King Salmon

The king salmon spawning run here at Deep Creek has finally started - big time. I can stand on the banks of the creek on an in coming tide and watch the fish roil the water as they head inland and run the gauntlet of fisher-folk. The fishing has been good too. I watched a guy take 15 minutes to land a 25 pounder last night, he skillfully played the fish into shallow water and even without a net managed to land it.

All is not peaches and cream however - emergency fishing rules have been issued closing the Kenai River for a month and prohibiting the use of bait on the rivers further south, including here at Deep Creek. The closure of the Kenai River has brought a few extra folks our way. Official link here.

Historically the Kenai River sees about 3100 king salmon enter from Cook Inlet by now, the count this year was 739. Hence the emergency closure.

On the plus side, a pod of Orcas came by just off shore behind our trailer this morning looking for their portion of salmon too.

Deep Creek looking upstream.

Big.

Bigger.