Wilderness Blues- Ramblings from the Great Land

  Some years back, when I was living in Hoonah, I became the manager of the L. Kane Store. I always thought that it was a stupid name for a store, until a lady who was a friend of the family who owned the store mentioned that when it was established, back in 1893, women owning businesses was frowned upon. Her name was Louise Kane, and in order to do business with suppliers in Seattle, she shortened the name to L. Kane's. It was one of three stores in Hoonah at the time, and unfortunately was the one that a local fisherman named Frank preferred to shop at. He lived on his small wooden fishing boat with his Black Lab, appropriately named Blackie, in Spasski Bay. It was a protected harbor, regardless of which way the wind blew or how hard, and provided shelter year round, even during the fierce winter weather that blew in from Icy Strait. When I first met him he must have been in his seventies. He always seemed to have a few days' growth of beard and wore a dirty felt fedora, a kn...

  I was going to do a blog post about my last days of fishing on the Bonnie J. I've given the boat to a worthy person I believe and I wanted to reflect a little bit on my time with her, but yesterday my son Brian called with the news that my friend and long time Hoonah resident Fagan Skaflestad had passed away. It came as quite  a shock to me for some reason. I don't know why. He was in his early eighties I believe, but he always seemed so robust, so full of life. He was one of those guys that just seemed like would live forever. I can't even recall when we first met, I feel like I've known him most of my life. His family has been around Hoonah for decades. His dad, Alf, had a logging business and he and the boys logged up and down Port Frederick for years. They had a camp up in Salt Lake Bay if I recall correctly, and Fagan used to tell me about running around in a skiff up in the Narrows, fishing for King Salmon. He had the uncanny ability of finding fish when few oth...

  Last Friday I  got a call from my daughter who works at the city. She mentioned that her boss, whose brother is the harbor master said a boat had sunk in the harbor. When she asked which one, she was told it was the Talache. I'm quite familiar with that boat. Thirty years ago at the time I was buying the Bonnie J, two of my friends were also buying old wooden boats. It was what we could afford at the time. My friend Marlin Ryder bought the F/V Ricky Ray, and my friend Buffalo Bob Holden bought the Talache. He picked it up from a guy down in Sitka, who used to tack Masonite on the hull down by the water line so he could go fishing in the winter and not worry about ice cutting the hull. The boat was built with cedar from Port Orford Oregon. It is a double end troller, with both the bow and stern of the boat tapered. It's nice in a following sea, but it was a little narrow and tippy if it was at the dock. When the trolling poles were extended with stabilizers though,...

  The fishing season is winding down, as is normal for this time of year, and with the end of the season comes the foul weather that fall brings. For the past few days we've experienced some thirty knot winds in Icy Strait, with higher gusts. A lot of the boats that were fishing the outside coast have come in to fish Homeshore, but with almost no protection from the winds, everyone was forced to seek shelter in town. There are boats tied up to the floats from Petersburg and Wrangell, Juneau and Angoon and Sitka and of course Hoonah and I don't know where all else. Boats with names like the Trisha Marie, Loretta Ann, Corvus, and Sea Fire. They're all shapes and sizes, and most of the ones that came in from the weather are trollers, like myself. It's interesting to see the different shapes, especially on the old wooden ones. They're all unique. I happened to be listening to some music the other night on U tube and came across a song titled Away From the ...

                                 Those unfamiliar with this area might look at these three pictures and wonder what they could possibly have in common. Well for one, all three pictures were taken from the playground area down near the harbor, but more than that, all three scenes depict things that have seen better days. If I remember correctly, the boat is named the Miss Andrea. It used to belong to a couple young fellows whom I believe were carpenters. They got the fishing bug back in the late seventies or early eighties and used to troll in some of the same areas I did when I owned my fourteen foot Hi-Laker skiff. I don't believe they were much more successful than I was and eventually had sense enough to get out of the fishing business and do what they knew best, which I'm sure paid considerably more. As you can see, the boat has been parked for quite some time...

It's a beautiful day here in sunny Hoonah Alaska. The only problem is that it's in the single digits and not supposed to go much higher. I don't know how the sun can be out and have so little heat to offer. I've known a few folks like that- beautiful people with no warmth to their character. Perhaps it's just as well- if they were good looking and kind too they might be intolerable. Anyway, it's too cold to wander around outside today so I thought I would tap into the archives of my  picture files. The top two pictures show the Mickey V on anchor in Neka Bay this past year. Neka Bay is named after a local Tlingit man who used to shoot a small cannon every time the fleet came back in. I saw a picture of him in a book. He's a very distinguished looking fellow and the cannon looked like it could do some damage if he loaded it with a pound or two of shot. The Mickey V (5) is owned by a friend of mine, Marc Miller. I don't know what happened to Mickey's ...

This is the F/V Don A, an old wooden troller/longliner moored in the Hoonah harbor. Last night, its owner, Floyd Hunt, met with an untimely death when he fell into the harbor after a night of drinking. I'm not here to pass judgement on his behavior, we've all made poor choices from time to time. It's just unfortunate that his choice had such dire consequences. I wish I had known Floyd better. I've seen him around the docks for years and we've spoken casually. He even did some work on my boat a number of years ago. What I do know about him is that he always seemed to be on a pretty even keel. He never seemed to get too excited about anything that I could tell. He was a good fisherman and a successful business man. To those who knew him well, I believe he was a good friend. Floyd seemed to fill the role of a surrogate father of sorts to some of the single fishermen who live on their boats. It seemed like every spring before the main season got started he provided s...