Fisher Girl DeLise?

Fisher Girl DeLise?
The end of 2017 I quit my corporate job to go commercial salmon fishing in Alaska. I would join my partner Doug on FV (Fishing Vessel) Pacific Son, his 37’ troller. My friends and family were not exactly surprised as I love a good adventure but I am a greenhorn when it comes to commercial fishing. My dad was a bass fisherman so I’ve held a rod and even caught a few blue gills as a kid, but nothing anything like trolling for salmon in the waters of SE Alaska. I’m a newbie so please forgive my ignorance and lack of experience as I fumble thru the language, gear and experience of fishing.

I had spent a couple of summers in SE back in the early 90s and always wanted to come back to Alaska to see more of the state. Doug lived there for 15 years and spoke of coming back to fish when we first started dating in 2010. In fall of 2015 he started looking for a boat and found Pacific Son (PacSon for short) in Oregon. He and a sailing friend of ours, Kim, motored her up to SE in spring of 2016. Doug fished her solo the next 2 years, except for a few weeks in the summer when his daughter, Marirose, crewed for him. I stayed in Southern CA working and living on our 42’ sailboat, coming up to visit as often as I could. By the fall of 2017 we were extremely tired of the separation and decided it was time to sell the sailboat and have me come join Doug full time.

We drove up the ALCAN (Alaska Canadian) highway and arrived in Skagway Alaska in mid-April. Skagway is at the Northern most end of the Lynn Canal in SE. PacSon was out of the water (“on the hard”) there and we needed to paint her bottom before we could launch her. The weather was wet so we had to wait for long enough dry periods to get her painted. We were able to paint a little every day resulting in our staying in the yard for about a week.


My new office 
Once she was launched we headed to Haines, AK - PacSon’s “home port”. We have family and friends in Haines so it is the obvious home port for us even though it is not where we fish.  We spent the next 2 weeks there working on boat projects (Doug built a cover for the troll pit, new stays on the top of the wheel house, a new cap rail on the port side, etc.) and preparing for the spring king salmon season. The state announced limited openings beginning May 1st for 2 – 3 days a week. The closest to Haines was in Sitka (a 3 day boat ride away). We had to wait on a few boat parts (it is not easy to get parts up to SE Alaska – most come up on the weekly barge from Seattle) and the wicked wind in the canal was relentless for well over a week.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

2022 Season Begins and a 2021 Recap

Image
A Good Morning in Haines Alaska  We left our beautiful mountains-to-sea town of Haines, Alaska this morning and headed out for our 20 22  summer fishing season. It was a glorious sunny  morning and the all-day trip to Juneau was smooth and  lovely.  Both Doug and I were looking forward to  getting back out on the water and pulling up those big  King and Coho salmon – especially after the 2021  season we had.  2021 Recap 2021 was a good year for most trollers – there were fish to be caught and a nice price point per pound. Unfortunately, Doug hurt his ribs right before the start of the season so we didn’t fish as hard as we usually do. We started late and had to take a couple weeks off mid-summer for healing. It was a different kind of season for us but still delivered spectacular sights and long days of wilderness fishing. We often spend much of the season fishing in the Gulf of Alaska – from Cross Sound south along Baranof Island. Due to our adjustments for the season we chose to stay
Read more

End of the Summer Season

Image
Coho salmon were not abundant this year. Other stocks did ok, and the local sockeye run was a good one, but coho numbers are what we rely on as trollers, so this was not a good year for us. In fact, Alaska Fish and Game stated that this years' coho run was the third worst in the last 40 years with a harvest 42% below the 20 year average!  We spent our last week of fishing in northern Chatham Strait. We didn't catch many fish but we had some really nice wildlife viewing. Again we had a group of whales bubble net or lunge feeding near us for a couple of days and that is always a spectacular site. There is also a really great sockeye stream in the bay we were anchoring in that draws lots of bears. It’s the classic Alaska photo op. There’s a beautiful waterfall that then streams down into the cove. At high tide the salmon can jump up the waterfall with some amount of effort, at low tide they get stranded in the rocks down below. A feast for the bears! One morning there were four be
Read more

Alaska Homesteading Update #3

Image
Our little guest cabin now has quite a sweet outdoor space with its fire pit, benches, serving counter and cowboy hot tub (heated by the fire pit). It’s very inviting and we spend as much time there as we can.  The house itself got new stain and an arctic entryway, which helped during the cold winters that we spent here during Covid isolation times.  We bought a tractor last fall and a mill this spring so we could use the trees on the property to make our improvements.  Doug dropped a few trees and milled a bunch of lumber while I was recuperating with my broken arm. We are now in the process of building a pole barn for all of our equipment. Next spring we will work on an addition to the house. It’s really fun to watch our little Homestead grow!
Read more