping our lines because we were hooking them just trying to get them in if you're patient with these fish there's a really strong current and believe it or not that's a that's a small one for here so these fish are like rockets in this water so we got one very happy with that those awesome fish okay i don't know what i have hooked oh okay that was a rocket he got off didn't snap my line dang that was a big one [Music] well we end up with four sockeyes fished here for just a couple hours really fun spot to fish it's beautiful out here we also ended up with a camera going in the river so we've been trying to dry our camera out seems like it might be working we're filming with it right now we don't really know but we're gonna head these up to the truck and i think we're gonna go to another fishing spot let's do it we made it to sildatna alaska we've been here quite a few times i have never in my life seen this place this pack there's people everywhere there's like events going on gas is like almost six dollars a gallon which i was not expecting and it's a beautiful day so we're on to the next adventure we got our ice gotta make one more pit stop at freddy's we're gonna go do some more fishing we arrived at our final destination which is casilla we are going dip netting that is our primary purpose of this trip so we are on the beach and we're looking for a spot it is so slammed down here we picked probably the busiest week in alaska to do this it is just madness it's a weekend and it is prime fishing season so that's why we're here too i'm already all geared up and ready to go so we're gonna get out there and see what we can do oh my gosh a twin do you see it hp [Music] all right okay we're ready to rock fish there's probably a spot i think that's the best spot right there over by that boat good luck young lady thank you hopefully i'll fall in here with the camera too from the looks of it people are catching fish so every time eric and i have come here we've been pretty successful in just one night of fishing like usually 10 plus hours or so we're allowed 35 fish for our household so we'll see what we can do i don't know if we're exactly looking to take home that many [Music] [Applause] i don't know which side it's on though i always make that mistake all right first soccer it's a little one it's so beautiful though okay sean [Music] hello they're small huh [Music] you know like in school you know why it's so hard okay that's our fourth fish and we caught a flounder look at him oh i'm gonna have to show you him he's adorable gonna release him yep man i'm amazed how strong there oh no we're gonna be switching off today eric and i eric's gonna go after i catch a certain amount he's gonna be up and see how many he can catch ah check out these guys [Music] all right we're coming into a little bit of a break here eric's going to run the fish back and grab his net because we want to get some more fishing done things are kind of slowing down and the low tide is going to be soon so we're going to have a long distance to walk pretty good so far thank you good job i'm not sure what time it is but we're going to keep fishing oh my gosh tangled mess okay i think we got uh this makes 15 total errols i caught four hey you got the other ones more than me all right oh no oh no oh if you pull your head you're making up for lost times man that's like three and three minutes isn't it yeah it is there's still a lot of boats coming in because they they don't have to wrap up shop till ten tens when their uh things can come in i felt three bumps three bumps and i saw one and i saw that one jumping over there quite a bit further oh yeah oh yeah i got one i got one whoa heck yeah is it no nice job you got another one look at that one nice one little finesse i don't know i can't tell eric we got problems here i decided to go through well i think we're going to call it quits it's probably about 9 p.m we're completely exhausted we're cold we are wet and we have a ton of salmon so here's my last load right here i think ariel's got another six on her stringer we're leaving here with 26 sockeye salmon we're gonna get the truck loaded up and we're actually gonna ditch this place because it is like one big party here and we want to get some sleep and we'll see you guys in the morning okay hopefully i can make it back to the truck thanks for catching so many fish i know i'm cold too we can run the heater for a little right get warm the fish just barely fit yeah they barely fit oh man weird look at my feet mud of sand this is the dirtiest fishing spot i've ever been to every year well our fishing adventure hasn't ended yet we are on the beautiful kenai we just couldn't help but pass up another fishing opportunity we actually passed through seldotna yesterday went dip netting and then today we've made a pit stop for the boys talked to some fishermen they had good luck this morning and we have a teeny tiny bit of room left in our ice chest so we're gonna see if we can fill it here i got the net right here i can help you it's not fighting too hard it's big yeah oh it got off did it snap it it snapped it let it let it fight right get it to shore it's gonna take a while it's gonna take a long one [Music] i cannot believe it i'm so excited this is my soccer from the kenai river it is a fatty total fatty i do not know how i got that in by myself i'm a horrible netter i missed it probably like five times we worked so hard for this fish eric and i took turns back and forth for about probably like close to two plus hours so this is definitely more than enough for me i'm stoked to take this home this has been a fantastic trip alaska is amazing in the summer hence why we like to take these journeys so much sightseeing wildlife the fishing everything and this river is spectacular it's very famous river the kenai river on the peninsula it's got this crystal blue like aquamarine water and it comes from the glaciers i believe and that's why it has that color to it we now have 35 fish in total we have a few hours of a drive home we've got to make it there because we now have some work to do we have some fish to process this is a fat one good job man that was amazing there's a battle wound all right i think we're ready now it's full [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] all right we made it back yesterday with our fish eric and i are just totally beat we process these late into the wee hours of the night and morning yesterday and today we've got quite a bit to do the trip was 600 miles we got back probably a little bit after the 48 hour mark so we weren't gone for that long pretty pretty insane stuff there and we have a lot more to do with this fish so we're going to tackle that today how many cups is that a little you could start with that and then mix it up [Music] [Music] because the fish sat we ended up with some extra nutrients and blood is an awesome fertilizer for plants that like nitrogen this is our celery so it's going to appreciate that very much you need a bigger smoker apparently yeah i never thought i'd see the day but okay a little more go completely full smoker these are the bellies that ariel cut out of the fish these along with all of these small strips that we cut up here have all been brined in sugar molasses and a bunch of salt rinsed them off we got them on the smoker we're about to fire this thing up look at that oh my gosh what happened to this one you did the tail piece yeah he must have gotten mixed in oh that's a big old piece huh it's a tail it's like a fillet perfect [Music] we got our salmon processed and we've already opened up the other pressure canner they look awesome we ended up with 32 jars they're a little bit dark this time and we think that's because of the brown sugar and the molasses so they still look really really tasty i'm really excited to open that up we went a little bit fancy with these we added garlic a sun-dried tomato and basil and oregano to each of these jars we're making dinner now and of course salmon is on the menu eric is making us some salmon burgers bubbling [Music] you want quite a bit of lettuce on yours i did what the heck is that look at that heads or tails baby looks like chicken hmm i don't think you included the dirt too there was a bug and one of them i kicked out too there's a tiny slug too hopefully it's gone there's like a little caterpillar [Music] well this looks fantastic yes a lot of hard work and a lot of ingredients went into this burger so we got salmon burgers we have homemade broche buns that aril made she also made us a really good dressing it's almost like a pesto but it's cilantro and lime we have skins from the salmon on there that i fried up like little crispy skins a bunch of stuff from the garden probably some more stuff on there it's gonna be delicious yeah it's a lot of stuff on there awesome trip down to the kenai i always look forward to going down there the fishing is just out of this world and i can't wait to go back again and the sightseeing is awesome too already mentioned but this is a massive state so fishing we're really grateful to have that opportunity to be able to travel around and get to fish so many different places just because you can hop to and fro and fish doesn't necessarily mean you can actually have like a crazy amount of fish on you there are possession laws so you have to abide by those as well it was a wild trip it was a blast very excited to add that to our 2020 summer bucket definitely cross it off the list i guess and now it's time to eat let's eat that's a really good onion that is a big burger cheers to the kenai right i don't even know how to eat it yeah i'm gonna go for it i'm gonna go from the west end oh yeah i'm just going to go with the head yeah this is good yeah i haven't had lettuce on a burger in forever i really got the um the dressing i just got like i pretty much ate bread and dressing i think in that first bite that is delicious yeah that was really good we'll see you guys next time that's really good thank you burger but salmon i really like the herb dressing yeah it's like a pesto burger mm-hmm freaking good yeah fried egg would be good on here some like honey and then oh yeah good day mate we're down here on the walkabout doing the walkabout on the outback

Channel: Simple Living Alaska

Views: 1,002,538

Keywords: off grid living, living in alaska, alaska vlog, cabin life, fishing in alaska, cabin living, off grid living alaska, off grid cabin, daily life in alaska, summer alaska, garden alaska, homesteading alaska, simple living alaska, off grid in alaska, alaska sockeye salmon, sockeye salmon fishing, alaskan salmon fishing, seward alaska, red salmon alaska, kenai peninsula, alaska kenai, kenai peninsula fishing, dipnet kasilof, dipnetting alaska, dipnet alaska, kenai

Id: tK52DEOTa1M

Length: 47min 39sec (2859 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 31 2022