On Wednesday, John and I decided to head down to the Kenai to see if we could get some fish. We got up early, loaded the car with our gear and hit the road.
Kiva thought that we should take her...or not go. In order to ensure that we would not leave her behind, she plopped herself on top of John.
Unfortunately for her, dip netting on a large river with hundreds of people is not particularly dog friendly. Nevermind the fact that she likes to roll in smelly things (i.e. fish guts). I wasn't about to spend three hours in a car with a wet dog who smells like rotting fish. Sorry Kiva!
I was trying to be hopeful, but the fishing report from the weekend was not great. This year the late run of sockeye all came through in two days (250,000 one day and 215,000 the next day) and since then the counts have been kind of sad. At the very least it was a beautiful day and it was mid-week so I was hopeful that it would not be crowded.
We got to Kenai around noon, unloaded our things and claimed our spot on the beach. There were not very many people there and there was hardly a cloud in the sky. It was low tide (very low), and it did not appear that anyone was catching...so we waited.
As the tide changed, it looked like things were starting to pick up. So John suited up and got to work. I sat on the cooler and supervised. The Kenai is prime people watching territory. My favorite observation was the two Asian guys that were near me who were sitting on upturned Kikkoman soy sauce buckets. Talk about a stereotype!
The tide was coming in pretty fast (it went from a -4.7 to a +27 in less than six hours), so it was hard to hold the net in the current. The entire time he was in the water, only two people caught fish and all he caught was a teeny tiny little flounder...oh and the fish that jumped out of his net!
We decided to call it quits and make it back to town in a reasonable amount of time so John could go to work the next day and not be exhausted. We packed up our stuff and loaded the car back up and stopped for pizza on the way home.
When we got home, I found a nest in a towel by the front door that Kiva had made. Apparently she was hopeful that we would come back for her. After she said her initial hellos and her butt stopped wiggling, she started pouting. She refused to eat her dinner or acknowledge our presence any longer.
By the time we went to bed, she had gotten over her hard feelings.
Even though we didn't catch any fish, it's hard to beat a day by the river in the sunshine!
