Alaska – Page 9 – Alaska Wild Salmon Company

Lillify crew in town

Sara’s former student and her son were up for 4th of July weekend. We did an overnight down Chatham Strait, fishing along the way. We caught half a dozen cohos and some nice pinks. Cohos showing up very early this year. Most of the ones we caught were smaller as expected this time of year.

Hanni saw me dress the fish as we caught them, and wanted to learn how to do it. I showed her once, helped her with her first fish, and then she fumbled through the rest of the fish we caught.

We tied up at Funter Bay and were the only occupied boat on the south dock. I got the fish out for filleting on the fish cleaning table there, and Hanni wanted to learn that, too. So, I showed her how to do one, helped her with her first one, and away she went, fumbling through that, too, getting better with each try.

Hanni runs a specialty shop catering to home decor and fashion (I think) in Monterey she named Lillify that she started from scratch. Her business and interests and California world could not be more different from mine. Yet she’s the first person I’ve taken who wanted to learn fish cleaning and processing. Maybe it’s our common experience of having both served in the Peace Corps, along with her growing up in Juneau, of course.

When she left for the Peace Corps, I gave her my prized Swiss Army knife that a Japanese client gave to me on the Nushagak River when I was a fishing guide in Bristol Bay. I think he was a dentist, and every time I cut the line for a knot, etc., I was using my teeth, and that, of course, didn’t set well with him. After handing me the knife twice to use instead, on the third offering he told me in broken English to keep it. It was the Swiss Army knife of Swiss Army knives, with every gadget from all their models on one knife. Hanni used it for her two years in Guyana, then passed it on to another friend who was going in the Peace Corps to Burkina Faso. I’d love to know where the knife is now.

After cleaning and wrapping the fish and loading them in the freezer, Hanni got me on the dock to continue doing some stretching exercises for my hip, which I’m pretty sure is yoga stuff. Hopefully this get me on a daily routine to help me get my hip flexor back in tune and make walking normal again.

When we left the dock yesterday morning, as we were steaming out of the bay, we got a call on the radio of a boat in distress. He needed a wrench to get off his fuel filter, or a tow in if that didn’t work. It took me awhile to figure out how he hailed me on the radio when I was out of sight. He’d called friends in Funter Bay who saw us from their cabin and relayed the info.

We found him in about 20 minutes. Funny thing was, he is a local lobbyist I know casually, but Sara knows well since she’s in the legislature. He was there with his wife and sister, who I’ve had dinner with at one or two legislative events.

When we got up to his Sea Sport, he tried my wrenches but couldn’t get the filter off. So, he threw over a line tied to his bow pad eye and I lashed it to my port cleat to see if his boat would tow from one side of my boat, rather than on a bridle. It did.

It took about an hour to get back to the north dock, where his cabin is located. My crew and his went up to his cabin while he and I worked on his outboard. He had me try to get the filter off, and it came off without much effort with channel locks. He had been trying to twist it the wrong way most of the time. There was water in his fuel filter, and he said it was a chronic issue. I told him about my problems with water getting drawn in from the fuel tank vents on outside stern of a Grayling boat I had, which Dave Svendsen taught me about, and told him when I moved the vent opening to the inside of the boat, the problem went away.

When he put the filter back on and tried to pump gas to it with the inline bulb, no gas would go in. This was the same problem he had with his kicker. When he switched tanks, he finally got gas to go to the outboard, and the engine started. I related to him about a similar problem I had on the Hewescraft, where the fuel tank water separator filter was too large for the kicker outboard fuel pump to draw through, and so I put a filter rated for my outboards, and that solved that problem. I realize more and more as I approach 60 that I’ve learned alot running used equipment over the past decades. Stuff you don’t learn at a desk or watching you tube.

We went up to his cabin and joined the others. He showed me around his cabin and his shop, which was an old cannery building. Before I left, I asked him some questions about where to catch halibut and crab in the area, and he freely passed on some good intel. So, some good learning for me this trip on towing and fishing.

We left Funter Bay about 2 hours after our original departure, so did not fish on the way back as Hanni needed to get to Jerry’s Meats. Like most people in Juneau, the owner Scott’s smoked salmon spread is a family favorite, and she wanted to take a load of it back, along with some of their sausages, halibut and salmon patties.

Hanni’s son Ames apparently had a good time and wants to come back, so maybe we’ll see them again next July. They may see in later July’s how lucky they were this July to catch so many coho salmon this early in the summer.

Jars of rhubarb jelly next to a steam juicer on a kitchen counter

Rhubarb Jelly Saga 2023

I bought a steam juicer at a garage sale a few years ago. When I picked it up to look at it, the owner raved about all the good things she’d made with it, so I handed her a tenner, and took a chance I’d actually use it. I did, and I love it. A practical, simple contraption for juicing. I think I’ve only used it for rhubarb, and Haines cherries may be next to try.

When we returned from my cousin Emily’s funeral back in NY state, the forecast was for a week of rain. I knew it was time to clear out some freezer space as Sara had to jockey around a bunch of things to make room for all the king salmon we had from this spring, and then I had to find it to pack up a box to take back with us.

As often happens, I think about things to do at home when I’m away. Firewood. Canning. Boat work. Stuff like that. So the day we got home, I dug through both freezers we have working to find (hopefully) all the rhubarb from the past years. The rhubarb patch in our yard, where I’d dug up plants and separated them at the bulb and replanted a few years ago, was now taking off, so I figure I’d use that rhubarb for fresh desserts. I’d already canned a case of pickled rhubarb after tasting some at a birthday party in Craig in the spring.

The following day, Sara left for Bristol Bay for a fish processor tour, so I got the juicer out and started making juice. The juicers are such a simple contraption, and if I’m doing it right, take very little work. The juicer is comprised of 3 pans that nestle into each other The bottom is the water bath pan that needs to be checked every once in awhile to be sure there’s water left. The top pan has holes in the bottom and is where the cut up rhubarb goes. The middle pan has a chimney of sorts in the middle, like a sponge cake pan, that allows steam to go up to the fruit in the top pan, and as the juice comes out of the fruit, it falls into the middle pan, which has a drain nipple on the outside with a clamp hose attached. As the juice collects in the middle pan, you put the end of the hose in a container and unclamp the hose to drain of the juice.

As the rhubarb in the top pan has the juice steamed out of it, it reduces to a pulp, and I just pile more new rhubarb on top as I’ve seen others do in stories and videos. I might try doing it in batches next time, letting all the juice come out of a batch in top colander, then dumping that and starting again. I’m not sure it matters much. The pulp goes in the compost so is recycled anyway.

The juicing part was easy. I got enough juice – about one and a half gallons – for 2 cases of half pints of jelly, plus an extra gallon I canned raw in quart jars.

Unlike the juice making, the jelly making was a learning experience. I’ve not made jelly very often. Just from high bush cranberries, I think. And maybe some jelly from cherries or salmon berries I let sit in a colander before processing or freezing.

Jam is a lot more forgiving because the fruit pulp gives even runny jam some consistency. Unset jelly can be as fluid as the juice used to make it. The runny jelly is useful for a syrup over ice cream or in yogurt, but not much of a spread.

I first used regular pectin, which requires a good amount of sugar for it to work. Finding a specific rhubarb jelly recipe was somewhat difficult, so I tried to wing it on the amount of sugar and pectin. The jelly didn’t gel at all. Next I used Sure Gel no sugar / low sugar pectin, thinking maybe the amount of sugar I’d used was off. Some of the batches gelled a little, but not much. After the jars cooled, I them in the fridge overnight, but it didn’t help much. The jelly tasted great – fantastic, really – but just never gelled.

Yesterday, Kurt, Jeff, and I took the boat around Douglas to Auke Bay for the summer. We dropped a car for Sara at the airport and a car at Auke Bay for us to get home, then took the boat around the island from the downtown harbor. We tried for salmon and got a Dolly Varden, which made Kurt happy as he loves eating it. We tried several spots for halibut, and no fish. When I got home, Sara had left a message that she took a paid bump for her trip home, so would not be back til the evening.

I saw the jars of runny jelly in the fridge, and couldn’t take it. I would try again.

I removed all the reuseable Tattler lids and gaskets from the jars and poured all the jelly into a pot and put it on to boil. I went to Foodland, and they only had one jar of no sugar pectin – Ball brand. So I bought that figuring it was enough. It was not. When I read the directions, I realized I needed two jars. I didn’t want to drive all the way to the valley to find more, so I tried Rainbow Foods to see if they had pectin. Good choice. They did.

They had Pomona Pectin. I hadn’t used that since I was in Kodiak and Sand Point making salmon berry jam. I think I ordered it out of Mother Earth News. It’s a pectin that uses calcium and pectin to gel the jelly, not pectin and sugar. So the amount of sugar in the jelly is not critical. And the recipes allow for up to tripling a batch recipe, which regular pectin recipes frown on. I followed the directions, reading them over and over, and calculating and recalculating, for a triple batch.

Once I measured and got the triple batch going in one pot, I had a double batch of juice still left. And not quite enough pectin to do it. But the instructions say you can vary the amount of pectin used to vary the consistency of the gel, so I used what was left. I also followed the Tattler lid instructions exactly, including letting the jars sit for 5 minutes after coming out of the canner before retightening the rings, and letting the jars sit overnight before removing the rings and checking for lid seals. I’ve regularly had problems with their lids sealing, and mostly from my impatience, I think.

All came out perfect. The jelly gelled and tasted great. All the jars sealed after sitting overnight with tight rings. Success.

We are through about half the summer growing season, so likely will see a case or two more of pickled rhubarb go in the pantry, and then a bunch more into the freezer or given away.

Sixty is headed this a way

I finished filling the woodshed today. A marathon day of splitting rounds, loading the truck with the split wood, moving it up to the shed, tossing the wood off, then stacking it in the shed. I didn’t plan to finish, really, but once I got close, I got the fever and couldn’t stop til it was done.

An old friend who is a prominent journalist in the state texted me out of the blue. Her sister in law said to give me a call. Did I have 15 minutes to talk about king salmon? I said sure. But I might refer you to someone else who is an expert or more acquainted.

She called not much later, and started asking me questions about the king salmon situation. As we talked, she asked me how long I’d been associated with king salmon. It didn’t take long to think I’m 59 and I got here when I was 19 and started guiding and catching king salmon when I was 20……..so about 40 years! That was sort of a wake up call, I guess. I’m damn near 60.

As we chatted, I realized I had been working with this fish in one way or another and kinda sorta did know something about the situation. More on a bigger societal picture than a scientific one. If anyone knew the specific problem, maybe we could fix it. We don’t, but “we” know it’s not “us” that’s the problem, so we start looking for someone to blame as we fight over the last fish.

By the end of the conversation, I felt pretty good about the perspectives I was able to give her, and she seemed happy for my responses. We’ll see how it comes out. I used to worry about how it would come across in the press when I was a state official. Now I’m just a guy with 4 decades of a little bit of experience associated in a lot of different ways with king salmon, and I like it that way.

I went out after the call and got the last of the wood in the truck and then into the shed. The hip that’s been killing me feels remarkably well today. I realize later exercise good. Sitting bad. So now what am I gonna do.

The neighbor has some firewood that she needs bucked up, so I can start there.

That’s how it works around here.

I got a text from a young married couple from Craig up here fishing. Do you want a sockeye? I think- my goodness, I have so much king in the freezer already…….- of course I want a sockeye. I wanted to see them anyway, as a bunch of canned goods from our pantry didn’t make it to them when the boys picked up the swim step they brought up for me on their boat from the friends we bought it from in Craig on facebook.

When I get down to their boat, the wife now wants me to take maybe two sockeye. And a steelhead. I say they must have friends who can use it. All our friends are fishermen, she said. They have fish. So we settle on a big sockeye and a steelhead.

When I get home, I see my neighbor is home, so I call her to see if she and her three young kids want a fish. Sure! She says. I tell her I have a sockeye and a steelhead. She said she didn’t know what a steelhead was, but knew she liked sockeye. I said you are a Juneau girl and know how to cut up a fish, right? To which she replied yes, I am a Juneau girl, and no, I don’t know how. Okay, I said. I’ll go cut it up and be over.

So I get out the cutting board and fillet the sockeye. It is beautiful. As good as it gets. Turns out the gillnetters know how to pressure bleed. The meat is clean as a whistle, with no blood. Wow.

I take the two sides of sockeye over to her, and we make a plan to teach her how to cut up fish. Then I ask about bucking up her logs for firewood. What’s bucking up mean? I explain it’s cutting the wood with a chainsaw to length. Then you split the wood so it will go in the stove. With a splitting machine, she asks? Well, I split by hand. I can see I’ve got some teaching to do here, and hopefully an eager student.

I come home and fillet the steelhead. It’s a white fleshed steelhead. Which I’ve never seen or heard of. I’ve caught many white king salmon, and just 3 white coho, but never heard of white steelhead. Huh! I let the fishermen know, and they haven’t heard of them, either.

Sara and I eat the sockeye frames from the fish which we gave the fillet sides to the neighbor, and save the steelhead for tomorrow to try and maybe give some away to other friends. I cut off the tails of the fish from the frames for crab bait with shears I brought back from the trip east just for this purpose from a family friend who is an employee of the Klein Tools cutlery where the shears are made in my hometown.

I love living here.

Back Home. Again.

Returned to northern Appalachia to attend the funeral for our beloved cousin. A second cousin, I think is the proper term. The eldest daughter of my mother’s sister’s daughter. She passed away at 49 from an undiagnosed cancer that was found while she was in for a routine surgery a week earlier. She was the second of my second cousins to pass away. Both women and both from cancer, I think. And both way too young.

My cousin was a favorite of Sara and my siblings. She was full of energy. An EMT, she took care of my niece when she had a compound fracture of her arm at the remote Canada island on the Georgian Bay, calling in the Coast Guard, and keeping everyone calm. Sara was there for that. My nieces and nephews all loved her from their time spent with her in Canada. In her free time, she was all about scuba diving, and met her husband Ed through diving. They were quite a pair.

We went, as promised, to their wedding reception, which occurred sometime after the actual ceremony. Just like ours did. The only problem was her husband wasn’t there. Just a cut out of him, as he got called to work if I remember right. This wasn’t how I wanted to meet him. I wanted to meet him when the both of them finally came to visit us. Hopefully he’ll still come. And others from the gathering.

I was glad to see the mother of the first second cousin who passed away years ago. I can’t remember just when, and not sure I knew she passed away at the time. I hadn’t seen her mother in maybe 30 or 40 years, and it was good to catch up.

Last week also corresponded with alumni weekend in my hometown, and it was good to see several school mates. We’re moving up the “old” ladder at these events, with fewer and fewer of the older classes there, and we are becoming the old people. And so it goes. Listening to unprompted racist shit from people I’ve known since childhood makes me know it won’t be a bad thing when my generation and those ahead of me pass on. Hopefully the younger ones will do better. I wish I had more hope that they will. We’re all products of our upbringing to some extent.

Our childhood home is soon to be razed. The neighbor bought it, and is taking it down. And it’s time, I think. Many have lived there since my dad sold it, and most every time it was repossessed when payments couldn’t be made. The young neighbor was married to the daughter of one of our childhood neighbors across the street. He was happy to have us look around and allowed us to take anything we wanted. I took a little piece of siding that was put on when I was young. Just before we left, I reentered the house to stand in the room where my mom passed away, and that was good.

This is the 5th trip out of state since last September, between overseas volunteer fisheries assignments and funerals. Good to touch down last night on the plane home and know summer season is here and lots of family and friends coming in for boat trips over the next 2 months and I have no plans to go Outside for awhile. Glad to be back where I belong.

Wood pile 2023

Time to replenish the wood we burned this winter. I waded up through the lush behind our garage to see trees and logs were down above the garage. I forgot about all the wood there from taking down the dangerous trees last year. I can’t fathom how I moved these logs to where they are, but I did somehow. Now to get them down to the driveway to buck up.

I used the truck and, depending on how far away the log was, I used either a short piece of chain and tow strap combo, or a length of blue line I bought over the winter for tie up lines for the tug when the temperature is below freezing, to pull them down to the driveway. I yarded out the logs, then started bucking them up.

I used the saw my dad bought for me – a Stihl 028 – when I drove to Alaska for the first time in 1983, until the bar seized up. I tried finding a bar in town, but no luck. So I got out the 041 I bought from Ron when he left town to finish most of the cutting. Should be plenty of wood to fill the shed.

Now I can split the rounds as I have the stamina to do so, and fill the shed little by little. Good to get some good exercise after so much time on the boat.

Got to splitting today. I think, along with cross country skiing, my favorite exercise. I’m not all that excited about bucking up the wood with the chainsaw. But splitting? I like it. And satisfying to see the wood split, and the split wood start to pile up. I split til I’m dog tired, but try not to go past the point I’ll be very sore the next day. Plenty of time to pick away at it, and we won’t burn this wood for 3 more years.