Wilderness Blues- Ramblings from the Great Land

     I suspect that if you were to check the garages, basements or closets of most  American households, you would no doubt find at least one fishing rod. Perhaps more. In some cases many more. When my friend Bob Pinard was getting ready to move, he took me into a storage room where there must have been dozens of rods and reels. I knew that he didn't fish all that much, so I wondered why he had so many. Well, Bob's a very practical guy. When he sees a bargain, he takes advantage of it. Apparently, down through the years he's run into a number of yard sales or moving sales or whatever, and when something was cheap enough, he grabbed it up. Of course the only problem with that is finding a place to put them all, and if space isn't an issue, what do you do with them all? It's too bad he didn't have a lodge or some other tourist business. He could have rented them out for a profit. I have a few rods of my own, maybe six or so. I have an o...

    It's mid-February and while much of the mid-west and east coast is suffering through brutal storms, here in Alaska it's uncommonly warm. Today the sun is shining. I looked out on the bay and it's like a mill pond. Everything within me wants to go drag some gear around and see if I couldn't hook into a few King Salmon. I spoke to my friend, Captain Jim Dybdahl the other day. He's on his way down to Sitka to join the troll fleet there and get his share of the winter harvest. He mentioned that about 37,000 Kings have been caught of the 47,000 that is allotted to the winter troll season. It usually runs from October 11 to April 15 the following year, but for the past few years the weather has been mild and the fish have been plentiful. If I had brain number one I'd go join him, but no one ever accused me of being too smart. The good weather has, however, gotten me interested in getting my boat and tackle squared away in preparation for the spring. ...

    When I woke up last Sunday, I was greeted with a fine layer of fog blanketing the town. I wasn't really surprised. The night before it was clear and cold out, and this time of year when that happens, if the moisture content in the air is sufficient, we end up with fog.  Of course we get fog at all times during the year, summer, spring, fall, and sometimes winter.  If the conditions are right it can set up, and oftentimes it can be a real pain. On Sunday the fog dissipated out over the bay, but looking back towards Ear Mountain it was so thick you could just about gather it in buckets. Because I was on the land and I didn't have any place that I needed to be, I kind of enjoyed it. When I'm out in the boat it's another story all together. Even though I have a GPS to let me know where I am, it doesn't tell me if I've got another boat in front of me. For that I need my radar. Unfortunately the radar crapped the bed last year. Of cour...