The Ner­ka is moored on New Thomsen’s 4^th fin­ger, a trek to the ramp that typ­i­cal­ly takes my short legs a 4 minute march. But the har­bor is a dif­fer­ent neigh­bor­hood than it was a week ago, and Cap’n J and I now incor­po­rate a half-hour buffer – at least – for clear­ing the con­ver­sa­tion­al gaunt­let up the dock.

The har­bor puls­es with antic­i­pa­tion and anx­i­ety. Local boats have off-loaded their halibut/black cod gear and rigged up for salmon, exchang­ing skates of ground­line for a rain­bow palette of spoons (met­al lures) and hoochies (plas­tic squid-like lures of every imag­in­able col­or com­bi­na­tion). Decem­ber is 6 months away, yet a repet­i­tive cho­rus of “Season’s greet­ings!” rings through the air. At each fin­ger, we exchange hugs and how-was-your-win­ter updates. It’s a famil­iar tran­si­tion back into this cul­ture of sea­son­al friend­ships, decades-old rela­tion­ships that receive only sev­er­al months a year of real-time face-time. After the pleas­antries, each con­ver­sa­tion returns to the focus on everyone’s mind right now: “Well, are you all set?”

The hot hoochies of 2007. (Insert your own bad joke here.)

The South­east Alas­ka sum­mer troll sea­son opens for king salmon on Fri­day, July 1^st, and accord­ing to Fish & Game’s pre­dic­tion, we should have 8 to 12 days to catch our quo­ta. The past few days saw trollers from Wash­ing­ton, Ore­gon and Cal­i­for­nia pulling through the break­wa­ter, one after anoth­er. Their fish­eries have suf­fered dev­as­tat­ing loss­es, while Alaska’s waters con­tin­ue to swell with healthy runs. Metic­u­lous­ly man­aged, Alaska’s wild salmon stocks sup­port fish­ing fam­i­lies from all along the West Coast.

Few out­siders imag­ine the depth of reg­u­la­tion that Alaskan com­mer­cial fish­er­men expe­ri­ence. There will always be those who grouse about state and fed­er­al over­sight, but this is super­vi­sion that I choose to take com­fort in, view­ing it as a con­cert­ed effort to pro­tect our liveli­hood and hon­or nat­ur­al resources.  Alas­ka Trollers Asso­ci­a­tion, our indus­try advo­cates since 1925, works close­ly with the Alas­ka Depart­ment of Fish & Game to ensure we’ll make a liv­ing today, while tak­ing care that we’ll still be able to do so tomor­row. It’s this effort that gives me a clear(er) con­science, a response for non-fish­ing friends who express uncer­tain­ty about their love of seafood. “I thought salmon were endan­gered… Is it real­ly okay to eat them?”

(In a word: Yes.)

Coho fil­lets for win­ter meals

After Hooked’s last post, my dad remarked upon its theme of grat­i­tude, that it wasn’t a val­ue he’d observed in the fleet 25 years ago. Every gen­er­a­tion has had mem­bers for whom the role of har­vester includes an accom­pa­ny­ing sense of stew­ard­ship, those deter­mined to keep this lifestyle avail­able to future gen­er­a­tions. But I agree there’s been a cul­tur­al shift. These days, more of us artic­u­late our pride in feed­ing peo­ple, being respon­si­ble for the high­est qual­i­ty food we can pro­duce. Rather than lin­ger­ing in doom-and-gloom pre­dic­tions that our industry’s days are num­bered, more dock­side con­ver­sa­tions mull over leg­is­la­tion and advo­ca­cy. Our col­lec­tive con­scious­ness slow­ly evolves, expands, and sus­tain­abil­i­ty become less the lan­guage of Left­ies and more an obvi­ous neces­si­ty to our profession.

There’s a bot­tom line most of us can agree on: this is a life we love. As our friend Sean sums up, “I’ll fish until I don’t.” Most of us would rather delay the “until I don’t” for as long as possible.

A kiss of thanks for this 48-pounder

As I write this, my gaze drifts to the Ket­tle­son Library win­dows. (My favorite library any­where, and damn, what a view.) It’s a misty day in Sit­ka, with a white shroud set­tled over the water and the kind of rain that does­n’t seem so insis­tent as it’s falling, but your clothes feel like they’re fresh out of the wash­ing machine by the time you final­ly make it back to the har­bor. A troller just pulled out of Cres­cent Har­bor, head­ing for their des­tined hot spot. The exo­dus has start­ed, the har­bors that so recent­ly swelled to capac­i­ty thin­ning out just as quickly.

Us, we’ll get gro­ceries this evening, fill up the water tank, and mosey out of town tomor­row. You can fol­low our weath­er here, by click­ing on the giant pur­ple sec­tion in the mid­dle. I can’t tell you where we’re going… Fish­er­men are a closed-mouth bunch, and though the same infor­ma­tion even­tu­al­ly fil­ters to all of us, we like to pre­tend that our des­ti­na­tions are a big mys­tery. One of Hooked’s friends explained his strat­e­gy like this:

For the July open­er we always fol­low this exact plan:

We always head south of town, unless we decide to go north,

or we might go deep, or we might leave ear­ly, or we might go late, 

and (depend­ing upon where we think every­one else is headed) 

we might do the oppo­site of everyone, 

unless we decide to fol­low them and do the same.

And that pret­ty much sums up trollers.  Good luck out there, friends, and stay safe.  We’ll check with you on the oth­er side of the opening.

F/V Juani­ta C at sun­set, 11:10 pm, 2007