Steve picked me up at 9:00 a.m. in their motorhome, and we set out toward Seward. We had about a 50-mile drive. Esther and Linda just chilled and did some reading at our campsite.
We found Samson Tug & Barge, and saw our Jeeps waiting for us. We checked in at the office, got the keys, and were quickly on our way. Well, Steve had to hitch up his Jeep, so I waited to make sure he didn't have any issues. Then we were on our way back to the Russian River Campground.
Our sites were quite far apart in the Campground, and we wished we were closer. I visited their campsite, which was a double.
Hmm. We could both fit in their site. So we decided to move.
While we were packing up to move, some folks went slowly past our campsite a couple times. I asked if they were looking for a site, and they said they were booked in our site in a couple days after we vacated. I told them we were moving now, and asked if they wanted to come in early. They did, so we worked it out so we didn't have to cancel our site and they didn't have to go through the Recreation.gov site and pay a reservation fee.
Well, that worked out nicely.
Once we were all settled in Campsite 32, Steve and I were preparing to go down to the river to fish when I noticed my fly rods were missing. I had stored them under the back of the RV last night, and we drove off and left them.
I hurried back to the prior campsite and the rods were gone .... but there was a note wrapped around a rock "If you forgot something, come to Site 62". I went to Site 62, and the nice family had picked up the rods and left the note. Whew. I got my rods, shook the guy's hand, and thanked them profusely.
A little while later, Steve and I walked down to the confluence of the Russian and Kenai Rivers. It's a long walk from the campground to the confluence.
Combat fishing was in full force, and we saw some people bringing in fish. We grabbed open spots and started fishing in an area that wasn't too crowded. Perhaps it wasn't crowded for a reason.
We could see fish all around us, but many of them had already spawned and were bright red. We weren't having any luck getting any on a hook. But at least the surroundings were pretty.
Eventually, I finally caught a Sockeye. And that would be our only one for the evening.
There are cleaning tables on the edge of the confluence, so I cleaned our fish and we made the long walk back to our campsite. On the way, we tried a couple more places briefly without success.
By the time we got back, the ladies had given up on us and already had dinner in progress. We'll eat this new fish tomorrow.
Steve and I agreed that we weren't impressed with the confluence of the Russian and the Kenai. We like fishing in Soldotna much better - there were lots of places to go, the volume of fish was higher, and the fish were much "fresher" as they were much closer to the ocean. We're going back there when we leave here, and part of the reason is that they recently raised the daily limit of Sockeye below Skilak Lake from 3 to 6.
As much as we had been looking forward to the Russian River, we were a bit disappointed and decided to skip fishing tomorrow. It would be another day of just relaxing.
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