On my last whale watch trip, right at sun set tonight, I witnessed two orca bulls trying to kill a humpback whale calf. The calf was surrounded by 4 to 6 adult humpbacks, though, and I think they may have been on all sides of the calf and even underneath it. The orcas were driving all around the group of humpbacks. I had to leave to get my group back to the dock before it was settled, but I never saw any blood and think the humpbacks were successful in protecting the calf.
Fishing with Andrew
Andrew and I rarely get to fish together since he works two jobs. He’s been with me to Keith and Jane’s to dipnet and to Roy and Brenda’s to net fish in the river. We’ve boat fished a few times. The most we’d caught was 3 cohos a few years ago.
I told him I’d caught some fish down the channel, and he said if I went on Saturday morning he’d like to go as he didn’t work til noon. I had Salvation Army store donation collection duty, but thought we could get up and start at sunrise and fish til midmorning and then come in for our job commitments.
I got up at 430 and made two thermoses of coffee and a couple egg and cheese sandwiches for the boat. Andrew showed up right on time and we launched the boat just before sunrise. We sped down the channel in flat calm waters and clear skies. It was supposed to get up to 70 again today. The September weather has been the best of the summer. Dry and not too hot and calm seas.
I put the gear out on the downriggers and Andrew drove the boat. Then he went back to watch the rods as I took over the wheel. He likes to stand right between the rods and wait for a hit. One rod was at 45 feet with a green hootchie and green flasher and one at 25 feet with with a yellow and red hootchie with a red flasher. We trolled for half an hour or more until we got our first fish on. It was on the 45 ft rod. The second fish was at the same depth, so I moved both rods to 45 feet. Then we got two or three more fish – all on the red flasher set up, so I switched both rods to the same hootchie and flasher.
We had steady fishing over the next couple hours, catching 5 more and losing 4 fish. Andrew just couldn’t keep them on, and I think he wasn’t keeping the pressure on the fish, but maybe I’d have lost them, too. He wanted me to take the fish now so we didn’t lose anymore but I knew he needed to learn. The last few fish were a little bigger. After each fish was landed, I’d break a gill and put the fish on a stringer over the side to bleed. Then I’d clean the fish and put it in the cooler. I was able to keep up with the cleaning to this point.
Then we got a double on. Andrew lost his and I got mine. Then another double. This time, we both landed our fish. Now we had 3 fish on the stringer. A few boats come around from town, after we’d fished all of the early morning by ourselves. We got more fish on. And lost them. One boat had fished around us for awhile, and apparently hadn’t caught anything and left. I got to cleaning the three fish on the stringer. The cooler was overflowing now. Finally, we got the last fish of our 12 fish limit on and landed it. I pulled in the gear, cleaned the last fish, and shut off the kicker. I called over to a family fishing near us who hadn’t caught any. I told them what we were using and how deep we were fishing and asked if they wanted to borrow our gear. They said no, they had the gear and thanks for the tip. By now it was 1030 and time to go to get us both to our jobs by noon.
We ran back to the dock with the fish. I told Andrew to stop and get ice in his car while I drove home with the boat to put the fish in a bigger cooler. I had canned the 5 cohos I caught my last trip last night, and I had all the fish we needed for the summer so I was giving all of mine to him. Andrew soon arrived with ice and we put the fish in the cooler then loaded it in his car. He would ice the fish down and butcher them tonight and get help from Sam and Gloria vac packing them. I think that’s the most cohos I’ve caught on my boat in a day here.
Evening Bite
I had the day off from whale watching. I went to the channel at low tide to snag for cohos after Andrew told me he’d got four the day before. There were no fish there today, but it was a good long walk. I did a few chores at the house, cleaning the woodstove stack and hosing the moss off the roof.
The day was so nice I decided to go fishing on the boat at high tide. I ran down the channel south of town and got there just after high tide at about 4 pm. There were a few boats at Salisbury Point and one was boating a fish as I stopped, started the trolling motor, and put out a flasher and green king candy.
I fished for about an hour, trying different depths, and switched from king candy to a hootchie. I choked up the downrigger to about 25 feet. Finally, I got one on. And another. And another. I caught four, lost one, and released two undersized king salmon, fishing in a circle off the point over the next couple hours. All the coho were hooked nose males, and all nice sized. In between catching fish, I cleaned each fish after letting it bleed on a stringer over the side. I got back to the launch right at dark. I stopped on the way home and put more ice on the fish so I could butcher them in the morning.
I filleted, portioned and vac packed the four fish the next morning before work. These I’d send to Carl and Bonnie in Michigan, along with some crab.
Scouting Outing
We had our August scout campout this weekend. The troop hiked about three and a half miles on the uninhabited east side of Douglas Island. The scouts hiked to a prominent point, which has a little creek that had pink salmon spawning in its lower reach. Keith and parent Chrissy hiked in with about 7 boys and 2 girls. We are the first troop in Juneau with girls in our troop, I think, and they are a great addition to the group. Seems like one of those things that adults might worry about but the kids don’t. When they were talking about the change of name from Boy Scouts to BSA Scouts, one of the boys said BSA stands for “both sexes allowed”. I like it.
I took my boat down and met them at the camp site with much of the camping gear and food. When the hikers arrived, they dropped their packs and 5 boys got on board my boat. We went to check our pots at the cabin. After getting nothing in the first pot, I could tell by their excitement there were crab (7) in the second pot they pulled up. Many had not pulled a pot before, but almost all of them liked to eat crab. We rebaited the pots, reset them, then went fishing for salmon. Meanwhile, another scout dad showed up and took the girls and mom fishing. They got 3 coho salmon right away. We fished for salmon for about an hour. We had one on, but it got off. I checked Jeff’s pot later and got 16 more crab.
I ask the kids as they are screaming in my ear in the boat who is loving me right now. They ask who? I say their parents. I tell them their parents all smile when they drop the kids off for campouts and tell us if we need to keep them out there all week that’s okay – they can miss school. When I see the kids all having fun with each other and gaining skills in camping and the outdoors – and self confidence in doing things on their own – I figure it’s worth it. I hope it pays off later in life for them. If nothing else, it was a weekend not spent playing video games, which has to be good.
It was getting late in the day now when we got back from fishing I dropped off the boys at camp and then anchored the boat in the nearby cove I’ve used when deer hunting. I then pulled myself to shore in the little sport yak I keep on top of the boat with the line from the anchor to the beach that another dad was holding. Back at camp I got to setting up my tent while I still had light. The campsite is my favorite so far in scouting. There were seven other tents all set up among the spruce and hemlock n the rain forest, and the scouts already had a campfire going with firewood I’d brought from our pile at the house.
The boys can pretty much run the trips now. The grub masters were a pair of brothers new to town and to the troop. They made pizza, and we got the crab steaming. The adults and kids gorged on all you can eat crab and the kids also ate pizzas cooked in the dutch ovens with charcoal. Keith then got to work on peach cobbler in the dutch oven. It was perfect with hot chocolate. The kids love hot chocolate. I think they drank up most of the powder in the new can. After a game of something called troglodites they were ready for bed. Incredibly, I had a good nights sleep for the first scouting outing ever. Been taking pills so I don’t have to get up five times a night and wow, camping is a lot more fun.
Today I knew it would be tricky as the mom and daughter and the oldest scout needed to go back by boat to make work and appointments. The other kids wanted to go by boat, of course, too. One said he’d die if he had to hike back, and I said to let me know when the funeral was so I could prepare a good eulogy. Sam, of course, tried to get his pack onto the boat, but Keith was not having any of it. He is good at being the bad cop, and after 20 years of scout leading, he knows how to handle middle schoolers.
Even though I slept well, it was still on a sleeping pad. On the ground. My knee hurts. My sciatica is acting up as I trudge with my pack full of sleeping bag, pad and tent out to the boat. And I didn’t even hike in. I hate some parts of getting old.
I get the group back to the trail head, then load the boat on the trailer and head home to off load the boat and wait for the hikers.
When I return to the trail head several hours later to collect scouts, it’s raining hard. Real hard. Like a thunderstorm. When I get to the trail head, I roll down the window to talk to two waiting parents. And then I hear it. Thunder. We rarely get thunder here. Soon, we hear kids talking and Samuel emerges as the first scout back. He’s always last in. First out. The boys walked through the thunderstorm in the big woods, so it wasn’t so bad. I ask if there were berries along the trail and Samuel said lots of red huckleberries.
More sadness awaits them when he and Issac find out we have to go get cans from the cruise ships that they give us to sell. The cans come crushed in blocks that are put in a cardboard tote that we we offload temporarily to a 20′ container. At the end of the season, AML places a shipping container next to our temporary container, and we load all the cans into it. AML then donates the shipping down to the recycler and the scouts get a nice check that we mainly use to defray the cost of scout camp. The boys are less than thrilled we now have to go get cans, but are consigned to the sad news. Samuel contents himself by eating leftover crab.
Canning Venison
First real day of rain in at least a month here. We need a week or two of this steady rain, at least, to get proper water in the salmon creeks. It’s been a record dry, hot summer. Jeff and I were going to fish the channel today for coho, but not in the rain. We’re retired. So I decided it was time to get all the old venison out of the freezer and can it to preserve it. Most of the meat was 2017 deer, with a couple packages even to 2016. The meat was still in good shape.
Seems like we are eating less out of the freezer than when we were both working our regular jobs. We both are working fulltime now, but I guess not eating as much or maybe we’re eating out more. And getting 2 moose on the Yukon River in 2018 red-lined our meat supply. I took a moose shank out with the deer for dinner. I salt and peppered all sides of the shank. After browning some onions and garlic in a pot, I put them in the slow cooker. I put the shank in the same pot and browned it on all sides. I then put the browned shank in the slow cooker with the garlic and onions, added water to about cover the shank, and set the temperature at about 240 degrees. It would be about 5 hours or more before the shank was cooked.
I looked up stuff on the internet as to how best to can the deer, and decided to grind all the meat and can the loose burger. I put the frozen packages of meat in a pot of water to thaw. I like to thaw the meat just enough to cut it into chunks as almost frozen meat goes best through the grinder. It took me a couple hours to thaw, cut and grind all the meat. Once I got a good amount of meat ground, I started to brown it by putting it in cake pans and cookie sheets in a 425 degree oven. So I was sometimes cutting meat, sometimes grinding, and sometimes tending the browning meat. A perfect cocktail for someone with severe ADD like me.
Once I had all the meat ground and browned, I started getting together my pint canning jars. I got all the regular size jars I could find as I have oodles of lids for those from major scores at garage sales – including a big score when I was back near Geneseo, NY years ago at my sister Paula’s. I put a piece of onion in the bottom of each jar. Then packed the jar tight with the ground meat. I filled each jar of meat with water, wiped the rims of the jars, and put a lid and ring on each jar.
I lucked onto a canner identical to the one I’ve had since I was in college a couple years ago on the Kenai Craigslist when I was up dipnetting with Andrew, Keith and Jane. I recently bought a nice 3 burner Tundra 3 out door cook stove, and what at treat now to can in the garage with the two pressure cookers. The University of Alaska cooperative extension service has instructions for canning the stuff we can up here, and sure enough, I found the instructions for canning venison in pints. I loaded each canner up with pint jars, got the first batch vented and under pressure, then continued loading more jars.
I had to hope that what I was doing was gonna be tasty since I had ground enough meat for 5 or 6 twelve pint cases. When the first batch was done and cooled down, I opened the canner. As usual, one of the jars broke at the bottom, but the meat was still intact inside, so I got to taste my handiwork. Tasted good. Great. So on to the second load.
After getting the second load going, we ate a dinner of moose shank. The last time I cooked it, the meat was the right texture but the broth too salty. This time, I just cooked it just in water with only the onion and garlic. Sara added carrots and potatoes to the broth for the last 20 minutes. The shank was kinda bland. Sara added dijon mustard and a little salt, and then it was perfect.
The second batch came off well and we’ve got several cases of canned deer burger now. I suspect we’ll use it often since it’s so convenient, as Sara likes to say. For me it’s like a big pile of split and dried firewood – it’s money in the bank.
Whale Fest
I’m into my third week as a full time whale watch captain, after working the past 7 seasons as a one or two day a week captain. Unlike the part-time job, now it’s a real job. I’m at the wheel 7 to 9 hours a day traveling at near 30 knots most of the time, in addition to pre-trip preparations and post-trip cleaning and fueling. Never thought I’d be doing this but here I am. I offered to work full time for a captain that wanted to work half the season before attending grad school. I agreed, even though she was going to Ole Miss……
There’s a huge humpback whale female named Barnacles who has a calf called Acorn this year. The whales are identified by the unique underside of their tail, which serves as their finger print. During my first week of work, as we were watching the two of them from a comfortable (and legally required) distance, Acorn decides she needs to check out my boat after her mother dives to feed. When whales approach your boat, the guidelines say you should put the boat in neutral until the whale goes by and is again at a distance of at least 100 yards. Well, Acorn comes right up to the side of the boat, and is looking up at us. With the windows open, it’s literally blowing into the window. By now, I’ve not only got the engines in neutral, but turned off. Then Acorn swims under the boat and looks into the other side of the boat. Now, I’m really nervous, despite the fact the 70-something year olds on the boat are just looking out the window at this calf at almost arms length thinking this must be what whale watching is like. Sort of like someone taking a photo of a brown bear coming down the sidewalk to them. All I can think of is – I’m going to jail. Even though I followed the guidelines I’m mandated to and didn’t approach these whales – the calf came to us – I thought this is like a guy with one leg of pantyhose over his head suddenly dropping a bag of money in your lap. You have the money. You didn’t steal it. But it doesn’t look good. The guide on the boat was brand new. He and everyone except me was ecstatic. “This is the best trip ever”…
Then mom showed up.
Right next to her calf.
Her nose and her calf’s nose right next to the boat.
Barnacles is one of the biggest whales in our area. Some 50 feet long. Now jail time was a distant memory. With two whales literally blowing into the boat I’m thinking: we’re all gonna die. Mom is going to think the boat is a threat to her calf and ram the boat. I was really glad I’d shut off the engines earlier. Maybe she’ll just think we’re some flotsam.
Mom showed no signs of alarm. After both of them blew a few times, nose to the boat, and looking at us, they simply submerged and swam under the boat. They casually surfaced on the other side and mom seemed to escort her calf away from the weird surface beings.
Fast forward about 10 days and I’m on another trip. It’s late in the day – about 8 pm – and I’m at a spot where normally there may be many boats watching whales and fishing for salmon and halibut at the north end of a long narrow island about 10 miles long. At this hour on this day, though, there’s just my boat, another whale watching boat, and a local watcher in his aluminum boat. We were watching two whales.
These two whales turn out to be one Barnacles and Acorn. Then it starts. First Acorn, and then her mother. Breaching. Jumping clean out of the water. Then one would slap it’s tail on the water. And then the other would. I’d never seen this behavior from a cow and calf. Normally, we’d see a calf slapping its tail or its lonnnnnng pectoral fins on the water, and also maybe breaching. I always thought this was the calf signalling to its mother who had left it to feed to come back. But to see both the calf and its behemoth 50 foot mother doing this was new to me. And just the three of us boats watching it at sunset. Wow.
Yesterday, the same thing happened. Only at the south end of the same island. But the same two whales and the same behavior. It all happened by chance that I even saw it. Normally, I travel up the east side of the long island to the north-end location where I expect to see whales, but this time I went up the west side as I’d had a tip there might be whales bubble netting. As we traveled along the southern tip of the island, I see a huge splash a mile or two away. That usually can only mean one thing – a whale just breached. I changed course for the splash, and as we got closer, we could see a calf breaching. When we got about a quarter mile away, both a cow and a calf were regularly breaching. Sometimes in unison. Barnacles and Acorn again. Of course, the passengers and guide were totally captivated. I tried to keep the boat positioned so everyone could see well. More importantly, I was trying to keep my distance as the whales will dive before they breach, and you can’t exactly tell where they will come out of the water. This is one time you have to pay full attention so you keep a good distance so as not to endanger yourself. 50 feet of flying whale is nothing to mess with. After awhile, the boat is rocking pretty good. The splash from an 80,000 lb marine mammal makes a substantial wake. Long days of driving, but it could be worse.