CATCH A SHOOTING STAR

U.S. Army Specialist Sagen Maddalena competes in the smallbore rifle U.S. Olympic Trials earlier this year. The world-class shooter who also loves to fish and hunted in Alaska in college has qualified for the three-position rifle event at the Tokyo Summer

TAKING HER SHOT AT GOLD

UA FAIRBANKS ALUM SAGEN MADDALENA HEADS TO THE SUMMER OLYMPICS IN TOKYO

BY CHRIS COCOLES

Sagen Maddalena’s road to Tokyo might have been paved in Alaska.

Maddalena, a specialist in the U.S. Army, will represent Team USA’s shooting team in the 2020 Summer Olympics, delayed a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic but scheduled to begin on July 23. Shooting competitions start July 24, and the 27-year-old from California qualified for Tokyo in the three-position rifle event.

“Wearing the red, white and blue, that’s going to be where my thoughts are,” she says. “It’s a privilege and an honor,

Americans haven’t dominated Olympic shooting’s medal table historically as in other sports such as basketball, swimming and track and field. But Team USA has a recent trend of women who have made the podium. Jamie Lynn Corkish (nee Gray) won gold in 2012’s London Games’ three-position rifle event; Alaska’s Corey Cogdell-Unrein has two bronze medals in trap shooting in 2008 (Beijing) and 2016 (Rio de Janeiro); Ginny Thrasher was the 2016 Olympic champion in air rifle; and Sagen Maddalena’s fellow Californian Kim Rhode (six medals, three gold, in six different Olympics) is the sport’s most successful female Olympian and the only woman to medal in six consecutive games (1996 Atlanta, 2000 Sydney, 2004 Athens, 2008 Beijing, 2012 London, 2016 Rio).

Rhode and Thrasher particularly have been great role models to Maddalena as she takes her shot at a Tokyo medal.

“Kim Rhode, I remember we were competing at the world championships in Granada, Spain. And we were traveling back together to the United States. I can’t say exactly what she said, but it had to do with loving what you do and enjoying the moment,” Maddalena says. “She also talked about how qualifying is just the first step. Getting into that final and just enjoying it. At least that’s what I took out of it. I don’t know if that's what she was trying to relay, but that’s what I took from the conversation that we had. That was a big thing for me to learn, the enjoyment aspect of it.” Thrasher and Maddalena are somewhat rivals in their discipline, and the latter will try to follow up the former’s unlikely 2016 air rifle gold in Brazil. Thrasher also competed collegiately at West Virginia University, which for years has battled Maddalena’s alma mater Alaska Fairbanks for national team titles. “We competed together a lot and have grown up in the sport. When Thrasher was preparing for the 2016 Olympics I was tagging along with her and training with her, and it was really awesome to see how she prepared mentally,” Maddalena says. “She’s very good with routines and I guess you can say she has rituals in her preparation before she competes. That’s definitely something that I’ve learned from her.” CC

and definitely I’m excited to represent the Army, my state, my family.” Her state, of course, is first and foremost California, where she grew up. But the state known as the Last Frontier is also part of who Maddalena is today as a skilled marksperson and a medal hopeful in Tokyo. Urged by her service rifle coach in California, she carried a borrowed .22 and an air rifle she bought with summer job earnings and headed north to try and walk on to the University of Alaska Fairbanks rifle team. “That was, all I can say, luck at the time,” she says of how she got there and what the experience did for her career, one that could be just taking off. THE COMMUNITY OF GROVELAND, located in Northern California’s Sierra Nevada Range and known as the “gateway” to Yosemite National Park, was an outdoor paradise for young Sagen Maddalena. Her dad Randy got her hooked on fly fishing, but it was another family member who inspired her in a different activity. “A big part of it goes to my grandpa. He kind of got me out there shooting and he showed me a lot of the safety part of it and the enjoyment of it,” she says. Sagen joined her local 4-H club and participated in the traditional raising of livestock. She started with sheep, then pigs, and she especially got into taking care of breeding goats (her family also owned horses and she participated in equestrian programs). But the 4-H also sponsored a .22 long rifle shooting program that Maddalena was excited to enroll in. It was mostly a safety class with some competitive events, but it opened new doors. “The big thing was, the junior rifle service team (California Grizzlies) ran that program, or assisted in running that program,” she says. “It was kind of like a football team and they recruited juniors who were interested in shooting. ‘OK, I want to go a little further in this.’” Kim Rhode. (PATTI WATKINS, INSPIRED STUDIOS, VIA USA Maddalena found herself competing SHOOTING) – and holding her own – against older 4-H competitors. And then the invite came to join the California Grizzlies service rifle team. “Once I went to my first match there, I was hooked at that point,” she says.

Ginny Thrasher. (GINNYTHRASHER.COM/MEDIA)

Still, as she was mostly homeschooled, Maddalena wasn’t sure if shooting could turn into something else. She wanted to enlist in the Army eventually, but preferred to get a college education first. That’s when her service rifle coach, Robert Taylor, had an idea that would change everything.

THE OLYMPIC GAMES TELL us so much about an athlete’s character. From Jesse Owens, the sprinter who stuck it to Adolph Hitler’s white supremacy propaganda in Berlin; to unlikely wrestling Olympic champion Rulon Gardner; to the sheer dominance of gymnastics star Simone Biles. Maddalena may or may not join them as American medalists, but she found humor when asked about how quickly she caught onto shooting.

“Not at all. Terrible,” was how she described her performance early on. “One thing that still sticks in my mind is the (4-H) instructor we had running the .22 program told everybody in the group in our lesson before we went to the range was – and he was talking to me

Even when fishing in Georgia, where she’s now based, Maddalena loves to rep her alma mater, University of Alaska Fairbanks, where she walked in and then became an All-Ameri-

can. (SAGEN MADDALENA)

Growing up, Maddalena and her father Randy shared many fly fishing trips, a passion that she continues today, and she even sees some correlations to fly fishing and shooting. “It’s the patience and the ability to just kinda be all there when you’re doing it,” she says. “You really can’t just let your mind wander.” (SAGEN MADDALENA) – to be able to shoot standing you have to love standing. So I pretty much told myself from that time on, ‘I love shooting standing.’”

She made sacrifices to get better. Between her practice time on the range and livestock duties, Maddalena admits she had little time to do what kids her age do and hang out with friends. She also credits her parents, Randy and Susan, for attending all those county fairs – “I’m pretty sure there were better things to do at that time,” Sagen says of her mom. “She sacrificed a lot to be there.”

Sagen also was thankful Randy wasn’t a “helicopter dad” who “never hovered” at events and got too involved in the proceedings.

“It was my drive; it wasn’t their drive,” she says. “They were always just there to support, so I was fortunate to have that.”

Maddalena was also inspired by her service rifle team coach Taylor, who offered some of the best advice of her life.

“‘Look: You have a choice to make. You can be the best here; the best as a service rifle shooter,” Maddalena recalls Taylor telling her. “Or you can expand

out and you can try shooting in college … You can (someday possibly) shoot in the Olympics and take your competitive nature out farther.”

UAF, one of the most storied rifle programs in the NCAA, checked a lot of boxes. The school offered a program Maddalena wanted to major in (natural resources management), so together coach and athlete reached out to then Nanooks head coach Dan Jordan (we previously profiled him: Alaska Sporting Journal, March 2015).

“I told him I was interested, my experience and what I had under my belt, and I told him where I wanted to get to and the goals that I had,” Maddalena says. “I wrote it all out in an email and he gave me a call. He gave me a chance. He said, ‘You can come up here and compete as a walk-on.’”

So with her borrowed .22 and that air rifle she purchased, Sagen and her mom headed to Fairbanks to try out. Jordan liked what he saw, Maddalena made the team as a non-scholarship athlete, and she redshirted in the 2013-14 season.

That time proved invaluable to watch her older Nanooks teammates in action at a prestigious program (UAF has won 10 NCAA team titles and finished second four more times). Match days meant Maddalena could watch the action from the sidelines. Then when it ended, she’d stick around.

“I’d watch them compete, shoot. They would pack up and leave and I would go on the range and shoot my match and be there until like 10 or 11 (p.m.), just shooting my match and seeing how I did amongst their scores. That’s how I pushed myself. They drove me to be better.”

In her four years competing, Maddalena became an eight-time All-American in both air and smallbore rifle and earned her degree in natural resources management with a minor in forestry.

She also immersed herself in the Alaskan lifestyle. Despite being a shooter, fishing was always Maddalena’s first love. Though she vows to come back someday and catch a massive Alaska salmon, she caught plenty of grayling and trout during trips to the Delta Clearwater River and other local fisheries.

“I remember going out to the Clearwater and I was out there fly fishing. I was walking back to the truck and thought, ‘Wow. My feet are cold,’” she says. “I had the waders on and the thick socks. I was appropriately dressed. And I got back to the truck and was eventually able to unfreeze my shoelaces so I could get my shoes off. But I had a half-inch of ice underneath my socks built up.”

It’s a feeling only an Alaskan – even a transplant from California – can truly appreciate. Maddalena savored her solo hikes when she packed her snowshoes and shotgun and headed out for some bird hunting.

“I had a 12-gauge and I’d hunt for grouse for dinner. And my poor roommates; I’d sit on the back porch of our apartment and take the feathers out of the grouse,” she says. “We had feathers all over the place. But that was my thing: just go out and start walking.”

As for her time in Alaska’s outdoors, Maddalena used the word clarity to describe the overall experience.

“You’re so close to just, I want to say nature, but that’s not the right word for it. You get into the truck and drive somewhere and then get out and start walking,” she says. “And you’re just 30 minutes from town. You can look up in the sky and the color is a little more blue or a little more crisp. And I always really enjoyed that part of it. It’s just a different place.”

TOKYO MARKS AN ENDGAME to Maddalena’s journey from rural California to Japan via Fairbanks, Alaska. All the 4-H lessons, the service rifle team success and her perseverance to make it work at the college level will come to fruition when she heads across the Pacific for the pandemic-delayed Summer Games.

Specialist Maddalena loves her current career in the Army. She’s stationed at Georgia’s Fort Benning, and when she’s not training – she missed out at 2016’s smallbore rifle Olympic Trials before joining teammate Mary Tucker as Team USA’s 2020 air rifle participants – Maddalena is proudly a member of the International Army Rifle Team.

“It wasn’t anything that was in the family (as a military background). But I’ve always been patriotic, I guess. Just growing up and being in that rural

Maddalena celebrates her qualification for Tokyo, four years after coming up short for the 2016 Rio de Janeiro games. “Just to make the team, that’s kind of like a ticket to the dance, right? It’s only the first

step,” she says. (MICHELLE LUNATO/U.S. ARMY)

“(It’s) kind of like putting on that Army uniform. It makes you pop your chest a little more, bring your shoulders out and chin up,” Maddalena says of representing Team USA in Tokyo. “ It’s like, ‘OK. Now I get to go to work. I get to show who I am among the greatest out there.’”

(MICHELLE LUNATO/U.S. ARMY) community, and I always looked up to the sacrifices that soldiers gave,” she says. “I wanted to be a part of that, and so to have that opportunity to be a competitor and shoot nationally, to compete around the world and represent the Army and my country at the same time, that’s hands down a huge drive. A huge reason why I compete.”

And what about that upcoming competition in Tokyo?

“Just to make the team, that’s kind of like a ticket to the dance, right? It’s only the first step. However, it’s a step that can be hard to get to,” says Maddalena, who referred to her 2016 near-miss as a “taste.”

“And now, having more than that taste and really getting it in my grasp and getting that ticket to go, it really doesn’t feel like anything special. It’s like, ‘OK. Now I get to go to work. I get to show who I am among the greatest out there.’” ASJ

Editor’s note: For more on USA Shooting, go to usashooting.org. The Tokyo Olympics shooting competition website is at olympics .com/tokyo-2020/en/sports/shooting.

INLAND BOATS & MOTORS

SERVING YOU SINCE 1975

111 N. Kittitas St. Ellensburg, WA 509-925-1758 • M-F 9-5pm inlandboatsandmotors.com

ALL ABOUT THE CURING

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Author Scott Haugen cured over 1,000 pounds of coho eggs last summer. Here he’s bleeding fresh skeins, using multiple cures on baits cut to size and starting the air drying process with two previously cured batches. (SCOTT HAUGEN)

HOW ONE EXPERT PREPARES HIS EGGS FOR SALMON FISHING

BY SCOTT HAUGEN

“I’ve never seen it done like that before!” It was a statement I heard over and over last summer while working at a fishing lodge in Alaska. Part of my duties included curing salmon eggs, a responsibility I insisted on. I’m picky when it comes to fishing eggs, even in

Alaska.

What caught me by surprise were the number of veteran egg-curing anglers who commented on my process. Most said they’d never even thought of doing it the way I did.

I’ve been curing salmon and steelhead eggs for over 50 years, and my goal is always to optimize the color and texture of the end product. For five weeks last summer I cured several pounds of coho eggs a day, as they were the primary bait used by clients to catch silver salmon. Wherever upcoming salmon fishing trips may take you, save those eggs and try this curing approach.

MY EGG-CURING PROCESS STARTS by quickly killing each fish that’s caught and immediately snapping a couple gill rakes. You want the blood pumping or quickly flowing before it coagulates, which can

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BLANKET ’BUT BETWEEN POTATO LAYERS

BY TIFFANY HAUGEN

“H e’s a real meat-and-potatoes kind of guy” is a statement I often hear about people who aren’t food-adventurous. It’s slightly insulting to the potato, too, especially when combined with fish.

From curries to colcannons to fish stew, potatoes across the world add a nice and complex carbohydrate to the dinner plate. In this fish-and-potatoes dish, they also surround and protect delicate bottomfish from drying out in the heat of the oven.

Fried ahead and partially cooked with aromatic, caramelized onions and garlic, these potatoes are anything but ordinary. Add the crunch of buttery Parmesanbuttered panko as a topping and you’ll have a simple, quick, flavorful dinner. It’s sure to become a favorite, especially with the easy clean-up of cooking on parchment. While this recipe works great with any fish, here we used halibut. Four halibut or bottomfish fillets, single serving size Half a lemon Three medium potatoes 1 cup diced onion 3 cloves garlic, thinly sliced ½ teaspoon salt ¼ teaspoon black pepper 2 tablespoons olive oil 2 tablespoons butter 3 tablespoons Parmesan cheese ½ cup panko or breadcrumbs 1 tablespoon chopped fresh chives Parchment paper Peel potatoes (or leave peelings on if organic) and chop into bite-sized pieces. In a large skillet, heat olive oil on medium heat. Add diced onion and sauté until onion begins to caramelize, about 10 minutes.

Add chopped potatoes, sliced garlic, salt and pepper and continue to sauté until potatoes become slightly tender. Do not fully cook potatoes, as they will go in the oven to finish cooking.

In a smaller skillet or in the microwave, melt butter and toss with Parmesan cheese and panko/breadcrumbs. Tear off four pieces of parchment paper slightly larger than your fish fillets. Place a spoonful of potato mixture on each piece of parchment. Rinse fish, pat dry and sprinkle with freshly squeezed lemon. Place on top of potato layer and cover each fillet with the remaining potato mixture. Top each fish fillet with an equal amount of buttered panko/ breadcrumbs.

Bake in a preheated, 375-degree oven until fish reaches desired doneness or 135 degrees. Garnish with fresh chives before serving. Editor’s note: For signed copies of Tiffany’s popular book, Cooking Seafood, and other best-selling titles, visit tiffanyhaugen.com.

Potatoes aren’t just a perfect match for steak, meatloaf or bangers (at least if you’re cooking in the United Kingdom). Tiffany Haugen likes to pair halibut and other fish with some

spuds. (TIFFANY HAUGEN)

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In order to optimize the egg-curing process, split big skeins lengthwise, up the center, then cut bait-sized chunks into the curing container. This maximizes the retention of connective tissues, thereby optimizing bait quality and performance.

(SCOTT HAUGEN)

compromise not only the meat, but the eggs as well.

Once the skeins are free, cut an inch or so off the narrow end, making sure to remove all coagulated blood. One bad bait can ruin an entire batch, and having blood-free eggs to start with is very important. Next, force all the blood out of the vessels in each skein. With a paper towel, blot any remaining blood from the skein.

Next, sprinkle a thin layer of egg cure into the bottom of a plastic or glass curing container, just enough to cover it. Last summer I used many brands, and settled on Pro-Cure’s Wizard Egg Cure in Double Neon Red and their Flame Orange Bait Cure. Clients could choose their eggs, and these were the ones they repeatedly went to day after day, and both produced high numbers of salmon all season long.

Grip a skein at the large end, hold over the curing jar, and cut into baitsized chunks. If the skein is small, simply start cutting at the narrow end, as this optimizes egg retention due to maximized skein being intact. The more membrane that’s intact, the firmer the bait will cure up and the better it will fish.

ONCE YOU REACH THE point on the skein where the baits become too big, cut up through the center of the skein that’s hanging down over the container; start at the bottom and continue to the top. This gives you two strips of skeins to now cut into bait sizes.

When the layer of cure is covered with fresh cut baits, add more cure. Sprinkle just enough cure to cover the baits, as too much can result in chemical burns or hard discolored baits. Continue cutting and layering baits and cure until the jar is full or you’re out of eggs.

Cutting your baits into the size you’ll be fishing does two things. First, it maximizes the surface area of each bait being cured, thereby optimizing their color. Second, it saves time when on the river. Fewer things frustrate me more than watching anglers fumble with whole, cured skeins when fishing. They’re messy and it wastes time.

Instead of having to cut bait-sized chunks, clean the knife or scissors, apply the eggs, then wash your hands and work area every time you need a fresh bait, all you have to do is grab a pre-cut bait and get back to fishing. They’re already air-dried to ideal firmness, so there’s minimal mess.

WITH THE CURING JAR full, place in a cool, shaded place, like the corner of a shop or refrigerator. Rotate the jar every six to eight hours. There’s no need to shake the jar, as you want the cure to slowly precipitate through all layers of eggs. If you have a big container of eggs curing, you can gently roll them around on the final rotation to ensure all surfaces of the baits are covered in cure.

After 36 to 48 hours, remove the eggs, drain and let air dry. I like putting them on plastic racks or a piece of plywood; don’t put them on metal, which can taint the smell. Never in the curing process should eggs be exposed to sunlight, as this will darken them and weaken cell membranes. Once dried to the point where baits are tacky to the touch, they’re ready to

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Cured eggs ready to be drained then air dried. The batch soaked for 48 hours and the container was flipped every six

to eight hours. (SCOTT HAUGEN) fish. Keep finished eggs refrigerated for up to a month, or freeze for longerterm storage. It’s best to cure eggs then freeze them. Don’t refreeze eggs; the membranes may burst as they contract and expand in the thawing and freezing process, which makes them easily break down and fall off the hook when fished.

THE KEY TO ANY well-cured egg is starting with a blood-free skein. Next, cut eggs to bait size and cover in cure. Keep eggs cool and shaded and handle with rubber gloves if worried about contaminating them with oils from your hands.

Remember that a salmon’s sense of smell is measured in parts per billion, so no precautions are an overkill when it comes to achieving the perfectly cured egg. ASJ

Editor’s note: To order signed copies of Scott Haugen’s best-selling book, Egg Cures: Proven Recipes & Techniques, visit scotthaugen.com. Follow Scott on Instagram and Facebook.

COVID-19 RESTRICTIONS BE DAMNED, VALDEZ DERBIES GOING STRONG

FULL SLATE OF HALIBUT, SILVER, KIDS AND WOMEN’S EVENTS ON TAP THIS SUMMER AT PRINCE WILLIAM SOUND PORT

BY CHRIS COCOLES

The Valdez Fish Derbies’ COVID-19-affected formats worked so well in 2020, it made sense to do it similarly this year.

The Southcentral Alaska community is known for its popular summer halibut and salmon derbies, and when the pandemic shut down so many communities throughout the previous year, the usual fanfare and gatherings the Valdez events normally embrace had to be downsized.

“Our focus last year was to tell people what they could do,” says Laurie Prax, Valdez Fish Derbies’ (valdezfishderbies .com) marketing coordinator and also the owner of local radio station KVAK. “We kind of went around and around, and then we said, ‘Let’s really analyze this. Really, the big events are what we can’t do. But the rest of it, we can do.’ We didn’t have in-person events. That is the accurate way to say it.”

What that included was not having everyone get together in large groups. Putting social distancing signs around the marina and installing hand-washing stations was a starting point.

“Because there’s a whole lot of room in Prince William Sound, it is kind of a social distancing event. We were pretty fortunate here in Valdez, because we’re small enough. And that kind of worked in our favor,” Prax says. “And I think we’re going to reap some benefits of that down the road because a lot of people from Palm-

Local angler Gary Gardner briefly led the Valdez Halibut Derby in June with this 133.2-pounder. The event runs through Sept. 5 for anglers who buy a $10 daily ticket (it’s $50 for a full-season ticket). The biggest fish will net the winner a $10,000 cash prize.

The Silver Salmon Derby is one of Valdez’s most popular events and also features a $10,000 prize for catching the biggest fish. The derby starts on July 24.

(VALDEZ FISH DERBIES)

er, Anchorage, came here just looking for somewhere to go and really enjoyed it. And we may see them back here.”

Already, the summer-long Valdez Halibut Derby is running smoothly. Anglers can spend $10 on a daily derby ticket and they can keep weighing fish at the official station near the harbormaster’s office through Sept. 5.

KIDS’ STUFF Prax cited the success of 2020’s Kids Pink Salmon Derby – this year’s event is July 24 – as a test case for how these tournaments can work safely during the pandemic. Normally, the free event also includes a weigh-in for the young anglers.

“Instead of weighing them at the weigh-in station for the kids’ derby, they (e-mailed) us a picture. We were sitting there wondering, ‘We don’t know who’s going to do it,’” Prax says.

When sending in a pink photo, the boys and girls were able to submit a line about their day on the water. Prax’s radio station also got involved in the festivities. The kids who fished could call into KVAK and talk about their experiences on the air, and Prax even had some read promotional spots.

“And it was so super cool to see. It just looked like they were having a heck of a day. I felt like it was cathartic,” she says. “It was a big connection; people were able to do something together. They felt like they were a part of something.”

BIG BUCKS AGAIN FOR BIG ’BUTS, COHO Last year, the usual top three largest-fish cash prizes for the halibut and silver salmon derbies (the latter runs from July 24-Sept. 5) were cut in half, but Prax says this summer’s first-, second- and thirdplace finishers will receive $10,000, $3,000 and $1,500, respectively. There are also daily prizes for first- and second-biggest fish – everything from apparel to charter-boat fishing trips.

“We made a couple changes in the prize amounts to weather the storm. And nobody complained,” Prax says. “Everyone was super thankful for us doing it and running it.”

In late June, the halibut derby’s leading fish was 144.6 pounds, but there will be plenty of opportunities for anglers to buy more tickets throughout the summer for a tournament that started on May 22.

“It’s probably the longest derby in the world,” Prax says.

The Silver Salmon Derby usually attracts plenty of locals, other Alaskans and lots of out-of-state visitors who want to fish Prince William Sound.

“The silver derby is big. It brings a lot of people here in July and August. That’s a lot of the reasons so many Alaskans come. It’s a great fishery and Alaskans really like silvers,” Prax says. “And a lot of people will do a combo trip and go to the Copper River and fish there also.”

MORE TO COME Special dates to keep an eye on for the Silver Salmon Derby include Big Prize Fridays on July 30 and Sept. 3. The largest silvers caught those days will also net the lucky angler an additional $500 along with the daily prizes.

And catch one of 20 specially tagged silvers from Aug. 13 through Sept. 5 and you could win $5,000, $2,500 or $1,000 or other prizes like gift certificates.

“They’re out there and you never know,”

From the Women’s Silver Salmon Derby that’s scheduled for Aug. 14, to a pink salmon contest for the kids on July 24, there will be something for everyone this summer in Valdez, even if the events continue to be limited for pandemic

safety reasons. (VALDEZ FISH DERBIES) Prax says of the elusive tagged salmon.

The always well-attended Women’s Silver Salmon Derby is set for Aug. 14, and again with a reduced event schedule than in the past. But it should still be fun.

And as a whole, Valdez Fish Derbies have offered those who participate with a wonderful opportunity to get outside, fish and, most importantly, stay safe.

“Really, the derbies are about fishing. And our mission is to promote sport fishing in Valdez. So we kind of never wavered from our mission, which was a lot more important to get out than it was in years’ past,” Prax says.

“I think people take it for granted. It’s really nice to have them say, ‘Hey, we appreciate it.’ People have the realization that maybe it doesn’t have to happen. Having them realize what it takes to do it and really appreciate it (was nice). As bad as COVID was, that was a good benefit.” ASJ

Editor’s note: For more information, go to valdezfishderbies.com and like at facebook .com/valdezfish. Also, see our Outdoor Calendar on page 11 for specific dates of these and other upcoming events.