Once upon a time, there used to be oodles upon oodles of steamer clams around Juneau if you knew where to go. I would steam, smoke and can them. They were great on crackers. My buddy Charlie and his wife loved them. When he moved to Juneau, he wanted to. We went to my favorite, can’t miss beach and started digging. And digging. And digging. All we came up with were shells. The clams were gone. Later I was to find out this was not an isolated incident and some stochastic event had killed them off in the area.
I’ve been telling Charlie how I’ve been getting crab hand over fist. Last week, I got 8 crab, rebaited the pot, and there were 10 the next day. I would give the 2nd day’s crab away after picking the first 8. I was getting so many, there was plenty to share.
So we pull up to the pots yesterday, and Charlie pulls up the pot and …….. not a thing. Second pot had a little king crab and that was it. First skunk in a long, long time. Hopefully, I rebaited and swapped the old pot for a new one and we reset. This morning…….nothing. Again. All I could do was laugh. Lucky for me, when we stayed over at the cabin, Charlie could see all the shells around the cabin from all the crabs I’d cleaned in the weeks past. The boy is a death knell.