Fishing on the Copper River

Adam- This weekend Nat and I took an amazing trip with the family up to Chitna, Ak (about a 5 hour drive north). We packed up the motorhome on Friday and headed up north to do some dipnetting. Our destination was the Copper River, which currently has a 5 star rating for red salmon. The Copper River is an interesting place to fish because the only area to fish is on the side of an extremely steep cliff. Adding to the excitement is the fact that the Copper River is extremely fast and has a very high density of silt, so if you were to fall in you would be dragged to the bottom by the weight of the silt.
Nat- Chitna used to have the largest copper mine in the world back in 1908. In 1938, it closed down and left a ghost town with a population of 49 people (at least that's what it was back in '96) and a now abondoned railroad track (which was eventually torn up).
The weather was rainy and it made the river swell to a high level. Fishing is usually better than what we ended up with, but with a bigger river this weekend it allowed for a larger area for fish to swim rather than in our nets. We couldn't dipnet, but I was goofing around and lowered Bernie's net in the water. 5 minutes later, I caught a little red salmon that we eventually threw back.
All in all, we had a great 4th of July weekend. Adam said he's done everything he's wanted to do while being in AK thus far. My mom said, "What does that mean? Are you guys going home now?" Not yet...we still have all of July now!