June From the Fishing Grounds
Hey there friends! Happy (almost) July!
We are dispatching from the salmon grounds, where we'll drop our king salmon gear tomorrow morning. Our Southeast Alaska Troll Salmon fishery opens tomorrow morning, July 1!
June flew by in a flash. We had a wonderful two weeks on the water near Yakutat, chasing lingcod in the icy blue waters of that region. We had the whole family on board, as usual -- plus our gal pal, Danya. This was her second season lingcod fishing with us, and we are so thankful for both the dedication she brings harvesting fish well, and to the fun she brings our family! Monti is missing all the amazing Aunties he had on board this spring!
Our lingcod fishery went fantastically-uneventfully. A few days of fishing, a day or so on anchor to wait out weather and glaze fish, then back out to do it all again. We caught what we needed in about two weeks, and that gave us some extra time to go visit Caleb's family out at their commercial fishing operation on the Alsek River!
Caleb did not grow up trolling on the ocean for salmon. Though he started trolling at 18 years old, his childhood was spent set netting for sockeye salmon on the Alsek, and East Alsek rivers (hence, our previous boat being named "Alsek")!
Caleb's mom, dad, sister, and her family still all work and live by the Alsek River, in a rugged area of the Glacier Bay National Preserve called "Dry Bay". It's such an incredible off-grid lifestyle, surrounded by the most gorgeous rivers and mountains. Not for the faint of heart (or for someone who values accessibility and convenience), but suffice to say: it's a really special place.
As a young man, Caleb's grandpa, Harold, left the family farm in Kansas, and in search of adventure -- found himself in Alaska. He hand built a log cabin and fish processing house, that the family still uses today for their fish business, Alsek Fish! Though this was the 1970's, it's difficult to describe what a feat this was: no road system, no modern communications beyond a radio, everything (well, besides salmon and timber) was either flown or boated in. He was a true pioneer and homesteader, maybe the last generation of them. Monti and his cousins are 4th generation fishermen, all because their great-grandpa took a huge leap of faith. It's so inspiring to see how the big, scary choices we make today could positively future generations. ❤️
We have a permit for a cabin site in the Dry Bay area, and someday (before Monti is grown up!) we plan to build a cabin and spend some off-ocean time there. It was once a bustling fish camp community, but now has just a handful of dedicated folks who prefer the Dry Bay lifestyle to anything else society has to offer. Hard to blame them.
After returning to Yakutat from Dry Bay, we ran F/V Fairweather thirty hours back down the coast, to Sitka -- where we offloaded our lingcod, and prepped for salmon season. Thankfully, the boat has been running great all spring; so all we needed to do was take the lingcod gear off, and pop the king and coho salmon gear on.
It's 3 p.m. in Alaska, which means here in 12 hours, we'll have hooks in the water! July 1 is always full of nerves. We're given only about seven days to catch the king salmon quota; shared by the fleet, it's caught on a first come-first served basis.
We can hope that we've chosen the right spot to set our hooks, but we'll know here in about 24 hours how right (or wrong) we were.
All that said: wish us some king salmon luck! And we'll touch base with you on the other side.
Pre-orders are still open, and will be throughout the summer. We'll know by next week if we have lots of king salmon available, or not much. In general: if you're hoping to snag king salmon for your order, we'd suggest ordering sooner than later.
Hope you all have a wonderful 4th of July, stay safe!
Can't wait to see you all this fall!
xxx
