Wilderness Blues- Ramblings from the Great Land

  Last week I went out with my number one crew hand Adam, and in what turned out to be a very wise decision on my part, a lady friend who owns the F/V Talache. I was having a heck of a time finding a second crew hand, when the idea occurred to me to ask Barbie if she would like to go.She jumped at the chance and I was so glad I asked  her. She was the perfect addition to the crew. The trip, as often is the case, didn't start off so well. I hooked up the long line drum and when I turned on the hydraulics, the motor that I had purchased just three years ago started puking hydraulic fluid like a college kid after an all night bender. What a hassle! The only person in town who works on hydraulics was out of town on vacation-go figure. Soooo..... I had to send the motor over to Juneau and order a new one, for a mere $775.00. We hadn't even set the first hook and I was already in the hole. Anyway, the second day I got the new motor hooked up and we ma...

A Pacific Halibut about 71 pounds before gutting and removing the head Three troll caught, ocean bright Alaskan King Salmon. The largest one was 22 pounds Locally caught Dungeness crabs. My son's caught these in two pots set overnight Fresh blueberries from the back yard. The kids picked about two gallons in a few hours Samonberries from around the house               One of the joys of living in Alaska is that there is so much to enjoy of nature's bounty. Many Alaskan's, especially those of us who are living outside of the larger towns, utilize the abundance of food sources that are prevalent here. Every season brings something that can be harvested. Right now salmon and halibut are abundant, and the wise person catches some for now and some for the long winter ahead. For many people, especially those out in the bush, smoking fish has been a way to preserve it for hundreds of years. Now we...

   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...

Salmon fishing was a little slow this week, and since I didn't know when it would pick up, and since I had to catch my 902 pound quota of halibut, I figured I'd go ahead and load up the long line reel and get her done. I was fortunate enough to be able to enlist the services of Captain Marc  Miller of the Fishing Vessel Mickey V to come crew with me. There is no way I can do the halibut fishery by myself. The top picture shows three halibut of pretty substantial size. Two of them weighed 111 pounds each. The one in the center is supposed to be 129 pounds. Thats according to the tide book. In the back is a chart that gives the lengths and the corresponding live weight and net weight after the gills and guts are removed. I think the bigges one was about 67 inches long. It might have been longer I can't recall. I don't have a tide book with me at the moment to double check. The gross weight was like 176 pounds or some such thing. It was a struggle to get thes...