Hel­lo friends!

Apolo­gies for the radio silence; Cap’n J, Bear the Boat Cat and I are all fine, but it’s been a very long time between avail­able land time and inter­net access. You haven’t been far from my mind: every day I catch myself think­ing, “Oh, I should write about this, tell Hooked’s friends about that.” With the real­i­ty check of real­iz­ing that we’ve already reached our mid-sea­son coho clo­sure, I sus­pect you’ll be get­ting this sea­son’s fish sto­ries far into the win­ter, long after my sea legs have faded.

After return­ing from our July king open­ing, Cap’n J and I were eager to final­ly expe­ri­ence Sitka’s Home­skil­let Fes­ti­val, a July week­end of music that we’d nev­er before been in town to attend. So we dal­lied at the dock, had a fan­tas­tic time, and, when we final­ly got back out fish­ing, arrived too late on the scene for an epic coho bite. Instead of fill­ing up the Nerka’s hold in record time, we found our­selves grind­ing out a 15 day trip.

That was a long one for us. Our pro­duce sup­ply dwin­dled to a cou­ple limp car­rots and we eyed the water faucet with increas­ing anx­i­ety — how many more washed dish­es or tea pot refills before it spat and ran dry? Though it was­n’t great fishin’, we found our­selves hav­ing one of the best trips we could remem­ber. Almost two weeks of glassy seas, breath­tak­ing sun­ris­es and sun­sets, trolling along­side friends human and ani­mal — pods of hump­back whales and orcas, griz­zlies sham­bling along the beach, moun­tain goats scram­bling sheer cliffs shoot­ing from the sea. With our work office a glac­i­er-strewn moun­tain range seem­ing just a stone’s throw away from our dai­ly tack, we agreed that this was the kind of trip — even with the mediocre fish­ing — that kept us  thank­ful for our lives as com­mer­cial fishermen.

F/V Chasi­na tack­ing along the Fair­weath­er Range.

When that trip final­ly came to an end, Cap’n J turned to me. “You know what’s awe­some? We haven’t seen a man-made struc­ture — oth­er than boats — for over two weeks.”

“And a light­house,” I added.

“Oh yeah. The light­house and boats. How many peo­ple get that kind of expe­ri­ence, or know it’s even still possible?”

(I won­der — how many of you expe­ri­ence this sort of “into the wild” dis­con­nect? Is it a val­ue for you, some­thing you seek out, or are you soul-fed in oth­er, more pop­u­lat­ed environments?)

After that, we made a 50-hour turn­around in Sit­ka and spent anoth­er five days chas­ing coho. We’re hav­ing a brief reprieve now; Alaskan trollers are on a state-man­dat­ed clo­sure now, shut down for four days to ensure that enough coho slip through to inside waters and their spawn­ing rivers.

So we’ll take a cou­ple days to catch up on delayed chores and a fren­zy of social­iz­ing with the loved ones we most­ly see from across the sea, rather than in per­son. As always, inter­net access is iffy and time is short, best of inten­tions and all that. Two last thoughts I don’t want to slip through the cracks:

After weeks at sea, my inbox is usu­al­ly burst­ing with junk and not much else. What a love­ly sur­prise to sign in and learn that two of my favorite writ­ers had bestowed blog­ging hon­ors on Hooked! Sin­cere thanks and appre­ci­a­tion to Gra­ham’s Crack­ers for nom­i­nat­ing Hooked for a Very Inspir­ing Blog­ger award, and Wendy Welch for pass­ing along the Lieb­ster Award. (You guys made my day; thank you!) I’m ter­ri­bly slow at the “pay it for­ward” ele­ment of these awards, but it’s on my list. Wendy is the author of The Lit­tle Book­store of Big Stone Gap, a mem­oir I’ve pre­ordered and am eager­ly await­ing its Octo­ber 2 release. Gra­ham wrote an ele­gy to Lone­some George, the world’s last giant tor­toise, that so moved me I read it aloud to Cap’n J in the Nerka’s cab­in. Please do get to know both of these gift­ed writers.

My inbox had one oth­er extreme­ly excit­ing offer­ing: an update from Aman­da! It’s a won­der­ful glimpse into how the past five weeks have been treat­ing our first-time deck­hand friend, and I’ll shoot for hav­ing it post­ed by tomor­row evening. Stay tuned!

Many thanks for your patience with the irreg­u­lar, unpre­dictable com­mu­ni­ca­tion that’s inevitable in this fish­ing busi­ness, friends. I hope the sum­mer’s been treat­ing you well, wher­ev­er you are, and send my good thoughts to you all.