Another week of hit and miss auto repair. The brakes started acting up, and the brake pedal was very hard, and it felt like only one pair of brakes were working. Changed the master cylinder. Then the proportioning valve. Neither fixed the problem. Finally pulled the rear hubs and saw that one side had been somehow grinding as shavings everywhere. On the other, a broken retracting spring. So I thought finally, here’s the issue. Changed out both sides of the brakes, put the truck back together….and still brakes not right. So now I’m sure it’s the power booster, which I’d changed only a year ago, I think. Then I thought – maybe it’s not getting vacuum. So I pulled off the hose to the booster, and put my finger on the hose end as Kurt started the truck, and no suction.

So, I find a store with the vacuum pump, get it home, and see I have to get the pulley off, but need a puller. I call Ishmael, or “foreign auto” mechanic (I use him for Toyota work), and he says to bring them over. He doesn’t have the right puller, so then to Napa, then to Valley Auto, then AIH, and finally to O’Riely’s, and they have the puller and the presser. Each tool cost $30! I buy them both, and when I start to use the puller, I have to put one side on one way and the other upside down, but that does the trick. The puller grabs as the bolt screws down, and the pulley comes right off. I press it on with the other tool without incident. The pump itself is an easy install once the pulley is on. I start the truck, feel the brake pedal depress as it should, and feel more relief than satisfaction, I think. I spent about $100 and time in parts I didn’t need. But, I saw a newer F350 in the valley for sale in the Super Bear parking lot. The sign
said “$30,000 Firm”. So an extra hundred bucks was no big deal, and like money well-spent for the education.
-e
Mark Stopha
Alaska Wild Salmon Company
4455 N. Douglas Hwy
Juneau, AK 99801
www.GoodSalmon.com

Ron and I worked in Haines on Monday, visiting a couple islands in the Chilkat River with Scott from the regional aquaculture assn. and Mark from the local ADFG office.  We were assessing the potential for construction of spawning channels in the river islands, creating new spawning habitat for chum salmon, mostly.  The first island had more high bush cranberries than I’ve ever seen.  It was a canopy of cottonwood trees with a solid undergrowth of cranberries.   It even smelled like cranberry under there. The berries weren’t ripe yet, so it might be worth a trip back up in a month to pick some.  Only problem is that by that time, the island could be crawling with brown bears getting the late season chum salmon.  At least I got an idea of where to look for cranberries here.

Ron and I each butchered our own catch.  The new fillet knife I bought made short, beautiful work of the sockeye sides, which I took to a local processor to smoke.  Ron and I gave many of our fish away to the wife of a friend who is in jail, and another who is ill.  The wife loaded us up with jam, sprucetip syrup, smoked fish and fish burgers from earlier drops of fish to her.   Ron and I dropped the outboard we bought for a friend when we were in Haines and shipped it to her in Yakutat at air cargo.    I also changed out the proportioning valve on the truck last night and we’ll bleed it today and hope that was the problem after the master cylinder was not.  Busy day.

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Mark Stopha
Alaska Wild Salmon Company
4455 N. Douglas Hwy
Juneau, AK 99801
www.GoodSalmon.com

Lots and lots of sockeye in the river this week.  Ron and I came back up to Haines to subsistence fish.  This time in the river, as last time we fished in the saltwater.  We tried the new 50 ‘ net I made from one of Len’s old commercial nets.  I had to choke up the depth to work in the river.  It wasn’t pretty or perfect, but it worked.    We pressure bled the fish at Roys, dressed and iced them in coolers for the ferry ride home.  It quit raining as soon as we got to the river on Sat afternoon, and we caught 30 in 3 hours.  We went again today and got our remaining 20 in 3 drifts under blue skies and a glorious day with no one else on our stretch of the river on either day.

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Mark Stopha
Alaska Wild Salmon Company
4455 N. Douglas Hwy
Juneau, AK  99801
www.GoodSalmon.com

I attended the memorial service for my fishing mentor Eric McDowell today.  Eric gave me a job at his consulting firm when I feared I might never have a professional job in Juneau again.  He then helped me find my boat the Dutch Master, rig it to fish, and then went fishing with me to teach me how to troll.  Everything from troubleshooting engine problems to proper leader length to hootchie and spoon colors.

I later deck handed for Eric on his new boat, caring for his catch with his other deckhand, Mark, and then buying the fish at the end of the trip.  The king salmon we are selling now are the last delivery of kings Eric made.

At 69, he was a young 69.   What a service.  Eric had so many parts to his life I hardly knew anyone there, and I thought I new him pretty well.  From basketball to AA to his
consulting firm to fishing to Alaskan singer and song writer he amassed a wealth of friends.  Although he was somewhat of a big wheel as far as his business went, his friends were mostly average Joes he met or helped or was helped by along the way.  His speakers reflected that.  Not one politician or societal leader spoke.  And the speakers all knew him in a different way, from fellow AA sponsor to business partner to basketball team mate to foster brother to son.  So the time I spent with him and knowledge he passed on seemed all the sweeter, knowing him in perhaps a way few next to his son did.

So, life goes on for the rest of us.  Funny, I put on my suit coat today.  And in the pocket was the program for my mom’s funeral 10 years ago, almost to the day.  So having not worn my suit coat for a decade means I had a pretty good decade.  And seeing my friend off today will keep me moving down the road to
do the things I like to do, it seems.

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Mark Stopha
Alaska Wild Salmon Company
4455 N. Douglas Hwy
Juneau, AK  99801
www.GoodSalmon.com

I traveled to Valdez for my state job to visit the hatchery there Wed-Fri.  What an economic impact the hatchery has on the place.  Valdez is akin to the Kenai Peninsula for Anchoragites.  The boat harbor was full of primarily sport boats.  Halibut, coho and pink salmon are the primary harvest species, with most of the coho and pink due to the hatchery.  I think over 150 thousand coho are harvested by sport anglers there a year, making it among the largest coho sport fisheries in the state.

The primary force behind the hatchery remains there today, although he said he’s about to retire.  He started the place in 1980.  I asked him why he did it, and he said it dated back to the late 50’s listening as a boy to fishermen in the region talking about doing something to make more salmon at a time when salmon stocks were low.  He was born and raised in Valdez, and it’s always great to talk to someone like that in Alaska.  A real treasure trove of local knowledge and perspective in a state of largely from-somewhere-elsers.

The man’s son was also heavily involved in the hatchery.  As they had the fish culture aspects honed for the hatchery, he was working on enhancing the value of the return.  The hatchery association built a small processing facility for themselves and fishermen who wanted to sell their own catch, rather than sell all the catch to a processor.  In some instances, a local processor might not be buying an off-salmon-season species like shrimp, so the facility opened up new opportunity to keep business local.  The son also enlightened us to the fact that if the hatchery can earn more money from value-added processing of the hatchery’s cost-recovery catch, then they don’t have to harvest as many fish for cost recovery – leaving more to the commercial fleet- and can employ more people in adding value to their product.  We watched as they processed salmon roe into caviar with a skilled crew of 6 who knew what they were doing.

The family running the bed and breakfast we stayed at knew a friend of ours living in Juneau.  His daughter and theirs were friends in school when he lived there in the 1980’s.

I delivered fish to may salmon customers on Sat.  I was relieved to see I didn’t have to run the whale watching boat as they didn’t need a relief captain and I’d said I could work on Sat.  The fishing family I work for said they’d like me to deliver to move some fish, and I had 4 hours worth of deliverying as it turned out.

I took my friend Bob and his visiting nephew fishing for coho on Sat evening.  It was warm and nearly flat calm with a red evening sky.  We managed 2 bright fish and let the nephew catch both of them – I think his first fish ever.  A whale was working close by as well, so the nephew got the full monty.  I offered Bob both fish but he insisted I take one, so I filleted that with my new knife when I got home.  I also tried using a small airpump used for exercise balls to pressure bleed the fish.  It worked okay but not great.

Sunday I worked hazardous household wasted day.  What a b-buster.  I was again the TV consolidator, stacking tv’s and computer monitors in a 20′ van, which we filled almost by lunch, and then went to stacking some on pallets, which another guy who is alot better at doing that than I am did.

After that, I packed a box of fish to ship out, and grabbed 2 small totes of beautiful sockeye frames to vac pak for winter.  I really have come to enjoy those, and glad these weren’t ground up or given away for bait.  I got home, butchered the frames by cutting off the tail and trimming any rib bones left, then vac packing all.  The “real” vac packer sure works nice.

I’m stiff all over today and back at my real job.

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Mark Stopha
Alaska Wild Salmon Company
4455 N. Douglas Hwy
Juneau, AK 99801
www.GoodSalmon.com

Picked 4 large coffee cans of blueberries at the cabin.  Only to find out that many of the berries I pick are “huckleberries” and not blue berries.  I only thought huckleberries came in red, and now I find it’s what I’ve been picking all along.  Learn something new everyday.

Fished before I went to pick and the next day on the way home.  Was not getting anything on a flasher and hootchie- the standard coho gear – so switched to what I learned in Wrangell.  Had one big strike and a big fish on the line, and when I set the hook, I pulled it right out of its mouth.

Ran 3 whale watching tours today.  Easiest job in the world.  Learned a new spot to see harbor seals hauled out, and a new spot to see monster Stellar sea lions hauled out.  Again, learn something new every day.

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