Alaska – Page 28 – 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.

Fall Seafood Bonanza

Jeff and I went fishing at low tide Friday morning. He picked me up at 7 am and I had to be back for a 10 am meeting. We drove to the trailhead a few miles from the house, put on our chest waders, and headed down the trail and out to Gastineau Channel. I was surprised we didn’t see any one else. Jeff said he’d been out the day before and had not seen many fish nor caught any, so I thought maybe the run was about over.

Jeff motioned to a spot directly across from the trail head. I sort of wanted to go back to where we were last week, but thought what the heck. As we got closer, I could see some fish finning and swirling in the water. Jeff went to the top of the little run of knee deep water, which was about as deep as any pool would be at low tide. I fished the lower part. It took a while but I finally got the hang of it, and got my first one. Then another one. And another. And another. We got 11 by 9 am. I brought a big rubber backpack, and the small one with my fishing gear. I put 7 fish in plastic bags in the big bag, and four in the little one. The big bag was like packing a deer with all the weight. Jeff took the smaller pack.

We slogged up to his truck and then headed to the house. We’d done this last week and so soon had the cleaning table set up. Jeff hosed off the fish, I dressed them, then Jeff rinsed them again and put them into a cooler. Jeff took half the fish and I gave my half of the catch away. I’ve got enough fish in the freezer and canned in jars, but the fish left in the channel aren’t gonna catch themselves.

I told Andrew what had happened and as he had the next day off, he was headed there. I was going to the cabin to check the crab pots and would have taken people deer hunting, but had no takers.

On the way over to the cabin, I realized I’d forgot the bait, even though I went up to the freezer to get it, but by the time I got to the freezers I was doing something else and forgot.

Ron’s little round pot had 5 crab in it. With nothing to rebait it, I kept it aboard. The next pot seemed overly heavy, even for a commercial sized pot. When I got it to the surface I realized why. There were 20 crab in it. Since I could only keep 20 a day, I left 5 in the pot to pull it on the way home tomorrow.

I reset the pot, motored to the easy out, offloaded the crab, and pulled the boat out to deep water on the clothes line haulout. In addition to the bait, I didn’t bring any gloves. I cleaned the 20 crab and both hands were bleeding when I finished. I hauled a 5 gallon bucket full of crab halves in each hand up to the cabin, where I steamed them in two batches.

With the first real rain forecast in nearly a month, I used water from the rain catchment to steam the crab and clean all the dishes since I anticipated the rain would refill all the water I could use.

The next morning I split kindling wood to fill the box and did a cleaning of the cabin. I pulled the pot on the way home and now had 7 in the pot. I stopped at Bob and Laura’s on the way home and gave them three. I called Lorraine, who had company in town, to come get the other four.

I asked Andrew if he went fishing. He’d caught 12 this morning. It took him an hour to catch the fish then 2 hours to clean and haul them by himself to his car. He said he was the only person fishing he could see. Then he went to work at noon. He was pretty happy being an Alaskan all by himself.

Deer camp with John

Nephew John and I are in Craig for John’s third season deer hunting. Not bad for a 14 year old. His flight was delayed out of Chicago to Seattle so by the time he got to town on Friday we had to spend the night. We went out for pizza and stayed at a hotel. We were on the first flight to Craig in the morning on a beautiful day. When we got to town, my inlaws had left my truck at the airport as they’d gone hunting for the day. John and I got to our inlaws, put out hunting gear together, and got John’s license. This is the last year of the pricing for his license ($80) and deer tag ($150). Next year the deer tag goes to $300 and license to $150.

We drove out towards the middle of the island, and stopped at a muskeg along the highway about 11 am. We had about 4 to 5 hours of daylight to hunt. John had the call he’s built with my brother-in-law last year, and was doing a good job calling. He called in a deer that seemed like a buck, but I never saw it’s head and John never saw it at all. Later, John called in a doe. So, 2 deer on the first day. Not bad. The next day we went to our favorite island. In the first or second muskeg we got to, John called in a doe and a yearling. A couple muskegs later, he called in a doe that came from the bottom, and another apparent doe from the top. He kept calling and that doe turned out to be a spike. I told John it was a buck and he said to take it, so I did. We dressed and skinned the deer there, cut off the front quarters, ribs and backbone at the hind quarters, and dropped it into my homemade game bag in my pack. Then we loaded the remaining hind quarters. John took the hunting gear from my pack and put it in his, and we hunted our way back to the boat and saw no more deer. The others with us hunting elsewhere saw few or no deer.

On day 3, we went to one of my favorite bays. The salal and muskegs had 3/8 inch of hoar frost and everything was especially noisy. We saw no deer, but lots of buck rubs, as we usually do. My brother-in-law went to another spot and didn’t see any deer either.

Today was day 4. My expectations weren’t too high after the previous day. We were dropped at another cove I’ve hunted several times. We made our way up through the 3 muskegs you hunt. I’ve seen up to a dozen does in these, but never a buck. Today, we didn’t see a deer. We worked our way around the bowl by getting up onto a spine that lead back to the beach. We came to a muskeg and I almost called there. Then I saw the muskeg went down to the left. Here on top it was blowing, but it looked a lot quieter down there, out of the wind. So, we went there instead. As we got into the lower muskeg, I saw a doe that turned around and went into the woods. I blew on the call, but didn’t see anything. Then I saw the doe come out across a little creek and head up the other side of the muskeg. I blew the call, and that turned her. Then we saw another deer, and John said it looked like a doe or yearling also. Then I saw third deer bringing up the rear. And it was a buck. It froze broadside to us about 50 yards away on the other side of the creek. By this time, the doe had crossed back over to us and was coming up to the call. John was only 15 feet to my right, and couldn’t see the buck. I called him over. He said ” the doe’s right there”. She was about 10 yards in front of us. I said get over here before the buck leaves. The doe jumped a bit but then was calm. John got a rest against the tree. I saw him flick off the safety. Then the buck, which had been looking at us frozen still, turned his head to the right and I thought it was about to walk away when John squeezed the trigger. Right through the neck and it was all over. I was really excited.

My nephew John in Alaska

Hunting all day and we see three deer in this little out of the way spot and John gets his deer. John got out his phone and had me take a few photos. Then I helped John dress his deer, and he put the heart in some salal to cool. I cut a stick that we put between the hind legs, hoisted the deer up a tree, and skinned it. Same as last time, we put the deer in my pack and my gear in John’s pack. John decided to take back the head, and put his locking tag in it’s ear. It was 12:35 pm when we started down, and I figured we had plenty of time. My brother-in-law showed up right on time at 2pm and we had just reached the beach. Sure didn’t seem like a 90ish minute trek back but my back figured that was about right. This deer was the 4th that I’ve packed out this season, and this trek was probably the most rigorous. Just glad I can still do it and hopefully John will soon be taking over the packing duties.