Mark Stopha - Alaska Wild Salmon Company

King Crab

I finally got my king crab pot out. The first check I had 1 female to throw back. An announcement told us the season would close on today so I went to the cabin yesterday to pull the pot for the season. I grabbed the buoy and moved to the center of the back deck of my boat and pulled the line hand over hand over the gunnel until I heard the pot touch the bottom of the boat. When I looked over the side, there was a huge king crab with claws a blazing. Only it wasn’t in the pot, it was perched on the top of the little pyramid pot I was fishing. It appeared too big to be able to drop down into the pot after it crawled up the side. I quickly grabbed a leg and slung it into the boat. It was the biggest king crab I’d ever caught. I pulled my dungeness crab pots and had 2 in them. I took all three crab in and cleaned and steamed them, then picked all the meat. One big king crab has about 6 to 10 dungeness crab’s worth of meat and is a lot easier to pick. I tuned in AM stations from Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver that night while reading old Alaska Sportsman magazines.

I came back today after a foot of snow had dumped on Juneau. I luckily was able to pull my boat out at the ramp and make it up the driveway to the highway without getting stuck. When I got home, I spun quite a bit going up the driveway, but made it.

Jeff and Kurt had not left yet to pull their pot, so I went along with them. People were out pulling their pot in the heavy snow fall. Everyone was catching lots of crab when they hauled their pots. Except for us. We got nothing. So we stowed the pot on board and tried fishing 2 rings for the another couple hours. Nothing.

As we were walking up the dock, I saw a pot in a boat we’d seen that had a good haul of crab and noted the simple design. I’ll work on making a pot for the next king crab opening, which might be in July. I tried to give my crab meat to Jeff as he’d given me the only crab he caught this year to me for Sara’s birthday. Jeff being Jeff, he said no. I pressed him enough that he said he’d take “just enough for Terri”, his wife, so I loaded up a quart bag for him and that hardly put a dent in the cache.

Day 2

Day 2 of retirement from my desk job. Went on a 3 mile hike (each way) in Juneau up to the city water source with our scout troop. It was 4 adults and 1 scout to start. Beautiful day in the 20’s and sunny. About half way there, 3 more people caught up to us on the trail. Another scout and his mother and his brother’s girlfriend.

The trail was pretty easy with some steep uphill the last mile. Most of the trail in the woods was dry with a little snow covering out in the open. When we got up to the dam and reservoir, I took a seat on a step out of the wind and drank coffee from my thermos as I looked up at the ridge not far above us while the others made cocoa by a little covered bench that was in the wind. The dam was built in 1912 and a marvel in its day. It was built in the form of an arch with the arch bowing into the water. This was before earthquake modeling. After modeling, they lowered the water level from what it could be, but otherwise they core test the dam every 5 years and all has been good so far.

My eyes were playing tricks on me as I thought I saw something in the willows on the ridge. I watched and thought I maybe saw it move and then thought it was just my eyes or the wind. Then there it was in the open. A mountain goat. Broadside to me. Never thought I’d hike high enough to be in goat country and here I was. I called the others over and they all saw it. I watched it over the course of the next hour or so and 8 of them materialized.

This is another in my series of firsts helping with the Boy Scouts. This is my first hike this long (on purpose, not counting hunting), my first hike up this trail to the reservoir, and my first hike into goat country. Might be a place to try for hooters in the spring.

Moose Shank

I got out the first shank of moose leg from the February hunt to cook yesterday. I’m guessing it was about 7 inches long and 5 inches wide. Shanks are great to eat. They just take a long time of slow cooking. I salt and peppered, braised the moose shank in olive oil, and took it out of the pot. I then put into the pot a couple diced onions, a big handful of diced garlic cloves, some diced celery, and 3 big diced carrots. When these were browned, I put in the last of some leftover red wine, a quart of the deer stock I’d made a couple weeks ago, along with 28 oz of stewed tomatoes, rosemary and thyme. I put the shank back in the pot so it was as covered as I could get it, and brought the pot to a simmer on the cook stove, and then transferred the pot to the wood stove to simmer all day This was at about 230 pm. I figured it would be done by 6, so I invited Gloria and Emmanuel over for dinner. By 5:30, I could see the moose would take much longer than 3.5 hours to cook, so we went for pizza instead. When I got home at 8:30, the moose meat was falling off the bone, and ready to eat. Made a note to self that the cooking time for a moose shank is about 6 hours. We can try it tonight.

Deer Bone Stock

Roy was hunting over on the outer coast north of Sitka on his annual trip. Since I wasn’t getting many deer in, I asked him to save me any leg bones they weren’t going to use, so I could make stock. He dropped an 80 lb fish box off of nice leg bones early this morning when the ferry stopped in Juneau on its way to Haines. The hunters left me extra meat in places like the shanks, and that’s even better. I looked around on the internet for recipes and found many for making the broth, but not many on how to prepare the bones before roasting. I went to the garage and saw my loppers on the wall. They are Fiskars something like the photo.

That was just the ticket. They cut right through the bones. I’ve tried cutting slippery bones with a meat saw or reciprocating saw, and it’s not easy – especially by yourself. Plus, the loppers don’t create the bone dust the saw does.

For the front leg, I cut through the shoulder blade where it meets the shoulder joint, being sure to actually cut through the end of the flat shoulder blade itself to expose the marrow. Then I cut the other bones on either side of the joints to expose the marrow.

This quickly reduced the volume of space taken up by the bones. I loaded a roasting pan with the bone pieces and roasted them in the oven for an hour at 400 degrees. After roasting, I loaded the bones into my 2 large canning pots. I filled the pots with water, brought the water about to a boil on the stove, and transferred the pots to the wood stove to simmer for the day.

By 2:30 pm, the stock looked about right, so I poured it into other pots to cool. I saw that the bones still had plenty of marrow in the bones and meat and collagen on the bones, so I refilled the pots and put it on the stove to simmer again. We left for Thanksgiving dinner at Jeff and Teri’s. When we got home about 8:30 pm, I skimmed off the hardened fat that had cooled on the surface of the first batch of stock, then poured the stock through a wire strainer. I packed the stock into Costco nut jars, which held about 8 cups of broth each, and put the jars in the freezer.

The second batch I did the next day I pulled the bones out of the pot one at a time and pulled any remaining meat off and shook out any remaining marrow. After all the bones were out of the pots, I strained out the meat and put the stock out to cool. I filled up the pots again with water to float any remaining fat and put them on the wood stove. In the evening,

In the evening, I pulled off the layer of fat on the stock and left it overnight. It was about freezing that night, and the next morning the stock had jelled. Was this right, I thought? I looked it up online and found out – that’s what’s supposed to happen. I guess I never fully refrigerated any before pouring it into jars for the freezer to see this before. Since the stock was now like jello, it was very easy to spoon it into bags and vac pack. That worked great.

For the meat, I drained about 2/3 of it, and then vac packed several pounds of it into bags for the freezer. It looked just like “pulled pork” meat. With the rest, I made soup. I took out all the leftovers from the past week’s meals that had lots of fresh and cooked vegetables as my vegetarian niece was here. And, we had lots of sweet potatoes left over from Thanksgiving dinner. I put all these in the pot with the meat and stock water, heated it, and then put the mixture in the blender for a cream soup. That should do us for lunch and some dinners for the coming week.

Lots of work and lots of food just for the asking.

Sewing with Fatboy

Went to the cabin on Friday with the portabote punt planning to leave the big skiff on the haul out, and row the portabote to Admiralty to deer hunt on Sat. Forecast called for big winds and rain. Forecasters were not kidding. Saturday morning I went down to the boat and seas too big to get to Admiralty. So, I returned to cabin. I had a pair of military fleece overalls with holes in it that I was going to cut up to fix some other items. I’d pulled the zipper pulls out of my Outdoor Products backpack that is attached to my bullpac, so I decide to sew in a new zipper using the zipper from the sacrificial overalls. I simply cut out the zipper from the overalls and sewed it to either side of the zipper on the pack. It was a pretty significant job and took a couple hours by hand using dental floss for the thread. I also used a piece of the overalls and zipper to sew in a pocket on my hunting overalls.

I listened to the UW Huskies game against Oregon State on the local station. That took me to about 330 pm, which is sundown. I took a break from sewing, and hoped to find a station on my old radio that was carrying the Washington State game, as coach Leach is one of my favorite sports characters. Sure enough, I was able to tune into 710 KIRO from Seattle, and got the game tuned in. I then started to prepare the pocket for the hunting overalls. WSU took it to Arizona the first half, scoring over 50 points. I checked the boat on the haulout again near sunset.

Sunday forecast was not much better than the Saturday weather. I cleaned up the cabin for next week in the event Sara and my niece Francesca came over. I loaded the boat and got off the beach without incident. I checked the crabpots and had 8 keepers. When I got home, i steamed the crab, picked the meat whilst i watched NFL games, then put the shells in a pot and made stock.

My long-time buddy Geoff had on his Facebook post that he’d gone vegan to support sustainability. He’s a professor at a South Carolina University. and I thought how non-sustainable being a vegan in Alaska would be. Rather than eating the deer, moose, salmon, halibut, ling cod, and crab we can catch right outside our door (except the moose, I guess), I’d be eating greens probably grown on the West Coast, along with my own fiddleheads and berries I could get here. Sustainability is where you find it, me thinks. I thought after reading his post – can you imagine a prospector on the Yukon saying – no, I’m not going to harvest the grouse and moose and salmon on my doorstep. I’m going to gather berries and hope the paddlewheeler has the flour and dried apples I ordered a year ago to get me through the winter…..

First deer

Took Major S from our Salvation Army Corps deer hunting on Friday. I’d told him to meet me at Douglas Harbor. He went to North Douglas Harbor. I made the same mistake with the earlier Lieutenant L I took hunting. You’d think I’d remember to be sure they knew which harbor I was referring to. No big deal since he was driving himself and didn’t get dropped off. He arrived in about 20 minutes and we were first boat out of the harbor. Another hunter launching his boat asked me where we were going and I told him and he said great, I don’t want to cork you. He soon caught up and passed us in his bigger boat, and true to his word, he went to a cove south of where we went.

After a short cold spell and a little snow, it had warmed up to the 40’s and was now shower after shower. When we got to our anchorage, we were the only boat there, and the rain had let up to a drizzle. It was low tide, so no need for a punt to anchor the boat. Just throw out the anchor and tie one end of a rope to the anchor and the other end to a log above high tide. We uncased our guns, offloaded my dry bag of emergency gear for the beach, and I carried my corks up the beach and changed out boots.

Off we went up the hill. It was pucker brush for awhile as we climbed uphill. We got to the first muskeg in about 20 minutes. I positioned S at one end and myself in sight of him about 30 yards away at the other end. I blew the call for several series. After about 10 minutes, out of the corner of my eye about 20 yards away, I see the flash of a tail. Then through a tree root, I can see a deer quartering away, looking at me. I get it in my scope, click the safety off, but didn’t shoot. Looked like a bambi. It didn’t wait long, and walked out of sight. I continued calling hoping it had a buck with it. About 15 minutes later, I saw another deer cross after a call, but it looked like the same yearling. Finally, I motioned to S we were moving, and we gathered our packs and started up the hill. We immediately saw a nice doe and the yearling bound away. I’d have taken the doe if she’d have come in. I was happy we were seeing deer already.

We worked our way up to the next muskeg and again set up. As I was settling in to call, I see a deer looking at me across the muskeg about 30 yards away. I got it in my scope and clicked off the safety off. But no shot. Another bambi. Not sure if it was one from the earlier muskeg or just another one. I watched it for awhile, and it started feeding. I blew the call, and it looked at me but didn’t come or go. Then it kept feeding. It looked behind it a few times and I thought maybe a doe or buck was back there but I couldn’t see anything. At some point, the yearling bounded into the far side of the muskeg. Maybe winded me or its mama called. Just one minute it was feeding, and the next instant away it went.

We worked our way up hill and called in the muskegs, but no deer. Seemed like the deer might be down lower where the snow was less and where we saw the earlier deer. It was after noon, and the sun was on it’s way down. Sun set is 430 now, with the time change last week. As we moved downhill to hunt the lower area on our way back to the boat, I thought, remember what Uncle Gerald from Ketchikan once told me – always hunt all the way back to the truck / boat. A moment later, we jump a deer. I see it trot uphill and I immediately toot on the deer call. I see the tail when it stops. I quickly chamber a round and get the scope covers off. I can’t remember if I duffed my pack or not. I look through the scope and it’s all misted. I try to clear it, but here comes the spike back to us to the call. When it was 10 yards away I got it’s neck outline in the misted cross hairs and fired and down it went. Funny how bucks always seem to come back like this at this time of year and does may not.

I dressed the deer, and threw the heart in the snow for burger and the liver in the snow for my Persian mechanic friend who likes to eat it. I cut out the tenderloins, too. I had S help me hang the deer up to start to butcher, then had him go to the nearby muskeg to see if he could call another deer in. All the spruce trees nearby had really young, limber branches. I thought I’d picked a good one, but it soon drooped down. I was able to skin about half the deer and then was stuck as the head was touching the ground. With snow on the ground, I remembered the moose hunt and that it wouldn’t get dirty on the ground so brought it to the ground, and skinned the rest of it. I got more hair than I like on the meat skinning it on the ground so will be more careful with that next time. Otherwise, it worked great and the snow helped cool the deer.

I got out my two pillow cases and started loading the quarters into one. I left the meat on the torso. I cut the pelvic bone off at the rib cage, and put the bone into the ribcage, which had the neck attached. I loaded this into the second pillow case. I loaded it all into my pack, and S and I discussed that he needed to replace his little day pack with a frame pack if he was going deer hunting in Southeast Alaska. Maybe he’d only hunted not far from a vehicle in his other hunts and could drag the deer to the vehicle. Dragging is a lot of work and can be a long, long haul here.

We weren’t all that far from the beach as it turned out, and in about 15 minutes we were back at the boat. The tide was going out, and when I got the boat to the beach, I headed up to get my pack and change my boots and untile the shore line, I told S to be sure to keep the boat floating as we couldn’t move it if it got tided and we’d be there till night when the tide came back in. He didn’t quite get my meaning, and when I looked down, he was struggling to get the boat off the rocks as the tide went out. I stopped putting my second boot on, trotted down the beach, and with both of us straining, we got the boat off the rocks and floating again. I went up to put my second boot on, and it happened again. This time I had to push until I was way over my boots to get the boat floating. Next time I’ll have to remember to get the second person on board and paddle off shore til I’m ready to get on. This boat is bigger than the other skiffs I’ve had hunting so I’m still learning. I should make sure we both have hip boots with us at the beach, too, so we can keep the boat off without getting wet.

It’s getting to be dusk by now, and we head for the cabin, which is about 30 minutes away. We get to the anchorage and look for my crab pots. We find one easily, and have half a dozen keepers. The next pot takes longer to find, but we finally do right at dark and another 6 crab. We have the same problem getting the boat on the haul out line, trying to keep it afloat without going over our boots. We both had gone over our boots by now, though, and so just grin and bear it, knowing a warm cabin was only minutes away. I get the game bags out of my pack and hang them from one of the stuts to the windshield so hopefully they’ll stay dry and away from marauding otters and continue to cool. We take the buckets of crab into the cabin.

With headlamps we find our trail to make the 10 minute walk to the cabin. I remembered then to text Sara and Jeff, our float plan holders, to let them know we were back safe. Near the cabin, there was sign that the brown bear that’s been living on the island has been here again since I was last at the cabin, as there was several skunk cabbage root diggings along the trail to the cabin.

At the cabin, I get the gas lamp lit for some light, start a fire, then get my wet boots off and light the coleman lantern. I go back outside and clean all the crab, put some water in the crab pot, and put the crab on to steam. Then I get off my hunting clothes and into some dry cabin duds and start dinner. Usual fare for first night in the cabin is costco cheese pizza with toppings we add. I put moose sausage and fiddlehead pesto on all the pizza and onions on my half. After lighting the stove, in goes the pizza. I crack a beer, tune to the local NPR news, and settle into a rocking chair. I get cramps in the front of my legs where I’ve never had them before. I’m getting old.

We go to bed early. We didn’t have a real plan for hunting the next day. We both slept hard and when S wasn’t up early ready to go, I let him sleep. I figured we could hunt the beach as low tide was first thing in the morning. We first headed north for a ways, and there were boats in every cove and then some. When I saw a boat heading south doing the same thing we were, I turned south and headed back along the beaches to where we’d hunted the day before. I didn’t figure we’d be able to hunt there again as someone would already be there, but I did know a spot further south of there where Matt and I had gone a few years back that had a series of muskegs near the beach. As we cruised the beaches, just about every cove that could hold a boat did. It looked like every hunter in Juneau was out on this Saturday. When we got to yesterday’s anchorage, there was a boat as expected. Further south, there was a boat in the spot I thought we might still be able to go. After cruising the beaches for an hour or two, we’d come as far as I cared to go as the tide was about half way in. We hadn’t seen a deer so we headed for town. I checked in with Jeff and Sara that we were safe.

After getting the boat on the trailer, we offloaded our gear. I give S the bag of quarters and half the crab, and I took the other bag with the torso and half the crab. He and his wife have 3 boys (I think). And it’s good karma.

At home, I butchered my part of the deer. I keep a few back straps out for Sara, and put the rest in the freezer. I text S and tell him to save me the leg bones to make stock if he’s not going to use them. Then I pick the 6 crab, which yield about 8 cups of meat that I freeze in 2 cup portions. A busy, satisfying 2 days.