I got invited to go crabbing with Brian and Randy. The weather roared all night with pouring rain. By daylight, it was just pouring rain, and when they picked me up mid-morning, the rain had let up. I’d already gone to a garage sale at Kevin and Brynn’s. I had pre-ordered a couple of his boat reels I didn’t need when he told me about his sale on the ferry ride over from Ketchikan, so I went to pick those up and see if I needed anything else. I found a few Alaskana books in the free pile.

We have to crab on the other side of the island now, as the sea otters have wiped out the crab on this side. About 10 years ago, you could set a pot on this side, right by the boat launch, in 40 feet of water and catch lots of crab. Now, you need to set below 200 feet, and even then, you might not get any. So, people on this side of the island drive across the island now to get crab. Sadly, it won’t be long til those crab are gone, too.

The problem is with the Marine Mammals Act, a federal law. Unfortunately, sea otters are considered a marine mammal, so are managed by the federal government, and not the state of Alaska, which regulates the rest of the furbearers like river otter, marten, mink, beaver and wolf. The main sticking point in the federal law is that sea otter fur, whose harvest is restricted to Native Alaskans, has to be worked in some way – like made into a blanket or a hat – before it can be sold. This is a bottleneck that severely restricts how many otters are taken each year, since the harvester can’t just sell green fur (fur that’s stretched and dried and sold to a fur buyer, who moves it to the people who tan it and make it into garments), but only a finished product. It would be like saying a commercial fishermen couldn’t sell his fish to a fish processor, but had to do all the fish processing and packaging themselves before they could sell the fish. Or that a farmer couldn’t sell his corn to local buyer, but had to get it into a can before they could sell it. So the fishers of dungeness crab, geoduck, sea urchins –  all of which support a commercial fishery in the region, as well as for the rest of us for our own consumption -watch these resources consumed to such a low level by the the sea otters that, while they may not wipe out the entire populations, have them reduced to such a state that it’s not worth trying to harvest them anymore. Were the state managing them, I think we’d come up with a way to manage the sea otters to support a fur trade, a handicraft trade, and conserve the prey of the sea otter, but as we’ve seen in the past with our fisheries, the federal government functions more on process and perhaps a small powerful lobby, and less on what’s good for everybody. So, we adapt.

The day turned gorgeous, with the temperature in the 50’s and sunny when we launched the boat and headed for our pots. After we got the first pot in, I took on the jobs of baiting the bags for the next pots and tending the line hauler while the other two pulled the pots over the side and sorted the crab. The bait was fire red spawner coho salmon from the local hatchery. What a treasure this hatchery is to this side of the island. After decades of low returns and shoestring funding, the local aquaculture association took over the facility. Now the the returns can sometimes top 100,000 fish, which are shared by commercial trollers, charter fishers, and personal use harvest by residents.

When the crab pot comes aboard, females are universally returned, and males under a minimum size returned as well. Each of us can keep up to 20 crab. Randy and Brian handle the crab, with Randy using a handy measuring gauge to measure any crab that are not obviously legal. Nobody else is on the water with us, as the summer season has shut down. We have the waters all to ourselves.

Brian dropped me off at our place, and 7 crab from the tote filled my 5 gallon bucket. Dungeness crab are about the easiest seafood to catch, clean and cook, but one of the most tedious to extract what you’re after. You start out with a bucket full of critters, and when the shells are all shucked, and you eat your fill, you  have a few  bags of meat leftover to vacuum pack and freeze. Of course, it is dungeness crab, so it’s worth it.

I picked the crab and can report you get about a cup and a quarter of crab meat for each crab you pick. I ate some right out of the shell on a big bed of baby spinach greens with Mama Lil’s peppers, pickled red onions, a couple pickled crab apples from Roy’s, some Rik’s Devil Seed Chili oil (a new favorite), with some olive oil and balsamic vinegar dressing. That did the trick.

I had a bunch of pickling solution left from canning the crab apples, so I used some to pickle a couple red onions in a big Mama Lil’s jar. I filled another Mama Lil’s jar with crab and poured more pickling solution.  This morning, I had a Wasa cracker with the crab, Mama Lil’s, the pickled onions, and Rik’s chili oil. That did the trick again.

Just back from a banner trip to the Georgian Bay, Ontario, Canada with one of my oldest cousins Chris and her husband John. Her parents – my mom’s sister and her husband, and husband’s brothers – bought islands at the mouth of Henvey Inlet in the late 1940′.  They had a super cool, one of a kind log cabin built that’s still standing. It’s the only place outside of Alaska I’ll travel to fish. I’ve been going there since I was about 10 years old, and because the place is surrounded by Crown and Ojibwe lands, there’s been virtually no further development in terms of cabins built or facilities since then, so it’s still the same wild place, with no significant increase in boat traffic, etc over the last 50 years. .

Except, of course, for the windmill farm that the Ojibwe put on their lands on either side of the Henvey Inlet. It’s like finding oil or gold on your land, sort of, only this land use is not an extraction of a non-renewable resource, but simply capturing the energy of the abundant winds there and feeding it into the Canadian power grid. The windmills are silent – you can barely hear them if it’s flat calm- a slight wooshing sound – but that’s it. And of course, no emissions. Some see them as visual pollution in an otherwise flat landscape of low islands covered with scrubby pine – but they are magnificent to me. I saw more wildlife this trip than any other trip there. So, while I’d not say the windmills are the cause for the abundance, I also would not say they’ve negatively impacted it, either. And the fishing. Still fantastic. Welcome to what the future could look like. From what I read on the wind farm, it produces enough power for 100,000 Canadian homes – so in theory, less than four of these farms could power all the homes in Alaska, but of course we have the little problem in that our communities are largely on their own grids, and not part of a larger grid, except on the road system from Homer to Fairbanks. But still, I can see the potential and power of them. You can have all the oil you want, but it’s got to be transported to some distant refinery, then transported back, and then it can provide power. With grids already in place, a windmill can be set up, wired to the existing grid, and start providing energy with the first breath of wind. The Ojibwe at Henvey Inlet looked for a decade for just the right project for and economic endeavor on their lands, and landed on this. They own a 50 percent stake in the project. Their lands are leased for 20 years for the project, and if they end the project at that time, the windmills will come down.  They voted overwhelmingly to approve the project first, and then even a greater majority voted to put some of their income in trust for future generations. I hope to talk to someone there someday to find out more about the project.

I flew into Milwaukee, where my first cousin once removed Aileen – the daughter of the cousin I was going to Canada with, lives with her husband and 2 pre-schoolers. Her parents drove there from their home in Iowa, picked me up, and north we went. I’d never been to this part of the Great Lakes nor gone this way to the Georgian Bay cabin, so it was all new to me. I’ve never seen Lake Superior, and it was neat to drive by Whitefish Bay, from the lyrics of my favorite singer of the north country, Gordon Lightfoot – who grew up, I think, not far from the part of Canada we were heading to. Then the Saute St. Marie bridge, the straights of Mackinaw – places my great uncle Carl spoke about from his merchant mariner days out of Lake Huron on the Thumb of the Mitten in Michigan. We drove on to Blind River, Ontario and spent the night. I was surprised at the number of immigrants from who seemed, from their accents and appearance, to be Indian or Pakistani, but maybe another country in that part of the world. From lawyers on billboards to the clerk at the hotel to the gas station convenience store attendant.  Kinda cool they’ve found a new home far from home in rural Ontario. Hope they feel welcome there.

The next day we headed to Sudbury, then south again around the Georgian Bay to Camp Dore at the Key River. We launched the boat, and John handed me the keys to drive.  Now, I’ve run boats in a lot of waters. Mostly ocean waters and rivers. And no where have I boated where there are more random rocks in water, just below the surface, than in these waters of the Georgian Bay. Of course, my cousin started boating here well before there were boat electronics. The only electronics on her Bayliner Capri ski boat was a cigarette lighter outlet. And not a backup kicker motor in sight, either. Away we went.

Luckily, both of them had been to the cabin many times, and they became my chart plotter and GPS.  The Key River itself is easy to run. Just stay in the middle till you get to navigational markers. Once we got out of the river, Chris and John became my GPS, directing me to the next set of markers as needed, and giving directions otherwise to avoid rocks. Miraculously, we made it to the cabin without incident.  When I was a kid, this trip seemed like it took an hour or two and was a 25 mile run. I’m guessing we made it there in about 40 minutes, and my phone app said 13.7 miles.

Most years, the last group to visit the cabin would be sometime in August. This year, it was in mid-September, whic. is between fishing and deer hunting season for me here. Sara just had her knee replaced, and was back to driving herself to her appointments. “Go”, she said. And for once, I heard her the first time.

We arrived at the island.  Just as it’s always been for 75 years. Propane lights. Propane stove. Propane refrigerator. Propane water heater. Bay water is transferred by a small gasoline pump from the bay to a large tank high in the rafters of the kitchen, so running water all around. Even a shower and flush toilet.

And there’s a smell to this place. An earthy smell of dry pine trees and brown pine needles and the lake air. The smell immediately tells me I’m back to this home, of sorts. A place I’ve been coming to for 50 years. Paradise, as I said. It’s a place where kids can sunbathe, swim from island to island, jump off the diving board or slide down the water slide. water ski, canoe, kayak, sail, boat, put together puzzles, play cards, and maybe learn for the first time to work as part of a team moving groceries and goods from the water up to the cabin. As a kid, I remember watching my cousin’s husband Mike magically help me get an old outboard running. All the workings in the cabin, from the propane appliances to the plumbing, were new to me then. After spending most of my life in Alaska doing the stuff I love to do, now I was the fix it and set up guy. And I loved it. I coaxed the water pump engine to life. Took down the window covers. Fixed some leaks in the plumbing. Removed an ice-split valve in the water line and spliced it. Re-spooled a fishing reel and got lures out of the fishing net with my younger eyes. Took apart a 9 volt battery to make a connector for a 9 volt wire feed to the fridge. Cleaned and cooked the fish for everyone. Life was all about fishing when I was 12. Now, it was still about fishing, but also keeping the camp running with a lifetime of practical skills learned, the training of which started right here.

The cabin is unlike any I’ve ever seen. A central square made up of about twelve, 8 to 14 inch diameter logs, with another square log room added off of 3 of the sides of the center square. The front side of the center square looks out on the bay. Two of the side squares make up 2 bedrooms, each, for a total of 4. The 3rd side square is the bathroom and kitchen. There are lofts above the bedrooms – coveted sleeping quarters of teens and pre-teens. I remember there being so many at the cabin that I slept on 3 chairs – two chairs facing each other, with one to the side between them to form a sleeping platform – and never thought anything of it. When you’re 12, you can sleep anywhere. I was just happy to be there.

We got the cabin opened up without incident. John and I removed the plywood window covers with his cordless drill – a nice invention from the early days of coming here, for sure. Once inside the cabin, Christine got to cleaning and John to putting the plumbing together. I got the water pump out and John helped me carry it down to the waters edge. John put the intake pipe into the bay, and I hooked the other end to the pump, then hooked up the outflow pipe, primed the water pump, and cranked up the engine. It soon started and hummed along for a good 15 minutes before it quit. And wouldn’t restart. I went through the diagnostics from a lifetime of doing this now with outboard engines and generators and the like. Got gas. Yep. Got spark. That took awhile to actually see a spark, but finally did. Note to self: put spark plugs on the list for next group. So now to drain the carb bowl. Actually didn’t look too bad in there. So put it all back together, and with a lot of pulling on the starter rope and adjusting the choke from full to half when it would fire, I finally got it running and it stayed running and we filled the water tank.  There’s a ball valve by the front steps of the cabin that serves as a check valve so all the water you pumped up into the tank doesn’t just drain back out, as the fill line goes into the tank on the side, and not at the top. When I shut off the valve, I saw it was leaking. Looked like water got trapped in it over the winter and the ice split the side. So, I got to looking at the plumbing pieces that were around. Eventually I found a nipple to splice the section, but it was not tapered enough to want to easily go into the plastic pipes we were connecting. I remembered seeing a you tube, from the Developing World somewhere, where the person used a torch to loosen up the plastic pipe for just this purpose. We found a torch, heated up the end of the pipe, and the pipe slid right in. When the pipe cooled around it, it was water tight. We put on a hose clamp, just for back up.

Meanwhile, Chris was getting out the bedding and making up our beds. John was trying to get the propane refrigerator to run and I looked at with him. First I checked that the propane tank valve was open. Check. Now to check if we have propane by checking the cook stove. Nope. So changed the 100 lb bottle out for the full 40 lb bottle, and check the cook stove. Burner lights. We have propane.  There’s a 9 volt battery on the refrigerator that somehow is a safety check to a CO sensor, I think. If the sensor sniffs CO, then it turns a valve to stop the flow of propane. Well, we had to hook a 9 V battery to a set of wires. The last group taped the wires to the battery terminals, and that didn’t work for shit. And we couldn’t test the 9 V battery to know if it was the problem, or the wiring was the problem, since we didn’t have any other 9 V appliances to test it on, nor a volt meter. So, we got out a fresh 9 V battery, and I took one of the old 9 V batteries, peeled off the outside cover, removed the top terminals and the flat metal strip that is attached to each terminal. I took a nail and punched a hole in the end of each of the metal strips. We noted the attachment of the + and – wires as they came to the old battery terminals, and I threaded the wires to the opposite strips of the terminals on the home made battery connection, then snapped the male to female and vice versa connection onto the battery. Permanent fix. Refrigerator lit up and ran like a dream.

By evening, we were settled in for now. I started lighting the propane lights – the same kind I had at my cabin near Juneau. Some lit easily. Others pulsed and had to be shut down. A few needed new mantles, which I replaced the next day. Chris made salad and sweet corn and brauts for dinner. None of us drink alcohol anymore, and this may, indeed, be the first group ever to the cabin where that was the case. It sure saves on garbage hauling, I noticed, when there were no beer or other alcohol containers to haul out at the end.

The next day, I was up early. I was eager to go fishing, of course, but not sure if John or Chris wanted to go as we hadn’t made a plan the night before. John doesn’t drink coffee anymore, either, and Chris has one small cup a day.  As a result, the coffee they brought from their house had been opened a good long time. When I loaded my usual amount into the perculator that first day, the coffee was way too weak for me, so I made a note to self to fill the basket right to the top in the future. I filled my thermos with the weak coffee, and headed outside to sit on the nearby deck to enjoy the morning. The other two rolled out of bed about 11 am. Chris made bacon and eggs for breakfast. After breakfast, I took care of a squirrel nest from the front wall cross beam on the inside of the cabin. The squirrel that made it was dried up on the floor below, with some of it’s nest covering it. I got it all bagged up and into the trash can so Chris would have one less thing to clean.   About 1 pm, I was getting kind of twitchy, and broached the subject of fishing to John. “Hell Yes” was the reply. Like he’d been waiting for me to ask. That’s what I wanted to hear, I told him. Chris said she’d stay put and continue cleaning and tidying. I think she was happy to spend a good bit of alone time with her memories in her cabin, none of us knowing if this might be the last visit.

I think most people fish this area by drifting and casting. Only problem with that is you need to know where to drift and where to cast. And there are so many options fishing among all the little islands near the cabin. Me, I like to troll. I especially like to fish this way when I’m fishing with people that don’t often fish or are new to fishing.   All they have to do is let their rapala out behind the boat and hang on. Then I do all the fishing with the boat. If we catch a fish, I turn around and go back over the spot. If nothing on the back tack, I turn around again over the same spot and if nothing again, I keep going.  This method usually leads to a stringer of bass and pike, and a card catalog in my head of where the fishing spots are.  We may try a new spot the next day, and add to the catalog. And if we don’t catch in the new spots, we go back to the old spots. It seems to work.

John had a “conservation license”, which he said suited him because he was lucky to catch the one bass and/or one pike a day limit on that license, fishing out of his kayak. From what I can tell, this license was added by the Canadians to accommodate catch and release fishermen. I, of course, had the “sport fishing” license, which costs a bit more than the conservation license, and has higher bag limits. After I came home from Africa, catch and release fishing was never a thing for me. Fishing was for food, and when we had the fish we were going to keep to eat, I quit fishing. Of course, there’s usually some catch and release to it to let the little ones go. There are no minimum size limits for bass or pike where we were fishing, but there was a limit to the “trophy” pike an angler can keep – you’re only allowed one pike over 86 cm (about 33 inches) in your possession. We didn’t catch any such beast on this trip.

By the end of the day, we had a stringer of bass and pike. I caught most of the fish, and think John and I realized by the end of the day why. I let out a country mile of line trolling, while John let out a lot less. And we had different crankbaits (I think that’s what floating rapala lures or similar are called). John’s lure was diving deeper into the weeds or rocks, while I think mine floated nearer the surface being back further, and so my hook stayed cleaner of weeds. John started letting out more line, and I gave him a lure identical to mine (I think this lure worked well the last time I was here, so I’d ordered several when I got home so I’d be ready for next time). His luck improved considerably the next few days.

I got to filleting the fish when I got back. So little fishing goes on here that there was not a fillet knife, or sharp knife of any kind, nor a sharpener to be found. I sharpened one knife as best I could on the honing steel rod, and got to work. We keep our fish on a live stringer during the day. These warm water fish are extremely hardy, and keeping them alive all day negates the need for keeping them on ice. I forgot, however, a critical step in fish care as a result. I forgot to properly bleed them before I filleted the. It took a lot of rinsing to get all the blood out of the fillets, but luckily, we’d eat all of this first day’s catch fresh the rest of the week. Chris made great lasagna and salad for dinner.

I was up after sunrise about 8 am. Chris and John got a couple hours later. Chris made breakfast of bacon and eggs. John and I headed out fishing about 130 pm. Where do you want to go, I asked. Back to the bass hole, he said. We motored out to it – it’s in sight of the cabin, mostly – and after awhile John said I wonder where we are with fuel in the tank. The fuel gauge was still pegged at full, so didn’t seem to really work. How many gallons does the tank hold, I asked. I dunno, said John. How much fuel does it burn an hour, I asked. I dunno, John said. Uh boy. We had a little Jerry can with maybe 2 gallons of gasoline in it – not always enough to run an outboard if the pick up tube in the fuel tank does not reach all the fuel in the tank. By now, we’d fished our way out away from the cabin and could see the cottages near the mouth of the Key River, where the lodge was that sold fuel. John suggested we just fish our way over there and fuel up. A great plan.

There’s lots of rock piles we ran up on on our way to the lodge. That’s why, of course, the navigation channel is marked well out towards the open Georgian Bay from where we were now. After the wind picked up a bit, and we caught a fish or two, we picked up and idled out towards the navigation markers and away from all the rocks just under the surface where we were now. We’d caught what I think is the 3 biggest bass I’d caught in a day. Another great day of fishing.  We got over to the lodge to fill up. I went in the store and picked up a fillet knife with sharpener and a 5 gallon jerry can. We filled the boat up and then the Jerry can. No more running around without spare fuel. And, we found out the 125 2 stroke Mercury was pretty dang fuel efficient. We’d only burned 5 gallons getting to camp, trolling 2 days, and back to the lodge. I also determined the fuel tank was likely 23 gallons from the info I could find online, so 5 gallons of spare fuel was plenty. We returned to camp. On our way in, I hit something not far from camp. It felt like a log and not a hard strike of a rock, but neither John nor I had seen any logs floating around. So not sure what it was, and the prop wasn’t dinged up bad or bent.

At the dock, I remembered this time to bleed our fish first. I just broke a gill on each fish with my finger, and put the fish over the side of the dock. We took gear up to the cabin, and by the time I got back, the fish were ready to fillet. What a difference bleeding the fish and a sharp blade make. I was done in 5 minutes. After reading the regulations, I butterfly filleted the bass, keeping both sides of the fish connected at the belly in one piece, with the skin on, to individually freeze in zip loc bags in the freezer, so an enforcement officer could tell both how many bass I had, and that the fish were bass by the skin. The pike were different. For pike, unless you’re only going to keep 2 fish, you have to keep the fish whole so they can be measured because, as I mentioned earlier, you’re only allowed one big pike as part of your possession limit. I can’t remember ever cleaning pike (I’d always filleted them) and they were surprisingly easy to clean in the same way we clean troll-caught salmon here, first removing the gills, then the innards.

I cooked up a mountain of fish from yesterdays’ catch. It was a big hit, and we continued eating it as a side dish for breakfast and dinner the rest of the week.  In the past, I’d dredge the fish in flour, coat the fish in an egg and milk batter, dredge the fish in Ritz cracker crumbs, then fry the fish in Crisco. Like my Grandmother taught me. The fish always come out great when eaten hot. Not so great as leftovers, however.

My diet now is carb- and refined sugar-limited. So, I tried something different. I lightly coated the fish in a equal mix of corn meal and flour, seasoned the pieces with Lowerys Season Salt, and fried the pieces in butter. Simple. Easy. And fantastic. Both hot, and as reheated leftovers. A lot easier and quicker from start to finish. And a lot easier cleanup afterwards. Everyone had seconds. And thirds. And lots leftover as side dishes for the rest of our week’s meals. One thing I didn’t have was ketchup for the fish. Luckily, I grabbed a small jar of mayo and Chris a jar of sweet pickles. I’d also bought a jar of bull kelp pickles I made this summer. I combined the mayo and pickles to make tartar sauce, which was also a hit.

The next day. I was up at dawn, made coffee, and enjoyed the sunrise on the deck. I saw a squirrel bound across the rock across the little harbor below me. Then I saw something big swimming out of the little harbor. A big. Freakin’. Beaver. I thought at first it might be a bear until I saw it go under and then resurface. Bears don’t do that. It rounded the corner, and after awhile, a bald eagle flew right over head. Then a mink scurried along the rock across the little harbor below. It got to the waters edge, and looked up at me a few seconds. Then it plunged into the water and swam across to my side of the harbor. It went out of my sight about half way over, and didn’t climb up to my level so must have run along the rocks at the base of the little cliff in front of me. I checked the time: 950 am. What a morning already, I thought.

Chris and John got up awhile later. I told them I was taking a walk around the island, as I needed some exercise. I wandered around the perimeter of the island as best I could. Some places you can’t walk along the edge because of brush or it’s too steep. There was lots to see on my walk. I found some tiny red cranberries low to the ground that were very good eating. I tried some other berries that were not. I found where a beaver – probably the beaver I saw – had cut down a tree and was now cutting up the tree further, with big wood chips all around. I found some surprisingly wet areas that held some bog grasses, etc. When I found some moose droppings, it now made sense where a moose might find some groceries in what I thought was an otherwise dry, rocky habitat. I came out to the channel behind the cabin, and there was Mr. Beaver’s house.

John and I headed out fishing early in the afternoon. I decided we’d try up the Henvey Inlet, as we’d not gone that direction yet. We came to a big cove I remember one of the nephews catching a pike in, and trolled around there, but no luck. We crossed the channel to another bay by a cabin owned by a person one of my cousin had befriended years ago. The bay was full of weeds, and eventually we found a pike. Then another one. Then a third one. All in the same little area. The fourth pike was a little one that I was about to turn back from the net. Neither John nor I remember just exactly what happened, but one second I’m getting the fish out of the net, and the next second one of the three hooks on one of the two treble hooks on my rapala is buried in my pinky. And I mean buried. Right up to the curve of the shank. Well past the barb.

Well, panic set in right away. Then I calmed down a bit. First, I got the small pike out of the net. Then I cut the lure off the line. Then I took my pliers and worked the hook in my finger off the key ring holding it to the lure. I handed the net with the lure to John, who was now in the stern, trying not to hurl. He recounted the time he had to push a hook all the way through his brother’s finger to remove it, and it was not a pleasant memory, nor was it a current pleasure seeing this hook buried in the palm side of the last joint in my pinky.

Luckily, I have been the fishing merit badge counselor for the Juneau scout troop, where I helped out when my nephew Samuel was in the troop. Part of the merit badge was learning and practicing how to remove a hook embedded past the barb into the skin. The technique calls for tying a string to the curve of the hook right where it enters the skin, pushing down on the eye of the hook to try to roll the barb of the hook towards the center of the puncture, and then pulling on the string to hopefully free the hook. I used the needlenose pliers instead of the string for the pulling part, but could not push down on the eye enough to free the hook. John told me about running the hook the rest of the way through the skin of his brothers finger, and when I tried that, the pain was too much. Then I thought about how when I get a hook into the twine of a landing net, I have to work it back and forth to form a larger hole in the threads of the twine, and then pull the barb through the hole. So I started to move the hook side to side in my skin, and I saw it was making the hole bigger each time. I finally got the hole wide enough and the hook pulled out. Oh, what a relief. More from the situation than from the pain, which wasn’t bad, actually. I let the wound bleed a bit as I got out the first aid kit, found the antiseptic wipes, and got to slathering the wound with that. Then I put some antibiotic ointment on it, and wrapped the wound in a band aid and more first aid tape.  Good as new.

I told John I was ok. And did he want to go back to the cabin, or to the bass hole. Bass hole, he said. I sure like fishing with John. We traveled back by the cabin and on to the bass hole. We only caught one there. I figured this was the last day of fishing, as we’d be closing up the cabin tomorrow to leave the following day, and a perfect way to end the trip with John catching this last fish and his biggest of the trip.

The next day, we all were up early and started taking care of chores to close the cabin. It seemed like we just got there. We boarded up most of the windows. I started the water pump, filled the water tank, then John and I brought the tank up to the cabin, where I changed the oil and wrote down the spark plug number so more could be purchased. By mid day, we finished all the chores we needed to. Why aren’t we out fishing, I asked. John did not answer in the allotted time, and away we went – this last day with cousin Christine.

Back to the pike hole, I thought, as we already had all the bass we could keep in the freezer. On our way up the Henvey, not far from the cabin, there was a black bear on the beach. Our only bear sighting of the trip. As we rounded the corner, we put our lines out. Over by the shore, I saw something making a wake in the water. Then three river otters were up on the shore and trotting away. We soon were catching pike. We could keep a total of three. We had 2 on the boat, and released some small ones.  As we trolled back up the little channel, I looked up, and there it was. Something I’ve seen many times, but never outside of Alaska, and certainly not expected here in the east. A moose. And a big one. It was standing with it’s front feet in the water, looking at us. About 100 yards away. It didn’t seem too concerned.  We didn’t approach it and now were whispering. John and I had trolled up this channel further yesterday and ran out of water, so we knew it was not very deep where the moose was. The moose than sauntered across the channel in water up to its knees and then up the bank of the island on the opposite side. Wow. Just wow.

When the moose was out of sight, I had to the boat what would have been our final pike for the day, and tried lifting it aboard. It came off. I’d lost that fish and one or two others, unlike other days, where I hadn’t lost any. I’d knocked all the barbs down on my hooks after my finger incident, so some of the fish were now self-releasing, which was okay, as that just meant we got to fish longer in the beautiful afternoon weather. Then fishing seemed to go dead. So, I headed out to deeper water towards the channel. I planned to fish to the channel, and pull up our lines and go home.

As we entered deeper water, John said he had a snag. He’s said this often during the week, as his lure seemed to fish deeper than mine and he’d get down in the weeds when I wouldn’t. I looked down and could barely see the weeds way down in the deeper water- but saw line was coming off his reel, so I turned the boat back towards the snag so he wouldn’t lose all his line. Luckily, we’d changed out the line on his reel earlier in the trip after he got his line wound in the prop and lost much of it. Otherwise, he might have got spooled here. John reeled in the slack as we caught up to the snag. I noticed the line was now under the boat for some reason. Must be I crossed over the snag and not paying attention, I thought. Then his rod doubled over, right into the water.  We had not a snag, but a big fish!

I grabbed the net, and waited next to John. Christine clicked on her phone’s video. The fish was pulling the line dangerously close to the prop, then rubbing the bottom of the boat. I hope it doesn’t break off, I thought. I was so glad now we’d put fresh line on. The line was coming up, but from under the boat, so we couldn’t see the fish. John knew how to fish. He played his fish well, and didn’t horse them in, letting the rod and reel drag do their job. When the fish finally appeared from under the boat, it was just a few feet below the surface. Oh, it was a nice square headed pike with John’s lure in his mouth. The fish made one more run, and John let him go, then played him back to me. We got it in the net on the first try. As it fell into the basket of the net, the hook came out, caught on the webbing.  There was screaming all around. Mostly by me. John said I can’t believe you’re bringing that fish into the boat with us. Like it was a dangerous snake or something. So, for the second day in a row, a perfect end to the day and trip, with John catching the biggest fish of the whole trip on the last day. I pray it’s not our last time here.

I’m back in Juneau to help Sara with her new knee. My Temne brother from Sierra Leone has been catching lots of fish this summer. When he catches so many – all from shore – that his home freezers are full, he brings overflow fish to our freezer. That’s when I know fishing is good. Really good. I went down to watch him fish on the Juneau waterfront this morning. Right in the middle of Juneau. He had one in the bucket when I got there, and landed a second as I arrived. Big, bright coho salmon. What a treasure our hatchery is to local folks without the means or ability to fish from a boat. Andrew has learned where to fish along the waterfront according to the tides and seals from his own experience and the many others that fish.

I watched Andrew clean his first fish, then gave him a few tips on cleaning for his second, which he appreciated. We left after about 45 minutes, not long after sunup. What a place we get to live in.

Took Jesse on the last summer fishing trip of the year. We caught lots of coho the first day, and that took off the pressure, so to speak, on getting fish for the freezer. The next couple days we caught less, but weather just spectacular. 70 degrees and a breeze.

The second night was one to remember. We’d anchored behind some islands with evergreen trees on them. We butchered our fish, I cooked us salmon and salad for dinner, and while Jesse was doing the dishes, I stepped out on the bow to enjoy the evening for a few minutes. Right as I got out of the door, I heard a splash. I figured it was seals running some of the few pink salmon in the bay waiting for rain to fill the stream so they could spawn. When I looked over, I saw it was a deer swimming from one of the little islands to the big island! Then I saw another deer. A big deer. I realized one was a long antlered spike, and the second – a big four point!. I had my gun, but no way to launch the punt in time to get to land to shoot. I called to Jesse, and we just enjoyed the show.

When the spike got to the beach, it made the splashing sound again. When it’s hooves touched bottom, it made a loud splashing as it got up to dry land. It ran over the big rocks on the beach and right up a rock face into the woods. It didn’t even look for a better place to escape to cover. He was definitely getting away from us. The big buck made a bigger splashing sound getting up on the beach. He was further away than the spike, and on a little better beach for walking. He walked half way to the woods, then stopped and looked back at us. Just like on a magazine cover. Then he trotted up into the woods and was gone. What a show! Like the orcas last year with Pat and Sean, this was another of those once in a lifetime things. Why were the two bucks on this little island next to the big island. And when I mean little, I mean you could walk around it in less than 10 minutes – maybe just 5 minutes. Were they getting away from wolves? When I first saw them, I thought it was a yearling and doe – that I would understand. But 2 bucks? Who knows. It was the highlight of the trip.

I got up about 4:20am this morning and started packing fish. I packed Jesse’s box, then Alan’s box to ship him, and one for my sister, and one for Lance and Dana, who are Salvation Army pastors that were stationed in Juneau for a couple years and great friends. They were back in Juneau for a few days, and I’m taking them to the airport in the morning in Juneau so I get to see them.

Jesse was up and ready to roll when I came in from the shed from packing at about 530 am.. We had a cup of coffee and headed to the ferry. We got there when there was little crowd, got in the front of the line, and Jesse was soon off to Ketchikan. Jesse has picked up cleaning, filleting, double rinsing and bagging the fish over the past few years. He is also the first person to watch me open the tailgate with the screwdriver who could do it themselves. A down rigger was giving me issues sending the cannon ball down, and it took some tinkering to do it each time, but he figured it out right away. Peace Corps friends are great to have and easy to please.

I stopped for more coffee at Lew’s on the way home. His kids are all thriving. He had a big pile of deer thawing from recent success that he was going to grind later. He was soon off to help a neighbor put in a footing for a shed, so I headed for Craig.

Then the usual running around on the last day to fuel the truck and boat. Drop some fish to the POWER food bank. Leave eggs and cheese with Sara’s sister. Clean the boat carpets.

This summer went by fast. The weather was pretty dry, and new winds to me out of the NW showed me new spots to fish. From my log books, I caught about half as many king salmon and three times as many coho salmon this summer as last year. Part of the lower king number was because I had people here fishing in June and early July last year, when king salmon are the only thing to catch, and this year I didn’t have as many people here in June to mid-July. A lot fewer halibut on the skate this year, but we caught more chicken halibut trolling, and I sure like dealing with those rather than 100 lbs fish. Just a great summer.

Don and Al were in this week. Al and I met Don when he came to UAF in 1985 for a year when Al was a fisheries graduate student and I an undergrad. Funny thing is Al and I didn’t know each other then, but met when were were fisheries biologists in Southeast Alaska later on.

Don is up there on the list of most influential people in my life. I knew Don from UAF, although I never took a class from him there. I met him while he took the bus that I drove for my student job from upper to lower campus. He told me about the Peace Corps. He’d gone to Malaysia in the Peace Corps after completing his MS degree. He told me about the advantages I’d have with federal jobs, and that Peace Corps would give me two years of mid-level professional experience. Had I not gone in the Peace Corps, it would take me years of time as a seasonal ADFG technician, or a Master’s degree, just to apply for a mid-level, permanent job with ADFG, which was my goal job after earning my undergraduate degree at UAF. He sold me on the professional job experience aspect of the Peace Corps. I saw the humanitarian experience of working in a developing country as a side-benefit. It certainly wasn’t the reason I went in.

Peace Corps was the most important 2 years of my life. I met fellow volunteers I would never have met had I stayed in Alaska – people from different backgrounds and interests and views. I learned a second language, lived in a rural African village, ate foods mostly grown in the surrounding rain forest, and had my eyes opened on everything from Race to poverty to religion to living by one’s own hand without any modern machinery to “transportation” primarily being one’s two feet to the commonality of fisheries around the world to the worth of fish as a protein in most of the world’s diet to the possibilities of successful tilapia fish farming in rural Africa in ponds built with shovels and feeds found in the bush. You’re just not going to get that and more in your first two years of any job that I know of. Yet I don’t know one person – family, friend, student – that I got to go into the Peace Corps. I think Don may say the same thing – that I was his only one. Sadly, the Peace Corps dropped its fisheries and fish farming program some 20 years ago and I can never get a good answer why from them. They say they only assign volunteers to programs that eh host countries want, yet just about every country the Peace Corps is in will note they don’t have enough fish production to even meet the needs of residents, much less for export. I think Peace Corps dropped the program because the stateside training was expensive. Teaching seems to be the big thing now for Peace Corps Volunteering. Countries like Sierra Leone that pay their teachers little, and often a salary that’s delayed months and months in getting to the teachers, is happy to have a Peace Corps Volunteer teacher who gets paid by the US government on time, and who doesn’t have to have a farm on the side just to get by. I haven’t seen many Peace Corps programs that a more appropriate technology and had a real chance to sustain themselves than fish farming. We worked with farmers to build ponds by hand, fed the ponds water by gravity, used African fish that reproduced right in the pond, and raised a fish- tilapia – that would eat about anything, from termites in their mushroom dirt house available year round in the surrounding country side to the rice bran left over when rice was extracted for everyone’s daily meal that was otherwise thrown away. And for people like me who stayed in the profession here in the states, a couple generations now of fisheries or similar degree college graduates haven’t had the same opportunities I did with the Peace Corps, which is also just plain sad.

Don also told me I’d be part of a Peace Corps community when I returned, and that I’d need them around. Ironically, I maybe came to know how combat veterans like my elder cousins who fought in Vietnam felt when they returned home. I didn’t know what they went through, just how they felt when they got home to their hometown and friends and family – only people who went through what they did knew what it was about, and it was impossible for someone who hadn’t to really understand. Not your parents, not your siblings, not your best friends from high school.

Don kept track of me during and after my Peace Corps stint in Sierra Leone. When I sent him a letter asking just out of casual curiosity what he did at Mississippi State, where he went after his year at UAF and remains today, he took this as an opportunity. He replied with a 3 or 4 page typed letter, outlining the research he was doing there, that he’d love to have me in the program, what I needed to do to apply (like take the MSAT), and that he could offer me a full-ride assistantship if I was accepted. I had no intention of going to grad school, but here was opportunity knocking. And if I’ve learned one thing, it’s the important of saying “yes” when things like this come along.

I’d recently been to a Board of Fish meeting, where a state biologist was going over a tagging study that was relevant to the area I was working in. I was as clueless as most in the crowd as to the workings of the statistical models used in the study, the findings of which were important to the management of salmon in our area. A masters degree program dropped right into my lap was just what I needed to help learn that statistics stuff. Kodiak Community College was, by chance, offering the MSAT exam that Saturday. I grabbed the MSAT informational booklet, completed the practice test in the book over the next two days, and took the exam on Saturday. My score was good, and I was on my way to MSU that August.

Peace Corps again entered the equation. I asked my friend Tom, who was just here in Craig fishing with me, to come up for the ride down. In addition to companionship on the ride, I knew he was mechanically inclined. When we broke the timing belt in Haines Junction in the Yukon Territory, Tom went to work, with me assisting his mysterious instructions, like we got to get the piston to top dead center, and things like that. Luckily, I’d thought to buy a timing belt before I left, and after a few hours, we were back on the road.

MSU was another trip into another culture. I think many of my collegues in Alaska wondered why someone managing Alaska fisheries would want to go to a college in the deep South. I always felt there was a lot of monoculture education the department from Pacific Northwest schools – the U of Washington comes to mind – and I was excited to go somewhere different and learn about different fish in different waters. Like the Peace Corps, it was a great experience of a new place and new ideas and new people. I made some life long friends there. One was the son of a man who worked in the Sierra Leone embassy who I met while I was there. All of us under Don worked our asses off with piles of field work, as well as getting our class work done. We all had assistantships, and nobody working in one of Don’s projects was going to finish if he couldn’t put in 60 to 80 hour weeks between classes and fieldwork. I liked Mississippi. It’s a rural, outdoors culture where most people fish and hunt or know those who do. I worked in the Delta region of Mississippi, where lots of civil rights history was made. I knew I could never live in Mississippi, though. After doing my first summer of field work in 90+ degree blazing sun and high humidity, I knew I’d never want to live in a place like that, having already had experience doing that in Africa. Cold climates are for me. As I told my Sierra Leone friend in Juneau – you can always put on another coat to keep warm if you’re cold, but when it’s hot, you can take all your clothes off, and you’re still hot. He has come to love Alaska, and complains a little bit more each time he returns from Sierra Leone at how hot it is there- the country where he was raised. I still see my Mississippi friends. I welcome them here to fish and as a respite to the heat at home.

When I completed my Masters degree, I had a lot of experience under my belt. I’d lived in the Alaskan bush for 3 seasons as a fishing guide at remote camps in Bristol Bay. Then 2 years in a rural African village in a subsistence economy where people grew their own food with no semblance of a governmental safety net, starting a successful fish farming program and seeing how 4/5 of the world lives. And now I was armed with a little bit of scientific methodology and statistics. I owe 2/3 of that experience to Don.

Don flew into Ketchikan. Al drove to his high school friend’s place near Bellingham, WA. He left his truck there, and came up on the state ferry MV Columbia to Ketchikan, then he and Don met and came over to Hollis on the Prince of Wales Island ferry. Al and I were good friends when he worked for ADFG in Yakutat. I visited him several times to duck and moose hunt, and to net fish for salmon on the Situk River. It’s been a long time since he’s returned to Alaska, and I hope he can make a habit of it.

We got home from the ferry near dark, so we overnighted in the container cabin. I made the boys a tray of smoked salmon, wasa crackers, and kelp pickles for a late night snack.

Everyone was up early the next morning. Both boys were up and dressed when I got up, and I thought – this is gonna be a great trip when that happens, as I’m usually the early riser when fishing. We had coffee and took off.

We set the skate at the honey hole and fished nearby. We had steady coho fishing. I trained Al on cleaning fish, and he took over that duty for the rest of the trip. We quit fishing about 3 pm. Don cut his finger somehow and I got him the first aid kit as the bleeding was not wanting to stop. After checking the skate for nothing, we anchored by the pine islands and butchered fish in the pouring rain. I trained Don on scraping the fillet frames from Al with a spoon to get the remaining salmon burger off, and pretty much left the salmon butchering to them for the rest of the trip. I made salmon tail fillets and salad and pasta salad for dinner. Don and Al ate their fill, went to bed early, and both slept hard.

On day 3, everyone was up early again by 5 am, and both boys said how good they slept. We drank coffee for 2 hours, then checked the skate for zip and reset it. We went to the coho drag nearby and put the trolling gear down at 730 am, and caught 3 coho in the first 15 minutes.

By 1230, we had enough salmon for the day already, so went to check the halibut skate. A perfect 34 lber on the skate. We anchored up again in the early afternoon at the spot nearer the outer coast, butchered the fish, then Don got prepping a salmon stir fry with onion, mushroom, and peppers that was just great.

On day 4, we were all up by 530. I weighed anchor straight away to check the skate as it was in the channel where seiners were passing on their way fishing, and I was nervous it might get run over. Nothing on the hooks, and we reset it. We fished the outer island on the lee side, ran over to the chicken hole and fished down to Kelly Cove. We caught a big coho, a chicken halibut and 2 ling cod. When we checked the skate, I broke off a hung anchor on the skate but got the rest of it back. Nothing on the skate. We ran back inside and reset the skate near where we caught the earlier halibut. This time it was first aid time for Al. I just sharpened a dull hook that caught Al’s finger and glove as it went over, and took with it a chunk of Al’s finger. More bleeding and first aid for the crew. We anchored behind the high island in a new spot for me. Don made dinner with salmon burger, making a sort of quiche with bacon, eggs, peppers, onions and mushrooms. Excellent fare, again.

On day 5, we had nothing on the skate, and moved it closer to the high island as the winds were to come up and we didn’t want it in too breezy a place as that’s what cost us the earlier anchor. We caught a king right off the bat, and the winds picked up steadily all day. We scratched a few cohos, then I had enough with the wind on the beam, and we moved to calmer waters between two of the big islands and scratched one fat coho there. Even though we moved the skate, it was too rough to pull it. We ran to the pine islands anchorage after it was too windy behind the high island, and that worked great. I made king salmon, salad, and sauteed vegetables for dinner, and Don said it was the best salmon he’d ever had. Hard to beat fresh king salmon.

One thing of note was that we’d seen hardly any whales this week, which was odd after fishing around them all summer. That made each one we did see a lot more special for the boys.

The next morning, the winds had calmed, and we checked skate first thing for nothing. We fished a new spot by the island where my nephew got his deer in years past, as well as a channel my neighbor told me could be good (it wasn’t), and we finished at the Point Tranquil drag. We scratched a handful of coho, and quit midday, as Don left on the ferry in the morning. We ran to the harbor. After we got the fish and our gear off the boat and put away, Don took us to dinner at the dockside cafe, but Alan demanded to pay.

I went over to Sara’s sister’s house later in the evening. My niece and her friend from Kotzebue were in town to deer hunt and fish. They flew them into an alpine lake, and got a deer, then came back and got some king salmon on the outside waters later in the week. I’d taken over my bag of found reels and was glad the friend took a pile. I’m hoping to go out to Kotzebue late next winter to fish for sheefish through the ice, and she and her family know all about it.

On day 7, we were all up early as usual, and I packed Don’s fish box, being careful not to short his box like I did Tom and Cheese’s boxes. He said it came in at 49 lbs. Then I filled the thermoses with coffee and we were off right on time to the ferry. We arrived at a perfect time when the line was already moving out the door. Don got his ticket and box checked in and was soon walking to the ferry. Al and I were back to Craig before 8 am.

I made a big breakfast when we got back, then we got down to getting our coho catch from the last 2 days butchered to smoke and can. We cut the fillet sides into length-wise strips, then put them into Nevette’s 18 cups water to 2 cups brine for 10 minutes, rinsed off the excess salt, and filled the Big Chief smoker racks. I put the fish in the smoker on just heat (no smoke), and headed to town. I walked my mile dock walk, stopped at the boat and figured out a problem we had with the downrigger and fixed it. Then I went swimming.

I picked up 2 dozen oysters on the way home from Maranda at the pop-up sale she and her newlywed husband were having in the Craig Tribal Hall parking lot. I asked her they were still married 2 weeks out. She laughed. He laughed. They thought I was kidding. Silly kids.

When I got home, Al, an oyster connoisseur from his time on the Texas Gulf Coast and elsewhere down there, ate a bunch raw with hot sauce, then we steamed some for 2 minutes in the instant pot. I put a few cooked oysters with my salad (I’m not a big oyster guy), and Al ate the rest out of the shells. He said they were fantastic. I’l take his word for it.

We took the fish out of the smoker in the early evening. The rainy weather and high humidity didn’t make for much a pellicle forming on the strips, but otherwise they looked okay. Al cut strips to size, which I loaded into jars. I decided to finally take out the big crab cooker stove I garage-saled in Juneau several years ago to can the salmon, rather than using the standard propane cook stove. Good move. It was steaming in just a few minutes under the blast flame of the cooker, and after 10 minutes, I put the 10 lbs pressure cooker weight on the nipple of the lid, and it was rocking immediately. We set our watches for 110 minutes of cook time.

We watched the next to last episode of this season’s Alone show on the History Channel. I watch very little TV or other video, but I’m a big fan of Alone and watched all the episodes. Two women and a man left. And we found out at the end of the show that next week’s show is the last one, so maybe this will be the first time in the “standard” Alone series a woman will win. Many have made it to late in the contest, but get pulled because they lose too much weight to be safe for their health. The two left this season- the first season of the show in a temperate / tropical location in south east Africa – look to be in good shape and in no danger of excessive weight loss.

The first batch of Al’s salmon was in the smoker for about 7 hours, with about an hour of alder smoke on it. The fish looked tasty, but didn’t get much of a pellicle because of the rainy weather. It might not come out as strip pieces, but it’ll eat good. The fillets we cut looked fantastic from our fish care on the boat. The first batch into the jars looked like it was not going to be great. We barely got a pellicle or none at all on some of the strips. This morning I took the jars out and two didn’t seal, and one of those jars broke. We took the fish from those jars in for breakfast. Perfect. All the worry about not perfect smoking on the fish going in was soon allayed by fantastic fish coming out. Again, quality starts at the time of capture. A good fish will be good with most things you do with it, but a poorly handled fish won’t taste very good, regardless of what you do with it. We left the second batch in the smoker on just heat overnight. The rain quit, humidity dropped, and these looked alot nicer. We’ll see if they actually taste better, though. Might be a tad drier than the earlier fish, but it all is going to be great, I’m sure.

I got fish out of the freezer to thaw for canning my smoked salmon. I started cutting off the rib section from the loin of the coho when we butchered them earlier in the season. Sent the loin home with my aunt and the Morgans, and saved the rib sections for me for smoking.