Went to Fairbanks with high hopes of harvesting a moose north of Fairbanks with the cow permit I drew, but we did not see a moose.  Matt and I hunted along one of the rivers and didn’t see any four wheeler or people tracks, so seemed like a relatively unhunted area, but maybe that’s because there are no moose there, either.  We did see some sign, though.  Saturday there were lots and lots and lots of hunters, as it was the last weekend of bull season. A TON of berries. Blueberries, high and low bush cranberries everywhere.  I ate blueberries along the way, and they are alot sweeter than the blueberries and blue huckleberries down here.  Saw several spruce grouse, too.  Wish I’d had a shotgun or .22 with us.  The birch were in full gold fall colors, and mild temperatures.  Lots of fun and good to see some of our long-time UAF friends in Fairbanks. – Mark Stopha Alaska Wild Salmon Company 4455 N. Douglas Hwy Juneau, AK 99801 www.GoodSalmon.com – Mark Stopha Alaska Wild Salmon Company 4455 N. Douglas Hwy Juneau, AK 99801 www.GoodSalmon.com

Went to PWS last week.  We traveled from Whittier on a 28′ boat to several streams.   We would take a small raft with 3 of us and our sampling gear to the creek, and the captain stayed with the boat.  At the creek, we would walk up stream to get above the tidal influence in the stream and then look for a place to catch a bunch of pink salmon with a small seine net.  We could usually get about 50 fish with the seine, out of the 100 to 120 we needed.  The other 2 would start sampling after we got the 50, and then I would use a dipnet to catch the balance needed, one or two at a time.  It was lots of fun, and good weather.  We spent the night on the boat and the captain cooked good meals.  On the last day, as we were packing up our gear after just finishing the last pink salmon, a black bear walked into the creek about 50 yards downstream, picked up a pink salmon in it’s mouth, and continued to the other side and into the woods without ever looking
our way.  The other two handed me the shotgun, and I led the way back to our raft.  We never did see the bear again.  As usual, we saw lots and lots of bear sign on the creeks but this was the only bear we saw.  Ate lots of salmon berries along the creeks on our way to and from the raft. 

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

Ron and I went to our annual subsistence fishing north of town.  We use his brother Roy’s boat, and stayed with Roy and his wife Brenda and her son Zeke.  We arrived by ferry with a couple 1/2 totes of ice, our pressure bleeding equipment, raingear, gloves, and knives.  We headed right to the river with Roy.   My fishing friend Len gave us an old commercial sockeye salmon gillnet, and we had cut chunks off to subsistence fish last year, so that’s the net we used.  It was a wonderful day as it always seems to be in the Chilat Valley.  It was pouring rain in Juneau, and about 70 miles north there were a few patches of blue sky, and when we got to the river it was high overcast and nice.  We were the only ones on the river.

Our first drift was our best for I think 9 sockeye.  We got a few fish every drift.  Sometimes we think of better ways to fish, etc., and then I remember I don’t want to catch them all in a couple drifts.  The fun is spending the hours on the river, usually alone as we were today.   As we brought fish into the boat, we would break a gill and bleed them in water.

When we were done, we headed back to Roy’s with about 32 sockeye.  Ron headed and pressure bled the fish, while I cleaned, rinsed and iced them.  We work well together after doing this for several years.

Brenda made a fabulous dinner of halibut and North Douglas chocolate cake, and we heard of Zekes busy summer deckhanding for a charter boat. The weather was so nice this summer they only had 2 days they couldn’t go because of wind.

The next day, just Ron and I went and got 14 more fish.  We repeated the cleaning, and there were still several hours left so I got Roy’s extension ladder and started picking the cherries from his tree, as he and Brenda had already put up what they wanted for the year.  The cherries left were the high-up ones, and I picked most of what was left on the tree.  Tonight, I’m back home making cherry rhubarb jam, after pitting all the cherries a few nights ago.

Ron and I filleted and vac packed the fish he wanted to fresh-freeze, and I took a bunch later to Jerry’s Meats for Scott to smoke for us.

Off to Prince William Sound tomorrow for a week of field work, and then time to get ready for moose and elk hunting in Sept.  We sure have a good life here.

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

Took my first trip to the Kenai River to dipnet for sockeye salmon with college buddies Todd and Keith.  Todd lives in Anchorage.  I flew up Friday night and we drove down to Kenai and arrived about midnight.  We were up at 4:30 am, Jane made us breakfast, then  off to the River with Keith.  It was about a 20 minute run or less from his guide service dock at Beaver Creek Cabins.  I had heard what a madhouse the fishery was, but it’s something you have to see to believe.  I figured about 250 to 300 boats with Alaska residents participating in a personal use, Alaska resident-only  fishery which allows 25 fish per head of household with another 10 fish for each additional person in the household,  in a half mile stretch.  The process is you idle downstream with your dipnet over the side, and if a fish goes in the net, you pull up the net, put the fish in the boat, and try again.  When you reach the end of your drift, you pull the nets up and the
captain runs the boat back up to the start again.  You dipnet along the shore, mostly, and run back upriver up the middle of the river.  As the tide goes out, the river gets narrower and narrower until the dipnetters and those returning upstream are right next to each other going opposite directions.  The commercial fleet was not fishing on Saturday, and so were tied up in the river, which was another obstacle to avoid.  Luckily Keith is a seasoned Kenai River guide and had no trouble keeping us out of the way of other boats and the commercial boats.
 
We caught 72 sockeye between us, and returned to Keiths dock, where we cleaned all our catch.  I dressed my share of fish and then helped Keith finish filleting his share.  Then we went to the store to buy shipping boxes and ice for the fish.  We bought sweet corn and zucchini, and made the corn, zucchini, salmon fillets and some black tail deer I brought down on the grill, and added some Bushs beans and potato salad for a big dinner.  On Sunday morning we slept in a bit, and Keith made us pancakes with some whitetail deer bacon and then back to Anchorage for a beautiful drive on a sunny day and 70 degrees.
 
This was my first trip to Kenai during the summer, and it is something to see all the activity there between sport fishermen, tourists, commercial fishing, and dipnetters.  During the winter, the place is quiet and almost a different world.  Already looking forward to going again next year.  Would not want to be the boat driver, but the dipnetting part sure was fun and all the boats made it exciting.
 
 
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Mark Stopha
Alaska Wild Salmon Company
4455 N. Douglas Hwy
Juneau, AK  99801
www.GoodSalmon.com

Took my cousin Amy, in town from Portland, fishing yesterday.  We went to my fish processor, where the fishing families were shipping orders from their recent gillnet harvest on the Taku River.  Amy bought 40 lbs of fish, which had already been expertly dressed and deheaded on board the fishing boats.  We took these home, where I filleted and Amy portioned the fish.  She then loaded them into the vacuum pack bags, and I did the vacuum packing.   More fun than not catching fish with me in the rain, for sure.

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

Home

Two groups of humpback whales were bubblenet feeding behind Douglas Island. This is a technique used by a group of whales where they blow a tornado of bubbles around a school of herring, forming a net of sorts. Then the group of whales comes up from below herring with their mouths open.  The group of whales break the surface with mouths open and it’s a sight to see.  Sometimes the gulls shadowing the group starts to dive to where the whales come up and you are ready when the whales break the surface.  Other times, the birds don’t see the whales coming up, and they may come up where you don’t expect them.  We also put a hydrophone – a microphone that can go into the water – overboard.  Just before the whales reach the surface, there is an eerie screeching sound that sounds like the whales will surface within arms reach, but when they do surface, it might be a quarter mile away – sound really travels in water.
 
Also saw one whale “lunge” feeding north of town near the beach where the road is close to the shore.  People were watching from their cars, too.  A single whale was coming up under schools of herring and breaking the surface with its mouth wide open.  Just before it broke the surface, fish were flying out of the water like the sea surface was coming to a boil. 
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Mark Stopha
Alaska Wild Salmon Company
4455 N. Douglas Hwy
Juneau, AK 99801
https://goodsalmon.com/