Hunter - Gatherers

Saturday, July 9th

Moon rise at about 10 pm

This is how our week ended and our weekend began.

We got off work at 9:30 pm, changed clothes and headed "out the highway" to mile 19. We went to meet up with our old Vegas neighbors Jason, Christy and their family who were fishing on the Chilkat river for salmon using gill nets. Residents of  Alaska can get "subsistence" fishing permits which allow them to harvest many fish each year by this method. When the salmon start "running" up the rivers to spawn, they no longer feed and gill netting them is the best way to catch them.

When we found them along the river bank, the net was already in the water and they had already pulled in 12 nice sockeye (red) salmon. The net is about 25 feet long, 4 feet tall and is set from the river bank, usually in a back current where the fish will swim into it while resting. They planned to leave the net soaking overnight in the river and camp on the river bank. Lori and I planned to "camp" all cozy back in the MLS and come back out in the morning to help haul the net and clean the fish...I mean...I would help clean the fish while Lori played with the kids and dog.

Wesley "the wild man" showing off the nights catch

Sunday, July 10th

Back out in the morning to mile 19 and the fish camp. We brought out the coleman stove and Jason cooked up some great breakfast burritos with potatoes, egg (yuck) and bacon (mmm...bacon). We hauled the net again and plucked another dozen sockeyes out.

!! Super Scary Alert !!

We almost lost Spaz today !!

While we were cleaning the fish, Wesley and Kayla were throwing sticks into the very cold and fast moving Chilkat river. Spaz saw them throw something and did what Spaz does...goes to fetch it. She ran into the river and quickly found herself being swept down stream while she dog paddled for her life. I ran down the bank about 20 feet, laid stretched out over the bank while Jason held my feet and I grabbed Spaz by the hair on her back as she swept by - eyes HUGE with fear - legs paddling furiously. This dangerous stretch of river has claimed 5 lives in the past 3 years...but not this lucky dog.

Jason and I mending the torn net

The thrashing salmon ripped the net beyond our field fixing capability which ended our fishing day. However, I know Jason will be back before the salmon are gone by the end of September. There are 4 main salmon types, each run at different times and each have harvest limits. Something like:

     20 King salmon

     50 Sockeye (red) salmon

     80 Pink (humpy) salmon

     30 Coho (silver) salmon

That's a LOT of good free eating that can really help offset the high price of groceries in Alaska.

Kayla snapped this nice shot of a woodpecker that was hanging around the fish camp with his mate. The males have this bright red head and are about 6-8" tall. Bird watching up here is very entertaining and there are lots of them to watch. Bald eagles are very common and we see them everywhere. Ravens are also very common and VERY annoying - but smart. They make a lot of noise, especially early in the morning on your roof. They also can mimic sounds and we have heard them making cat sounds to torment Spaz when she is laying around outside. 

Since we could not gill net any more, Jason asked if we wanted to go back to town, get his boat and cruise out to Strawberry Island. The island is about a mile out into the bay and was rumored to be overflowing with wild strawberries that no one would have gone out to pick. Who could resist that chance...YUMMM!

Lori and her berry bucket on the hunt

If you have Google Earth and want to fly there and check it out, the Lat/Long for Strawberry Island:

                                     Lat. = 59.144830°      Long. = -135.396299

If you don't have it, you can see on this image where we are talking about. You can see that Haines sits on a peninsula with the Chilkat river inlet on the left and the Chilkoot river inlet on the right. You can aslo see the Davidson Glacier in the lower left corner.

We did not have much success finding strawberries, but we did have a good time. The weather was great, seas were calm and we had a picnic lunch with us. We found wild strawberry plants everywhere, however, they all had dried up flower buds where berries should have been. We have had an unusually dry summer up here (less than a 1/2" rain so far when normal is 5-7") which may be why there were no berries to pick. The tide ranges 25' or more this time of year so you always need to be aware of it when you are on the water or even fishing.

 

On the way home we stopped to get some bottled spring water...rather...we stopped to bottle some spring water. Alongside the highway is a natural spring that has been tapped with 2 small pipes sticking out from it. The water flows constantly with cool, pure spring water and the best part...it's FREE. Considering a case of bottled water from the grocery store is around $10 and this is even better tasting, we have saved a case worth of bottles that we fill ourselves...I'm trying to think of how to get it to market so we can make some money on it but I don't think mail order or internet sales is practical. Think about that next time you buy a bottle of water...it might have come from some dude filling them out of a piped spring somewhere.

Monday, July 11th

Didn't do much today, did some cleaning of the MLS and some errands. Later Jason asked if I wanted to go halibut fishing in the bay since the weather was still so nice and calm. We left when he got off work at 3 pm and spent about 4 hours drifting along and baiting our hooks with salmon guts...yummm. Jason caught one halibut so small (about 14") that he didn't know it was on his line until he reeled it in. It was what you call a "shaker"...meaning that you shake your pole to try and get it to fall off because it's too small to keep. Still, it was great to be on the water and the scenery was spectacular. We did get close enough to "catch" a few bald eagles sitting on rocks and fishing which never gets old watching.

That's the Davidson Glacier in the background