Wilderness Blues- Ramblings from the Great Land

     The girls and I had such a good time last week when we went to Kepler Lake, we decided to go fishing again. Liz has been on vacation, and Autumn has been off work waiting for the new location for the cafe' to get the necessary permits so they can open. We wanted to try Hatcher Pass again. Last time I was there in June with Camille and her daughter Justine, there was still ice and a foot of snow on the lake. I checked with Fish and Game and found out that they stocked the lake on July 4, but it still had ice and snow on it. We figured by now, it had to have thawed out. We wanted to catch some of the thousand trout that ADFG had stocked. This time, I figured that I would offer the trout something other than nightcrawlers so I wouldn't have to spend all my time baiting the girl's hooks. I brought a handful of frozen, raw shrimp with me. I still ended up baiting some of the hooks and taking a few of the fish off, but for the most part, I spent most of my time baiting my ...

I should be down cleaning out the fish hold and getting it ready to receive a shot of ice for the upcoming opening, but I was actually able to get on the internet for a few minutes and so far got one picture to download, so I thought I had better take advantage of the opportunity. We are in the middle of a four day closure for cohos, which really worked out good for me because I had to do a bi-annual cleaning of the forest service building, which includes cleaning all the windows inside and out and powerwashing the whole building outside,as well as shampooing all five thousand square feet of carpet. It's quite a chore so I was happy that I could do it during he closure. The tides are huge right now too, and I don't normally like to fish too much when there is so much water moving. Depending on whether you're going with or against the tide, the boat is either going too fast or too slow. If you go cross ways to it the lines can sometimes get tangled. It's best just to avo...

Here's a shot of one of the tour boats that anchor out by the cannery. This is looking through the tunnel on the way out to Icy Strait Point. Everyone here has always called it Cannery Point, but once tourism took hold I guess the powers that be felt like it had to have a classier name or some such thing. Most of the locals still just call it Cannery Point though. That's not all that's changed with the coming of tourism to Hoonah. On the days when the ships are in there is a steady stream of busses and large vans up and down the roads, as well as hundreds of people walking up and down the roads. The town has roughly 850 people, so when you throw in another 500- to 1,000, it makes an impact. Then to have six or eight large city busses running through a town that doesn't even have a stop light, it starts feeling kind of crowded. I'm not overly enamored with the whole tourism thing. My biggest complaint is that so many seemed to have left common courtesy and common ...