They were silver salmon come to the Tsiu River to spawn.
We stood then with limp arms beside the traffic jam of silver salmon and watched the urgent swell of life coming from the sea to spawn in the 10,000-year-old waters weeping from the melting Bering Glacier eight miles upstream on the Tsiu River.
We moved two hundred yards upriver to the first great bend, where the Tsiu cut through high sandbanks before dashing to the sea.
On the days (three a week) when the commercial fishermen plied the lower sections of the Tsiu with their nets, we fished around them.