Back at it for my second trip hand trolling. I feel like I’m 40 again. I was fishing day 1 and only had one clatter of 4 fish between 8 am and 5 pm. At about 5 pm, the tender came into Funter Bay and everyone but me went in to sell. Then I saw a cluster of gulls diving on feed. I headed their way. Next thing I know, I’ve got 16 fish on board. The wind had picked up from the south, so when I had trolled out of the fish, I pulled in all my gear and headed south to where I started catching them, turned north, put in the gear, and trolled north again. I got 5 more the second pass, then wrapped the port wire in the kicker prop. That stopped everything for awhile, but it came out quite easily. Only having to lift a 10 lb cannon ball is easy. I remember having to lift 60 lbers on the Dutch Master during mishaps and how much fun that wasn’t.  I got two dozen fish in all for the day, and might have made 30 if not for the wire in the prop. I quit on the third pass as it was getting dark and I headed to the dock to tie up.

I saw my first sea otter in North Chatham today, and I also saw a shark swim by at the surface with it’s dorsal fin out of the water, just like in the movies. Also, saw a deer hide and offal float by, and reminded me deer season is open and glad someone got some winter meat somewhere.

I tied up in the back dock and as soon as I shut off my outboard, I heard the golden pipes of Gordy. He grew up a couple doors down from our house, and I used to take clams to his parents. I worked with him during Hazardous Household Waste days, and he borrowed my fish tote when he was out trolling. Then another kid came by. He was the son of a trolling mentor, and his uncle was a mentor to me in Kodiak. This is what I missed about trolling.

The southerly wind was worse the second day. I started at sunrise, but the wind kept building all day. I made several more runs at the same place I had yesterday, and managed 14 before the waves were more than I wanted to bear in my little boat, and I headed to the dock for a nap and hoped it would die down later in the day and I could get back out. Instead, it only blew harder.

At the dock at the back of the bay, I met another troller who lived on an island near Craig. He’d helped replace my brother in law’s engine in Craig, and replaced an alternator for Paul once in Port Protection. That’s Southeast Alaska commercial fishing for you. I didn’t realize I missed it that much til I came back to it.

It was pretty lumpy at the dock. I told the Craig troller there was another public dock, and he didn’t know about it. I said I’d run over to it and let him know if it was better. It was. I called the Craig troller to tell him to come over, and he did. The tender showed up and I was the first to sell. The captain was a favorite student of Sara’s who went on to play on the women’s basketball team at UAA and then came back to Juneau to coach the women’s team at the new high school. I sent a photo of her on her boat to Sara. She and her crew member worked for several hours into the night offloading the Funter Bay fleet. They earn their money.

Today, the wind was still blowing, but I thought I could get my gear in and fish with the wind all the way north to Pt Retreat, and then head home, as I had to deliver fish tomorrow for our fish selling business. When I got up, there was a live mouse/vole in one of my empty buckets. How did that get in there. I dumped it out on the dock.  I caught a few fish on the way to Cordwood Creek, but not sure where as it was so lumpy I couldn’t tell I had fish on the gear. When I ran along the shore from Cordwood to False Pt Retreat, it was really lumpy. And fishy. There were lots of fish here and I was again the only one there. I pulled my gear once past False Pt Retreat, and beat my brains in against the 3 foot waves back down to Cordwood to start again. I did this 2 or 3 times. I scratched 16 fish, and 14 of them were hogs.

I called in to the fish processor at Auke Bay and they said to bring the fish in and they’d be glad to buy them. My last tack north I continued from False Pt Retreat to Point Retreat and then pulled in all my gear as I was at the open/closed border, then cleaned the last two fish, and headed for the processor. I kept one seal-bit fish back for Chris, sold the rest to the processor, loaded my small fish tote with ice for the next trip, then headed for our crab pots.

The pots were loaded. Boy this was my day. I had saved roe from 3 female fish to rebait the 3 pots, plus the head from the fish for Chris. Then I headed for the boat ramp. I refueled the boat, then brought it home, and delivered the fish and crab to Chris and his crew.

I had boy scouts at 7, and had about an hour and half to do some chores. I pulled off my dirty laundry, and when I looked into a dry bag – there was another live mouse. I dumped it out to run into the woods. Now I’ll have to pull everything out of the little cabin to be sure there are no more. I wonder if they got onto the boat in my driveway and were with me all the time, or did they jump on at the dock in Funter Bay. A serious mystery.

Along with my own patch, I have a trapline of people in town who let me pick their rhubarb. I think most inherited their plants with their homes and just don’t use it.

After I harvest, I dice it up and vacuum pack in about 4 cup bags. The freezer is filling up with rhubarb. I’ve made jam with rhubarb alone, rhubarb and cherries, pies, and chutney.  But after canning cases of all of these, the rhubarb still continues to grow in the freezer.

I started making bagels when the pandemic started. I’ve tried making bread many times in the past. I can do all of the mixing and kneading and rising with the bread, but bake time was always a wild card. The recipe might call for 50 minutes, and I’d pull the bread out then. When we’d go to eat it, it was soft in the middle. Probably needed 5 or 10 minutes more.

Bagels are different. You make the dough, let it rise a couple times, shape bagels, and let it rise again. The cooking part is alot more fool proof: First you boil, them you bake. The bagels are supposed to be chewy. And chewy is a big range. They always come out okay.

So, how to use the rhubarb. I’ve tried adding some to batches, and have gradually increased the amount of rhubarb. The last batch, I used 4.5 cups of flour with teaspoon of salt. 1 cup of sourdough starter with a 1.5 teaspoons of yeast, and 2 cups of rhubarb puree. The rhubarb puree is 2 cups of diced rhubarb with sugar sprinkled on top, baked in the toaster oven at 450 degrees for 20 minutes, and then pureed in the Vitamix.

I put the puree in the bottom of the kitchen aid bowl, then poured in the dry flour and salt, and then the sourdough starter with yeast, and mixed with the kitchen aid bread hook. I added a little water as the hook worked the dough as needed until it was just moist enough to form a mass of dough that looked right, then let it knead with the bread hook for 10 minutes or so.

I did two, ~ 2 hour rises of the dough, and it had a slight reddish hue from the rhubarb.

After the second rise, I made rings of dough, and put them on cookie sheets lined with parchment paper and let them rise a bit longer.

On the stove, I put on about a gallon of water with a 1/4 cup of sugar and 2 teaspoons of baking soda to boil.

When the water was boiling, I boiled the bagels for a minute on each side, then put them on a rack drip dry.

I brushed the tops of them with egg white wash, put them on cookie sheets lined with parchment paper, and baked them for 20 minutes at 425 degrees.

The bagels came out nice and chewy, and you can’t tell or really taste the rhubarb.

I’m going to try to increase the rhubarb volume to 3 cups for the next batch and see how that goes.

Jeff and I went south again today in search of kelp and a black bear. Once we left Gastineau Channel, I think we saw one or two other boats today. We knew where the kelp was after the last trip, and on our way there, we found another bed so we stopped and got what we wanted and piled it into the cooler. The kelp is growing fast now, and we got some real trophy stipes.

We continued on, seeing lots of whales. We saw 15 total today, with 2 cow/calf pairs.  We went to look for a bear in Limestone Inlet, and there were 5 whales in the narrow bay. There is a hatchery release of chum salmon there. The smolt have already been released since the net pens are gone, but apparently the smolt stuck around and the whales were taking advantage.

On we went south to a long creek flat bordered on either side by steep hills. That was our destination, as today we were going to look around this flat rather than cruise lots of beaches. Jeff thought it looked the good last time we visited this place. After I anchored the boat and rowed to shore in the punt, we started walking up the big flat of grass. Not 5 or 10 minutes of walking and I spotted a bear on the opposite side. It was eating grass along the tree line at the base of the hill. We sat down under a tree to be out of sight – not that the bear would have spotted us some 500 yards away – and watched.

I initially thought it was a brown bear. It was brown, and had what I thought was a hump. But Jeff wasn’t sure. The bear was continuing to come our way on the opposite side of the flat. We decided to head to the other side now while we had time and hope the bear kept coming all the way out to our position near the ocean.

The creek through the grass flat was deeper than my knee boots. Jeff forded the river in his hip waders, and I stayed put. There were some huge boulders here at the mouth of the river, spread out across the flat, making perfect cover for us.

As the bear continued our way, it would go in and out of sight behind rocks, or in the brush, but eventually it was visible again, and it kept coming up along the edge of the woods, ravenously eating grass.  As it got close to us, I watched though Jeff’s spotting scope as it hopped up and over a rock. I saw its paws and saw it was a black bear. A cinnamon bear.

A couple times the bear ran a few steps forward and looked nervous. He always looked back where he’d come from and not our way. Like maybe there was a bigger bear in the area. We never saw another bear, although from all the grass cropped on the flat, there surely could be one in the area.

He kept coming toward’s Jeff’s position. Jeff was prone on the top of a rock with a perfect rest and watching the bear move his way. When the bear was about 100 yards away and broadside, Jeff squeezed off a .338 round. I saw the shot go through the middle of the bear, maybe a tad high and a tad back from the heart, but certainly a shot through the boiler room. The bear kind of hopped just a bit and ran into the brush.

I headed over to help Jeff find the bear and take care of it. I went upstream to find a spot to cross in my knee boots, but finding none, I just waded across and got wet.  I met Jeff at the brush line where he thought the bear went in. With the sound of the rushing creek, we couldn’t hear any brush crash when the bear ran in. The brush was a tangle of devils club and alder, with a few big spruce trees here and there, and big craggy rocks. There were only a few paths you could take to go up hill in the tangle.

We looked for blood or hair and found none. Jeff indicated the spot he hit the bear and where the bear had run into the brush, but I didn’t see any sign of busted brush. We both entered the brush side by side about 20 yards apart, heading up hill. The slope uphill was gradual for about 20 yards, and then turned steep. I couldn’t conceive that the wounded bear could have gone up the steep hill, but we didn’t see any sign.

We regrouped, and this time we paralleled each other going side hill, venturing much further on either side of where the bear entered the brush, but again, no sign. I didn’t think we could have missed it and thought somehow the bear must had gone up the steep hill.

By now, the tide had turned and was starting to rush in. I needed to back to the punt before the tide got too high and move the boat over to our side of the cove. I had to cross the mouth of the creek. I was already wet, and so was prepared to wade. As I got to the middle of the creek, the water was up to my belly, and I thought the other side would shallow up to the bank. It didn’t. It was a cut bank of sorts. I got to my nipples and was on my toes, between swimming and wading, when I got to the other side and up the bank.

I rowed out to the boat, pulled the anchor, and moved the boat to the other side of the cove, where Jeff met me with our packs gear. I had spare clothes in the emergency bag on the boat. The clothes were vac packed in bags, and so were fresh and dry. As I changed, Jeff said he wanted to go take one more look near the beach for the bear and would be back in an hour or so. I said to fire off a round if he found the bear.

As Jeff returned the 1/4 mile to the spot the bear went into the woods, I changed out of my wet clothes into dry ones, and hung the wet clothes up on the bars of the roof rack. Then I muscled the punt up onto the roof rack and secured it. Next I got out my gun case and started to case my rifle when the shot rang out. I dropped everything, put out the anchor with a line tied to it, and ran the line up to a tree. The tide was rising so the boat would float right here by the shore.

I walked back and found Jeff just finishing gutting the bear. I held on to the bears legs as Jeff finished removing the innards. The bear had been less than 10 yards from where Jeff hit him. He’d run into the brush, and fallen under a log. The bear was right there all the time. It’s one thing to go hunting and not have a chance at game. It’s worse to shoot, know you hit your target and not find it. We were elated.

By now, the tide was really flooding. After wading the creek mouth over an hour prior, I knew I could run up the creek not far from our position and load the bear. Jeff and I floated the bear across a slough into the creek.  This was easier than dragging it, and helped to cool the meat down and wash out the body cavity.  Jeff loves bear meat.  He gave away much of his first bear so he was grateful to get his second bear as the season closes tomorrow.  He mainly cans it, which ensures it’s fully cooked as bears can carry a parasite that can be passed to us humans.

Jeff continued to the rendezvous site, while I returned to the kill site to collect our packs and Jeff’s rifle, and headed for the boat. We were both happy campers now and the walking was easy.

I picked up Jeff and the bear, and we headed for home, reveling in our luck and grand adventure.

About out of the pesto I made in 2017, so gathered up what I need for a new batch.

I used about 6 cups of raw fiddleheads, 3 cups of raw nettles and 4 cups of frozen blanched devils club buds,  1/4 (? – 6 to 8 oz?) pine nuts, 1/4 cup lemon juice, 1/4 cup lime juice, 3 tsp garlic powder, 3 tsp pepper, and several cranks of salt from the salt grinder thingy.

Steamed the nettles and fiddleheads, then dumped into a colander and ran cold water over them. Put the greens and nuts in the food processor little by little to finely grind it all, added the juices and spices to it all it a big bowl, then added olive oil til it was the right consistency.

This year, I’m gonna try to freeze it in the ice trays like I’ve seen online and then vacuum pack bags of a few cubes each.