Chinook Winds & Ice Fog

We made it over the hump!  The holidays are over and the days are getting longer.  We are gaining about 2 minutes of daylight everyday!  Sunrise today was at 10:06 and sunset is at 4:10.  We are on the upswing.  Good.
Last week the Chinook Winds hit the state of Alaska and temperatures went from 7 below to 44 in the matter of two days.  We went from winter wonderland to spring break-up like mush.  Though most complained about the soggy messy conditions, I personally enjoyed a few days reprieve from the sub-zero temps.  35 felt balmy.  But now we are back to normal and it's 10 degrees out.  Since the ground had  a few days to warm up before the temperate dropped again, ice fog forms.  The whole Anchorage bowl was pea soup for a few days and hoar frost was created covering every branch and limb on every tree.  It's beautiful, really though we couldn't see the sun for days.  However, the skies have finally cleared and we can go about winter again ice skating and what not.  Though, we could use some new snow to improve cross country ski conditions.

While winter is whiling away the days the salmon are out milling around.  And can you hear them?  All those salmon out sniffing around in the ocean, sniffing their way back home to AK waters.  Even the little humpies are making their way back.  I wonder if they feel like they have made it over the hump.  If they have made it to their turn around point.  If they have this innate "turn around"  point.  "Hey Charlie, this is it.  We turn around here."  Or perhaps it's a turn around date.  1/1/11 time to turn back.  Either way, they are coming.  And I am waiting.  We all are.   

I feel as though I have made it over the hump too.  I'm starting to count down the days until fishing season again.  I'm gearing up to head back to Cordova in a few months for another round of net mending and fish slaying.  Videos like these get me all pumped for another season.  Plus it's just fun seeing all my buddies on camera.  I hope this gets you excited about salmon, too!  Fish-on!

Aloha

As I settle in for my 16th winter in Alaska, I notice the novelty of it all is starting to wear thin.  I can't decide, though, which is worse the cold or the dark.  Granted, 6 degrees isn't that cold, but 5 hours of daylight isn't that much either.  So, what do I when it gets cold and dark?  First, I grumble.  Then I go to Hawaii!

This year I decided to try getting out early. Usually, I wait until after the holidays.   Granted, November is full on winter here, but the gamble here is that when I return, the days will still be getting shorter.   And there will still be a good 4 months of winter left.  Hey, if we get 2 feet of snow at the end of April, I'm calling that winter.  Time will tell if this is a good move or not.  But mark my words, this will be my last winter in Anchorage.  (Please, someone mark my words.  And if I'm here in Anchorage this time next, someone  please hit me with a largest cast iron frying pan within arms reach).  Call me what you will,  a wimp, a snow bird, whatever. I don't care.  I need sunshine.

Speaking of sunshine, there is tons of it in Hawaii!  It was great!  I woke up at 6:30 every morning (OK, 7:00) and the sun was already up and the birds were chirping. With the fragrance of Plumerias hanging in the air,  I'd grab a cup of coffee and head down to the beach, I wondered down to check out the morning colors and the waves. I'd shoo the wild turkeys milling around out of the way as I made my way across the out of business golf course that is now, instead of green and lush, brown weeds and red dirt. On the bright side, no worries of a concussion before breakfast from a soaring golf ball.

 Days were spent on the beach snorkeling and soaking up as much vitamin D as possible. And if I got too much sun, I just marched over to the aloe plant and applied liberally. By the next day, I was good to go.

In the evening, we would all scramble to grab an adult beverage and bamboo mat to head back down to the beach to watch the sunset. This was the only time in our day that we actually had to rush.  Sunsets are quick in winter in  Hawaii.  Opposed to Alaska where they start at sunrise and last all day long. Though short, they are sweet.  Hues of orange and red melting into gold and peppered with shadows of palm trees, as we wait, hoping to witness the green flash that only occurs with sunsets on the ocean.  Shortly after, Venus would appear, followed my countless other stars, all visible with the lack of light pollution. It was magic.

And my oh my, the fruit.  We had fresh papayas, mangoes, bananas, oranges, limes, Tahitian  limes, lemons, star fruit, and passion fruit, to name a few. Everyday! Then we had fresh kale, arugula, cilantro, cilantro pesto, cucumbers, avocados, and mixed salad greens.  And  Poke, which is one of my favorites.  Poke (pronounced pou,k'ei) is a traditional Hawaiin dish that consists of cured  ahi sashimi (raw yellowfin tuna) marinated in sea salt, soy sauce, sesame oil, and chili pepper with some Maui sweet onion, seaweed, and garlic.  It's typically eaten with chop sticks and is dee-lish!  Other gems I tried were cilantro-pesto, made with cilantro, lime, garlic, olive oil, and pine nuts.  It was great on pizza or pasta salad with sun-dried tomatoes, feta cheese, and olives.  Massaged kale with tamarind and avocados washed down with Hibiscus, lemon grass and mint iced tea made the favorites list.  As well as Coconut Porter from Maui Brewery.  Yum.

Thanksgiving dinner was a real treat for me.  We had dinner outside on the porch over looking the ocean.  I think that was my only Turkey Day dinner eaten out of doors. I loved it. Until a felt a centipede scamper across my foot.  I still enjoyed it after that, but wouldn't put my feet down.  I may be a tuff fisherman, but I don't like creepy crawly things on my toes.

After about 10 days on Molokai, we flew out on a Cessna Caravan, which held 7 passengers, on our 25 minute flight back to Maui.  Due do wind conditions, which were about 25 knots out of the North, we flew over the north shore of the island.  It was spectacular!  We went right over Kalaupapa, the Leper Colony (http://visitmolokai.com/kala.html) and next to the tallest sea cliffs in the world, rising over 2000 feet from the ocean with some truly magnificent views of the 1, 750-foot Kahiwa Falls.



After that, just a few more short days in Maui were spent soaking up rays on the beach and snorkeling checking out the many varieties of coral and fishes.  Below is a photo of Ahiha-Kina'u Natural Area Reserve near Makena on the south shore of Maui.  Great clear water and old lave flow that goes right into the beach!

All in all, it was a spectacular trip, just what the doctor ordered, fun in the sun.  Now, I'm back in Anchorage, refreshed and busy writing.  Until next time......

Mele Kalikimaka

Happy Holidays

Anchored Down in Anchorage

After spending the last five months or so in Cordova, I'm back in the big city.  It's quite a transition to be back.  Driving here is the hardest to get used to.  Compared to other cities, Anchorage is relatively mild to drive around, we don't even have any freeways.  However, compared to Cordova, where there isn't even one traffic light, Anchorage might as well be the moon.  I feel like I'm racing around like Mario Andretti, yet cars are passing me like I'm standing still.  And I miss the beauty of Cordova.  But, I don't miss the rain.  Don't get me wrong, it is good to be back, it's just taking some getting used to.

And I have been writing more.  Writing lots, actually.  And reading and writing and  rewriting and rewriting and rewriting.  I'm also pleasantly neurotic now, so I must be making headway as a writer.  I keep thinking "who would ever want to read this shit?"  So, from what I understand from other writers, I'm right on track.  Unless, I am actually right and every word that I have ever uttered is all garbage, then what?  Well, this is when I lie to myself and say it's not that bad and keep writing anyway.  I try to ignore the little voice in my head that tells me, with every letter that I type, that its all horse shit. I continue to ignore that little voice that gets louder, also with every letter I type, until it sounds like Tom Waits is singing with a megaphone and I hope the neighbors don't call the cops on me as I'm sure this voice is real and making quite a ruckus.    But then I think if the cops did come and arrest me, that would be a welcome distraction from this cycle of nonsense I am engaged in.  Oh sure, there are times when I am at peace with all of this, like the other night when I got so drunk I couldn't remember my own name.  I was quite pleasantly oblivious of that little voice then. :)  Anyway, I'll keep typing and keep yelling "Shut-up!" until they come to take me away.

Good news!  I found a mentor.  Though, he doesn't know he is my mentor, unless he reads my blog.  He is an old boss, well, I only worked for him for about 4 days.  It was back in about '94 or '95 when Prince William Sound opened up for herring for the first time since the 1989 Exxon Valdez Oil Spill.  Everyone was all excited and everyone showed up.  Everyone, except, unfortunately, the herring.  It was a total bust and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game shut it down and has not reopened it since.

The boat I worked on was the Quinn Delta and the skipper's name is Mark.  As fate would have it, I bumped into Mark this summer while in Cordova.  I think it was the first time I'd seen him since that dismal herring opener.  We visited and caught up with each other.  Turns out, Mark and his wife Nancy have been sailing all over the place for the past ten years or so and writing about it.  They even sailed around Antarctica. You can check out their blog for yourself at: http://www.krillroye.blogspot.com/.  Its good stuff.  Anyway, I told Mark what I was up to, writing and what not.  Since then he's been kind enough to give me advice on writing, trying to point me in the right direction and the like.  He even did some editing for me!  Check it out.

A FISHERMAN’S COMMUTE

It’s obscenely early on a Monday morning, what’s likely to be a typical fishing day.  My alarm sounds-off at 4:00 am, but it barely gets in a single ring before I bound from the bed, my feet landing on the cold wooden floor of my tiny rented room at the old abandoned cannery now known as Fisherman’s Camp.  Stumbling around as quietly as possible so as not to disturb my neighbors on the other sides of the paper-thin walls, I gather up the clothes I’d laid out the night before: a blood stained sweatshirt and course brown-duck Carhart jeans, oil stained and rent with holes from battery acid, a product of the endless maintenance that is much of a fisherman’s daily work.  Cold as I pull them on, my simple raiment puts me in the fishing mood as I tip-toe down the dark oiled wood hallway, willing my footsteps to be silent.  Silent not in consideration of my neighbors, but of stealth.  Just as one pulls up the anchor as quietly as possible to steal away from the anchorage, I slip out the door, hoping to leave unnoticed in order to get a head start.

My car, a well traveled ‘82 Subaru with faux zebra-skin seat covers and luminescent stars pasted on the headliner that I’d bought from a sixteen year old girl whose dreams of luxury could never be satisfied by such conveyance, starts instantly with the push of a button.  The faulty ignition switch had long since been replaced by fisherman’s ingenuity.  But my concerted efforts at stealth prove futile.  The engine roars to life, greeting the day’s work through an exhaust system nearly as full of holes as my jeans. I put it in reverse and hear the rumble of the wooden planks of the pier on which the old cannery has stood for decades.  Fearing I’d just awakened the entire camp, I finally turn on to the paved road and head for the harbor in the pitch dark, a full constellation of paste-on stars glowing above my head.  This is the time I love the best because of the stillness. I find it  consuming and comforting.  I pause and savor the tranquil moment, knowing that all too well my world will soon be in constant motion from the instant I step onto my boat until I tie up again secure in my slip.    But for now the succlent moss and trees of the dense forest of Prince William Sound are an eerie, unnaturally dark green.    The town remains still and quiet.  Mount Eccles stands above me on the left, the ocean lies beside me to my right.............

Old Fishing Pics

End of the Season Highlights

The Copper River Salmon Fishery 2010 has finally come to an end.  It finished up a few weeks ago.  After our grueling 60 hour openers, we finally got a break.  There is usually a break between the end of the reds run and silvers showing up and this year was no different.  I had time to catch up on life things and mend nets.  Then silver season hit full swing.  Though it wasn't as grand as we had hoped.  I kept hearing rumors that there was a flood during the parent year of this run and it washed out many of the eggs.  Silvers was pretty good if you went to the east end of the Flats.  We did OK.  We stayed on the west side but managed to scratch a season out of it.  And, the weather was nice. Nicest silver season ever, I reckoned. Cordova even set a record for the most sunny days in a row.  15!  Beat the previous record by 1 day. (In case the reader is curious, it is not currently sunny in Cordova right now.  Matter of fact, its a down right snot storm.  48F, blowing about 25K gusting 35K and of course, rain.  It's the kind of day where it will rain in your ear.  The marine forecast = East 50 and 32' seas.)

The season is over but the memory of the season is still lingering. I want to share some of the highlights that I jotted down.  Most of the following are either bits of conversation from the boat or what we heard on the radio or the docks.  Enjoy!



Skipper: "Hey, there is your buddy, corking us.  I want you to curse at her and I mean curse.  And I get to choose your words."

"I wonder if its too late to get a seine job?" One gill net skipper to another, referring to the epic pink run in Prince William  Sound.

After we take off and start running east.  Then we do a 180 and head west.  I ask Skipper "What's up?"  "My plotter's tellin' me I'm going the wrong way."

"Skipper, you used to crab.  What was it like?"  Skipper: "... just set me down in a chair and beat me with a club."

Native elder to Skipper years ago.  Skipper: "Do you have a tide book?"  Native elder: "Tide book?  Tide comes in, tide goes out.  You don't need no book to tell you that."

"Yeah, he sounds like a pro but has a rookie hair cut."

"We only have 55 fish, but at least I don't have a pipe pole sticking out of my head."  Skipper after I accidentally hit him in the head with the pipe pole about 5 times before I realized what was happening.

"Well, looky there.  It's almost working."

"What about that fish?  You gonna call that a humpy?"

Fisherman who just returned fishing 64 and 80 hour openers in Prince William Sound: "I had to stick my whole head in the pencil sharpener.  I had hair and whiskers out to here. My girlfriend came up to me and asked "is that you?"

Same fisherman referring to getting jelly fish in the eye: "The dull pain of soap in the eyes is refreshing compared to the searing ice pick pain of jellies."


"The same could be said about all of us, but he's worse."

"Don't tell him what we caught, I don't want to make him feel bad."

"What's he doing runnin' from the fish?  Well, good luck.  Hope you get some."

"Look at this f#@kin' net.  I can't even believe it." Referring to crazy top current that kept collapsing the net despite our best towing efforts.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) when asked what being on a boat was like: "It's like prison, with a chance of drowning."

"It was the damndest thing I've ever seen.  And this is a true story........."

"It's lookin' pretty dead.  I hope they're hittin' deep.  They like to tickle their backs as they go under."

"Them coke years was a mother-f*#ker.  Ain't nobody can survive that shit..........again."

"He went dry, dumb son of a bitch."

"We ain't got no water. The only pace we could go dry, we did."

"Don't ever ask if it can get worse.  The answer is always yes."

"When fishin' you hit that stage of exhaustion that you can't imagine, unless you've been there."

"Me?  I hide my weed in my Froot Loops."

"And we didn't even have to call for help.........like a baby."

"We're gonna f*$k him.  He's been there long enough."

"I gotta get the combine out I got so much grass in my net."  "Yeah,....  There's so much of it, it looks like a freakin' blanket.  Ain't no way I could go outside."

"I was broke down. No heat.  No way to cook.  I ate canned salmon and cold corn.  It sucked."

"Cut him some slack.  He went swimmin' in the Bering Sea in the winter.  In his underwear."

Fish Tales

Can you friggin' believe it?  Some twits from Maine corked me on my own book title.  I saw it in this month's National Fisherman or some fish rag.  We were running, Gordon was driving and all the sudden I yelled some free flowing litany of curse words.  So much the Gordon stopped the boat to see what was wrong. "Someone stole my book title!!!"  Gordon didn't respond, he just reved 'er back up againkept running.  The book, Fish Tales: Sustainable fish, blabla and Recipes or something to that affect is about just that, I guess.  I couldn't bring myself to read the rest of the article, I was too pissed off and assume that they found my blog here and stole my idea.  Oh well, I'm over it now.  I'll just have to come up with a sexier title.  I also decided to nix the idea of putting recipes in my book, thinking now that its just too namby-pamby.  My book will be more gruff-n-X-tra-Tuff than that.  I don't think those guys are even fisherman.  On the flip side, there is a book out, by actual fisherman called "Fishes and Dishes".  These gals, who I met years ago in SouthEast, crab, pot fish cod, tender and whatnot wrote a fishing cookbook.  It can be found at http://www.fishesanddishes.com/.
OK, moving on.  I've been fishing the Copper River Flats since mid May now and the fishery is in full swing.  It's now wide open and we are fishing two 60 hour periods a week.  This is just one of the many changes since I last fished here.  Back then, a 48 hour period was about the longest we would have to endure.  Now, for those of you who have not done the math yet, two 60 hour a week openers puts you at a minimum of a 120 hour work week.  That makes for a grog filled head, to say the least.  And my left pinky does this weird twichy thing which I find very annoying.
Fisherman are never happy, we always have something to wine about.  Not enough fishing time, too much fishing time.  Whatever.  So, we fished our 60 hours, went to town.  Left the next day for another 60 hours.  Went to town for less than 12 hours and went for another 60 hours.  Lack of sleep starts to set in and a sub-humanness starts to take over.  You get this 1000 yard stare.  Tempers flare.  And you start not to care.  Everything rhymes, every time.  Ok, enuf.  Where's my Xtra-Tuff?  But, skipper decided we needed an R&R, go to the bank, and other things we haven't been able to do for weeks.  So we took of yesterday and ran to town.  I got home and found that I literally didn't even know what to do with myself.  I was tired, hungry and is desperate need of a shower.  So the question is, which do you do first?  I didn't know, so I had a beer.  Then I wandered down to my friends house for a shower.  Ran into a fellow fisherman who was done for the season.  He fished Prince William Sound, where they were fishing a 60 followed by a 84.  That leaves 12 hours between openers.  He had had a few days to rest up and regroup.  He understood where I was and offered to make me dinner.  We had this incredible meal of mashed sweet potatoes, tri-tips on the grill, this killer blue cheese and avocado salad and a nice red wine.  Thanks Mark!!  That super hit the spot.  Soon after, I took a 11 hour coma.  When I work I had an amazingly strong cup of coffee and am on my way to reducing my 1000 yard stare.  I think I'm about at the 350 yard line now.  By tomorrow, I should be right as rain.  Just in time to go out and do it again!
But before I go, I want to try to share with you some photos from the Flats. 

Jen and a King Salmon

Fishin' Again

Wowza. Bad blogger. Father, I have a confession, its been 61 days since my last blog. Sorry folks and followers, I fell of the wagon there. And speaking of falling off the wagon, I fell of the wagon of being a recovering commercial fisherman. Yup, I'm fishing again. I knew coming back to Cordova for the summer would be like an alcoholic walking into a bar. Its just too tempting, but, then again, I wanted to be tempted.
I decided to pack up and head over to Cordova for the summer. I figured I could do some net mending and see what happens. I got myself a trailer, filled it to the brim with everything I might possibly need, eat and drink the next 3 months, threw the cat in and took off. I caught the Whittier tunnel with 5 minutes to spare, hopped on the ferry and settled in.
Life has been cozy for me and the cat, Hunter in a 6x12 foot trailer. But all is good. Its at a beautiful location at the base of a ski hill. That's not to say life doesn't have its challenges, honestly, cooking is a pain in the ass, but do-able.
I've been busy mending nets and was on the dock one day mending when a buddy of mine drives up with his boat. He leans out the window and asks "wanna go fishin?" I say "yeah" he says "wanna go Monday?" Again, I say "yeah". And the rest, as they say, is history. That was over a month ago and that's all it took, I've been fishin since.
I'm still mending on the closures and fishing the Copper River Flats twice a week. Fishing is a little slow, but we grind away and make a go of it.
So, that's the haps here. Will have pix soon!