Collateral Damage

Originally trained on Maine lobster (mm, tomalley) with a four-year degree in Japanese sushi (minor in sashimi), your correspondent is voraciously piscivorous. Shad? Sardines? Little crispy smelts? Lemme at em! And yet, I almost never kill and eat a striped bass for a very simple reason: I'm already mad enough without further increasing the mercury levels underneath my hat. Big stripers get plenty of mercury concentrated in their flesh after years and years of eating thousands of smaller fish, each packing its own little toxic punch. Naturally there are many fisher folk out there who love to kill and keep a big show-off fish, but god save their brains and livers. I release big stripers and only very occasionally keep a small one to sautee.

Now, about the nine pound, 28-inch striper I am about to describe here -- we DID try to release him. I hooked him on a plug with only the rear treble hook attached, and I fought him in as fast as I could to keep him from getting fatally overtaxed. If anyone needs proof of that, witness exhibit A, the remains of said plug:


Obviously, that fish was pulling hard. And I think I know why: when we got him boatside, he was bleeding profusely out of his gills. The hook -- including the bent tine -- was firmly in his bony lip, but I theorize that he swallowed it deep on the initial take, and ripped the hook up through one of his gills before embedding it deep in the lip. Ouch! And dang. This is sad. Stripers are tough customers (I once knifed and clubbed a small one before watching it jump off my kayak deck and swim away), so we figured on giving him a chance to recover . . . but he bellied up, and we ended up scooping him back up with the net.

This sad death through collateral damage is unfortunate, but not an entire waste. For one, my neighbor's cat Jose got to scarf up some delightful little scraps of fish innards.



The neighbor herself, who states firmly that she will have no more kids and can therefore handle a little mercury, got a nice three pound filet to bake. A highly piscivorous friend down in Santa Cruz took the other filets with a vow to mate it with lemongrass and other good things. And, last but not least, I made a lovely little lemon-and-capers sautee out of the tail ends for Sunday lunch. Probably none of this fine unfortunate fish will go into the freezer to be forgotten for months, which is surely the fate of so many of the 'trophy' stripers that people kill and keep.

This fish was landed on a small but well-rigged motorboat belonging to my friend Mike. It is a MUCH better platform for fly casting than a kayak, and I do hope he'll take me out again despite the blood and savagery that I brought onto the clean floor of his boat. The spot is good kayaking grounds, too, and overall this is a good sign of striper happiness to come. Can't wait until the delta starts turning on!

As a side note, you may notice over the course of these blogs that your correspondent is rather hard on equipment, including reels run over by trucks, rods broken while wave surfing, and plugs twisted into scraps by stripers. I'm reminded of a time when I somehow ended up watching a bit of "Survivorman" on TV with some of my 'indoor friends.' They said to me,

"Hey Gillie, this is the kind of stuff you do out there, right? Eat bugs and sleep in swamps, right?" And I said,

"Wrong. I buy the best equipment I can afford, surround myself with it, and then destroy it piece by piece."

Some casualties of the summer in Alaska: middle pole of MSR four-season tent; new handheld depth finder; Altitech barometer clock (which wasn't as waterproof as it claimed); third in a series of surprisingly fragile GPS units; and so on. Certainly a few fish died and got digested, but all of that was intentional. Going forward, I will keep striving to hold down the collateral damage.

Getting Back to Ekwok

I mentioned that I wanted to write something more about Ekwok, and I still do. Actually, I'd like to get back to Ekwok physically as well as verbally, since it is a very logical take-out for a trip down from Twin Lakes through the Chilikadrotna and the Mulchatna, or a similar route down the Stuyahok or Koktuli. The idea of the long three-river float only tightened its grip on my imagination this summer. And the idea of using village flight service instead of expensive float planes just makes sense.

What makes Ekwok interesting to write about is its status as a native village. That makes it a bit tricky, too, for I am a white boy and I may get in trouble if my comments end up sounding insensitive or condescending or in any way verbally oppressive. I live in the middle of Berkeley, and I do NOT want the Berkeley Thought Police to show up at my door in a Prius and disarm me with a severe astral tai-chi advanced yoga down-dog beat-down.

But you can't pretend it doesn't matter. One of the first things I heard from the first two guys I met in Ekwok was a joke about bears: the reason I didn't have any trouble with them is simply that they don't like white meat, haw haw. They were friendly enough guys but they both had liquor on their breath at 2 p. m. in a supposedly dry town. I tried to ingratiate myself with the first guy by giving him my eight pound anchor, which I no longer needed. I'm pretty sure he was pretty pleased. I saw this guy one more time before flying out of town the next day, when he showed up at my camp to brag to me about his fresh marks and bruises from the night's fighting. This time it was 8 a. m. liquor breath.

Have I done it already? Are the BTP coming in the Prius to stop me stereotyping native Americans as wild drinkers? If so, they are too late. When I really needed them was when a guy appeared outside my hotel room in the middle of the night in Anchorage with his entire t-shirt spattered with blood.

"Jesus buddy, are you OK? Have you been shot?"
"No man, I've just been fighting," the guy slurred. "I've been fightin' em ALL tonight!"

But let's get my narrative back to Ekwok, where I set up a camp on the gravel of the airstrip and dried out my boat and tent in one of the only sunny days of my entire trip. While I was busy with this, at least fifty four-wheelers drove by my camp, often with four or five people hanging on them, and sometimes with people waving to me as they checked me out. In a town where the full-sized roads peter out into forest single-track after just a few miles, cars and trucks are very few. The four-wheeler is king. And the cheechako camped out at the airport is entertainment! After several dozen four-wheelers had paraded by, one finally stopped to say hello. This was George Taylor, who not only introduced me to his wife Vera, but invited me to get on the other fender and come over for coffee. I said I was just laying down for the night but would love to take him up on that offer in the morning.

And so I did! And I'm glad I did. George was a genuinely kind man who seemed to sense what I really needed after two weeks on the river alone, and provided it: morning coffee, a phone for checking on planes, and intelligent conversation. This mellow old fellow, it turned out, was a rabid environmentalist determined to stop the Pebble Mine much as John Muir was determined to stop the O'Shaugnessy dam. I hope he and his associates at http://www.stoppebblemine.com/ end up doing better than John did. George seemed deeply offended that people would even consider putting a mine at the headwaters of the river that ran by his home and provided the salmon for his backyard smokehouse. "They've got a hundred-year history of making fools of us, but I'll tell you, this old Eskimo knows when they're pulling the wool over his eyes."

George actually was an eskimo, a transplant from native lands far north of Ekwok. This apparently made him something of an outsider in Ekwok, which may be what made him sympathetic and kind to the cheechako over on the airstrip. His wife Vera was a true Ekwok native, and I was amused to see that even after only a day in town I recognized a few of the people in her numerous family photos on the wall. Before I left to go catch my plane George made sure to give me a copy of "Shadows on the Koyukuk," which is the bildungsroman of a half-white half-native from the native lands north of the Yukon river. It is a very good, recommendable read for anyone interested in Alaska.

It's funny what an unexpected dose of human warmth from unexpected quarters can do for your psyche. I had to sit several hours in the rain on the Ekwok airstrip waiting for my plane, but I did so with a rather pleasant sense of being in a special, pleasant place (it helped that the town mailman, a guy named Bill, took my water bottle and filled it with hot coffee for me). Sitting there on the bags containing my boat and camping gear, I got some of the odd sense of being a highly random element that accidentally fell into the correct spot in the puzzle, if only momentarily. I've had this sense when landing the tarpon with the Nicaraguan dudes (see January) and a few other times in Japan and elsewhere.



Speaking of elsewhere, the last couple days of my last float ended in a coastal native village called Quinhagak. In Quinhagak there was another airstrip wait, though this one was drier and less lonely; my four buddies and I got special visits from the local artisans who had lots of handcrafts and really seemed to want to exchange them for some hard currency. I step carefully here again, checking the windows for the paisley Prius . . . but just imagine if I were ignorant enough of the marine species protection act, and fascinated enough by local foods and customs, to ask if there might be any seal oil on sale? According to the protagonist of "Shadows on the Koyukuk" and other sources, a little bit of seal oil goes a long way to making a cold outdoorsman warm again, and giving him energy and strength. Western experts note that it is super-rich in omega 3 acids. And if, hypothetically, it were legal to possess, I myself might even consider keeping a small vial of it among my kayaking gear, just in case of cold times.



Ekwok will soon be starting its nice long winter. I hope George will have time to read the two books I sent him: "Coming into the Country" by John McPhee and "Sketches from a Hunter's Album" by Ivan Turgenev. After taking in the native perspective on the wild country, I wanted to send him some cheechako perspectives on the same. McPhee's book is about the Yukon country, with a great essay on floating down the Kobuk. I'm curious to see what George makes of it. I also want to see if he agrees that Turgenev describes weather and country and animals like no other writer. There's snail mail to Ekwok in the near future! And, in the more distant, I hope, more visits.

Another Little Lesson

Triton says this: thou shouldst not surf boat wakes with fly rods lashed to thy rigging.

Surfing your kayak is both fun and practical. Leaning forward a bit and riding out a wind wave or wake will get you from A to B a lot more quickly than letting the waves roll under your boat (though don't forget that the way back to A lies against the force of the waves. Plus, Triton also saith: beware when the tidal current turneth against the wave). I can't remember the name, but there is an expert, godlike kayaker, known for his trips in arctic, who makes incredible average speeds on the open water by surfing swells and waves as much as possible.

But Triton does not like his waves to be trifled with. In a playful, show-offish mood yesterday, I saw the Larkspur ferry launching and figured I would show my kayak fishing buddy Jim how easy it is to get a wave ride off its wake. I've done this before, and I did indeed double-check that both rods, spin and fly, were secure in their usual places. And when the wake came along, down went the bow, up went the stern, and WHEEEEE! Or wait -- is that the tip of my superexpensive Sage 8wt bending down under the water like that? Wow, is that the rod breaking on the second section down, and hanging weakly on like a snapped twig?

Sure enough, that's what it was. Maybe that little wake ride wasn't such a brilliant idea.

Fortunately, the rod is covered for repairs, and better yet, we ended up not needing fly rods on that outing. I found one small fish right after launching, but that was it. The typical process of elimination begins: so far, the early fall stripers are not where we have fished. When we fished there, anyway.

While I was at the launch dealing with all the gearables -- the rudder, the GPS unit, the sponsons, the pump and paddle float, etc. etc. -- some old fella out of an RV stood and stared intently at my every move. To my "how's it going up there?" he nodded and just kept staring. At length, he ventures to say,

"That looks like a LOT of work!"

To which I reply unthinkingly, "Yeah, especially if you're LAZY."

And that kind of ended the conversation. Snap off! Including rod tips, alas, especially if you're STUPID.

The Kanektok Klan

It really has been the summer of the "K." All the half-dozen rivers I fished in Alaska are rich in K's: Tikchik, Nuyakuk, Nushagak, Agulukpak, Agulowak, and Kanektok. Let's not get into the tributaries, either (Nukluk, Kanuktik, Klak, Upnuk, Koneruk, Klutuk and Tunravik). If I'd gone a little past Ekwok, I might have tried for chinooks at the mouth of Koklong creek. Targets for next year include the Kisaralik and Kasigluk rivers, or perhaps the Kwethluk or even the Kukaklek branch of the Alagnak again.

On this last leg with the Kanektok Klan, the K factor really kicked in. Kommunikation between our two waterkraft was karried out on walky talkies like this:

"This is the Kanektok Kid hailing King Kanektok, do you kopy?"
"King Kanektok here, karry on Kid."
"We just lokated a large pod of Kohos at the Nukluk konfluence, river right."

Kamping with the Klan was a whole different kettle of fish than camping alone. For one, bear-safe practices were kept to a minimum. We kept all our food in two big coolers that rode in the rafts by day and sat amid the tents at night. Our boats were quickly sprinkled with power bar wrappers and other stinky stuff, such as waterlogged turkey jerky. In the end, I committed the worst of all infractions myself, when I completely forgot about a ziploc baggie of salmon roe and left it outside of King Kanektok's tent by accident. Good thing a bear didn't come around that night, or it would have been quite a showdown!



But good company is a great thing. We had some memorable feasts on seared coho fillets and smoked char, all washed down with three varieties of single malt scotch and draughts from two separate bags of good wine, each containing five full bottles each. Dead tired from a day of fishing and full of good food and drink, we tended to sit around the fire and listen with amusement as the level of discourse descended like water down a cascade. However, we did come up with some practical thoughts, such as how to most effectively beat off any bears that might come into camp . . . .

One undeniable benefit of having some fishing buddies is the ability to fish while on the move. I've been known to hook a few from the inflatable kayak, but it's pretty hard work keeping the boat pointed the right way and the line free of slack at the same time. With a skilled rower like Bluegrass Bill or Jet (using our usernames from ncffb.org for a moment), you can fish very effectively as you float on down. Both this nice rainbow and this colorful char were hooked while just floating on down the Kanektok.





Of course, having a pal take your picture with the fish -- the so-called "hero shot" -- is also pretty kool. Our group took that to an even higher level with a high-quality film camera manned by the talented GM, creator of films on the Arolik and Kisaralik rivers, as well as our local treasure the Trinity. GM did more filming than fishing and earned his indian name, "Fishes with Camera." I hope to poach a few bits of his film to post here if I can. Definitely, I will try to obtain and post some his excellent still shots, not least because one of them depicts what is probably the biggest rainbow of the trip cradled heroically in my very own hands. For now, here's a nice coho taken for me by flys4b8 (who cracked me up badly one night by talking about "socko" salmon, a cross between the sockeye and coho, apparently):



So stay tuned for those additional pictures and any other tales that come from my rekollektions in trankwility. Krikey!