Wilderness Blues- Ramblings from the Great Land

  It's hard to believe but for all intents and purposes the 2013 fishing season is over, at least for me.  In my last three trips out fishing I've only caught a total of ten cohos- hardly enough to make it worth the while. With fuel costing upwards of $5.00 a gallon and the boat burning about eight gallons a day on a short day, it doesn't make sense to go out. Last year, or maybe it was the year before, I started heading out on the last day of the season. I saw that even the hard-nosed trollers were tied up and even though I made it out of the harbor, I got discouraged and turned around and came back in without even dropping a line. On my way back in I saw one of the guys who fishes only sporadically anymore, and then usually doesn't do much, leaving the harbor. I wished him luck but frankly didn't believe he would catch anything. As it was,  he went just to Point Sophia and caught sixty cohos for the short time he was there- about six hundred ...

   Hi- thanks for joining me here. Tonight I would like to share with you a tale. Unlike the tales of the Grimm brothers, this tale is true and involves yours truly. This tale is from a long time ago, relatively speaking, and while it could have been sad for me, fortunately it wasn't. So, sit back, grab a refreshing beverage, cold or hot and join me as I travel back in time with a story from my past. Years ago, in a simpler, happier time, there was no EPA or other government sanctioned terrorist groups. In those days, when Autumn came and the leaves began to fall, folks used to rake them up and pile them in huge stacks out on the curb. Kids used to ride their bikes through them and scatter leaves over the same areas they had just been raked away from.  Eventually, I guess in an effort to keep from having to rake the same leaves again, it was a common practice to set the leaves on fire right there on the street. Now, I have no idea how the asphalt kept ...

   When most folks think about Alaska, sharks never even come to mind. I'd never heard that there were sharks here until I started commercial fishing some years back. One year I leased the troller Acadia from one of my friend from the farm. It was June and I went up in Port Fredrick to a place just known as the waterfalls, oddly enough because there is a waterfall right there. Anyway, one of the local highliners, Joar Savland, was fishing his boat, the Standy up there. I was still learning the fishing business at the time, so I thought it would be wise to follow behind him a few boat lengths and spy on him with the binoculars, you know, see what he was using, how fast he was trolling and so on. Well, I got distracted somehow, maybe I even had a bite, I don't remember, but anyhow I lost track of him for a bit. When I located him again I noticed a fin circling a ways behind his boat. I thought he had knocked a big King Salmon off his line and it was stunned. I figured that i...

  Today is Labor Day- September 2. It's hard for me to believe that it's upon us already. Back in May, at the beginning of the fishing season, this day seemed so far away. The days of summer were almost twenty four hours long, with some semblance of darkness occurring in the wee hours of the morning. Now I have to rush home to beat the dark, lest I be caught in the middle of Icy Strait in the pitch blackness. I guess Labor Day is considered the official end of summer, although ours ended several weeks ago. That old familiar chill in the air followed by the first brown leaves falling from the alders were a sure sign; that and the white, shriveled tops of the Fireweed. Oh we still had some gorgeous days, warm, even hot, but they are coming to end. In the thirty six years that I've been here I can't remember a finer summer though. I hope we don't have to pay for our unexpected pleasure this winter. Well, I have a houseful of family visiting and I...