Two thumbs up and a sincere compliment for the two outstanding articles on dip netting by Megan Pacer on your front page, July 20. They were written with a fair eye and an in depth view of the family sport of dip netting on the Kenai.
Any one starting to read either article would have turned to page 10 to read the rest of the story. The pictures by Ben Boettger helped make one feel that they were there. They, together with the article were as fine a fair description that we have seen in any publication in some years. It truly showed what folks were there for, to catch their fair quota of one of Alaska’s finest resources. Last year over 28,000 Alaskan families dip netted for reds on the Kenai for family fare and freezer foodp, that represents a family projection of over 80,000 Alaskans, over 10 percent of the states population did family dipping for reds in the Kenai.
We all see many stories on dip net fishing. So many of them are biased, we the public have learned to read them with a tongue in the cheek. How fresh and encouraging to see good journalistic effort to show how important this fishery is to the people portrayed in the stories. Reading it makes one want to go get a dip net and join the fun! All the quotes, which certainly took time and effort, make the event seem real and riveting.
All the talk about dip netters and their annual invasion of the Kenai beaches are the sign of one major thing, how tremendously successful a public fishery it is, the most so of any new sport fishing in our nation. The Kenai is the only river with a red salmon run of its size that is road available to the public in the US, that is why it is so popular.
Please let’s see more of such in depth good stories about the Kenai and our area. Those articles were like a breath of fresh air and makes one look forward to the next days paper and more by lines and pictures by these same journalists.