![Yup'ik Raven Yup'ik Raven](http://ankn.uaf.edu/Resources/file.php/16/yupik.gif)
Special | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O
P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z | ALL
An Exciting Day at Wilson Creek:An Exciting Day at Wilson
Creek
This summer I did a lot of things and went on a lot of fishing trips. Some places I went were up to Wilson, Willow and Kuik. This one fishing trip up to Wilson was an especially exciting one. It all started when David Andrew and I decided to take a boat ride to Wilson Creek. That day was one of those hot, boring, and not so sunny days. I was walking around town wondering what to do that day. I was at the store, and after I bought a can of pop I bumped into David and asked him if he wanted to go rod & reeling up in Wilson, and he said, ya. We got all our fishing gear ready and then headed up towards Wilson. It took us 10 minutes to get to our desired fishing area. Just before we got there we thought that there would be people already up there fishing and it would be kind of slow. But when we got around the bend there was no one there, so we had the whole area to ourselves. After we landed we got our rods ready and decided to fish for whatever lurked in the shadowy waters below. But our minds were set especially on the humpies. I told David that I had caught a humpy the day before. After 20 minutes of no luck we moved to the other side to try our luck there. Fifteen long minutes passed and I figured it was time to change my lure. After I changed my lure I thought to myself that this fresh hook should have a little luck in it, and just as soon as I cast it out a fish was after it. Once the fish was hooked it fought enough to kill the boredom. And after a couple of minutes of tugging and pulling I finally got it to the beach. I was hoping it was a humpy, but it turned out to be a female chum. I was just about to throw it back into the creek when the thought popped into my mind that this fish should have eggs inside, and I knew whitefish loved salmon eggs. I asked David, "Do you want to try for whitefish if there are eggs in this fish?" And he said, "ya." We looked around the boat for a knife but realized that neither one of us had brought one. So I searched the boat for a sharp instrument to use to cut open the fish and scoop out the eggs. Finding a hacksaw blade, I thought it would have to do. So I went to the beach and cut open the fish. The blade worked fairly well. We took the eggs and left the fish for another animal's next meal. I asked David if he had any "J" hooks. He had just one so I made one out of the prongs of a small hook that was lieing around. Then we moved to the other side of the creek again, but this time a few feet up. We prepared the hooks with the salmon eggs and set them down in the water to nestle on the bottom. Just as soon as we put the eggs in the water whitefish came around and started picking the eggs off the hook. Once in awhile a fish would get slightly hooked, and as soon as we tried to reel him in he would come right off. So w& decided to reel in with caution the next time to see if we had really caught anything. Most of the time though the fish picked the hook totally clean of eggs, and this made us a little mad. Sometimes we would see the line jiggle a little after we put a fresh bunch of eggs on the hook. It was mostly the bigger whitefish that would overpower the smaller ones and steal all the eggs, although rarely the smaller ones would sneak in and gobble them up. After a half-hour of this, however, I finally managed to hook one. I cautiously lifted my rod to see if the hook was securely in place. Then I started reeling it in slowly until I felt its tug and I reeled it in a little faster. I continued to reel it in with caution towards the beach because I didn't want to lose this one. The whitefish put up a good fight for only a 12 incher. I plucked the hook out of its mouth and put the fish in the boat then added a bunch of fresh eggs. David seemed to be getting mad because the fish kept stealing all his eggs and running off with them. But a few minutes later he caught one too, and he also reeled it in with care because this was his first one of the evening. His whitefish was about an inch and a half longer than mine. We both wanted to catch the big one that kept running off with our eggs though. A few times we managed to snag it but it always got away. Fifteen minutes after David caught his I had hooked another one, and again with caution I reeled it in to the beach. This time it was bigger than the one David had caught. Later in the evening we started running low on salmon eggs, and as it grew darker it got harder and harder to see the fish. We only saw their silouettes moving toward the eggs, and our lines jiggled a little, but we never caught any fish. Finally when the fish were virtually invisible to our naked eyes and we were very low on salmon eggs we headed for home. I ended up catching two whitefish and David caught one. By: Fred Alstrom
| |
|