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FAIRBANKS — Operation Chitina launched at midnight from the parking lot of Fred Meyers on Airport Way on June 25.

Three graduates of West Valley High School in Fairbanks headed to Chitina in a red Toyota pickup overflowing with coolers and dip nets and a green Subaru Forester filled with snacks and warm socks. They carried walkie-talkies in each vehicle to communicate back and forth.

They drove through the “night” on deserted rollercoaster roads through spruce and aspen-cloaked mountains, past hanging lakes and meandering moose to get to the goods.

Collin Todd, Luke Mather and Tony Tomsich chain-drank energy drinks and played iTunes to keep alert on the 350-mile drive south on the Richardson Highway as the sun winked under the Alaska Range and foamy clouds nestled among the peaks. The mesmerizing drive to Chitina helped compensate for the fact that I wasn’t actually allowed to dip net on this dip net-themed adventure, being from the Lower 48. Still, tagging along with high-energy locals gave me the full salmon experience minus the sweat, blood and guts. After coming as close to dip netting as I was legally allowed and personally tempted, I understand the allure of Chitina. And also why my friends warned me, “Fun isn’t the right word. But it will be hard-core.”

Pulling into Chitina at about 6 a.m., the college students geared up in layers and chest-waders, strapped on external-frame packs and navigated 20-foot-long dip nets through a snaky, half-mile trail to a rocky point on the Copper River, just downstream of McCarthy Road bridge. The Wrangell Mountains loomed over the wide, curving river on all sides. Above the bridge, subsistence fish wheels spun hungrily and twinkled in dawn sunlight.

Donning life jackets, Mather and Todd inserted their crib-sized nets upstream of a quiet eddy on the point, where the Copper’s silty gray water gurgled and crashed against big rocks.

“A group of old Native ladies taught us how to fish here last year,” Mather, 20, said, holding the metal pole upright against the fast current.

“We were up here jury-rigging things together. We had no idea what we were doing,” he said, perching with more experience over the river in a yellow life vest.

Slow fishing

Within 15 minutes, he jerked his net out of the water to reveal a writhing king salmon. Mather completed the catch with a fat stick to the head of the chinook. The 30-pound king was the first of three the group would catch, in addition to 30 other sockeye (red) salmon in what was a 24-hour dip netting marathon.

The trollers agreed that the fish were not running as strong as last year, when their two-year tradition was born. This year has been slower for commercial, subsistence and personal-use fishing, according to Alaska Department of Fish and Game officials.

“This is definitely a weak year,” said Mark Somerville, fish biologist for the Upper Copper and Upper Susitna areas for the Department of Fish and Game. “We’ve had over a million fish come up the river the last two years.”

Less rich than in recent years, the river has attracted fewer people this season, he said.

Anyone with a personal-use permit is allowed 15 salmon, including one king, each year for a family of one, or 30 salmon, including one king, for a family of two or more. Fishermen with these permits catch about 14 fish per permit, based on a five-year-average since 2003 from Fish and Game data. That amounts to an average of about 116,500 salmon caught by personal-use permits each year.

When Somerville visited the sandbar just downstream from the bridge last Friday, he saw 11 people fishing.

“They’d been fishing since 8 a.m. The harvest was from six to 24 per person. Ten fish in eight hours,” he said. “That’s probably about average.”

While the fishery is slow, that didn’t stop the budding dip-netters from catching twice as many as they did last year, reinforcing fishing’s key principles of patience, randomness and luck.

The Fairbanks team was alone on the gusty point for the first eight hours, each netting a couple of salmon, eating freeze-dried beef stroganoff and dozing on the gravely slopes. They didn’t catch fire until the chilly, dim hour of 3 a.m., when Todd, 21, tied his net off on a boulder and started getting lucky.

“He caught about four in 10 minutes,” Tomsich, 21, said.

Two other Fairbanksans had set up their dip nets at a calmer section just downstream of our group and scooped up 34 salmon Wednesday night. Reid Olson, 48, and Carl Benson, 45, have been coming to Chitina for the last five years to catch enough salmon to last all year. Although they spent nearly eight hours fishing, they caught fish during just a few of those hours.

“Today was kind of slow,” said Olson, as he finished packing up a second load of salmon a little before midnight.

“It was really windy today,” Benson said on his way back to the car after delicately straddling a fallen birch tree blocking the trail while carrying a 100-pound pack.

“I was freezing out there,” he added.

The day had been gusty but in the mid-60s and sunny, pleasant for a non-Alaskan spectator such as myself. But during the dusky late-night hours, when the guys found their rhythm, I excused myself from the point for the luxury of the tent back near the road. When I woke up, my group was a task force of efficiency.

As Tomsich has fish allergies, Mather and Todd gutted the meaty salmon on a wood chopping board, scooping out arteries and long links of bright orange eggs and wrapping the pink meat into their plastic-lined packs. I proudly embraced my official title as Disposer of Fish Heads.

The fish were as slimy as they were heavy, and the king slipped through my fingers like a greased torpedo as I tried to clutch it around the tailbone.

They hauled the cumbersome packs and gawky dip nets back to the car in a couple of trips, bumping into occasional log obstacles and snagging the monstrous nets on twigs. They had their 150 pounds of fish iced in coolers by about 8 a.m. Thursday. We made decent time back to Fairbanks, weighted down with coolers full of fresh salmon on ice and fueled by the thought of milkshakes at the IGA in Delta Junction.

The final numbers?

Forty-two hours, 700 miles and 33 salmon.

Mission accomplished.

Molly Rettig is a summer intern working at the News-Miner. She is a journalism graduate student at the University of Colorado.