Fisher Girl DeLise

Coho Salmon The summer King season closed on the 15 th so Pacific Son came back to Juneau to provision and Marirose and I again changed places. She went off for a new adventure aboard her grandparents’ 48’ trawler in the San Juan/Georgia Islands and we headed back out for 3 weeks of Coho fishing off shore. Besides food and water for crew and fuel for the boat, we need to have plenty of ice to keep our catch cold. That means we had to go to the Alaska Glacier Seafoods ice house (who we sell most of our fish too) and fill up our totes and hold area with a ton and a half Icing the boat of crushed ice. Then we made the 2 day trip back out to the fishing grounds. From Juneau we head out thru Icy Straits, past Glacier Bay and into Cross Sound. Now that we are targeting Coho we are setting lures every fathom and a half instead of 2 fathoms as we did for Kings. We are also using mostly spoons whereas we fished a lot of hoochies when we were King fishing. We are setti...

Samuel Glacier from "camp" Last weekend I went up the Haines Highway into Canada and backpacked into the Tatshenshini-Alsek wilderness with a group of friends. A World Heritage Site that encompasses over 3,000 sq. miles and part of the Tatshenshini-Alsek river system, this wilderness is known for its pristine beauty and wildlife. It was a fabulous hike through the tundra – full of wildflowers and views of glaciers. Friday afternoon we crossed the border and camped at the Chuck Creek trailhead, about 30 miles into British Columbia. The mosquitoes were pretty determined so several of us sat around the fire in our very fashionable head nets (HaHa).   It kept them off faces but arms and legs suffered a few bites. Lupine in the tundra Saturday we hiked in 6 miles along a glacier run-off creek. We were up in the alpine and tundra with flowers everywhere! One couple said they identified 60 different wildflowers! The dogs we had with us flushed several White Tailed P...

4th of July Parade Doug’s daughter Marirose is crewing for him for the Coho opener so she and I traded places for the first 3 weeks of July. This means shore leave for me! I am spending most of my time in Haines, AK, where Marirose and her brother live as well as their mom and many other good friends. It’s a small town, population of less than 2000. My first week here has been gloriously sunny and packed with   4 th of July fun. Mud Volleyball There was a parade, which was small town fun with lots of kids in the parade and all the rest of the towns kids grabbing for the handfuls of candy thrown from every vehicle and float. Next everyone moved to the town park where the games began – tug of war, dunk tank, mud volleyball, and more. There was also a race on the Chilkoot river – where participants had to create their own floatation device (most were made of Styrofoam) and try to control it down the river to the finish line without losing any teammates to th...

Fisher Girl running the gear from the pit. Our boat is small but quite comfortable for the 2 of us. The aft deck is the larger portion of the boat at 18’, as it should be since we are in it to fish!   From the back of the boat forward, first is the troll pit, where we stand as we run the gear. I like that there is a pit here as it comes up to my waist and gives me security as I lean outside the boat to pull gear or land a fish! Next is the landing deck, where the fish go as we clear them off the hook and where they are cleaned.   Then is the fish hold area. We have ice below in the hold where we pack the fish but we also have 2 large (blue in picture below) totes on deck that we use to “slush” fish in iced water. Our tender (the boat we deliver our fish too) prefers we slush our Coho salmon as it is a quicker off load then pulling the “hard packed” fish up from the hold (raised grey area just behind the blue tote). In fact, Doug ordered some slush bags tha...