Salvage Run

With a rising river and a report from my friend Jeff saying he recovered 5 anchors, I felt I was too late to float the river for my annual Salvage Run.  I thought, "what the heck, good or bad I have to get out there."    I hadn't drifted more than a couple of minutes when something shiny caught my eye.  That's a three dollar lure. Yeah, baby!   It was going to be a good day after all.

After finding mostly fishing lures in trees and snagged on rocks my first non lure discovery was this: a genuine Alaska license plate.  

 

The expiration date on the plate was 2008.  For being in the river for at least 5 years it was surprisingly in good shape.

 

 

 

Not far downstream from the license plate I came across this.   Let's see, a license plate, a tire, what next, a truck?   Well, that didn't come together but a guy can dream, can't he?   By the way, the two white objects near the top of the photo are dead hooligan.

My next big find was this.  Hard to tell but this is a hooligan dipnet.  After close inspection I found it was broken so I hauled it out of the water and placed it on the bank.  This was a little too large for me to strap on my cataraft so figured I should at least take it out of the water and leave it visible so maybe a boater would notice it and take it to the landfill.

As I was floating the homestretch coming into Beaver Creek I came across this gem.  This is a full fledged king salmon spinning rod and reel.   It always makes me wonder about the story behind something like this.  Did someone carelessly drop it in the river?  Did a fish rip it out someone's hands?  Did someone get frustrated with it and decided to chuck it in the river?  Who knows the real story but it's always fun to speculate.

 

This photo is of my final haul.  No anchors (darn), but I did find a few "firsts".   A knife, a boat roller, a running light, and a license plate made this list.  All in all, a great day on the water.

 

So, on to the fishing report.    After a couple of cancellations I'm back on track this week with a couple of trips.   ADF&G has estimated that 16 Kenai kings have been caught and released to date with the overall run being weak.  No one I personally know has caught a king, but I hope to change that real soon.

 

See you next week.