Notes From the Fishing Grounds – Page 38 – Alaska Wild Salmon Company

First deer of the season

Deer season opens next week on Aug 1. I got a head start on processing practice today. Samuel and I delivered fish after work and just as we got done I got a text from Shane that Fish and Game had dropped off a road kill deer. And left the guts in. Yikes. Who drops off an ungutted deer to a church when it’s 70 degrees out ? Luckily Shane was smart and put the whole deer in a bag and into a chest freezer. It was cool when we took it out and we loaded it in the van and headed to my favorite gut deposit site.

Shane married into a hunting family and was eager to learn about dressing a deer. The church cadet from L.A. was here too, and was eager for another Alaska experience. We got to my spot, and I could see that the little deer was a bit bloated. I wasn’t careful enough as I opened it up and poof. I nicked the stomach. The smell was not pretty, but everyone held their cookies. I got the insides out and into a bucket, then put a bar through the rear hocks and strung the deer up a tree, skinned it, butchered it, and put the parts in a bucket. Easy Peasy.

We dumped the hide and entrails into me secret spot, then policed the area where we parked to remove any sign of us being there. Then back in the Salvation Army van and headed for town. The boys dropped me off then took the bucket of goodness to the food bank for distribution.

Dipnetting 2018

Took Andrew with me to Anchorage to go dipnetting at Keith and Jane’s this year. Todd has moved out of state, but luckily his son Alec took his place. Andrew and I arrived into Anchorage late in the evening. My niece Melissa picked us up at the airport and took us to Sara’s family home, where we borrowed the spare Subaru that’s there for this purpose. We drove to the family cabin at Cooper Landing and arrived about 1100 pm. We slept there til 4 am, and high tailed it to Kenai. As we entered Sterling, a volunteer from the chamber of commerce had out a big 4 x 8 sheet of plywood with “F?!$ You Dip Netters” hand written in spray paint leaning against the struts of a highway sign.

Not far after another sign in the same handwriting read “No Fish!”. Andrew asked what that was about, and I said “Welcome to the Cook Inlet Fish Wars” my friend. We arrived right on time at Keith and Jane’s at 5:30am. That gave us time to motor down to the dipnet area and be ready to put our nets in the water at 6am, when fishing opened. We passed under the bridge where the fishing line started, and continued toward the mouth of the river. We saw some people getting a head start with their nets already in the water along the way. It was a blaze red-orange sunrise, and plenty of boats, but not as many as in earlier years it seemed. The run was late and just starting, and in the past 4 days the escapement up the river had jumped from 11,000 fish per day to 33,000 fish per day, so it looked like we would be in for some decent fishing.

We got 4 or 5 fish our first drift. Not bad. Andrew manned one net. I was on the other. Alec got fish out of the net when we brought them aboard, conked the fish to stun it, broke a gill to bleed it, and snipped the lobes of the tail as required by regulation. Then the fish went into the fish hold. Fishing was slow but steady. About noon, after a few fishless drifts, we called it a day and headed back to Keith and Jane’s.

Just before the bridge, we pulled the fish out to count them and record the numbers on our permits so we’d be legal once we passed the bridge. Then on to Keith’s dock to clean the fish. Keith and Alec worked on their fish together. Keith is an expert filleter and did both his and Alec’s fish. Jane helped to put the fish in bags then went up to the processing shack to vacuum pack them.

I like to take fish back whole as I think they travel better. I had my pressure bleeding gizmos, and was pleased to see them work well on the fish, even though they’d been in the hold for several hours. Andrew cut off the heads, I bled and dressed them, then Andrew rinsed them thoroughly. We put ice in the bottom of our cooler, then put in fish and more ice at the end and worked the ice down between the fish so they’d all cool. The fish looked fantastic. I steaked one smaller sockeye, seasoned it on a plate, and put the fish in Jane’s fridge for dinner. Andrew and I both took a hard nap while Keith caught up on gassing up his tanks for the week and other chores.

I got up pretty groggy, and got to cooking dinner. Salmon on the grill, a salad, some beans and corn on the cob. The fish was excellent, of course. We were all bushed after the simple meal and went to bed right after dinner.

We were up by 5 am the next morning to fish a few hours before we had to head back to Anchorage to catch our flight to Juneau. We were down river at 5 minutes to 6 am. A light rain was falling, which I always like for taking care of fish. One guy already was fishing. Pretty gutsy. When we got to the lower river I couldn’t believe it. We were the first boat through and hardly any others behind us. Andrew and I each got a fish. Twice. Then I got a third. Easy livin’. Boats arrived one by one but not enmasse as on the Sundays we’d fished in years past. Wow. Alec had gone back to Anchorage to work, so it was just the three of us. By 9:30 or 10 we had a good catch and after a couple fishless drifts we headed back to clean fish. By now Andrew and I were a well-oiled machine and knocked out our catch in no time, while Keith filleted on his side and Jane filled the vac pack bags. We cleaned up the tables and the boat and then got ready to leave. We chatted with Jane and Keith in their vac packing shack, and I was glad to see they had several maps I’d sent of the Kenai River and Alaska on their walls, which they said people vac packing loved to explore while waiting for the machine to do it’s work.

I’d found a pressure cooker – the same model as the one I’ve had for some 30 years – on Kenai Peninsula Craigslist, and so headed over there to buy it. Having 2 pressure cookers will make canning a lot more efficient. The guy selling it was moving to Wisconsin and said he didn’t need it any more. I jokingly asked if the winters weren’t cold enough here, and he said yes, but Wisconsin only has THREE months of winter.

We stopped to buy ice for our fish again. The large and smaller cooler we had just held our catch. The trip back to Anchorage was in light traffic and enjoyable. Andrew enjoyed the sights. When we got to Anchorage, we needed to get gel packs to replace the ice to keep our fish cool for shipping with us back to Juneau. Finding already frozen gel packs this time of year at stores I could see was going to be a problem. So, I tried something new. I bought 4 lb bags of frozen strawberries and banana combos that are for making smoothies. Genius. One bag went into each insulation bag that held the fish, and the bag in the box. These worked great, and now I have smoothie fruit till the fall. Andrew loaded the fish boxes at approximately 40+ lbs of fish each to stay under the 50 lb limit for baggage after adding in the box and frozen fruit weights. We packed up 5 boxes of fish, plus one box with my knives and the pressure cooker, etc., and headed over to check in at the airport early in case there were any issues.

I sent Andrew in with three boxes and waited with the car. He called to say one of the boxes was overweight, but the Alaska Airlines ticket agent helped him move fish from one box to another. Don’t think you’ll get that kind of service at Dulles! He soon came out with the cart, and we traded places. My boxes all weighed in okay. We headed back to the house and cleaned up the car.

Aimee came over and took us from the house to the airport. Andrew thought she and her sister were the same woman. Pretty funny. As we walked to our gate, here comes Governor Walker walking past us. By himself. He was on his way to the McDonalds line, where he chatted with the others in line. No entourage. Where do you see that? When I got on board our flight, I had one row of emergency row seats to myself. Governor Walker had the row behind me. I was still in the same clothes that I’d flown to Anchorage in on Saturday, so glad he didn’t have to sit next to me. When we landed, I offered him some fish as I told him I guessed he and his wife didn’t get much fishing in these days, being in charge of the biggest state in the Union and all. He politely declined, then asked me where we went fishing, where I worked, and just idle chatter that people make as they line up to leave the plane.

Sara picked us up and when we got home, we got to butchering. I cut, Andrew bagged and Sara vac packed. We got the 200 lbs of salmon packaged in an hour or so, and I took Andrew home, along with fish from 3 of the 5 boxes. I told him he needed more fish than us, as Samuel may finish the fish by September.

New things I saw today

While waiting for passengers on the whale watch boat, there was a group of ravens going through the back deck of a commercial fishing boat on the other side of the dock from me to see what morsels they could find. Then it happened. One of the ravens scratched the side of his head with his foot. Exactly like a dog scratches its ear. Never seen that before.

Then we were out whale watching. A humpback whale was lopping its lonnnnnnng pectoral fins over and back, smacking them on the water. Then it started doing these short surfaces that sort of looked like a bucking bronco, with its back arched and its head down. I realized later I think it was doing some sort of one whale bubblenet feed, and when it came up through the herring at the surface, it was dragging its wide open mouth through the water, with the top jar barely above the surface and the lower jaw below. Most times a single whale lunge feeding just comes up to the surface with its mouth open, then closes it above the surface. This one did that technique later, but this bucking bronco was a brand new thing after 6 years watching from the wheel.

Taku Fishing

Leon and I met at the harbor at 2 pm. It was supposed to be a 24 to 48 hour trip, but we both were loaded with food and gear for days as you never know when running 30 miles of river and ocean in an open skiff with an outboard. Lots of things could happen. The motor could quit (we had an extra in case). You could ground the boat on a sand bar and be stuck. Fishing could be poor and you stay an extra day. You could fall in and get wet.

We left town in a driving rain and 1 to 2 ft seas. I had my back to the wind and Leon was squinting in the pelting rain to see. When we rounded Salisbury Point, the seas were a little bigger over to Point Bishop, and Leon strained to see the corks of the gillnets fishing there as we weaved around the nets until we got to the entrance of Taku Inlet, where the waves abated, but the rain did not. It did not take me long to realize the jacket I was wearing was not water proof, and my back and arms were soon wet. I’d worn chest waders, so at least my lower half was fairly dry, but I could feel the cold setting in.

I’d made this trip about 20 years ago with a friend and my older sister Jane. Somehow I forgot over the two decades what a spectacular trip it is, or maybe I’ve just grown to appreciate scenery like this more. As we got into the river proper, here come the glaciers. Their massive terminus came right down to the river. These glaciers dwarf the Mendenhall Glacier in town, and you could easily go over and walk on them if you wanted.

Leon knew from 30+ years of making this trip where to look for glacier ice, as we counted on getting it rather than bringing our own ice from town. Once we found one chunk, we saw others nearby, and in about 5 minutes we had enough in our coolers and continued up the river. On the river across from the glacier, I saw a black bear that was standing still, looking back at us from a grassy slope. We stopped for a second to look at it and it continued on its way. Mountains border the river on both sides, rising steeply up from the river side to about 5000 feet is my guess.

The river shallows up as you get up to the glaciers, and people who have cabins up the river mostly use jet boats. We had a 40 hp prop, but luckily most of the bottom is mud so if it got shallow, we slowed down and I used a pole to test to see if we were getting shallower or deeper, and we eventually found deep enough water to get to deeper water where we got on step again. About four and a half hours later, we wound our way up to our fishing spot at Canyon Island near the Canada border.

Some ADFG technicians working at a camp on the river nearby stopped by to say hello. They invited us up for coffee and I was able to hang my wet clothes by their stove to dry and change into new dry clothes I’d brought along. That changed my attitude in a hurry. We returned to our spot on the beach and were the first fishers there for the opening of the season the next day. We got the spot Leon had fished for 30 years. We got the net out, tied one end to the shore, and strung it out along the beach, getting it all untangled and ready to fish. Leon filled a 5 gallon jug nearly to the top with water and capped it. We tied this and a buoy to the other end of the net. At this spot, you can sometimes just toss the jug and buoy into the river and the buoy and water jug will drag the net out into the back eddy in the river. As it turned out, a couple old timers came in and unknowingly fished right on top of us. They didn’t realize we were there to fish, apparently, till they were already set up to fish with their shore-side anchor not far from us. They had heard we worked for Fish and Game and assumed we were there for work. So Leon ended up using the boat to take out the float at midnight so we didn’t tangle nets with our neighbor, who also set their net next to ours at midnight. The nets fished far enough from each other to both catch fish so it worked out fine.

Our neighbors pounded in 1 x 4 stakes about 2 feet apart in the beach, and I wasn’t sure what that was for until I saw them hang a cleaning tough in between. That’s a great idea, I thought. I would be cleaning my fish in an aluminum trough on short legs my friend Ken had made for me for the Dutch Master, and I had placed it on a cooler, which was lower to the ground than the stakes these guys used. All hands laid down for a snooze after we set our nets in near darkness to wait til daylight for the first check.

I’m not sure quite when, but we checked the net after dawn. Leon was sleeping in a sleeping bag rolled up in a tarp, and the river was licking his feet as it had come up steadily from all the rain. It took all we had from both of us to pull the net into the beach. We got over 20 fish the first check. Mostly sockeye and a few coho. Our net mesh was larger by 1/4 inch than our neighbors, so they got some pinks and smaller sockeye while we got all big sockeye and the coho. We put the net back out, and continued fishing till about noon, checking the net every hour or two. I cleaned fish in between and we put them on the glacier ice we collected from the river on the way there. A 20 something came up to our neighbors camp about noon to fish the net, and she was very appreciative to have me show her how to troll-clean a fish after I watched her struggle cleaning fish from their net.

At noon we decided to move our net to the other side of the river after fishing slowed down and we were tangling buoy lines with our neighbors. That was a good move, as we got quite a few more fish over there. We’d run over in the boat to check the net from the boat, then bring back the fish to clean at camp. When we got all the fish we wanted for ourselves and a couple of seniors we were proxy fishing for, we cleaned the last of the fish, I made a pot of coffee for the thermos, packed up the boat, and headed for town. After raining cats and dogs for 24 hours, the clouds thinned out, and patches of blue sky peeked through as we headed for home.

The trip home was fantastic. I learned from the trip in to put my rain gear over the non-water proof coat I’d worn on the way in, and I stayed dry and warm. Plus, it wasn’t raining for the first 3 hours or so. The 3 coolers of fish weighed down the bow a bit, but with me moving back to sit next to Leon in the stern, we stopped the bow from spraying us and we were able to get on step and move right along. The glaciers were again impressive on the way home. The trip home was downstream of course, and took about an hour less then the trip upriver. We got into the wrong channel once, and had to get out and pull the boat back up into the deeper water and find the deeper water. I took on a little water through a rip in the waders by my right knee, but it wasn’t too bad. It didn’t rain until we got to the channel and could see town.

Leon called his proxy when he got a cell signal as we entered the channel so he would come and get his fish when we got to Douglas harbor. We got to town about 615 pm and I carted up my gear and fish up the ramp to the car. I delivered fish to several friends in town. To Samuel’s adoptive grandmother who is making sure he has a dream childhood; to our friend who gave us a pile of youth soccer jerseys they no longer use for me to send to my village in Sierra Leone; and to our friend the local pediatrician who takes care of the kids in town. And then several to my proxy who does welding whenever I need it, as well as advising on building projects and deer hunting with me when he can. His wife is a graphic designer who helped me with my company logo and Sara with her campaign logo.

For our house, I cut up about 5 salmon into steaks, dredged them in a 50:50 salt:sugar mix, let them brine for about 40 minutes, then loaded the smoker that my nephew John helped me build out of an old refrigerator. I then started the fan to dry the fish. When the fish dried with a nice pellicle, I turned on the electric double hot plate in the smoker and lightly smoked the fish with chunks of alder wood until the fish was fairly firm, then canned the fish.

After seeing the glaciers, I made a mental note to take visitors there when they came to town. A pretty simple trip in most weather. There’s also a forest service cabin directly across from one of the glaciers that I want to “camp” in sometime to just sit on the cabin front porch and watch the glacier for a weekend. Another trip of a lifetime.

Sunday Rescue

As I got back to the dock in the skiff from the cabin Sunday morning, I saw a text message from Brian, who is up here with the fleet from Coffman Cove to fish for DIPAC chum salmon for the first time. He said to call him as Doug was broke down. Turns out Doug needed a water pump, so I called OReilys, who incredibly had one. Doug had planned to either get the part flown down from Juneau or get it up from Petersburg on a tender. I told them I’d go buy it and be down with it in my skiff in a couple hours. I trailered my boat at North Douglas, drove to the house, grabbed the electric car and drove out for the part. I ordered them a pizza too, which I picked up on my way back to the house. I figured his deckhand would need something to eat watching the captain do a parts replacement.

As I got ready to drive to the Douglas Boat Harbor ramp it hit me: here’s free transport for stuff to our place in Craig. So into the skiff went the toyo heater, a double burner electric hot plate and a couple shovels I bought at Salvation Army, and a folded-up Alaska map on poster board. I launched the boat at Douglas. There was a 1 foot chop on the water. I headed down Gastineau Channel, and as I got past Salisbury Point I could see the gill netters lined up at the fishing district line to fish near Point Bishop. Other gill netters were fishing all down Stephens Passage. About an 45 minutes later, as I neared Taku Harbor, I thought I saw Brian’s boat near mainland shore, but thought I’d get the part to Doug to get him going, then find Brian on the way back.

Doug was all smiles as I came into the dock. When he looked at the picture of the part on the box, he immediately said – uh oh, this doesn’t look like it. But I said don’t worry, the part inside doesn’t look like that. Doug had called me on his sat phone at the parts store and described the part he needed to compare with the one I was buying, and he was relieved when he opened the box to see the new one matched the old one. The water pump for his Cummins diesel is surprisingly small and only has a rubber gasket to seal it – no fiber gasket and a ton of gasket dope like my old Ford truck diesel or Detroit 453 diesel in the Dutch Master. I handed him the pizza, and asked if he could take my items to Craig, and of course he said sure. Plus he had lots of room. So I helped the deckhand with the items and we stashed them in his hold.

It took 19 minutes to get the part in and the coolant water replaced and the engine fired up. We sat and chatted at the wheelhouse table while the engine came up to temperature. After about 20 minutes, all looked good, and they were off to fish. They untied and idled away as I got into my skiff, untied from the dock, and idled behind them. Doug came out on deck an asked me to stick around. It was overheating again, and I could hear the engine alarm going off. There were some tense moments of them drifting back towards the tenders that were anchored up in the harbor as he assessed the situation, but after about 5 minutes, all was well- just an air lock that he bled off or had cleared on it’s own. He gave me the two thumbs up and I scooted past them, out into Stephens Passage, and headed towards town.

I found Brian about a mile down the beach. He was all smiles. His deckhand was a young man who was the grandson of Brian’s friend in Craig who also used to trap with my friend Ken Dunshie in a super cub up out of Fairbanks. Ken is from my hometown of Bolivar, and went to Alaska in the late 60’s as a teacher. I stayed with him and his wife my first month in Alaska until I could get a place at a UAF dorm. The deckhand had his rain gear buttoned right up to his neck and was pitching chum salmon into the fish totes. They’d had a great first set – and as this was their first set ever up here and they didn’t really know what they were doing – that made it even better. Already they were glad they’d made the two day run to get up here. Brian’s friend Mike came over in his boat as I was leaving to say he caught more his first set than he had the whole last opening down in Clarence Strait, and he thanked me for getting Doug, who by now was catching up to me set his net. He called later in the day and said fishing was good.

I left them all to their work and had a slight following chop on the way back to town. I sipped from the coffee in the thermos and thought that I’d be back on the water commercial fishing by this time next year, one way or another.

One Fine Evening

Erik asked me to take some coaches in town for soccer camp on a whale watch tour. There was a coach from Colorado, one from Anchorage, and two were from Central or South America somewhere. As we headed out of Auke Bay, I overheard them saying they’d already been on a whale watch trip. That was kind of a bummer, as I didn’t know if we’d see much or if what we’d see would now be old hat. I’d contacted a co-worker captain to see where the whales were today. The weather was picking up a little, so although I was headed for the west side of Shelter Island, I decided to go up the east side to keep out of the wind.

We ran about half an hour without seeing anything when I saw a puff in the distance. When we got up to the whale, it was a humpback whale lunge feeding right on the shore line. It would curve its body to herd fry (I think) in a school, and then came up under them with mouth wide open to swallow them. The whale seemed within 10 yards of shore, and was right at the surface. As it would curve it’s body to herd the fish, half of its tail would come out of the water, then there would be a swirl, and then up he’d come with his mouth wide open, and gulp. Well, they hadn’t seen this kind of action on the big whale watch boat they’d gone on earlier in the week.

We left this whale after half an hour and went around the north end of the island and headed south again. We saw another whale blow. This whale took several breaths and dove. Her big white tail told me this was Flame, a local favorite because she shows her big beautiful tail on every dive. After 20 minutes with her, we went to a buoy with several sea lions on it, and circled this a few times, before continuing south.

As we came to the south end of the island, we saw black fins coming out of the water- orcas. We came alongside the orcas at about 100 yards, and paced them for awhile. Then they went under and were gone for several minutes. As I looked to my left where they had been, the coaches in the rear yelled in surprise – the orca pod had gone under us and was now right next to the boat on the right side. Hadn’t seen THAT on their whale watch trip, either! We admired the orcas for another 20 minutes and then went to check our crab pots. I set them in this spot because it’s convenient, but hadn’t caught squat there in about 5 years. On our way there, we passed a couple Dall’s porpoise. Then an eagle come down to the water and grabbed a fish in its talons. We pulled up to the first crab pot, and got 3 keepers! Next pot was 2 keepers! The boys weren’t going home empty handed. We took off for the dock, where their conversation was all about the whales they’d seen like they’d never imagined and the crab in the bucket. I dropped them off and headed back to the cabin for the night.

This morning I got up early to be down at the beach at 7 am. There was a -4.4 tide at 8:15 am so I wanted to reset my haul out. I screwed 4 auger anchors in a square into the ocean mud, ran a piece of garden hose through their eyes, then ran some gillnet leadline through the garden hose, and tied off the ends of the lead line. To the lead line I tied a piece of abs pipe that had 90 degree fittings on each end. Then I ran my haul out line through the pipe and back up to pulleys on the beach to form a clothes line to which I could tie the boat painter to and haul the line and boat out to deep water, which would save me from anchoring every time and rowing a punt to the beach. Since my boat was dry from the minus tide, I headed back to the cabin and read old Alaska Sportsman magazines and drank a pot of coffee over the next 2 hours while the tide came back in and floated my boat. Then it was back to town and back to work for the afternoon.