newsminer.com

FAIRBANKS — For the first time in more than 10 years, me and my wife, Kristan, went dip netting together at Chitina last week.

Ever since our son, Logan, was born almost 10 years ago, we have alternated dip netting duties. I would go down with some of my man friends one year and she would go down with some of girl friends the next year.

It was a good, practical arrangement and we both always managed to come home with plenty of fish.

But this year, we decided to go down as a couple.

It was like the honeymoon we never had.

We — or at least I — spent the better part of a day finding our gear and stuffing it into our 1990 Volvo, hoping that we didn’t forget something but knowing that we probably had.

We didn’t get as early of a start as we had planned, in large part because we drove around Fairbanks looking for a place to buy dip net poles because my friend and dipping partner from last year still had ours and was headed for Chitina himself. We finally ended up borrowing a couple poles from a friend because we couldn’t find a store in Fairbanks or North Pole that had any.

We drove six hours through the night, counting moose, rabbits and porcupines that we spotted along the Richardson Highway.

We arrived in Chitina at 1:30 a.m. to find people already parked in the spot where we had planned to fish so we decided to hire a charter to take us out in the morning.

We slept three hours in the car before waking up to get in line for the charter with other dip-netters who had driven through the day and night to get to Chitina before we did.

We stood in line, chatting with dip-netters we had never met like they were old friends.

We listened to a man named Phil, who works for the two charter operators, talk about how good the fishing was the day before and how everyone had come back with their limits of fish.

We got our hopes up.

We paid $90 apiece — the “couples rate” — for a five-minute boat ride to a fishing spot.

We — or I should say Kristan — caught our first fish in less than 10 minutes.

We got our hopes up higher.

We didn’t know what to say when three men in a boat showed up at our fishing spot and one of them promptly positioned himself between Kristan and me and stuck his net in the water.

We appreciated it when one of our guides, Sam McCallister, returned and chewed out the guy for moving in on top of us before moving us to another fishing spot.

We got our hopes up again when Kristan netted another fish right off the bat at our new fishing spot.

We should have known better.

We spent the next nine hours with our nets in the water and caught only 12 more fish.

We begged charter operator Mark Hem to give Kristan a ride back to our car to pick up supplies — sleeping bags, tent, headlights, stove — so we could spend the night on the rocks to catch more fish.

We got excited when Hem moved us to a new fishing spot and the two dip-netters who had been fishing there and were waiting to be picked up had a pile of 55 salmon up at their feet.

We tied ourselves to trees and rocks so that if we slipped and fell in, we might not die.

We caught 17 fish in the next 2 1/2 hours, crawling around on the rocks like mountain goats as we clubbed each fish in the head, cut their gills out and tied them to stringers.

We marveled at how big and beautiful the fish were.

We finished the day off with a double — two salmon in one dip — and exchanged high fives with our dirty, blood-caked hands.

We pitched our tent in the trees above the rocks, cooked Top Ramen and ate a romantic dinner sitting on a bluff overlooking the snow-covered Wrangell Mountains and the swirling gray mass that is the Copper River.

We both agreed that Chitina is an awesome place.

We drank beer and cheered on two fellow dip-netters who had taken over our fishing hole each time they netted a fish.

With darkness falling, we climbed into our tent, crawled into our sleeping bags and rested our sore, tired bodies.

We were asleep before our heads hit our stuff-sack pillows.

Contact outdoors editor Tim Mowry at 459-7587.