Wilderness Blues- Ramblings from the Great Land

Today is Friday. If you happen to be one of the millions of people who work five days a week, this could be a great day or a pain in the butt. It could be the end of a long week and you can't wait for it to end, or it might be the start of the weekend and you also can't wait for it to end. For me, Friday is just another day. When the fishing season is open, all  the days are pretty much the same. Most fishermen don't take any particular day off usually. I'm off today, but not by choice. The weather is pretty blustery, so fishing isn't really an option. I hope that it calms down by tomorrow. The season is winding down and I don't want to miss too many days because of weather. For me, Fridays have a different meaning all together. Around here, Friday is garbage day. As you can imagine, getting rid of your accumulated trash is of utmost importance. In fact, one of the last things Jan tells me on Fridays isn't " I love you" or "Have a good day...

  As I was sitting down getting ready to work on this blog post, my wife, Jan, came into the office and started talking to me. With the greatest of effort, I managed to say something like "Pizza". A simple one word answer to the question, thus fulfilling my obligation to respond to her question without totally having to stop what I'm doing and engage in a full blown conversation. It's not that I didn't want to talk to her, but my man brain can only do one thing at a time- especially when I'm on the computer. When I go to Hoonah Trading, up to the office where she works, she has the ability to count money or post invoices or look for a billing address at the same time as she's talking to me. I don't know if all women can do that, but she can. She can talk to me while she reads with the TV on. When I'm watching something on TV, I don't want to answer questions about what's going on or who did what or why so and so killed Joe Blow. It drives m...

It's been an incredible year for anglers in Northern Southeast Alaska this year. The pinks came in numbers I can't remember seeing before. It will be interesting to hear what the final tally was- well into the millions. It's quite a contrast to last year when it was really difficult to even catch a Humpy ( Pink Salmon). These pictures are primarily of the seine fleet. They've come from all over the state and even from Washington and California to tap into the resource. Usually I wouldn't be so happy to see so many seiners fishing the local waters, but the Humpies were so prolific that it was almost impossible to catch any of the other salmon that trollers target. Humpies have a voracious appetite and it's not unusual to have forty hooks in the water at once with Humpies on thirty of them. They are the smallest of the Pacific salmon and they're totally squirrely. Once they come aboard they flop and thrash and spray blood and scales all over the boat. The buy...

 As you can see very clearly, I have a picture of a box of Kelloggs Corn Flakes here. For those readers who are too young to remember the days before cereal had names like Sugar Frosted Marshmellow Yum Yums with a hint of REAL WHOLE GRAINS, there was cereal that was rather plain. Things like Cheerios, and Shredded Wheat, Kelloggs Corn Flakes and Wheaties (breakfast of champions). You used to have to add your own sugar- how odd. I don't know what people did in the day before cereal became popular, probably had to suffer through bacon and eggs or sausage, maybe some hash browns and toast with homemade jam, possibly a stack of pancakes or waffles with real maple syrup. Fortunately people like Kellogg and Post came along and fixed it so that you could rush out the door to whatever the day had in store for you without having to wait for the sausage and eggs to cook. Yes sir, those were the days. Anyway, I'm only mentioning breakfast cereal because of what happened to me out trolling...

Holy Toledo, it's the last day of July! That's hard to fathom. I don't know where the month went. It kind of flew by on the one  hand, and yet on the other hand it seems as if it's been July for ages. Don't know how to explain that. In any event, I wanted to do a blog on our newest eating establishment here in Hoonah- The Chipper Fish. For those who haven't been to Hoonah for awhile, it will be a bit of a surprise to see. The building used to be located down at the harbor, across from Tideland Tackle Co. It was called Libby's then and offered the usual hamburgers and fries and if I remember correctly, Jo Jo's and soft ice cream. It was a nice place to go and very conveniently located, close to the boats,so visitors and fishermen frequented it, as well as many of the locals. It was a real bummer when it shut down. For a number of years the building sat vacant and was moved to an empty lot behind the building that houses the laundromat and thrift store. T...

I went trolling last Friday and Saturday. I intended to just go to Outer Point and drag around for the day, but the seine boats were working the area, so I ended up closer to Flynn Cove by the end of the day and decided to drop in and spend the night. It's  a great anchorage when the wind is coming from the east, which it was. When I arrived, the Silver Fox was already on anchor. It was just  the two of us in the anchorage that night. I guess everyone else was fishing outside or tied up in town. The Silver Fox- what  a great name for a boat. It lives up to its name too, she's a sharp looking fiberglass job. I imagine it catches fish like crazy also. You'd have to catch a lot of fish with a name like that. It's too classic of a name to be a dud. It runs in my mind that a good looking, popular country singer named Charlie Rich had the nickname, the Silver Fox. Just like the boat, you couldn't look all flabby and wrinkled and be called the Silver Fox. It got me to...

It's been quite a busy few days. I went out several days ago and made a halibut set with a friend and pulled it yesterday. We caught all I needed to fill my quota and ended up having to shake off about seven hundred pounds of halibut in excess of the quota. It was a real bummer- the shaking, not the catching. Today I sold the catch and got started on cleaning up the mess. I'll continue with the clean up tomorrow. I fell asleep in the chair earlier, and when I finally woke up I figured  I would do a blog post. I know that I'm overdue for one. I made the mistake of looking at my email first. I saw that the credit card company had a charge for Norton Internet Security. I knew that it couldn't be right- I just had about a two hour chat with a fellow named Rohit back in February and he assured me I had 546 days left on the subscription. I was able to get on line and chat with another fellow this time Sonji or some such thing. By the time we got it all figured out, I felt li...