kzamzow
Fishing? You want to ask me about fishing! Well bring up the armchair and settle in because do I have stories for you.
Of course you know that I fished on the Copper River flats in my own bowpicker -- built in the 1970s as a high school project by a couple of kids that went on to become Seattle boat makers. You know I was a setnetter. And worked as a fish observer in the Gulf of Alaska, Bering Sea. Pollock, crab, skate, cod. Saw the Pribs, False Pass, Unalaska/Dutch -- the whole South Bering Sea Islands. Wish I'd bought a pair of those sweatpants now.
Crabbers were the best -- cleanest fishery I ever saw, next to salmon. You either pull up a pile of male crabs or a pile of females, and you can dump the females all out at once, right out of the pot into the ocean before they ever come aboard. Couldn't take the groundfish -- ought to close them all down, dirty fishery, bycatch all the time, holds filled with bycatch sometimes. Had to leave that.
Not much use for weekend fishers. Those pictures, all lined up arm to arm -- it's not right. They've messed up their own cricks, and their they are, most of them on someone else's territory -- Ahtna Athabascan, Dena'ina. Ought to leave the rivers to those that live there and take care of them.
Miss the old skiff. Miss summers in the setnet cabin. Don't miss hanging upside down in the bilge desperately trying to fix something, get the engine started, slopping in the trough. Ups and downs, ups and downs.