Today started out taking my wife and her high school girlfriend to the airport at 4 frickin’ thiry am for their trip to Montana. Day was starting out kind of iffy, but it was to get much better.

I left about 945 am to start delivering fish to our Juneau customers. Most wanted sockeye a few days ago, but we had more coho. Most switched to coho, and we ended up almost selling out everything on hand. And boy howdy, were the coho nice.

Then, I get a call to go fishing Monday and Tuesday. Why not just ask me if I’m interested in a third slice of blueberry pie? Of course I’m going.

Next, I get an email asking if I want to go moose hunting in early Sept – which happens to be my next 2 week “off” period. I call the guy, and he says lets go over to your cabin, do some deer hunting, and talk about it over the weekend. Hell- give me that forth piece of blueberry pie. Don’t want it to go to waste.

I’m thinking it would be hard to have a better day….until I get notice from the Anchorage Daily News. Our legislature just approved sending all of us $1200 each to pay for the high cost of fuel. This, on top of the $2000 each we’re already going to get for the annual Permanent Fund Dividend giveaway. I smell another pie coming out of the oven right now. What a country.

It’s 930 pm now, and past my bedtime, but I might stay up till midnight just to press my luck…..

–
Mark Stopha and Sara Hannan
Alaska Wild Salmon Company
Wild Salmon and Salmon Pet Treats
4455 N. Douglas Hwy
Juneau, AK 99801
907-463-3115
www.GoodSalmon.com

Back to Juneau and good weather here. Sara and I went to our cabin, which Sara only seems to reach once per year. I fished one day and caught no cohos. The next day, I wanted to climb the ridge on Admiralty across from Horse Island to find a blacktail deer buck, but the clouds were sitting right on the top, so I wouldn’t be able to see anything. So, I climbed to the base of the ridge. I called a doe about half way up. The deer’s summer coats are so bright it looked like it was painted florescent orange.

I picked berries when I got back to the cabin. The blueberries were absolutely loaded with worms. I guess from all the wet weather. After I picked a container full, I dumped them in a bowl to pick the leaves and stems. There were so many worms burrowing out of the berries I put them on the outside table for the birds. Later, I thought maybe there was some salvaging to the berries, so I went through them one by one, and flicked off any worms. When I was almost done, I looked into the bowl, there were more worms than when I started! More had burrowed their way out. So I left them for the birds. I have find out what critter it is that lays it’s eggs for their larvae to eat my blueberries.

Back in town, it’s all busy with fish order packing and arranging. As always, nothing but work here!

–
Mark Stopha and Sara Hannan
Alaska Wild Salmon Company
Wild Salmon and Salmon Pet Treats
4455 N. Douglas Hwy
Juneau, AK 99801
907-463-3115
www.GoodSalmon.com

We went to Badami to do oil spill training with a skimmer yesterday. Badami is about 35 miles to the east of here, and my first trip in that direction.

After training, we were invited up to their mess hall to eat. What a beautiful place. The mile or two drive from the beach to the camp (part of the road also serves as a runway) was through beautiful green fields slightly higher in elevation than the lowlands around Deadhorse. The green fields reminded me of Iceland or something you’d see from Ireland. Again, it’s like driving through a game park or farm here. Caribou were on either side (or in) the road. Swans with fuzzy goslings. And new fox pups, which the Badami folks said were using the drain pipes under the road for a den, and which had been feasting on a swan their parents apparently killed for them.

Only about 20 people are at Badami now, as it’s a drill site apparently in what was called “warm storage”. Word is that the camp will see new drilling this winter, and balloon to 80 to 100 workers.

–
Mark Stopha and Sara Hannan
Alaska Wild Salmon Company
Wild Salmon and Salmon Pet Treats
4455 N. Douglas Hwy
Juneau, AK 99801
907-463-3115
www.GoodSalmon.com

Took a 35 mile trip to do training at a place called F Pad today. Saw my first polar bears on the way. The first was a large boar on a barrier island. Even though he was quite distant, the bear looked very large.

On a nearby island, we saw a sow polar bear and her cub. She, too, looked large.

I ran the boat on the return to our harbor. As we entered the area, an announcement came in on the radio reporting a polar bear headed towards the harbor, and the boat captain thought it might well be the boar we saw earlier in the day.

–
Mark Stopha and Sara Hannan
Alaska Wild Salmon Company
Wild Salmon and Salmon Pet Treats
4455 N. Douglas Hwy
Juneau, AK 99801
907-463-3115
www.GoodSalmon.com

An uneventful day spent doing vessel maintenance. Testing bilge and hiqh water alarms, alot of bilge cleaning, etc. Near the end of the day, I happened in a conversation with a lead person who is doing seismic work for the 8 mile long Liberty drill. He said the seismic is not for pinpointing the oil, but to determine the earth strata from the drill site to the oil so the easiest path can be drilled. Then the folks in the discussion further remarked how different where we were standing would look now if today’s technology was present in the 70’s – most of it wouldn’t be here. Sunny and dry today, and a bit breezy.

–
Mark Stopha and Sara Hannan
Alaska Wild Salmon Company
Wild Salmon and Salmon Pet Treats
4455 N. Douglas Hwy
Juneau, AK 99801
907-463-3115
www.GoodSalmon.com

Spent all day on a boat ride to the Ooguruk (sp?) drill pad. Like Northstar, it’s a tiny man-made island you can walk across in less than 5 minutes. The trip was about 2.5 hours each way, much of it through the fog. We went there to jump on a small boat to do sounding surveys for a company that is testing to see how far the sound from area boat traffic will travel so as to protect the marine mammals in the area. Saw the first marine mammals here of any kind – some seals – and many rafts of ducks, which I thought were eiders.

We ate lunch at Ooguruk. What a spread. In this tiny camp, there was good grub. Philly cheese steaks for lunch. And too many sweets. A Dreyers Ice Cream machine, cookies galore, donuts, and even banana nut bread. I thought we were in the middle of nowhere, but no – Ooguruk…that’s the middle of nowhere.

As per most camps here, friendly folks who seemed to enjoy seeing some new faces.

–
Mark Stopha and Sara Hannan
Alaska Wild Salmon Company
Wild Salmon and Salmon Pet Treats
4455 N. Douglas Hwy
Juneau, AK 99801
907-463-3115
www.GoodSalmon.com