Ole Bates checks fish wheel at Slana after Copper River rises from heavy rains.

We got our turn on the fish wheel this week.  The fish wheel floats along the shore of the Copper River just downstream from the confluence of the Slana River.  The salmon have spent several years feeding at sea and now they are returning to spawning streams in the Slana River drainage. Most of the salmon are sockeye or as they are locally called, Copper River Reds.

Sockeye salmon in the holding bin.

 Releasing a rare female chinook salmon back into the Copper River.

As I watched the wheel turn, one of the baskets carried a big purple chinook salmon out of the silty river then dropped the flopping fish into the holding bin.  The chinook had been in fresh water long enough to turn from silver to purple and that meant its flesh was probably in less than prime condition. Since it was a female full of eggs, I pulled it from the bin and released it back into the river hoping it would continue its upstream migration to spawn.

Filleting a sockeye salmon.

We harvested forty salmon, one chinook and thirty-nine sockeye.  After filleting the beautiful fish, we vacuum packed some for the freezer.  We smoked the rest. Being local residents of Slana, Alaska, federal subsistence regulations allow us to harvest up to 500 salmon.  But forty is plenty for us.

Sockeye salmon eye.

Fish wheel graveyard in Slana.