The fishermen at work in the lower part of the river Bystraya. Sitting in two boats at the both sides of the river the men span a net and let the current drift them some hundred meters downstream. The fishermen are only interested in the red fish eggs of the females. The meat of the killed females and the male salmons are simply thrown away. These were the only legal fishermen we met at the river Bystraya. Fish eggs make up 20 to 22 % of the body weight by the pink salmon females. The high prices of the red caviar make poaching very lucrative and thus very common in Kamchatka. Only the remoteness of the peninsula protects the salmon population against overfishing. The sturgeons in Black and Caspian sea, which supply the black caviar, are much more threatened. The salmon's feature to come back to the river where it was born makes it an easy catch for poachers. During our rafting tour we met a lot of poachers at the river. Passing them, they asked us, whether we saw water guard. When the poachers hear the roaring of motor boats they pull their nets with the astonishing speed out of water and hide in the dense vegetation at river bank. As legend has it, there are some heavy-armed poacher gangs in Kamchatka, which are equipped with helicopters and catch a big amounts of fish in the remote rivers.