Alaskans, as a rule, are fish-heads. I don’t mean this as pejoratively as it sounds – they simply love their fish, and fishing for them. During fishing season, and especially salmon season, all Alaskans are required by state law to leave their homes and congregate along shorelines of rivers, lakes and oceans. There, they are not allowed to leave until they catch their limits. Well, at least that’s the way it seems. Tourists and travelers who feel similar enthusiasm also enter the fray.

The sheer volume of people was surprising to us, but their enthusiasm should not have been. Look at the prizes that await, like this 70-pound halibut caught in Kachemak Bay near Homer.

There’s so much fishing activity that local businesses “clean up” (pun intended) by processing sport catches. So this big bad boy (above) was quickly dealt with by a lean, well-muscled chap with a whole rack of razor-sharp filet knives. It took him no more than three minutes to completely process the entire fish, smooth, slick and no fuss.

We camped for part of a week in Seward, a pleasant sea-side town at the north end of Resurrection Bay. We barely got a spot in overflow camping, which then filled up and overflowed.

The city elected to quickly chalk-stripe new spots at opportunistic points along the seashore, providing maybe 40-50 new slots. In early August, as if there weren’t enough people already out fishing, the Salmon Derby began. Prizes are awarded for largest size of various species, and a special prize for catching a tagged fish can bless the lucky winner with $20,000. Like these folks need any encouragement to go fishing? Madness. This time of year, it seems difficult to spot a person without a pole in their hands.

These guys at Seward seemed just about as happy to get off the water after an all-day charter, as they were to numbly get their pictures taken with a diverse catch.

On the dock at Seward, post-catch processing is a conglomerate affair, with private, charter, and commercial guys all taking their turns over a bucket and spray faucet.

Literally dozens of fish-filled carts roll up and down any given set of docks, slithery rumbling testimony to the widespread success of the hordes.

As non-fishermen, Karin and I watched all this with great bemusement. Oh, we get a kick out of landing a big fish just like anyone would, but we just don’t have the passion which drives folks out into the rain and rough seas, throwing lines in the water from dawn to dark (which is about 17 hours a day this time of year).

If you like fish a whole lot, you might even want to decorate your yard in a nautical motif, like this charming house in Seward.

From Anchorage to Portage, to Kenai and Soldotna, down to Homer and over to Seward – FISHING, more fishing, and then lots of fishing.

Rivers, streams, and lake shores are lined end-to-end with hopeful casters and snaggers. Boat loads of bright-jacketed baseball-capped sports –men and –women float past the bridges and sandbars, all seeking the silvery slippery slimy slithering critters that populate the waters.

Sometimes, it can be beautifully peaceful, like this drift boat on the Kenai River – – –

Or this group of women cheerfully (although unsuccessfully) shore-fishing further downstream.

But sometimes it’s just pure combat-fishing too.

The fish are indisputably THERE. Whenever we get to an area clear of fishermen, like this “No Fishing” spot on the Russian River, the quantity of salmon is simply awe-inspiring. These guys are about two feet long or a bit more.

In Seward, an interesting sort of interruption of activities was the periodic arrival of a cruise ship, just across the harbor in front of our camp site.

With this inauspicious event, 1,000-3,000 people would fire up their cell phones, bring the entire local 3G network to its knees, and then head into town on the mandatory ice cream and Chinese souvenir expedition.

The cruise tourists appeared to be the only people in Alaska (besides us) who weren’t fishing. So with it all said, and all my previous ranting, sure, there were some excursions from the prevailing piscine passion.

Here’s an odd one: The people who owned these kayaks on Kenai Lake took them out just for paddling!! They didn’t even have fishing poles!! Can you believe it?

And yet another remarkable exception to the fishing furor: a campground wedding. Complete with paisley-stockinged bridesmaids, jeans-and-vests best men, and a lovely tattooed bride who, in clear Alaskan tradition, carried her own firewood to the reception campfire. I couldn’t make this up.

On the eastern side of Resurrection Bay, a very different kind of Seward escapes the tourism and the fishing mania. This is industrial town, all business, no glamor, seven miles travel from Tourist Central, and it might as well be on another planet. It’s lonely and unpopulated, with one huge sprawling gravel campground with two solitary residents.

There’s a massive oil drilling rig sitting docked nearby, undergoing re-fitting before it gets towed up and around to the Beaufort Sea to again ply its job sucking up the oily stuff.

Cargo cases, anyone? They’re building massive industrial “barns” out of the things. A big forklift, a little stacking, and voila! You have a really big shed.

Yards full of old boats waiting for —resurrection? —destruction? Hard to say. Maybe just plain waiting.

So we roamed the peninsula, watched and tolerated the fishing intensity, found our own pockets of variety and interest, and finally wandered back up the Kenai toward Anchorage. After a few chores and activities there, we will begin the long trek back in a roughly homeward direction – with a few side-trips as they strike us.