Mark Stopha - Alaska Wild Salmon Company

Ecuador and Fish

Quito

I arrived in Quito in the evening after a 5 hour flight from Atlanta for my volunteer fisheries assignment. My first trip to a Spanish speaking country. Everyone – from the customs agents to the security people – were very friendly. They sensed I couldn’t speak much Spanish and so helped me along as best they could. As I’ve come to find out in the first few days here, it’s just how they are. The airport was as modern an airport as I’ve seen. With modern stores and spotlessly clean. And no signs of soldiers in fatigues and guns as I’ve seen in Africa.

A driver with a sign with my name on it was there to greet me when I exited to the arrival area after picking up my luggage. His English was as good as my Spanish, but he got a kind woman at a desk to tell me he’d be right back as he went to pick up his car and bring it to the exit door. Soon he pulled up, we loaded my luggage, and were off to the other side of town to my lodging at the Ibis Hotel. There was hardly any traffic at about 10 pm. The roads were beautiful and the highway was as modern as a highway anywhere. Complete with the graffiti here and there. The roads were clean, and I saw surprisingly few pedestrians anywhere. Electricity looked to be everywhere in the city. This wasn’t Freetown or Bamako or Monrovia, for sure. The driver and I made small talk as best we could. He would pick me up at 9 the next morning.

Checking in, the clerks were very friendly as well. They helped each other find my reservation with my poor Spanish.

I saw that the end of the Sunday Night football game was on, so decided to get a bite to eat. I looked at the limited menu and figured since the prices were so small, the plates of food must be too. When the plate of chicken wings piled the fries and the large Cesar salad showed up, I realized I was wrong.

I didn’t sleep great the first night, as I never have on a first night after a long travel. I dragged myself out of bed, and got my first glimpse of the Equator in the daylight. Many of the deciduous trees looked similar to those I know, and then also some exotic plants like palm trees. Hard to believe I was at the equator and it was 45 degrees. Fahrenheit. And dry. Just lovely weather, really. My driver picked me up right on time – early actually – and we returned to the airport for the flight to Manta. I could see snow on the mountain above the city. Turns out the equator can be just fine for a man who hates the heat if you’re at 8,000 feet. I noticed gasoline was $4.75/gal, so a little lower than Juneau. Later I found out that this was for premium. Regular is $2.40/gal and diesel $1.75.

I met my company guide, Monica, at the airport. We knew each other from a zoom meeting and numerous correspondence prior to the trip. She would accompany me and be my interpreter for the entire trip, along with a driver who would meet us in Manta. I told her about my friend in Chatham Strait who is from Ecuador, and whose family runs a restaurant in Quito. Not only did Monica know the restaurant, she KNEW MY FRIEND’S SISTER! How does this happen in a city of 3 million? Even more, Monica is from Honduras and only moved to Quito 3 years ago when NCBACLUSA offered her a transfer from her position in Honduras.

Talk about a life history. Raised in Honduras, went to college in Costa Rica, interned for Whole Foods in Boston, then went to the Czech Republic for her masters degree. I cannot imagine going to a country with a language so foreign to mine and doing a masters degree. And now migrating from Honduras to a new country, where she seems right at home. She’s taken every opportunity afforded her, even when it involved learning a new language or two, and all on her own.

We boarded the plane right on time, and I was happy they put me in the first row of the jet, with lots of leg room. We arrived in Manta to a more rustic airport reminding me more of Africa. I thought I might be hit by the tropical heat when I stepped off the plane at sea level at the equator. But, it wasn’t bad! The temperature was in the 70’s and a nice breeze. We got our bags, and met Diego our driver in his nice Honda SUV, and off we went. Diego was my age. He’d worked in agriculture sales of fertilizer, chemicals, etc and also was busy with hand sanitizer during the pandemic. He started driving a few years ago for NCBACLUSA and what a friendly, enjoyable guy to be around.

Monica had to run several errands, including one to a store in a mall. Diego and I went in with her as I wanted to see if there were fish and how they were sold. Like the Quito airport, I was surprised. The mall was a modern mall, just like you’d see anywhere in the US, with a Pizza Hut and KFC. The MegaMaxi was a brightly lit, spotless supermarket. We went to the meat section, and when we didn’t see any fresh fish, we asked a butcher where the fish were. Isle 8A. Isle 8A was about a 30 foot row of bins of frozen packaged fish like you’d see in Costco or Walmart. With every kind of wild fish from Ecuador – even farmed salmon from Chile and tilapia from Ecuador. All frozen and portioned in about 1/2 to 1 lb bags, ready to cook. Very interesting.

We headed to a coastal town called Canoa that reminded me of Hilton Head in that it was a tourist destination for families on vacation to the beach, from what Diego could tell me. We were not there during the tourist season, so our hotel was about empty except for us. We went into town, and saw lots of sort of makeshift restaurants and bars with very few people around. One young man talked us into eating at his family’s restaurant, and we were not disappointed with the fish and plantain fare. I sampled their domestic beers – one light and one dark – and enjoyed them both. We were definitely in a more rural, rustic area now. We passed acres of corn on hillsides – all planted by hand. Also strings of passion fruit hanging on wires like grapes are grown. Some cattle and a handful of horses.

Puerto Cabuyal (PC)

The next morning we headed to our destination – Puerto Cabuyal (PC). Not far from Canoa, but seemingly a century in time between the life in Canoa and the life there. A few huts were built along a bluff along the beach, with a one lane road running along the beach. The little school – which won an award of some kind for it’s architecture – was built of local wood and thatch, up a hill, with tiny rooms we thought were a library, a classroom, a room we saw a student with a small stringed instrument, and a little old school domed clay wood-fired oven. Again, all with just local wood frames covered with thatch. When it’s 70 degrees all the time, you don’t need much. If I understood Monica correctly, the schools in this part of the country have their “summer” vacations during the rainy season, which made sense as I’m guessing the thatch isn’t waterproof everywhere. A very Spanish? Italian? looking man who spoke a little English had come from what we think is a well to do family in Quito some 18 years ago and found his niche living in this village. He was barefoot, dressed in shorts and a sweater. Although the village was very much closer to my home village in Sierra Leone, one difference was they had power. According to Monica, about 95 percent of the country has electricity, which certainly shows some government organization, to me at least.

We talked with a few people who were officials from the town about the upcoming workshops. The panga fishing boats started to return in the early afternoon. When I saw a group of men and women joining in to haul the boats up the beach over a couple roller logs, I went down to help. The boats were small – about 18 feet long and 6 feet wide – made of fiberglass and propelled by 40 hp outboards. The boats looked in good condition. The 2 person crews had been out fishing a longline of hooks between 2 poles floated by buoys. I couldn’t tell if the gear was fished on the bottom or up in the water column. The catch was made up of a variety of rockfish looking fish, some cool eels, some fish that looked like a sea robin, and another that looked like a red drum. It was a veritable bitch to haul those heavy boats up the beach. Not the sort of thing I’d look forward to after fishing since early morning.

We went to the mayor’s house for lunch. We climbed a fairly steep sandy path up the bluff to his house. He had a sow tied under a tree with a few of her offspring close by. Chickens clucked as I heard some slapping up on an open platform. At first I thought maybe someone was cracking open nuts of some kind. And then I saw the little arms of two boys with a card in them whopping down their play card one after the other in some sort of game, with several other girls playing near them.

The mayor’s hut was made of rough cut lumber, with poles and rough cut small width timbers supporting a tin roof. A small table was next to an open window with no panes that looked right out on the big ocean. The mayor said he inherited this spot from his parents, who inherited it from their parents. His wife cooked some of the day’s catch on a gas stove behind us. The platter was was lightly breaded fish fillets with lemon seasoning, with a pile of rice, some little plantain cakes, and coleslaw. Like my village in Sierra Leone, the people out here might not have much money. But they eat good. The fish was wonderful. Near the end of our meal, a few tame parakeets (?) showed up. Like they owned the place. Monica offered one some of her rice. He’d played this game before, and was soon sharing her plate, along with his girlfriend or buddy, who showed up shortly after.

We toured a “collection area” built reportedly by the UN years ago. It once held freezers or refrigerators, vac packer, sink and stainless steel cleaning tables. Only the tables remained. The collection site was obviously not used, but the building and tables were still in good shape. Water was piped to the building as well.

Across a dirt lot was a brand spanking new restaurant. Built by an Italian agency and others from what I could gather. It had a nice little kitchen in the back, restrooms, a concrete floor and heavy locally made wood tables and chairs. Although I thought this was a big a white elephant as I’ve ever seen since it was in the middle of now where down a dirt road with no population center nearby, I found I was wrong when the clerk at the hotel said not only did he know of the restaurant, but even the hours and days it was open. So many times my opinion on options for improving the fishing situations can change over the course of a day as things I think I understand on first impression are found to be mistaken a few hours later when I find out new information.

During the planning session the day before, I showed them jars of smoked salmon I bought from Dick before I left. I said we’d do a demonstration of canning fish in the pressure cooker using fish smoked in their traditional methods. So today, several women helped to butcher the fish and get a fire going. The fish caught the day before had been frozen, so it took some time for them to thaw. I showed the mayor how I cleaned fish, cutting out the gills first, then slitting the belly, cutting the esophagus off at the gullet, then pulling the innards out. He said they do it in a similar way. The mayor butterflied the fish, leaving the head on, then made longitudinal cuts down the length of the fish fillets on each side. He rubbed salt into the fish, then squeezed lemon juice on the meat. He then bent the fish around a line several feet above the fire so the fish balanced there. The fire smoke from the open pit went up and over the fish, but not in a concentrated fashion as it would in an enclosed smoker. The breeze blowing through the open window would dry the fish nicely, and the smoke from the fire could burn a long time and just lightly smoke the flesh.

After an incredible lunch again at the Mayor’s house, we had our first workshop in the music room of the school. I talked about fish quality and how to take care of fish on the boat. Like I’d seen in Africa, fish here are sold in the round. I’m not exactly sure why. Maybe without any use of ice on the boats, the fish keep better in the near term that way. And surely they’d likely stay cleaner inside if they are transported in a wooden box in the back of a truck traveling a dusty road. I could tell there was resistance to this, and wasn’t too concerned. They could do the basics of gently handling each fish and bleeding each fish in water. But what to do about ice. They had no ice maker and the nearest ice was miles away and no one had a truck. I had an epiphany the night before. One of two so far this trip. They may not have an ice maker here or nearby access to ice. But they do have electricity, water, and empty water bottles. Wah la. Ice. Just like I use when I go out sport fishing and don’t expect to catch many fish. Ice problem solved. It wouldn’t be perfect, but it would surely work. They could simply take the frozen water bottles with them each day, then clean them off and put them in the freezer each night.

There was much talk about “the middle man” – that bastard that buys fish for a low price, and sells it at a higher price. Prices for food and fuel have all gone up, but the price they pay us for our fish has not. The same lament of commercial fishermen from Bethel to Lima. For at least the last 100 years.

On day 3, we would start in the afternoon as the fishermen would be fishing in the morning. Diego, Monica and I went to Jama and Matal, as the mayor indicated there was a port there. We saw an extensive shrimp farm as we approached the beach in Jama. Jama was a more established town than Canoa, with more streets and neighborhoods. The beach front was clearly a tourist front. There was no harbor or dock that we expected. But several boats up on the beach as they are in PC, so perhaps this is the definition of port here.

We made our way to PC and had lunch in a different location to spread our lunch money around the town. We ate at a little restaurant we didn’t know existed at the end of the road not far from the school. It was fried fish with a heavy lemon seasoning, lentils and rice, and again, just excellent fare. I think the price for all the meals was 3.50 or 4.00, and we insisted on paying $5.00 for all of them. They were the best meals I had in the country.

We made our way to the new restaurant. I didn’t think the powerpoint would show up on the screen in the broad daylight, but I was assured it would. It…..did……not. So Monica and I started with her just showing here computer screen to people while I spoke. Soon, the teacher returned with a large flat screen tv. That worked great. We continued with the workshop. There were many more people attending than yesterday. I quickly reviewed what we’d talked about yesterday, and then moved on to talking about fish products. The pros and cons of selling fish fresh vs frozen or smoked or dried or canned. The difference between wholesale and retail selling. The possibilities of drawing tours from Jama and Canoa to the new restaurant and the newly designated protected area of their waters for young hammerhead sharks and the beach for sea turtles, selling fresh and selling fish through the restaurant, and fresh, frozen and canned salmon to the restaurant patrons as they left. I talked more than I’d expected, and went through more of my material than I’d scheduled. I now was wondering what I’d talk about for the rest of the workshop times, but knew I’d felt the same way on my other assignments in Haiti, Mali and Liberia, and things always worked out. I forgot to mention my second epiphany. The vac packer disappeared from their UN building the day before we arrived. It had never been used to my knowledge, and the teacher was wanting me to go over how to use it. Then I saw on a youtube – of course! – how to “vacuum pack” fish without a vacuum packer by putting a fillet in a ziploc, zipping the top closed except for the very end, and then dunking the pack into water. The water forced the air out, and in the end, it’s a pretty darn good substitute. It wouldn’t work for packing for a year, but it could be good for a month. So, we planned to do demonstrations with that, along with scraping fish burger of a backbone and making pet treats with the remainder. Like I said, worry about not having enough material gives way for lots more to do. Day 3, like the others, was just perfect. In the 70’s with a stiff breeze on this undeveloped beach and not a hint of rain.

Day 4 and another day of great weather. It was a tad warmer today, cracking 80, but still a stiff breeze and dry, so almost too hot, but not quite. We had an afternoon session, and we arrived in PC for lunch. Today we had ceviche, an Ecuadorian staple. I’d not tried it til now because I thought I’d like it less than some of the other dishes I’ve had, but I was wrong. It was the best meal I’ve had here. With the ubiquitous plantain chips and some rice. They also saved a side of the “big head” rockfish we’d started smoking a few days ago. Fantastic. It was very similar to black cod.

I went over my workshop with Monica, and she drew up some nice illustrations on the flip chart paper to tape to the wall at the school. We went to the new restaurant where we met yesterday, and people slowly dropped in. We got started, and Monica pretty much ran with the whole talk that we’d gone over at the school, so it took a lot less time since it was not me talking and her translating. I interjected when I wanted to make some points, but otherwise she ran the show. Today the young fishermen seemed to see there was a way to make more money for their fish, and a path towards getting there. The mayor of the town had sent fish to Quito in the past, sending it up in a cooler on the bus, and then getting his empty cooler back on the bus. Super efficient to not have to be using one time boxes like I have all these years. I heard people emphasizing the importance of the “first 20 minutes out of the water” fish handling, and that was encouraging. Maybe today was a pep talk that will bear fruit.

Day Saturday was my day to go fishing. I went with Pedro and two boys I’d guess were about 12. We headed out about 8 am. Two boats had already gone out and come back, and had some fish – a wide variety, from a cool flounder with three spots to an eel to a snook, aka Robalo. Along with some prawns, which was what they were after. We set the same small mesh gill net a few miles off the beach. We waited a half hour or less, then the two boys started hauling it back. It probably took 5 minutes to set and maybe 40 minutes to haul in. We got just a couple small fish. The big purse seiner we’d seen off shore had made a set, so we went over to see its haul. Alaska seiners generally have a crew of 5. This boat had 13. There was one man on the corks, 5 on the web, 1 on the lead line, a captain, a deck boss, two in one seine skiff, and a sole person in another auxiliary boat. From what I gathered from the people in PC, this was a “sardine” boat. The seine was so fine you could barely see through it, so I’m guessing even sardines would be caught. A couple other boats from PC joined us as we watched them purse up. It seemed to take about an hour to pull on the net. The money bag had very few fish. There were some fish I’d guess were about 12 inches, and one that had a pike shaped body with a sort of bill fish nose and a couple feet long, and not much more. A small haul, especially split 13 ways.

We returned to the beach, and then started the ball busting daily routine of hauling the ~22 foot panga up the beach and then up the little berm above the beach on log rollers. It takes about 8 people to haul a boat up.

Diego and I then had lunch at the place we had the excellent ceviche yesterday. It was the same today, with prawns caught in the morning, and it may have been better than yesterday’s ceviche. I think I’m going to find myself eating alot more ceviche if I can duplicate the recipe. A substitute for salsa to eat with chips.

We got back to the hotel and I took a hard nap while listening to Mississippi State running Texas A and M on an audio stream on the web. When I woke up, I figured out how to get XM radio, and now that I can do that, I pretty much have it all.

Monica called to say we’d meet at 7 pm for dinner. As we headed out the road, she said we were going to a fancy restaurant that is about “sustainability” and “ethnicity”. And that the meal would be $35. The $35 didn’t bother me, but the fact that I had $40 in my wallet and a tee shirt on that says “Ain’t I Just a Freakin’ Ray of Sunshine” kind of worried me. But what the heck. Neither she nor Diego were dressed up either, so I figured it would all be okay. And of course it was.

We went to eat at Iche restaurant. It’s on some kind of a farm from what I could tell on the outskirts of San Vincente. It’s a restaurant, a culinary school, and some sort of farm. We stopped at a gate with a guard. Diego asked for a table for 3, and we were soon passed through. The drive to the restaurant was about 1/3 a mile. The restaurant was a casually elegant place with a pleasant staff – have I mentioned how nice everyone is here?- and we soon felt at ease. Nobody had a tie on in either the customer or staff population. Ribs were the special, and Monica and I ordered that. Diego got the fish. It was a small dish with an elegant peanut sauce cooked perfectly, with a little side dish of rice. Fantastic. I sampled a local martini, too. Another perfect day here.

Sunday, I worked on presentations in the morning while I watched football with the sound off and had football talk on the XM radio. We had today off, as Sunday is a day to play sports in PC, so we went to Bahia for lunch. We ate at Pily’s, a little 5 sided building right on the seawalk run by, you guessed it, a woman named Pily. I had crab rice, which was okay but not up there with other dishes I’ve had here. As we were leaving, Diego and Monica were talking with her, and I listened in. She said she was on a Master Chef television show down here, and also did competitive salsa dancing. She asked if I wanted her to teach me salsa dancing. I’m sure it was my snow white legs and operation-scarred knees in my first day in shorts that made me look like the ultimate dance partner. Bahia was alive with tourists – many families and kids walking the seawalk or on the beaches. Having fun. Apparently most were from Quito according to Diego. I saw none who looked like they were from the US, Canada or Europe and that made me happy for some reason. Looks like Ecuador has a big middle class and people can spend time at the beach with their families and friends.

Monday we are back at PC. We had lunch at the mayor’s daughter’s house. The mayor’s brother was there. He fishes on a boat out of the Galapagos. The boat has a crew of 24. They travel 5 days to get to the fishing grounds. It sounded like they fished for tuna, but caught lots of species. They fished with hook and line in some fashion. I asked him how they took care of the fish, and it was the same way as I’d been telling the fishermen in PC, so that was great to have another fishermen to tell them how fish are cared for for long term quality as a fresh or frozen product. He said it might take 8 days to get back to the Galapagos because they would be going against the ocean current. (And maybe because they were heavier with fish?) Their trips were for about a month total. He said they cleaned the fish and packed them in ice. He talked about using some kind of bag to put in the gullet after cleaning that they filled with ice, and I need to research this!

This was the day that may show the workshops are getting through. The mayor said he was going to Manta for a freezer for marketing his fish. Then one of the young fishermen gave us a sheet of paper with his calculations for selling dorado fish (mahi mahi) using the yield calculations we went through last week using the price they get from the middle man! We saw right then that was the place to start today, and so Monica and Diego put up some of the print paper and went through the calculations with the fishermen, and it turns out everyone seems to get it. We then went over the Navionics App on their phones for navigating to fishing spots using the bathymetry on the charts. This was a great little session for the younger men who love the technology. Finally, we talked about negotiation and what (if any) they may have with a single buyer, and I think that hit home that if they want to get more for their fish, they need to start selling directly to customers.

Tuesday and I finally got my ass out of bed before breakfast for a walk on the beach. Not sure I’ve ever been on a beach with such a big surf like this. I’d say the biggest breakers were out about 50 yards and 6 to 8 feet high. I saw this weird trail going from the ocean up to the top of the beach. I couldn’t make out any definite foot prints, but it looked like something was drug from the ocean up to the top of the beach, where the sand meets the beach plants. Couldn’t figure out what made it till Diego said he was walking earlier than me and did see what made it …. turtles! I’m gonna get out there earlier tomorrow.

We went to PC earlier today so Rosanna could teach me how to make ceviche. So here’s what we did. She brought 3 little red onions, 2 green pimento peppers, two cucumbers, and a bunch of cilantro. We cut the onions in half, then thinly sliced half moon slices, put them in a bowl, and added a couple pinches of salt, and then put that aside to let the salt work. We then de-seeded the green pimentos and finely chopped it. Then peeled the two small cucumbers, cut them in half the long way, de-seeded them, diced them, and added them to the peppers. We chopped the cilantro and added it to the cucumbers and peppers. Now, she washed the onions briefly to desalt them a tad, and added the juice of half a lemon to the onion and let that sit a few minutes, then added the peppers/cucumbers/cilantro and mixed it well. Finally, the prawns showed up, right off the boats who had just returned. We pulled the shells off the tails and saved the shells. We de-veined the tails, then cut the front of the head off just behind the eyes. Lastly, we pulled off the front shells, which came off easily after cutting the front of the heads off. I’d never done this. We normally just squeeze the heads off where they meet the tail. By doing it this way, we got an additional significant piece of meat up in the head part. All the shells were saved. We cut the shrimp tail meats into 3 pieces.

Next she put another half lemon or more to coat the shrimp, and some salt, and let that sit a few minutes. Then she added some water to boil the shrimp for 10 min. If she had a long time before serving, she said you can just leave the raw salted shrimp in the lemon juice overnight. She said she never cooks fish but always just soaks them in lemon juice.

Next she added water to the shells and put those on to boil.

When the shrimp was done, she cooled them by putting the pot in the 5 gal bucket of water next to the stove. She said it’s important to cool it because if you don’t, the shrimp will be bitter when you added it to the lemon juice and vegetables.

After the shell stock simmered a short while, she put the shells in the blender with enough stock water to about fill the blender, and then blended up the shells in the water til the shells were as finely chopped as they were gonna get. Then she poured the blender contents through a fine mesh sieve to capture the shell remains. This, too, she then cooled.

She added a tbs each of mustard and ketchup to the stock, then added everything together with the shrimp and vegetables. Then a pinch of cooking oil to it all, and add salt or whatever else to taste.

We had lunch, and enjoyed it all with fried plantain chips and rice.

I showed my presentations of my fishing business and Alaska fisheries. The fishermen were intrigued with the differences in daylight we have between summer and winter, and also that the salmon all die after they spawn.

We left PC, stopped at the hotel, then went to Bahia again as I forgot to get ziploc bags yesterday, and Monica needed to get the workshop certificates printed for the participants. We ate coconut soft ice cream again at the mall, and had dinner at a little dive that was charcoal broiled chicken, a little salad, beans and rice, fried plantain pucks, and passion fruit juice. For $3.50. I tip a lot higher here than would be standard in the US based on percentage. Every meal is worth at least $5.00 to me. Especially when they are so good and the servers and cooks are so kind. Interestingly, food is inexpensive, but most other goods, be it a styrofoam shipping box I saw for $12, a simple calculator for $14, or the 70 cents per copy Monica paid for the colored certificate copies, are at or above US prices.

Wednesday was our next to last day to PC. I got up to walk the beach at the hotel and to see if I could see a turtle coming in to lay eggs. I didn’t see any turtles, but did find out what was making all the about 1/2 inch holes in the beach – little red crabs. At PC, we did a practical demonstration on how to use a tub of water to drive the air out of a ziploc bag to make a poor man’s vacuum seal on a fish fillet. Then we did a practical on canning fish. It was a hit. The jar lids held and were a success. My friend Dan from Peace Corps is coming for an assignment this weekend and will bring lids and rings for the jars the fishermen’s association bought that had one piece lids, the only kind available here for some reason, and not approved for pressure canning. We stopped at a home made cheese stand on the way back to the hotel and scheduled a pick up tomorrow for a take home gift for the boss.

Not sure just why, but it struck me today that while I may have thought English was a first language for so many, when I thought about it, I couldn’t think of a language more ubiquitous in a place than Spanish. Where can you travel from though so many contiguous countries that uses one common language. Mexico south through Central and South America, all the way to Peru/Chile. I need to get on relearning the Spanish we took back in middle and high school. Even if could recall all those years of study, though, I don’t think I would be even conversational. So, a new hobby to think about.

Went out to see a dead turtle on the beach at the hotel after breakfast that Diego had seen. There were a dozen vultures on it, and another dozen waiting their turn. I turned the turtle over to right side up, and it was a lot lighter than I thought it would be.

Last day in PC. We ate lunch at a new house that was on a steep slope and the climb up the steps was sketchy, with no rail on the little porch, and I was glad to get inside and sit down at the table. A son was there that was the student we’d heard was at the culinary school in Bahia and worked it Iche’s. We had fried fish, rice, and a great salad of citrus, lettuce, and passion fruit.

The wrap up meeting started late, but we had a good turnout when everyone got there. I broke open 3 more jars of smoked salmon, mixed in creme cheese, sour cream and a sort of pesto from here, then some salt and lemon. Monica pulled out the last bag of plantain chips, and people started gobbling it down. We also took out the three jars of fish we canned yesterday from the fridge, and found that 2 of the 3 lids we reused (because we didn’t have new ones) did not seal, and that was a great lesson on not reusing lids. Two had “big head” (a kind of snapper) meat, and the other prawns. It was okay, but nothing close to the smoked canned salmon.

Monica presented the recommendations to take care of fish at the boat and keep them cold til they get processed and then market them directly to customers. She handed out certificates to attendees, and we said our thanks and goodbyes. Diego got a certificate, too. Always weird leaving these places that have become familiar in the past two weeks, and wondering if I’ll ever visit there again. We got back to the hotel, and as we were leaving before breakfast the next morning, I had Diego go to translate and left a tip at the front desk for the staff for the great breakfasts and cleaning my room.

Manta

Up early today and off to Manta. Diego has a flat in Manta and has been coming here since he was a kid. He loves it here. His wife is coming down for a long weekend and hopefully we’ll meet her this evening.

He dropped Monica and I off at the fish market, and I was a kid in a candy store. When the sellers found out we were just looking for information and then found out I fished in Alaska, they were not upset I wasn’t buying but instead, very chummy to meet a fellow fishermen/fish monger. Not a drop of ice in the market that I saw, but the fish looked in decent condition and may have been on ice before it was up on display.

Then we went to the coffee producer’s coop building for Monica to drop off something, and I got to see a bunch of different kinds of coffee beans.

Diego was now on his home turf, and excited to be in Manta. We ate a nice breakfast at one of his favorite breakfast spots. Then he took me to the SuperMaxi, Ecuador’s version of a Wal Mart sort of. I bought Sara Ecuadorian dark chocolate, coffees and cheeses, although some of my cheese ended up being from Holland I found out from Monica later. Then to the hotel and soon – back to eating. We went to one of Diego’s favorite lunch places. I had eaten my breakfast, tried Monica and Diego’s breakfasts, then drank a yogurt drink from the Supermaxi I wanted to try, so I wasn’t interested in lunch, but didn’t want to miss out so went and just had a couple club beers, an Ecuadorian, and very good, brew.

When I got back, the Mariner’s game was on the XM radio. I thought – maybe it’s on their satellite tv, and sure enough, it was. So I turned off the XM and watched the game with the Spanish speaking announcers.

Back in Quito

Back in Quito this morning. No muss no fuss flying here. Random observations I noted as I was traveling back to Quito today. Bathrooms are everywhere and clean. Phones work well here. Cabs were very clean. Pride in community as evidenced by parks and art and decorative plants and well organized beach fronts. The area near Canoa looks alot like the town I grew up in – rolling hills with deciduous trees that were nearly all bare here this time of year, with cattle here and there and some agriculture. Horses and donkeys or mules are still a mode of transportation here. As are two feet. Plantain chips are a nice replacement for tortilla chips. No military presence in the country, but police seem to be everywhere in a good way. There were no elderly people in PC, but Phillipe said the last two elders passed away within the last year and so it was a coincidence. We did see elders in the villages between PC and the main highway. Fish market vendors were happy to talk with a fellow fishermen from elsewhere. Service people at hotels and restaurants were very friendly and accommodating. Fishing rods were not present in PC, but it sounds like they may jig for fish with a hand line. Most tourists in Manta are Ecuadorians. Beaches are mostly clean and open to the public. Standard of living is decent, even in rural areas we visited. People here seem healthy and healthier in general than US people. Lots of dogs, but no dog poop – again, civic pride. Plantain is a staple- it fills you up and is satisfying and I was not hungry in between meals. In fact, could have skipped lunch dinner most days. Even here, people get their impressions of what Alaska is from reality TV.

I took a walk around the block here by the hotel. Listened to Mississippi State beat Arkansas on the XM. Then watched Georgia beat Auburn on CBS streaming on the computer. Ordered a burger and fries from the hotel restaurant, went to the nearby liquor stores and got a bottle of the only wine – red- made by an Ecuadorian winery, picked up my burger, and returned to my room to hear the end of the Mariner’s game. Down 6-1, they came back and won the game! I liked the Bruma brand Ecuador wine, but that’s not saying much. I like Folger’s coffee, too. I woke up in the middle of the night with a headache, so guess maybe this wine is not sitting well with me as I haven’t had any other issues here with headaches caused by the altitude – just a little here and there with dehydration.

I went to the Contag family restaurant, Mucki’s, for lunch on my last day Sunday. Ben Contag ran the hatchery at Port Armstrong for years, and is a main reason it’s still there. He’s from Ecuador. I had lunch at his brother and sister’s restaurant today. One of the best meals I’ve ever had. Duck pate on duck fat from their farm’s ducks, home made bread, multiple pickled vegetables and even quail eggs all served in scallop shells, sausage and home made mustard from the farm, roast duck from the farm with apple puree and gravy served on a half a roast apple and a large bed of crispy hash browns. Then for dessert, apple strudel with vanilla ice cream. The Contags are of German decent, so I wanted to try everything that was their ethnic dishes, as well as items from their farm. The restaurant was really cool. They had displays of old typewriters, old radios, old tvs, old refrigerators, coleman and miners lanterns, so a ooh gah horns, old wooden Austrian skis, Alaska and Yukon license plates, some old railroad jacks. Hanni and John Cox would love this place. They also make beer, and Thomas gave me a couple to take home so I will have them with Ben when I see him again. Thomas was an exchange student in Sitka, so he knows Alaska and hopefully he’ll come and visit again.

My last meeting today was with Gabriel, who is connected to PC as some kind of grant writer or something like that. He is married to the teacher in PC, Phillipe’s, sister. He brought his tow little daughters, and took us to a cool cafe’ overlooking Quito, then to a basilica that was lavish inside with Catholic statues and paintings. I gave him a summary of the time in PC, and we had nice chat about what history he knew about the place.

Trophy Harvest

Got over to the cabin after not getting over there since May. I was hoping there’d be a few berries left as I hadn’t picked at all this summer, except for the Haines America cherries at Roy and Brenda’s.

Boy, was I surprised.

The huckleberries – blue and red – were as prime as I’ve ever picked. It seemed late for them to be this prime, but it sure wasn’t. A few blueberries were left, too. Just like the cherries were the best I’d picked in Haines earlier this summer.

I picked about 6 to 7 hours over the weekend, with lots of coffee drinking and reading old Alaska magazines and reading an old book about contact with the Tlinghit in the mid-1800’s in between.

The murder of crows over there around the island is something else. There are about 30 of them. And they will sort of swarm over an area – sometimes me – and caw and caw and caw – about nothing. Kind of like the sea lions do at Little Island. I can’t recall seeing this behavior anywhere else.

I looked up in the log and saw I was only over there for 11 days last year, and this would be my 6th to 8th days this year.

Might be time to sell the place to some younger people who will use it more.

Now the not fun part of discarding all the leaves and sticks in the berries a handful at a time.

Luckily, lots of football on the XM radio to listen to.

Today’s Short History

I finally made it to Baranof Warm Springs. I was working on the new boat when Larry called at about noon and asked if I could go with him to BWS, as a group of people were weathered out with their scheduled sea plane service and hoping to get there by boat. A couple hours later, off we go.
It’s a 90 mile run to BWS. Seas were up to 4 feet going down Chatham, so it was a long slog. The group was a hearty bunch and nobody got sick. They were heading for Baranof Wilderness Lodge, where most or all of them, it seemed, had spent many weeks over the years. You could tell they were anticipating returning to a familiar, favorite place.
We arrived near sunset. Before we left, Larry warned me we might have to spend the night, so I wasn’t surprised when we decided to do so. The decision was not difficult. We were greeted at the dock by a thankful lodge crew, relieved their guests had arrived for the week. The kitchen staff handed us bags of cookies before we had the boat tied up. Soon, the owner, Mike Trotter, greeted us like long lost friends, invited us to dinner and to spend the night in one of his spare cabins. We eagerly agreed.
We mingled with the staff and newly arrived guests. Lots of beer on ice in the cooler. We felt right at home. Mike was busy taking people’s orders for steaks, and then tended the grill of fresh salmon and a load of steaks. Turns out Mike had guided out in Bristol Bay on the Nushagak River, just as I had. We talked of the tremendous king salmon runs to the river back in those days.
As I talked to the age 20 something guides and asked them where they were from, I smiled thinking of my own guiding years in my 20’s and the home states – Minnesota, Montana, Idaho and northern California – were the same home states as guides and staff I worked with then then as these kids now. All of them to a person seemed happy and content- a sign they worked for a good lodge owner, especially this far into a long, rainy summer season.
Dinner was fantastic. Perfect steaks, perfect salmon, salad, mashed potatoes, rolls – then ice cream with triple chocolate brownies for dessert. We ate our fill and more.
Well after dark, one of the guides ran Larry and I and Jon, the other boat’s captain, up to the little town proper, where we were let in to Mike’s spare cabin. It was right next to the falls that drain the lake above. After a long day on the water, we were soon asleep in comfortable beds, with the rushing water from the waterfalls to put us to sleep.
The bay is like a cathedral, with steep treeless mountain tops and a commanding water fall of sorts that cascades down a steep rock face into the head of the bay. I bet it’s dark and cold here in the winter. The place is also somewhat magical for me since it was the home for Wayne Short and his family growing up. He’s the author of several of my favorite books, including The Cheechakoes and This Raw Land, about coming to Southeast Alaska in the 1950s and coming of age in a new land. The family bought the store and property in Baranof Warm Springs, including the main lodge house compound we were dining in. I’ve read the books so many times I felt like I’d already been here before many times.
We awoke at 6 and a guide came back for us right on time. As we walked across the docks on our way to the boardwalk up to the lodge, I studied the fishing gear the lodge used. The halibut set ups had spin and glos on one side of a three way swivel, with a circle hook on a stout leader on the other, and a snap hanging down to clip on a weight. The hootchies were white with red in the head – a similar pattern to those I’d had success with further up Chatham this year.
When we got up to the lodge, we were greeted by kitchen staff with plates full of breakfast before we could even sit down. We ate our fill with the guides as they talked about the day to come. The cook rang the bell to call the guests to breakfast, and we said our goodbyes and headed down to our boats. Soon, we were on our way back to Juneau at full speed and fair seas, and tied up in Auke Bay before noon. I didn’t get a hot soak in the hot springs on this run, and look forward to doing that on the next trip.

Boat with small craft in front going toward shore

String Cheese

Tom Morgan, who I trained and served with in the Peace Corps, and his nephew Jasper, were here for a week. Tom and his wife Sarah and I don’t see each other all that often, but, like the others in our group that trained at the University of Oklahoma in 1986, we are all family.

Jasper is the same age as my nephew who was here a few weeks ago, and the same age as the twins were when they were here last year from Mount Vernon. When I asked his grandma what he ate, she sent me a list of 5 things, but I thought this was just what he liked. Nope. It’s all he eats. Doesn’t eat salmon. Or crab. Or moose. The primary food he consumes is string cheese. From day 2 of the trip to this hour, his nickname is String Cheese. He seems to like it. Last year, I dubbed Odessa as Chicken Boots from her boots with chickens on them. I didn’t think I’d ever top that, but then along comes String Cheese.

The boys arrived just after midnight. Sara and I had provisioned the boat, and I parked it right near the bottom of the ramp for easy loading. She drove us to the harbor from the airport, where we settled in on the boat for the night. I was up at 6 am, and was surprised to see both boys up and ready to go. Now they were seeing Alaska in the daylight. We untied and steamed for Chatham Strait.

When we rounded the tip of Admiralty Island, we put out the fishing gear and fished our way south. I showed the boys how the downriggers worked with the fishing rods. At first they helped each other set one side, with one holding the rod and the other working the downrigger. Soon, they could run each side on their own. It was the same for the fishing part. I showed them how the drags work, coached them on bringing in fish, removing the hook with the gaff, and bleeding fish by breaking a gill and putting them on a stringer over the side or in a bucket of water.

We lost several fish the first day, but as the days went by, the two were quite a team, with one fighting the fish, and the other working the net. I’d often come back to take off the fish and bleed them while the two of them got the gear back in the water. I did all the fish cleaning.

Our best days fish wise were the first and last days, with about 7 fish on each day. The other days we caught 3 or 4. But the best days over all seemed to be the days we caught few fish. On those days the two watched whales and other sea life and just enjoyed each other’s company on the back deck as we had nice weather everyday.

We tied up the first day in Funter Bay, and String Cheese got to meet my good friend Gordy, who was out hand trolling. Gordy seemed to make a good impression on SC, as he’d ask how Gordy was doing every day thereafter from texts I’d receive from Gordy. Other old timers at the dock were eager to help SC bait and set a crab pot and then showed him what they caught in their pot the next morning. We also saw a brown bear on the beach, and I told them about the residents from St Paul Island, who were interned in Funter Bay during World War II under terrible conditions, and not brought to nearby Juneau, where there would be shelter and care for them, due to racism. Tom and I had my canned smoked salmon and cheese on crackers for dinner, while String Cheese had, well, string cheese and Ritz.

We left about 630 the next morning. String Cheese pulled the crab pot, but it only caught starfish. We fished south of Funter Bay and caught about 4 nice coho. I decided to cross over to the other side of Chatham Strait while the seas weren’t too bad and tie up at the Swanson Harbor dock so we’d be in the area of the Clover Islands DNR cabin, which we had reserved the next day. A friend came in with his family to tend to a pile of crab pots he had stored here, and another couple arrived with a springer dog that String Cheese soon befriended. We set a crab pot near the dock. All was good, except it was buggy back in here and the mosquitoes kept me up until late in the evening, when it seemed that once it cooled down below a certain temperature, that they were not active anymore. Tom and I ate some trout-sized coho for dinner.

We got up early again and headed out to fish. No crab in the pot. Again. We fished along the mainland shore of Icy Strait all day. We caught 3 coho, and had a spectacular display by breaching humpback whales. The seas were a little choppy and the fishing was kind of slow, so we quit in the early afternoon and headed back to Chatham Strait to the cabin, setting the king crab pot along the way. I’d spent two days here last year with Andrea’s twins, and so knew there was great anchorage and berry picking around the cabin. I also planned on this being a great place to teach String Cheese to run the little portabote and 2.3 hp Honda outboard. And he took an immediate shine to it. We lightered several loads of string cheese, other foods, cooking and sleeping gear to the cabin, with me longshoring on the beach and Tom as crew for captain String Cheese in the punt. They also made a check later on the dungeness crab pot we’d set on the way in. Tom and I gorged ourselves on fried coho salmon frames left over from filleting fish, which Tom had wrapped in plastic and we’d put in the freezer.

The next morning we slept in and enjoyed another nice morning. When I asked String Cheese if he liked pancakes, he looked at me dumbfounded. Of course I like pancakes, he said. Everyone likes pancakes. While he and Tom went for a walk around the bay, I took the berry rake and went up behind the cabin a short ways to find a bush loaded with red huckleberries. I soon had enough for pancakes, and returned to the cabin to start breakfast. I made patties of venison breakfast sausage I made last fall, and cooked those first. By this time, the boys were back. Tom and I enjoyed some of the sausage while I cooked pancakes one at a time. Tom warned me that String Cheese wouldn’t eat the pancakes if there were berries in them. Turns out, he wouldn’t eat them if they were plain either. So, it was string cheese for String Cheese, and pancakes and sausage for Tom and I.

We pulled the dungy pot on the way out of the anchorage. Nothing. Then we pulled the king crab pot. Nothing. I’m really lacking in the crabbing department. Seas were calm, so we steamed back across Chatham Strait while the getting was good.

We put the gear down after noon, and fished south from Funter Bay. We caught 4 nice coho, and saw several whales fishing right next to shore. Tom also spotted a big black tailed doe on the beach still in her shiny reddish-orange summer coat. We set the king pot again in about 300 feet of water in a little nook of calm seas, then anchored for the evening in a cove between Piledriver Cove and Game cove near the entrance to Hawk Inlet, where the boys could see buildings of Greens Creek mine in the distance. We set the dungy pot on the way in.

Although the forecast called for southerly winds, the winds here were northerly. Just a slight chop, but the boat did not want to turn into the wind, and stayed sideways to the little chop, and it was a little sloppy on the boat. The boys were soon fast asleep though, and eventually the boat turned to the wind in the middle of the night.

We awoke to a light rain in the morning. Our first real precipitation all week. And viola. Finally. A huge male keeper crab in the pot, along with several large females. I showed the boys how to identify gender in the crabs as I tossed the females over and put the male in a bucket on deck. Next we checked the king pot. Empty again. The sea conditions were the predicted southerly winds at 15 kts with about 3 foot seas, so we’d just fish our way north today. I thought the fishing might be good with the overcast and change in weather. And it was. We caught 7 or more coho with steady fishing all morning. I made Tom a lunch of a trout-sized coho and the whole dungy crab. He ate it all.

We reached Point Retreat at mid-day. I gave String Cheese the option of going to our cabin or our house. When Grandpa mentioned the wifi at the house and not the cabin, SC opted for the house. I finished cleaning our catch for the day, iced the fish with the last bits of ice in the cooler, and we pulled the gear and headed to Auke Bay.

We lucked out and were able to tie up in the loading zone right where we had left earlier in the week. I rounded up a couple carts while Tom and String Cheese piled the gear on the deck to offload. We got our clothes and the foodstuffs and fish from the freezer and fridge, and the cooler with dressed fish on ice from the last 2 days of fishing, onto the carts. Then we moved the tug to a tie up spot nearby.

I’d texted Kurt earlier in the day and guessed we’d be ready to go from the harbor about 5 pm. We were 15 minutes early when we got the carts to the top of the ramp. Just as Kurt pulled in. Kurt took us to see the glacier on the way home and gave the boys ideas for sight seeing in town the next day.

When we got home, I got the boys immediately onto vacuum packing the frozen fish wrapped in plastic wrap while I started to fillet the fish from the past few days. We had plenty of fish already frozen for a full 50 lb box for the boys to take home to grandma Sarah, so I would smoke and can the fresh fish later in the fall. I cut whole fillets and put them in the fridge and called it a day.

The next morning, String Cheese got a call from one of his buddies back in Iowa. From the vivid descriptions he was giving his buddy, it’s apparent he had a good time.

Aug Boat Trip

My nephew Eaton arrived the day after we got the boat to Juneau. He’s my youngest nephew, and was here a few years ago. He was here for 2 weeks, and he was ready to fish.

We got the boat provisioned, picked up Dorothy, and took the boat around Douglas Island from the downtown harbor to Auke Bay harbor, where we took on fuel and water.. With nothing else left to do, Sara met us out there, where she picked up Dorothy to take her home, and Eaton and I headed west. I thought about going to Funter Bay for the evening, but it was pretty late in the day, and so we anchored in Barlow Cove near the lighthouse. Bad choice. Although Eaton slept like a baby, I was awaken hourly by cruise ships coming and going around Pt. Retreat.

The next morning, I was up early and we rounded Pt. Retreat and headed for East Point, where I fished for king salmon July 1-2, as well as in my past years power trolling in the spring. North Chatham was the usual. Forecast for light winds and seas, and kicking up 3 foot seas, just because. As we headed towards Funter Bay, I could see my deck hand was getting a little green. We arrived at Funter Bay about noon, and I pulled into the dock to wait out the wind and waves. Also at the dock was the main clerk from Harri’s, where I get my trolling, boating, and plumbing supplies, and Mac, who ran for Mayor when I ran for assembly and his deckhand Bobby, who I know from fish politics. All at the dock to wait out the wind.

We tied up for a couple hours. Eventually, everyone else left, so we figured the wind had laid down. We left and when we got to Chatham Strait, it was a duck pond. We cruised south to Freshwater Bay on flat seas.

We arrived at Pavlov Harbor, where we joined a sailboat, a small yacht, and a couple small cruise ships. I could see a bear fishing just up from the creek mouth.. As we settled in for the night, my nephew watched movies on the DVD player. I sat on the back deck and watched humpback whales bubblenet feeding right at the entrance to Pavlov Harbor.

We fished the next day at East Point. Normally, I try to avoid pink salmon. But there were pinks. Lots of pinks. Really bright pinks. And not much else. And my nephew loved catching them. So pinks it was. Turns out my nephew also loved eating them, as he had a half a side of pink salmon from one we caught the first day for dinner and would have ate more.

I figure out a little more about the boat everyday. I learned how to access the transmission oil check. As long as I have my skinny nephew, that is. How to position rods in the back so I can see them through the windows at the helm. That the freezer I bought for the deck works great and does not unduly tax the batteries. That the windlass is slowwwwwww pulling up the anchor, but if you put water on for coffee before pulling the anchor, it will be right at boiling by the time the anchor is up. That you can kick and move the battery selector switch without knowing it when exiting the port side door. That although the stern is in need of scuppers to allow water to exit more easily, if I clean the fish in a cleaner tied over the side, I can keep most of the fish innards out of the boat.

On Day 2, I was up and had the boat out to East Point to fish.. Eaton got up about 9, and just as he got to the back deck to pee, a pink is on the line, and he lands it in his pajamas. We watched whales lunge feeding close to us and the wind was just right that we could smell their breath. I’m always nervous fishing around whales. I stay away from them, but once they dive, you never know where they’ll resurface.. The fishing action was good with the pinks. And the fish so bright and decent size this year that they weren’t all that hard to clean.

We anchor in Wachusetts Cove and set the dungy pots near others in the bay.. One of them came with the boat, and was a folding type with no escape rings. So, I scrounged a couple large hose clamps left in the boat. I showed Eaton how to adjust the clamp to size according to the regulation book onboard for dungeness crab pots, and then tie them into the mesh, and finally cut the mesh inside the clamp. I then taught Eaton how to cook a pink salmon fillet in butter with some seasoning, which is about as hard as boiling water. He cooked a whole fillet of pink salmon and wolfed it down watching another DVD. The Big Lebowski. For the second night in a row. I sit up in helm writing and looking over manuals, and enjoy just listening to a funny movie like TBL. Like Pavlof Harbor, pink salmon are jumping everywhere.. I also look out at the cool geology in Wachusetts. Rock formations that stick up out of the beach like a chef’s high hat, with caves eroded out underneath that would make for a perfect camping shelter.

Day 3, I wait for Eaton to get up so we can check the crab pots. Although sunrise – 4 am ish- is my favorite time to fish, I contemplate that helping out with Scouts over the past several years, as well as having Eaton’s older cousin John here several time, has trained me well for traveling with a teenager. I make a pot of coffee and write and look around me and look at more manuals. Then I make another pot of coffee and continue the routine until I hear him rustling down below. I pull the anchor as Eaton tends the wheel, which is our routine now. He sets the anchor in the evenings, and as many times as I tell him, he’s not careful with the chain going out after the anchor and it jumps out of the bow roller and then tries to chew up the nice gunnel rail on our nice boat. I think to myself : maybe I just can’t have nice things….. We idle over to the crab pots, As we coast by the crab pot buoy, Eaton whiffs with the gaff. Like I knew he would. He grimaces while I shout encouraging words of “if I was going any slower, we’d have going backwards”, and we go round again. He gets it this time. And every time he needs to in subsequent days after that.

The pots are full of crab. But they are small. And female. I show him the tell tale female tails and explain we can’t keep them. He accepts that with no argument, and I’m happy he doesn’t rationalize that we could keep them and cook them and nobody would know, as he’s practically drooling since crab are his favorite seafood. Good boy.

We put down the fishing gear and are fishing soon out of the harbor. The seas are choppy, and it’s pretty sloppy as we round East Point. This isn’t going to be a day of fishing in these conditions. Eaton hurls over the side. We catch a couple shaker kings and a pink, but it’s not something I want to fish in. So I tell Eaton we’ll pull up the gear when we get a ways into Tenakee Inlet, and go see town. Then it happens. One of the rods has a fish. We’re just about in the lee of the point across the bay, and the seas are lessening. Eaton yards the fish in, and when I see it, I see a nice big king salmon. Now I whiff with the net the first pass, then on the second the hooks catch in the net, but I manage to roll it into the net and get it on board. That made the day. Not many fish, but this one was worth the try and he forgot about being sea sick.

As we’re pulling the gear to go to town, a seiner is steaming full ahead towards us. I yell “sorry!” as he passes, but he wasn’t upset and greeted me happily. He was just going to make another set. The inlet was full of seiners after the pink salmon jumping everywhere, and I explain how a seiner fishes as we head towards Tenakee. We pass boats in all stages of seining, and it’s good to see boats catching fish and knowing the miracle of the annual salmon migration looks fruitful for yet another year and know there’s not many place left in the world where this is so.

We make it to Tenakee and tie up to the little dock below the store. It was about 130 pm, and the website for the store says they are open from 2 to 430 pm, so we relax for half an hour. At 159 pm, we head up the dock and arrive just as the store is closing.. The volunteer from the little museum across the boardwalk sees us and says – “Oh that- yeah, the webmaster is pretty busy. They changed the hours. They change the hours all the time.”. We didn’t need anything in particular from the store. It was just something to do. She sees the store clerk walking back into the store and asks if they’ll be open again at 3 when a little cruise ship will be in. He says yes, and we’re welcome to come in now as he’s not going anywhere.. So, in we go. We look over all their goods. Eaton grabs a couple candy items, and I tell him to get a coconut ice bar for each of us.

We exit the store and head down the trail towards the head of the bay. The museum volunteer tells us about the brown bear situation. They had to kill a bear the evening before, and this seemed to make the other 2 bears around town take off for awhile.. The houses and cabins on either side of the trail are well kept. Many Juneauites have second homes in Tenakee. I point out the various berries along the trail. Some trails bushwacked through the thick berry bushes look like they were made by bears. We walk maybe a quarter mile and turn back. My back is stiff and my leg joints sore from just being on the boat. By the time we head back, things have stretched out a bit and I feel better.

I look on the chart and see a Crab Bay across the inlet. Gotta be crab there! So we untie and head in that direction. As we entered the bay, seiners were still fishing. We head up the bay, and I immediately see it’s a blow hole. The wind is blowing directly to the back of the long narrow bay, which has spectacular cliffs and steep mountains rising straight up from the bay. When we get to the back of the bay, we haven’t seen a crab pot to think there were actually any crab here now. And it wasn’t going to be a good place to anchor. So we turn around and head back to Tenakee Inlet.

I think maybe there will be crabbing at the mouth of the Kadasan River, and we can anchor or tie up in Corner Bay, where I know the Chew logging and construction family from hauling their lumber from there to Juneau with Larry. As we pass the Kadashan Delta, I see crab pots. So we toss our pots out near them. I see a nice little island towards Corner Bay with a nice spot in the lee of the wind to anchor. Soon, we are anchored in a little 60 foot deep hole behind the island. I shut down the engine – the best silence of the day – and start getting the back deck ready to butcher fish.

I fillet our catch to date, except for the king salmon, which I steak. I set Eaton up at the kitchen table with plastic wrap, and show him how to put some fish pieces in a colander in a bowl to let them drain, then transfer those fish to another container, and put more pieces in the colander. While those are draining, he then wraps each piece of fish in plastic wrap and stacks them in a pile. I continue butchering and feeding him fish to wrap. When I’m done butchering, I come in and start wrapping fish in butcher paper. A vac packer for the boat is on the list of things to get. As I wrap, Eaton tears off pieces of masking tape to seal the paper wrap. We are a good team. Then he starts to write the fish species and year on each package. When we’re all done, I tell him about freezing salmon.. That you want to spread the fish out so they are not in a bunch and so each piece will freeze as quickly as possible. I put as many fish is I can spread out in the freezer to freeze, then put the rest in the cooler on top of the ice. The fish in the freezer were frozen the next day, and I then put in the fish in the cooler on top of them to freeze. The freezer was working out great, and it was such a pleasure to tie up at the end of the trip with just the day’s catch to butcher, and not a week’s worth.

Now that I have plenty of bait from fish heads and frames, I bait up a halibut rod and put it over the side in our 60 foot anchorage. I set the drag so it’s easy for a fish to pull it out, and put the clicker on so we can hear the line paying out if a fish bites. We were about half way through wrapping fish when we hear the line going out. I get to the rod, and let the fish take it out further, then set the hook. Oh yeah. It’s a halibut. I hand the rod to Eaton. He’s been used to yarding in pink salmon that he can just skip over the top of the water once they are to the surface. So he tries to yard in this halibut. Then the halibut yards back. And yards back. Eaton is not used to this. And he likes it. He plays the fish skillfully to the boat. It’s a nice halibut about 30 to 40 lbs. I conk it on the head, then gaff it aboard. What a day. What started out as a day of sloppy water and few fish turns out to be a king salmon and halibut day. Mom and Dad are gonna be happy with Eaton.

After the brief excitement, Eaton exits stage right to his bunk and more DVDs. I put out two halibut rods with our new found luck. He passes the pile of dishes I’ll be doing after I clean the halibut and finish wrapping the salmon. The Scout master training kicks in. I’m just gonna let him go and know I don’t have anything else to do anyway the rest of the night. And, I like taking care of salmon and doing dishes while listening to KCAW on the radio from Sitka, and he likes watching TV, so everyone wins. It’s been a particularly rainy day. The kind of Southeast Alaska day that can soak you to the bone, and I’m happy to get into some dry clothes.

On Day 4, I’m up early and Eaton late again. Now I’m used to the routine. We had no more action on our gear over the side. However, I did have some excitement. A bear swam across from Chichagof Island to the little island we were anchored behind. An island you could walk around in 5 minutes that had a little copse of evergreen trees in the middle. We were so near the island I could clearly see it without binoculars. It was not exciting enough for Eaton to leave his bunk and look, however.. Eventually, the bear walked over the spit out of sight and I expect swam back to Chichagof.

When Eaton finally got up, I pull the anchor and we check the crab pots. No luck.. We head out Tenakee Inlet back to Chatham Strait. We travel straight down the middle to stay out of the seiners’ way fishing on either side of the Inlet. We fish from one side of East Point to the other, and not even a pink salmon. Yikes! So, we decide to go to explore the head of Freshwater Bay. My former workmate and her family have a cabin there, built with their friends and featured on a reality tv show. They are bringing us out some salmon rods and a chartbook, so I look at her directions to their cabin so I’ll know where it is when they arrive. We find it perched on a short cliff, and it looks beautiful.

We anchor at the head of the bay at the mouth of a creek – I think it’s a creek. I looked for a little whole like we anchored in behind the island in Tenakee Inlet to see if there’d be halibut there, too.. After we set our crab pots, get the anchor set, we see our friends neighbors come out to check whatever it was they had under some big buoys. Turns out it was a halibut line, and we see them haul a nice 40 pounder of the side of their skiff.

I realize after we set the anchor we put all the bait in the crab pot! I figure we’ll let them soak a couple hours before we pull them to get some bait out for halibut. During that time, our friends arrived with the gear, and we talked for about 15 minutes about what we’d been doing and what gear they had set on the way in.

After they leave for their cabin, we pull the anchor and go pull the pot to get some bait. We check the pots and ooh! We have some crab. And then we see a big crab that was hanging onto the outside fall off! When we look at the crab on the inside, they are males but too small. We toss them back and hope for some bigger ones in the morning. At least we see some male crab in the area.We re-anchor and I put our lines over the side, but we have no interest for the rest of the day.

On Day 5, at about 5am the next morning, though, I hear line screaming out.. I get up from my bunk, out to the rod, and pick it up. Nothing there. As soon as I jig it once, back the fish comes. I set the hook, and after one or two lunges by the fish, the line goes limp. I reel up, and the line had parted. Not sure if it was rotted there or could have rubbed against something on the boat or what.

Well, I was up now.. And it would be hours before Eaton would be up. Our bait was gone. So, I find a mooching jig in the box left by the former boar owner, tie it to my salmon rod using leader line from the same rod, and try jigging. It didn’t take long and i had a fish on. It swam straight to the surface.. So not a halibut, I think. I get it to the boat and see it’s a shaker! I release it, and try again. I get another fish on, and it feels bigger. It too swims to the surface, but throws the hook before I saw it. Another nicer king, I think.

I’d tied the treble hook directly to the line threaded through the jig, and though maybe I needed to put a ring and swivel on the hook so it hung down a little further. When I cut the line to the hook to retie everything, I realized I’d put the jig on upside down! Well, we’ll see how it works when tied on properly.

I fish for another hour or two. I caught a bullhead and some very small pollock or cod. Then a big one. I knew I had a good halibut on. I roust Eaton, and ask him to put together the harpoon to tie to the small buoy over the side.. We fumble with lines as I get the fish to the surface. It’s a nice one. A little bigger than the one we got earlier. I can gaff it. I ask for the gaff, and when he hands me the short one, I ask for the long one. Now the fish is just laying at the surface, not doing much. Eaton has to get the gaff out of the cleaning table, and struggles to pull it out of the tight space. Then the fish shakes it’s head. Just a little. And the line parts. Right at the jig. I should have used a heavier leader, as the halibut’s teeth must have nicked the 30 lbs test line on the reel. Eaton then got an education in four letter words as Uncle Mark swore up and down at himself for not using heavier line. Again the scout training kicked in. I was careful not to blame anything on my nephew, as of course he was not to blame. I told him: you don’t remember all the fish you catch, but you remember all the fish you lose. I tried another jig with heavier leader and caught some more tiny cod, but did not get another halibut on.

We decided to try the raft on the back of the boat to check the crab pots for a little adventure. I lowered the raft, and mounted the little 2.5 kicker. I then had Eaton get in the boat and instructed him on how the outboard worked. How to start it and how to stop it. When he got it fired up, I flopped into the front of the raft, and off we went to check the crab pot about 100 yards behind us. Eaton figured out how to steer the motor, and how to control the speed with the throttle. He was clearly pleased with himself. I pulled the pot up and when Eaton could see it, I stopped pulling so as to not possibly puncture the raft, and we motored back to the boat. Eaton said he saw crab in the pot.

When we got to the boat, we indeed had 2 crab in the pot. Both keepers, and one hog that was as big as dungeness get. Finally, we got some of his favorite. I’d planned to motor up to our friends cabin to visit, but had seen them leave to check their gear, and I couldn’t raise them on the radio, so we decided to head to Funter Bay. I did reach them on the radio on the way out, and told them my sad fishing story.

On Day 6, we steamed towards Funter Bay in a following sea, which was pleasant. When we got near Lizard Head about 4 hours later, I put the fishing gear out at the two cabins south of LH.. I soon had a nice coho on, and Eaton brought it in. It was big. September sized. Not long after, we got another one on. This one was even bigger – 12 or more lbs I’d guess. I wanted to turn back to fish the drag line again, but it was too sloppy to want to buck the waves, so we kept going towards Funter. After no more fish past Lizard Head, I pulled up the gear and found I did have another small coho on that had not tripped the release. I dressed the fish, and then we steamed in to tie up at the Funter Bay dock.. I dropped the crab pot over the dock, as I’d seen people catch crab here and there were other pots nearby. Later in the evening, a small brown bear walked right along the shore about 20 or 30 yards from the dock as if it was on a Sunday stroll with not a care in the world. When he got further up the beach to some old cannery (I think) ruins, he stopped and sniffed the air. Then he took off at a job across an open patch of beach that led to the woods. I’m guessing he smelled a bigger bear.

I awoke early on Day 7, and left a little after 5 am with no need to wake Eaton. But he yelled up from his bunk not to forget to check the pot, which I had but no crab.. We steamed up to a spot south of Cordwood, and I put out the fishing gear. We had a couple hours to fish, then would steam to Auke Bay, where Kurt would be getting in from a boat trip and give us a ride home.. I caught a couple smaller coho as Eaton slept. Then I got a double on. And lost them both. When we reached Point Retreat, I pulled the gear and we headed for Auke Bay.. A great week with my nephew.

Tug

I found a boat Sara might like. A Sundowner Tug. Kind of like a Nordic Tug, but in our price range.

The boat had come up for sale a less than a day before and I just happened to see it on Alaska Boat Brokers. It was a similar situation with our house 25 years ago. We passed our house on our way to work. One morning there was a for sale sign in front by owner. At noon, the sign was now for a realtor. We called him to try to be the first to look. A little house on a big lot. Not a common occurrence in Juneau. We looked, and Sara liked. I told her we needed to offer full price now or it would be gone if we hesitated. We’re still here today.

The one difference with this boat was that I had already scheduled my fish delivery for the following day. I could not change the delivery date now. So I told Sara if she was really interested, she needed to fly down to Ketchikan and look at it. Somewhat surprisingly, she did. And the report was two thumbs up. Looks like we were going to buy a tug.

We had 2 weeks to close the deal with a haul out and inspection, and the next time the broker, who was a friend of our friends in Ketchikan – could get a haul out date was for 10 days later. That worked for me. Sara would be out of town then at a conference, so I asked my friend Kurt, and he was excited to go.

Our flight arrived in Ketchikan a little after 8 am, and Jeff was there to meet us. A little after 9 am, we were at the harbor launch, with a haul out service pulling out the boat on a trailer on the ramp. The hull bottom looked like it had never been even scratched. The mechanic who was a friend of Jeff that we hired to look at the boat with us was familiar with these Yanmar engines and a tug owner himself. Like Sara, he gave it two thumbs up. He also checked the shaft and propeller, and said the prop showed some signs of electrolosis. Peter, the owner, said he thinks the prop had the pinkish hue when he bought it, and he thought he had addressed the electrolosis issue with bonding. I paid the mechanic, and we put the boat back in the water for a sea trial.

We toodled down Tongass Narrows for a mile or two. Peter went through the controls and electronics with me. Soon, we were back to his stall in the harbor. A done deal. Money was transferred by wire from my bank to the documentation company, and it was now our boat.

I texted our good friends Jen and Bill, and soon Jen and her car arrived. She took a tour of the boat, then we took her home and borrowed her car. We went to Walmart to look for a small freezer, which Peter said he used on the boat when out fishing and I thought was a good idea. Kurt talked me out of getting it there, but we did find all the groceries we needed. We had an excellent lunch of Mexican food from a food truck near Walmart, then stopped for a half rack of PBR at the liquor store, and back to the boat. Off we go. Just like that. It was only 130 in the afternoon.

We steamed north on calm seas and made our way up Clarence Strait. We thought we’d tie up at the dock in Meyers Chuck for the evening, as neither of us had been there. When we got into the bay, the dock was full, but it was great to see the place.

We continued up Clarence Strait and decided to anchor in a cove in Onslow Island off the channel with Eagle Islands.

The next morning we were up early. I checked the oil and coolant. This was my first check. The engine looks brand new. Never had something like this before. Engine hardly turns over before it jumps to life. Much quieter than the old two stroke Jimmy motors I’ve had in the past. We steamed north and picked out some spots to fish.

We fished near Mabel Island on the advice of my inlaws, but no halibut. We traveled further north to Snow Pass, where there were humpback whales all over the place. The tide was really running, and it was hard to get the salmon gear down very far and still try to make any headway. We caught a pink and a coho here.

We decided we’d travel to the entrance to Wrangell Narrows, and then run the narrows in the morning. I’ve never known anyone having a problem in the narrows, but it’s legendary for tide currents and groundings. As we got to the narrows, we still had plenty of light, so decided to head on to Petersburg. We were traveling at the last two hours of the flood tide, and this may be the best time to go. I thought it might take us 3 or 4 hours, but we made it in about 2 hours with the tide whisking us along.

I called the night attendant at the Petersburg Harbor, and got my stall assignment. We picked our way in there, and when we tied up I realized we were right across from Paul’s boat, Cisco, and right at the bottom of the ramp. We had pizza for dinner. The galley in the boat is as nice as our house. A 3 burner propane cook top and a stove.

We went up to the harbor office and paid our moorage. Then stretched our legs the short block to the liquor store, and back to the boat. We took care of our purchase, and had a restful sleep tied up to the dock.

The next morning, we met Paul and Eric for breakfast at the Salty Pantry restaurant. Paul and Eric had brought 2 vehicles, parking one at the harbor and the other at the fuel dock. We all went back to the boat for their tour, then headed over to the fuel dock to give them a little ride. We took on about 50 gallons of fuel, and Paul and Eric departed up to their car. I suggested we fill the water tank, but Kurt said we’d be fine with what we had. For some reason I had thought Petersburg was most of the way to Juneau from Ketchikan, but it’s only half way. About 117 miles from Ketchikan to Petersburg, and 115 miles from Petersburg to Juneau.

We made our way out the narrows and into Frederick Sound. Another calm day. On Paul’s advice, we fished at Cape Fanshaw, and caught a pink and a coho. We then steamed over to Five Finger Lighthouse, which used to be leased by a good friend of Kurt’s, and Kurt had been to the place. There was a sailboat full of tourists on site at the lighthouse, and I wasn’t sure if there were residents at the lighthouse or not. A humpback whale was feeding right next to the shore of lighthouse island. I mean right next to the shore such that if you were casting from shore, you might cast over it. We anchored up in a spot that looked like money for halibut, and tried for a couple hours. There were several humpbacks feeding around us, and one came right next to the boat to check us out before diving and being on its way. We had a few nibbles but no halibut. We picked up and headed north.

We made the cove at Point Ashley at dark. There were two smaller cruise ships and a yacht in the anchorage. We ran the heater and it was pretty luxurious sleeping on a heated boat. But we ran out of water in the last washing of dishes. Kurt said “I told you we should have got water in Petersburg”.

The last day there was a little tail wind and chop. We traveled up to Taku Harbor and tried trolling for salmon. We got a fish on soon after putting the gear out, and it was a 23 inch undersized king salmon that we released. We were in our country now, and recognized our geography. We made our way with a 1 to 2 foot sea the rest of the way to Juneau.

Back home, we got a slip in Aurora Harbor. Jeffy had dropped Kurt’s truck at the harbor, and soon he was dropping me off at the house. I returned to the harbor office to register the new boat, and later signed up for the waitlist for a slip.

The next morning, I was up and got started on my priority project: installing mounts for the downriggers. My nephew Eaton was arriving tonight, and so I needed to get these on so we could fish for salmon. I had been thinking of lots of different ways of doing it, and took supplies from the garage for the different options. In the end, the simplest seemed the best: I bolted a piece of 2 x 10 across the curve of the stern rail, and then put the downrigger mount on the board. Simple and stout. The boat was already starting to look more like a hand troller than a quaint tug. Sara was not surprised.

What is surprising is that there are no scuppers in the stern. Just two little floor drains about an inch in diameter, with a grate over the mouth of the drain. They get clogged just looking at them. So, that’s the next project. There’s lots of free board in the stern. I’m just a little nervous cutting through Sara’s new boat.