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SEAN DWYER

Rookie Captain

FISH TALES Kenai SOCKEYE Dipnetting Seward HOOLIGAN Bristol Bay RAFT-FISHING & MORE

HUNTING BRUINS Catch Up p With

BERING SEA GOLD’S EMILY RIEDEL

Hunter’s Massive Griz Flirts With Record Book 3 Ways Bears’ Hunger Can Work For You

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SPORTING JOURNAL Volume 7 • Issue 12 www.aksportingjournal.com PUBLISHER James R. Baker ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Dick Openshaw GENERAL MANAGER John Rusnak EXECUTIVE EDITOR Andy Walgamott EDITOR Chris Cocoles ASSOCIATE EDITOR Tom Reale WRITERS Dave Atcheson, Paul D. Atkins, Ralph Bartholdt, Christine Cunningham, Louis Cusack, Scott Haugen, Tiffany Haugen, Bill Howell, Jeff Lund, Bixler McClure, Krystin McClure, Dennis Musgraves SALES MANAGER Katie Higgins ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES Mamie Grifﬁn, Larry Hinze, Steve Joseph, Garn Kennedy, Mike Smith, Paul Yarnold PRODUCTION MANAGER Sonjia Kells DESIGNERS Ciara Pickering, Sam Rockwell, Liz Weickum WEB DEVELOPMENT/INBOUND MARKETING Jon Hines PRODUCTION ASSISTANT Kelly Baker CIRCULATION MANAGER Heidi Belew DISTRIBUTION Tony Sorrentino, Gary Bickford OFFICE MANAGER/ACCOUNTS Audra Higgins ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT Katie Sauro INFORMATION SERVICES MANAGER Lois Sanborn ADVERTISING INQUIRIES ads@nwsportsmanmag.com ON THE COVER Sean Dwyer, 24, grew up around the commercial ﬁshing industry tagging along with his dad, Pat. Sean is now captaining his own crabbing vessel on the Discovery Channel hit series, Deadliest Catch. (DISCOVERY CHANNEL) MEDIA INDEX PUBLISHING GROUP WASHINGTON OFFICE 14240 Interurban Ave South • Suite 190 Tukwila, WA 98168 OREGON OFFICE 8116 SW Durham Rd • Tigard, OR 97224 (800) 332-1 736 • Fax (206) 382-9437 media@media-inc.com • www.media-inc.com CORRESPONDENCE Twitter @AKSportJourn Facebook.com/alaskasportingjournal Email ccocoles@media-inc.com

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CONTENTS

VOLUME 7 • ISSUE 12

Well, OK, maybe not like the actor in A River Runs Through It right away, but you gotta start somewhere if you haven’t picked up a fly rod yet! Our Anchorage-based waver of the wand Tom Reale (here fighting one) sets you up for fly fishing success in his beginner’s guide. (TOM REALE)

FLY FISH LIKE BRAD PITT!

FEATURES 14

ROOKIE OF THE YEAR Deadliest Catch’s procession of cranky veteran Bering Sea captains is getting a fresh face this season in youthful, gregarious skipper Sean Dwyer, who’s just 24 but has a lot of years of learning the commercial ﬁshing industry from his late father, Pat. Sean shares his memories of growing up as a crabber in waiting.

RED ALERT! Dennis Musgraves wanted to give his nephew Duncan a shot at sockeye before the Kenai River overﬂowed with anglers during the run’s peak. Would the youngster overcome slow ﬁshing to score his red?

127 RECORD-WRECKER BRUIN?! Louis Cusack didn’t plan to use his brown bear tag when he and wife Ruth went ﬂoat-hunting that September for moose. But when a massive boar appeared, Cusack took advantage of what seemed to be a possible record-breaking bruin. Or was it? 149 TROPHY’S DOWN – NOW WHAT? You’re on a DIY hunt in search of a caribou, moose, Dall’s or blacktail and just harvested the critter of

your dreams. Now you need to get your trophy animal’s rack and meat home – and home’s a long, looooong way away. Fret not, Paul Atkins has been doing this for years, and he details the game-transporting tips you need to know.

ALSO IN THIS ISSUE 31 62 77 103 107 119

Catching up with Bering Sea Gold’s Emily Riedel Raft-ﬁshing Alaska’s rivers When Panhandle steelhead don’t bite Kenai Peninsula’s beer scene is thriving Dipnetting Seward-area hooligan Hang on! SJX jet boats a wild ride in skinny water

DEPARTMENTS/COLUMNS 13 43

The Editor’s Note: Carrying on for Dad Protecting Wild Alaska: Subsistence board closes federal lands near Kotzebue to caribou hunting 143 From Field to Fire: How to use bears’ hunger to your advantage; Rendering bear fat

Alaska Sporting Journal is published monthly. Call Media Inc. Publishing Group for a current rate card. Discounts for frequency advertising. All submitted materials become the property of Media Inc. Publishing Group and will not be returned. Annual subscriptions are $29.95 (12 issues) or $39.95 (24 issues). Send check or money order to Media Inc. Publishing Group, 14240 Interurban Ave South, Suite 190, Tukwila, WA 98168 or call (206) 382-9220 with VISA or M/C. Back issues may be ordered at Media Inc. Publishing Group, subject to availability, at the cost of $5 plus shipping. Copyright © 2015 Media Inc. Publishing Group. All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be copied by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording by any information storage or retrieval system, without the express written permission of the publisher. Printed in U.S.A. 10

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EDITOR’S NOTE

Sean Dwyer, Deadliest Catch’s rookie crabbing captain, honors his late father Pat, who died at just 52, every time his boat heads out onto the Bering Sea. (DISCOVERY CHANNEL)

hen I talked to Deadliest Catch’s newest crabbing captain Sean Dwyer, I knew the subject of his dad would come up. As interviewers we’re looking for that golden ticket that makes a story sing. In our business we call it the nut of the piece. Sean, just 24, captained his own boat, the Brenna A (named after his sister), in Deadliest Catch’s ongoing Season 12 on the Discovery Channel. TV execs also love the kind of backstory Dwyer brought to this award-winning reality series. It’s the younger generation of a family whose roots are in the commercial fishing industry carrying on the tradition. But after chatting with Sean, it was obvious each time he and his crew hit the Bering Sea in search of thousands of pounds of bairdi crab, he does so with a heavy heart. I’m one of the lucky ones in that while I lost my mom about a decade ago, she lived almost 78 years and got to experience and brag about her kids’ children and dogs, their college graduations and personal and professional success. My dad is 84 now and still hanging in there despite some recent setbacks. But he too has already led a full life. But then I think about Sean and what he had to endure and I wonder why their family had to endure losing its patriarch far too early. Pat Dwyer always hoped Sean would repeat his career path as a Washington state-based fisherman who’d make his bones in the commercial industry in Alaska. That was going to happen regardless. And then Pat was diagnosed with ALS and slowly deteriorated. At the end – on June 4, 2013 – he was confined to a wheelchair. That was just miserable for Sean to accept, as he explained to me. His dad was happiest getting his hands dirty working down at the boat yard, and that he succumbed to his disease at just 52 years old seemed unfair. But I guess you start to understand how important it is for Sean to get out on the treacherous waters of the Bering Sea and honor his memory. Pat wouldn’t want it any other way. –Chris Cocoles aksportingjournal.com | MAY 2016

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Sean Dwyer, 24, was preordained to be a commercial ﬁsherman from an early age. He skippered his own crab boat for the ﬁrst time, which is being on chronicled this season on the Discovery Channel’s hit series, Deadliest Catch. (DISCOVERY CHANNEL)

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Dwyer and his Brenna A crew had some expected ups and downs as rookie crabbers. “The guys really pulled through at the end. And they came as long a way as I did. It was a learning experience for everybody.” (DISCOVERY CHANNEL)

JUST LIKE DAD DEADLIEST CATCH’S ROOKIE SKIPPER FOLLOWING IN FAMILY’S FISHING LEGACY BY CHRIS COCOLES

t was a classic mentor/rookie moment for Sean Dwyer. In the dangerous world of commercial crab ﬁshing off the coast of Alaska, Dwyer’s debut as a ﬁshing vessel skipper couldn’t have been more pressure-packed. The cameras of Discovery Channel’s Deadliest Catch followed Dwyer’s boat, the Brenna A, during his maiden voyage as a

captain. If that wasn’t enough of a welcome-to-crabbing moment, his mentor on this journey was venerable and wonderfully gruff Sig Hansen, who set a 290,000-pound bairdi crab benchmark for the 24-year-old Dwyer to reach during this 12th season of the popular series. “One of the pieces of advice that Sig gave me is, you’re only as good as your last season,” says Dwyer, who was at even more of a disadvantage given that he didn’t have a last aksportingjournal.com | MAY 2016

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season to measure himself against. “You don’t know what’s going to happen next season. You just can’t predict it. I’d like to think that when I stop learning about crab fishing is when I’ll stop crab fishing.” But once a fisherman, always a fisherman. It’s the kind of career Dwyer was destined to fulfill from the start. Sean’s dad Pat Dwyer was one of the most respected commercial captains along the Pacific Northwest coast, and Sean tagged along from the beginning, soaking up the lifestyle and dreaming of a similar career path. Fate intervened along the way,

but this was meant to be a family business from the start. Pat Dwyer passed away at age 52 on June 4, 2013 after battling amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease). Before that, Pat’s dream of his son following in his footsteps became reality when he purchased a new ﬁshing vessel, the Brenna A, which became the younger Dwyer’s home-away-from-home on Bering Sea. Dwyer, who grew up in and still calls the Seattle area his home base, says he spends at least eight months out of the year plying his trade in Alaska. We chatted with Sean about

Sean Dwyer pilots his boat, the Brenna A, which is named after his sister. His dad’s boat, the Jennifer A, is named for Sean’s mom. (DISCOVERY CHANNEL) 16

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Dwyer says the process of ﬁnding and pulling this coveted crab species off the ocean ﬂoor and onto hundreds of thousands of dinner tables can take a physical and emotional toll. But it’s the only life he’s ever wanted. (DISCOVERY CHANNEL)

his father, life at sea and just how difficult the crabbing game can be for both the young and young and heart.

Chris Cocoles So what was the experience like for you – captaining your own fishing vessel and having all of it captured on camera? Sean Dwyer I don’t know if it was a good year, but it was what I wanted to do. It’s defiSean had a special relationship with his dad, Pat Dwyer, who passed away in 2013 after he bought a boat for Sean to follow in his commercial fishing footsteps. “The one thing we all learned through my dad’s dealings with ALS is that time is really valuable. If you want something and have a passion, you should just follow it,” Sean says. (SEAN DWYER)

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nitely a challenge to do it on TV and being a new captain at the same time. But I think I do better under pressure, so why not bring it on all at once? It was a good opportunity, and whatever it entailed I just couldn’t pass it up. The TV thing wasn’t top priority, but it’s pretty fun. And what I really appreciate is that Discovery and Original Productions have done a really good job of keeping it real. It’s been a lot of fun.

CC With your background in this industry, were you preor-

The great Capt. Sig Hansen has become somewhat of a mentor to the rookie skipper Dwyer. “He gave me some really good pointers, and I think the most important one was just to be honest,” he says of the Northwestern’s iconic skipper. (DISCOVERY CHANNEL) 20

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dained to do this too?

SD It’s almost been my passion and dream. I followed my dad around when I was a little kid and I started salmon ﬁshing when I was young, like 12 years old. Once I actually got my feet on the boat and I started working, I knew that’s all I wanted to do – much to my mother’s dismay, initially. Because it was my passion, I’m really fortunate that I was able to share that with my dad because in that, he taught me a lot of valuable information that I used going forward.

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“I didn’t go out there and expect to be a Sig Hansen right off the bat,” says Dwyer, who considers himself a far better captain now than when he started. “It was cool to see that process, because it’s not every day that you just get to start fresh.” (DISCOVERY CHANNEL)

CC Can you share one of your early experiences on your dad’s boat? SD It was during the summer and we used to go out on Jenni-

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fer A, which was named after my mom [his current boat, the Brenna A, pays homage to Dwyer’s sister of the same name]. We used to go out on the Jennifer A for two to three weeks

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at a time. I remember being in Southeast Alaska and there were icebergs and whales; I was just a kid running around in my life jacket watching the big guys work. It was awesome to see the big-boy stuff: the machinery, ﬁsh ﬂying around. I think I was probably like 5 or 6 years old. It just stuck with me ever since.

CC What kind of impact did your dad have on you? And it had to be such an emotional time for the family when he was sick and bought the Brenna A. SD It was a huge impact. He bought that boat after he was diagnosed. It was one of those things where my dad would buy equipment, machinery, 4X4s – whatever – without telling my mom and just show up with them. It got to the point where, once she heard a big truck outside the window, she just hoped it was the garbage man and not my dad showing up with a new piece of equipment. But he kind of did the same thing with the Brenna A. He always wanted to have two boats and he ﬁgured no better time than the present. The one thing we all learned through my dad’s dealings with ALS is that time is really valuable. If you want something and have a passion, you should just follow it. And that’s what he did; he just went out and bought another boat.

CC When he passed away was it in your and your family’s mind to be able to carry on his legacy with the new boat? SD I deﬁnitely did. For me, I’ve watched my dad go through

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that whole thing, and he was always a hands-on guy. And for him to be sitting in his wheelchair for the last four years of his life, not being able to go down to the boat every day and work, it was tough. What he did was teach me to be his hands. I would go down there and take pictures and send them to him midway through the day. And he’d call me and say, “Hey, you need to do this, or, This is in the wrong spot.” We did that for awhile and he taught me a ton that way. And because of the unfortunate later stages of ALS, I think, for me personally, I was relieved when he ﬁnally did pass because he just wasn’t happy. He was frustrated but he held his ground until the end. He passed in June and in May I was with one of the boats in the shipyard. And he was still telling me I was spending too much money on paint and I needed to do this and that. Right after that he ﬁnally said, “OK, you’re good.” And after that, he passed away.

CC Is there a lot of solace for you in that you’re able to do what he spent his life doing? SD Deﬁnitely. He was proud – he is proud. And it’s pretty cool. Obviously, it’s not a job that everyone can do; and it’s not a job that everyone loves. A lot of people go up there and their heads are not in the game. The thing about it is, you can be the biggest, the strongest and toughest you guy you want. But if your head’s not there, you’re not going to make it. And I think on all those promos – “The Bering Sea will make you or break you” – but what it does is test how mentally strong you

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are and how bad do you want something. And when he saw that in me, he was proud and he wanted to fuel it because he knew the potential. And it took us a little bit of time after he passed, but we’re at the point now where we’re doing what he wanted – ﬁshing crab – and it’s great.

CC You have an engineering degree. But you’re at heart a fisherman. Tell me how it was to be stuck in classrooms when you could have been on a boat. SD [Laughs] It was tough. I have a two-year technical degree in diesel engines and heavy equipment technology. What that meant was over the course of the two years, basically half the time we were in the classroom doing the books; and the other half we were out in the shop. South Seattle College was where I (studied) and we mainly worked on trucks, though there were a few marine engines and some pieces of heavy equipment. So it wasn’t the field I wanted to go in, but it all applies. Mechanics are mechanics, and having that mechanical mind is really what benefits you. Whether it’s a car or a boat, you can eventually figure it out if you can troubleshoot. The cool thing about the program was that it was from 7 a.m. to noon, so from noon to 5 p.m. I’d go into the shipyard and go work on boats. I was able to kind of do both at once.

CC How challenging was it to hire a new crew for the Brenna A? SD It’s tough because everybody has the best intentions. But when you’re out there on the banks there’s nowhere to hide,

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and like I said, your head has to be in the game. It doesn’t matter how good you talk and how strong you are or how far you can push the pot. If you’re not into it, you’re not into it. What was challenging for me was trying to find guys that, first, were best for the boat and best for us as a team. And I was concerned that I was going to get guys who just wanted to be on TV. But I hired one guy who I’d worked with before on a deck crab fishing; he’s my engineer. And the other guys – with the exception of my greenhorn – the others were just word of mouth or some had left me a card and they said to call if there was ever a spot. So you just start going through the list to see who’s available. I was kind of scrambling but was happy with the way things turned out. We had our ups and downs, but the guys really pulled through at the end. And they came as long a way as I did. It was a learning experience for everybody.

CC Did you have to find your niche as a first-year captain? SD Definitely. I didn’t go out there and expect to be a Sig Hansen right off the bat. I went out there and I needed to make sure that, for one, we’re safe. And two: to try and figure out and apply all these things that I learned and see if I could catch these crab. I tried to tell the crew that we’re all after the same goal; you gotta work together, and it did take some time for all those guys to find their roles. And once that was established and we knew who was where, things really flowed. It was cool to see that process, because it’s not every day that you just get to

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CC You worked toward Sig’s quota demands. Has he been a mentor for you on the journey so far? SD He’s given me a lot of really useful information. When we started this thing we really didn’t know each other; I knew of him from the show and outside the show in the industry. We weren’t friends or anything and it was business first. But he gave me some really good pointers, and I think the most important one was just to be honest with the whole TV thing. This show is such that it’s not scripted; you can’t make it up. You can’t take a second to think about what you’re going to say. Even the camera people only get one shot to film these things. But you have to be honest with yourself. When you mess up, you mess up. That was the biggest piece of advice that he gave me and it holds true. To keep it real you make the show what it is: a documentary.

CC How much did Sig’s health scare – his heart attack – provide a wakeup call for you and your colleagues? He is the epitome of a tough customer, but it reflects what a challenge this life can be. SD It’s hard on everything – the boat, the crew and your body, and it’s hard on your relationships back home. What we go through to get that crab off the ocean floor and onto the table is tough. Sig and I were the only two boats left still fishing when he had his heart attack. I was a little bit scared for him because it is a stressful job and you never know what’s going to happen; you don’t know how you’re going to react with everything. Unfortunately, sometimes that takes a toll on your body. ASJ Editor’s note: You can keep track of Sean Dwyer on Twitter (@captseandwyer) and Facebook (facebook. com/seandwyerbrennaa). For more on Deadliest Catch go to discovery.com/ tv-shows/deadliest-catch.

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Emily Riedel, a classically trained opera singer, has shunned a career in that ﬁeld to chase gold as one of the dredger captains around Nome on Discovery Channel’s Bering Sea Gold series. (DISCOVERY CHANNEL)

NOME IS WHERE HER HEART IS BERING SEA GOLD STAR EMILY RIEDEL CAN’T QUIT DREDGING

BY CHRIS COCOLES

bout the only thing Emily Riedel has in common with one Francis Albert Sinatra: they both have/had quite the singing pipes. Sinatra once famously crooned about hitting it big in the Big Apple. Riedel’s little-town blues are melting away thousands of miles west in Nome, Alaska, a place where dreams live and die in the form of gold hidden at the bottom of the Bering Sea.

If I can make it there, I’ll make it … anywhere. But can you imagine Ol’ Blue Eyes trying to do the same in old Nome? “Or maybe it’s, if I can make it here, I’ll never make it anywhere else,” Riedel deadpans. She jokes that every time she boards an Austria-bound plane for classical music-inspired cities like Vienna and Salzburg, the ﬂight charts must be screwy because the plane always seems to end up in Nome. (She playfully blames the Discovery Channel, which chronicles Riedel’s and the other dredgers’ highs and lows on aksportingjournal.com | MAY 2016

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Bering Sea Gold.) But the lure of striking it rich – even amid a setting that’s caused undo frustration, tension and, at times, failure – has swallowed the 27-year-old whole. “It’s something I find myself not being able to quit doing,” she admits. “Unless I go through intensive reconstructive therapy involving a really insane addiction to the trials of gold mining, I will continue to do this.” She purchased her own dredge – with modest success – and even called a truce in her feud with childhood pal and onetime boyfriend Zeke Tenhoff to work together during the winter season (they are at odds again as rivals this season). But give her credit for being tenacious, if not stubborn as seasons go by with less-than-prolific profits being made. “I consider myself dedicated, period. This is a challenging industry – both television and gold mining in their own way,” Riedel says. “But you can’t go halfway in this business, especially after all these years of doing it to not succeed at it fantastically means to have failed. So that’s taken over my head quite a bit. I’m no longer a beginner. What can I do to evolve and be better?”

“Leadership for me on a boat has been a lot of trial-by-ﬁre and learning on the job,” Riedel says. (EMILY RIEDEL)

RIEDEL WAS ASKED IF her time on Bering Sea Gold has been a real-life opera. If you count romance, conﬂict, heartbreak, personal tragedy and more, you have all the elements of a musical epic. “It’s a grand question because being in Nome is a great drama. I graduated from arts school amid all The skipper of the boat, The Eroica, Riedel considers herself a “6½ to 7” on a 1-to-10 scale when asked to assess herself as a gold dredge captain. these divas, and then I came to go gold mining in the (DISCOVERY CHANNEL/EMILY RIEDEL) Northwest and found more divas,” she says. (Riedel also points out that – we kid you not – early out of her comfort zone. 20th century German composer Kurt Weill did write “I would walk around campus barefoot in the winter. I was an opera about Alaskan gold miners, Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt the Alaskan hippie and they’d say, ‘What is she doing here at Mahagonny, or Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny.) this conservatory and school of opera?’ Everyone else was a “Everyone here is part of that drama. When I’m in a place lot more classy than I was.” like Manhattan or San Francisco or Seattle, I’m never normal In hindsight, her time as a gold miner was a lot closer to but I feel relatively sane or even-keeled,” she says. “But when her roots – Riedel was active performing in Homer, one of I’m in Nome I’m this crazy person, this broken-tooth old sourAlaska’s most artsy communities – than she might have once dough. But we’re on our own stage up here.” believed. She goes as far as saying she needed to experience Oh, how her classmates at the University of North Carolina life like an Alaskan. School for the Arts would be curious about Riedel’s whereIt’s not likely any other alums from the university’s Winabouts when they meet up for their 10-year. ston-Salem campus would list Nome gold dredger in the what“It would be a puzzling reunion,” Riedel says with a laugh. are-you-doing-now questionnaire. So she can embrace that she’s “‘You’re doing what?’” a little bit eccentric in the two worlds she’s split her life around. Her alma mater’s more famous alumni include actors “I didn’t feel entirely right amidst the elitists of the operatic Mary-Louise Parker, Anthony Mackie, Danny McBride and world. I kind of got a little bit tired of them,” Riedel says. “AlasAnna Camp and several prominent singers and dancers. ka is in my blood and this state feels right to me a lot of the The school can also claim one of the biggest celebrities in times. It’s who I am.” Nome, Alaska. “There’s a certain spirit that comes from being raised in For that reason, Riedel considers herself as a Dr. Jekyll and Alaska. You don’t have any preconceived notions of identity. Ms. Hyde hybrid – half the sophisticated opera singer and You can be whomever you choose to be. And most choose sweet voice, and the other a foul-mouthed, not afraid-to-getexactly that. We don’t have any lineage of a certain career. her-hands-dirty Alaska girl. And among the future thespians, The opportunities are endless, and we’re all raised believing dancers and singers she went to college with, this wasn’t the that of ourselves.” stereotype student on campus. Leaving Alaska meant getting 32

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NO PART OF EMILY Riedel’s “opera” existence in Nome is more dramatic than her relationship with Tenhoff, a complicated dynamic that continues to be one of the major backstories of this production known as Bering Sea Gold. When their brief rekindled partnership (strictly professional, of course) deteriorated again as Tenhoff went to work for a corporate dredge owner, they stared each other down on the dock as the subplot thickened. She still considers Tenhoff to be a part of her life through the highs and lows they’ve shared

worth $12,912. That total didn’t exactly prompt the popping of any champagne bottles from her crew. But this is what Riedel signs on for when she goes back every year. Riedel believes there are so many gold deposits still undiscovered on the sea ﬂoor off Nome that it’s a little easier for herself and colleagues to justify why they keep going back. Some of the other dredges had more success over time, but perhaps that’s even more reason to keep coming back – the body blows she’s taken be damned. On a 1-to-10 scale, Riedel

Even as life as an opera singer has taken her to the high society of European music halls, Riedel’s belief that there’s still more gold deposits on the seaﬂoor brings her back to Nome. (DISCOVERY CHANNEL)

off- and on-screen. She calls him “instrumental” in the journey she’s had a gold miner. “We’ve grown up in Nome doing this business. The way that Zeke has changed in my eyes has been huge,” she says. “He’s been a lover, a friend, a brother, a bastard enemy. And we’ve found ourselves in situations where we’ve had to do business together, whether we’ve liked each other or not. I can look at Zeke and see a bunch of history or I can look at Zeke and see Zeke as someone to do business with; that’s what I tried to focus on.” After a disastrous debut to Season 6 – damage to Riedel’s boat, The Eroica, forced her to suspend dredging operations – more mechanical issues cut short a promising dive and triggered tension between the captain and her top-notch diver, Daryl Galipeau. Riedel reported Murphy’s Law to be alive and well in Nome during her stint there. “The only thing I can do to keep my people around is make sure they keep making money,” she says in an early episode that ended with her crew cashing in 10.76 ounces of gold, 34

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puts herself around a 6½ to 7 as a gold dredger. “Leadership for me on a boat has been a lot of trial-by-ﬁre and learning on the job – quite often learning on the job. There is a traditional way of doing this; I could have been raised on a boat and could have had a dad who was a captain and was organized,” she says of her dad Steve, who also has tried his hand as a dredger on Bering Sea Gold. Like Emily, Steve was also new to the industry when Tenhoff convinced them to give this career a shot. “I got on a boat before knowing anything about boats. I thought, ‘Yeah, I’ll take over a dredge; this is starboard and this is port.’ All I have to do is learn as fast as I can and get better.” Being a woman – on the season six premiere Riedel said at times it’s been difficult for the men to take her seriously – makes the challenge that much greater, though Riedel is deﬁant. “The most important battle to me is to do a really good job as a gold miner. What’s important is that I know that I deserve their respect,” she says. “Being told that you can’t do something is an amazing motivator.” So as the planes continue to divert from Europe or other

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Mining in Nome, Alaska is not for everyone, but for Riedel, who graduated from the prestigious University of North Carolina School of Arts, it’s allowed her to feel more like a native Alaskan than she did among her college classmates. (DISCOVERY CHANNEL)

cities with storied opera scenes and Riedel ﬁnds herself back on Nome’s Front Street heading toward the harbor, she understands Nome is – for better or worse – part of who she is, who she’s been and ultimately who she wants to be. “Six years in Nome. And one of the locals told me, ‘Once you’ve been to Nome 10 years, you can never leave because you can’t function normally in any other society,” she says

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with a laugh. “So you learn to function here. And I’m terriﬁed because I’ve noticed this. I’m always so happy for work to be done and to be leaving Nome and seeing my family and that sort of thing. But it’s become increasingly more difficult to disconnect from this place. And I’ve started to feel better and better to come back here. I’ll think, ‘Thank God; I’m back in

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Nome with the crazy Nome-ites. I’m my old self again.” Start spreading the news; she is not leaving today. ASJ Editor’s note: For more on Emily Riedel, follow her on Twitter (EmilyRiedel23), Instagram (Sluice24) and like her at facebook.com /theemilyriedel. New episodes of Bering Sea Gold air on Wednesday nights (check your local listings) on Discovery Channel. For more, go to discovery.com/tv-shows/bering-sea-gold.

Of her sometimes stormy but longtime relationship with childhood friend Zeke Tenhoff (left), Riedel says, “We’ve grown up in Nome doing this business. The way that Zeke has changed in my eyes has been huge.” (DISCOVERY CHANNEL)

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ARCTIC CARIBOU HUNTING GETS MAJOR RESTRICTIONS BY CHRIS COCOLES

federal decision to limit subsistence caribou hunting in the Arctic regions of Northwest Alaska won’t be received very well by the rest of the state’s hunters. Last month, the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Federal Subsistence Board approved “Temporary Special Action WSA16-01,” which will shut down caribou hunting on federal lands in Game Management Unit 23, which surrounds Kotzebue and includes part of Koatak National Preserve, Selawik National Wildlife Refuge and Gates of the Arctic National Preserve. It takes effect starting July 1 through June 30, 2017. The regulations will bar caribou hunting by nonfederally qualiﬁed subsistence hunters. That means, nonresidents of Alaska, those with less than 12 months of resident status in the state, and Alaskans who live in what are considered urban areas or along road systems, which would include Anchorage, Fairbanks, Juneau and other more populated regions. During a public meeting in Kotzebue in February when the proposal was debated, many subsistence hunters who lived in some of the areas that would be affected by the regulations protested the plan.

Officials announced subsistence caribou hunting in part of Northwest Alaska will be restricted on federal land to certain hunters only for a year starting July 1, sparking outrage from other hunters. These caribou were at a nearby refuge. (KRISTEN SOWL/USFWS)

“A lot of us have to leave home for jobs, so, it’s very sad to hear that the federal government is going to consider me a nonsubsistence user, when I’ve been a subsistence user all of my life, just because of where I live,” current Anchorage resident Paulette Schuerch said, via the Kotezbue newspaper The Arctic Sounder. “I’m an enrolled tribal member at home. My family lives up there still. I do agree with trying (to protect the Western Arctic caribou herd), but I’m upset to hear that I’m a nontraditional subsistence user and I won’t be able to hunt at home.” The Federal Subsistence Board explained their action, saying, “The Board felt that there was sufficient evidence indicating that the closure was nec-

essary to allow for the continuation of subsistence uses and for conservation of a healthy caribou population as mandated under (the Alaska National Lands Interest Conservation Act) Section 815,” which can close federal lands to subsistence hunters when deemed neccesary. Kotzebue-area residents voiced their displeasure when the regulations were made official last month. Jared Cummings, one of the owners and operators of Golden Eagle Outﬁtters (907-3885968; alaskawildernessexpeditions. com), called on fellow hunters to ﬁght against the restrictions, which he called “absurd” in an email sent to various media outlets and colleagues. “We need to make noise,” Cummings wrote.

OUTDOOR CALENDAR May 10 Start of spring brown bear season in GMU 9 (Alaska Peninsula) May 14-June 12 Wrangell King Salmon Derby; wrangellchamber.org/annual-salmon-derby May 15-Sept. 5 Homer Halibut Jackpot Derby; homeralaska.org/visit-homer/ events-homer/homer-jackpot-halibut-derby May 21-Sept. 4 Valdez Halibut Derby valdezﬁshderbies.com May 28-30 First weekend of Ketchikan CHARR King Salmon Derby; ketchikankingsalmonderby.com June 1-30 Seward Halibut Derby; seward.com June 10-19 Halibut Hulabaloo, Valdez; valdezﬁshderbies.com June 10-19 Anchorage Slam’n Salm’n Derby; shipcreeksalmonderby.com

Several halibut derbies are on the docket this month and next, including events in Homer, Valdez and Seward. (SEWARD CHAMBER OF COMMERCE)

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Fly fishing is an obsession amongst a specific fraternity of anglers. But there’s always room for more pledges who want to join, and there are worse places than Alaska to learn the fly game. (TOM REALE)

Casting is half the battle when it comes to the beginner’s guide to fly fishing. The flies are so light that you’re casting the line instead. (TOM REALE)

BECOME A FREQUENT FLIER HOW TO JOIN THE FLY ANGLING FRATERNITY

BY TOM REALE

hen you’re normally thinking of trying a new sport, your first inclination is to read up on it and gather as much info as possible. With fly fishing, this can be a very bad idea. Reading through the available literature, of which there are thousands of volumes, introduces the neophyte to an entirely

new world of terminology, gear descriptions and even ethical considerations that can be bewildering. Before you know it you’re reading about matching the hatch of the rare purple No. 22 Somethingus latinus or the beauty and extreme difficulty of mastering the double-haul cast. It’s about then that you’re thinking, “You know, ﬂinging hardware with my Wal-Mart spinning rod ain’t so bad after all.” Fortunately, we’re very lucky to have a wide range of ﬁsh aksportingjournal.com | MAY 2016

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species and fishing opportunities here in Alaska. It’s entirely possible to buy an inexpensive fly rod-and-reel set-up, add a few leaders and some flies or beads, and catch fish your first time out. No guarantees, of course, but it really doesn’t have to be all that complicated.

FOR STARTERS

Nate Henderson and Mike Morelli team to land a fly-caught Kanektok River Dolly Varden. Alaska’s vast river system provides fly anglers of all levels endless opportunities to practice casting for and catching fish. (TOM REALE)

First, some basic terminology is necessary. Right off the bat, you have to familiarize yourself with terms like 5-weight rod, dry flies, nymphs and sink-tip line. You are quickly made aware of the fact that casting a fly line involves a lot more than just flinging a weighted lure into the water. Let’s define a few of these terms. Fly rods are categorized in terms of weights, ranging from 1 to 15. In fly casting, unlike spin or bait casting, you don’t cast the fly itself. Since flies are nearly weightless, you have to cast the line – the fly on the end is only there for the benefit of the fish. Line and rod weights are matched to the size and weight of the fish you hope to catch. You can find tables showing the rec-

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Author Tom Reale lives in Anchorage and gets his ﬂy on regularly. Much like golfers, ﬂy anglers spend a lifetime attempting to improve their skills. (TOM REALE)

ommended rod and line weights for various types of ﬁshing, but for our purposes, let’s just say that for most trout and Dolly ﬁshing in Alaska, a 4- or 5-weight rod will do. For reds and silvers, you’ll want a 7 or 8 weight, and for the mighty king,

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you’re going to need a 9 or 10. These guidelines are very general and will vary depending on circumstances such as your fishing experience, where you plan on doing most of your angling (such as

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lakes, small streams or big rivers), wind conditions, etc.

FOLLOW THE LEADER Once you make a rod weight decision, you’re going to need some leaders. Fly line is fairly thick and heavy, so you need something much finer between the line and the fly. This section is the leader and, once again, we’re into the weeds when it comes to figuring out the details. Sometimes it seems as if the founding fathers of the sport have been trying to make learning about fly fishing unnecessarily complex. If you were going to buy leader material for your spinning outfit, the procedure is very straightforward. Going after fish in the 15-pound range? Get line with a breaking strength that’ll hold that fish secure. How closely you want to match your line and leader material to your quarry depends on just how sporting you want to be. With fly leaders, however, there’s another ancient methodology involved where tippets – the end of the leader tied to the fly – have traditionally been rated using an X-scale.

The smaller the X-number, the heavier the line. For example, when fishing for trout you’d choose a tippet rated somewhere between 3X and 6X. If salmon is on your list, you’d be more likely to use tippets in the 1X to 02X range. Clear? Of course not. Fortunately, nowadays most tippets and leaders are marked not only using the X-scale but also with a line diameter and a pound-test rating, just like normal leaders. So a 4X leader has a diameter of .007 inches and a breaking strength of 6-pound test. Buy a selection of knotless tapered leaders appropriate to the fish you’ll be pursuing and leave building your own leaders for another day. We’ll keep things simple until we’ve figured out if this is really our cup of tea before we get in over our heads, so to speak.

THINKING LIKE A FISH Another thing that permeates the fly fishing literature is anglers talking about the oh-so-selective and wary trout that seem to have graduate degrees in detecting artificial lures

Pinks run this year in Alaska, and for novice ﬂyrodders, the highly catchable salmon make for a perfect introduction to the sport. (TOM REALE) 52

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A bad day of ﬂy ﬁshing beats a good day working, as the cliché goes, and in Alaska even rookie anglers may end up with a fat rainbow in their net. (TOM REALE)

and will turn their noses up at any fly presented in a lessthan-perfect manner. Granted, you can find finicky fish here and there in Alaska, but you can also find trout, salmon, grayling and Dolly Varden that are absolutely eager to pounce on just about anything you put in front of them. They’re not everywhere, but a little prospecting and some investigative footwork can put you into some excellent fishing. Any discussion of fly fishing in Alaska, especially in Southcentral, has to include the so-called fly fishing on the very popular Russian and Kenai Rivers. The rules here are unique – you can use any kind of rod, reel and line set-up, as long as you have a fly of the proper size on the end of the line and your weight is at least 18 inches above the fly. You’ll 54

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find every possible type of rod-and-reel arrangement on the river, few of which would pass muster on a “real” fly-fishing stream anywhere else. You can look at this as a disgrace to the noble pursuit of fly fishing, or you can see it as a way to ease yourself into the sport. Buy an inexpensive 8-weight outfit, add some 20-pound mono as a leader, rig up your fly and weight and give it a shot. It’s a very simple way to go, and you can see if fly fishing has any allure for you. Fishing the Russian has the added advantage of being able to see and cast to the fish, and to see how they react to your fly. You can learn how to drift your fly into the fish’s mouth, and experience what a take feels like. If you’re good and/or lucky enough to hook a sockeye, you’ll gain experi-

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MAN GEAR ALASKA Man Gear Alaska, LLC is a small family run partnership. We do believe that it is still possible to maintain a manufacturing facility in the U.S, and strive to keep goods made in America; at this time still made in Alaska. We look forward to the idea of creating more jobs for those within our community. Our goal in manufacturing these holsters is to provide a rugged, high quality, handcrafted product. The design principle of our “The Ultimate” chest holster is one that has been in Alaska for well over 15 years, and we are proud to be able to continue to create a holster with craftsmanship and quality which we believe will serve its purpose in the ﬁeld for years.

Fly ﬁshing is a relaxing diversion, as well as a lifetime pursuit that you may never completely master but won’t be able to get enough of it once you start. (TOM REALE)

ence in ﬁghting a big ﬁsh in the current, and how to land and unhook it. All very valuable lessons.

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Your final piece of tackle is the fly itself. If you’ll be fishing the Russian, you can stick with the tried-and-true coho fly, available almost everywhere. Untold thousands of reds have been caught with these inexpensive flies, so it’s not a bad place to start. However, the cheapest of these flies tend to have too much hackle, the colorful feathery stuff tied to the hook. Clip about twothirds of that stuff away, sharpen the hook to a fine point and give it a shot. If you’d rather not brave the Russian and Kenai crowds, there are plenty of other opportunities for you to wade into the sport. As a beginning fly angler, you have a wide range of options to concentrate your efforts. The range of difficulty for Alaska fly fishing is about as extreme as you’ll find anywhere, from grayling and pink salmon that, under some circumstances, will take nearly anything that’s plopped down in front of them, to “well educated” trophy rainbows that have seen everything and can be extremely selective in what they’ll take. Lake fishing for hatchery rainbows is a great introduction to the sport. Planted fish aren’t terribly selective, and you can spend time trying differ-

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ent flies, and working on your casting skills at the same time. Speaking of acquiring those casting skills, there are a number of avenues you can go down. The best way is to have a knowledgeable friend give you some hands-on tutoring. There’s nothing like one-on-one teaching to get you off on the right foot. If you’re not so lucky, there are classes given in most communities, either through adult education courses, local groups such as the Alaska Fly Fishers or with tackle shops. Fly fishermen are very active in promoting their sport and in helping newcomers get comfortable with the techniques and equipment involved. And of course there’s always the Internet. YouTube has scads of videos online showing every fly casting technique you can think of, and you can scroll through until you find a teacher whose style meshes with your learning comfort level. Once you’re familiar with the basic casting technique, you can branch out a bit and head for some additional challenges. Pink salmon and grayling are well known for being easy marks when it comes to fly fishing – look around for nearby chances to go after these guys. There’s nothing like lots of positive reinforcement in the early stages of a new sport to get you to keep at it. This is especially helpful if you’re teaching

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kids, as the pink salmon run in Hope is probably the best known intro to fly fishing for kids in Southcentral Alaska. Unfortunately, this run is an every-other-year phenomenon, but luckily, 2016 is an on-year for humpies. There are plenty more details to fly fishing that you can acquire as your comfort level increases. By all means, make friends at your nearby fly shop – they’ll clue you in on good places to go, flies and tackle to buy and how to build on your skills.

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So much for the “how” of fly fishing – the bigger question that comes up a lot is the “why.” If catching fish via fly tackle is harder and (probably) less productive that other kinds of fishing, why do seemingly rational people go to the trouble and expense? The answer comes under the definition of sport fishing. You’re supposed to give your quarry a sporting chance, and fly fishing just elevates that up a step or so. You can keep elevating it until you make it so sporting you never catch anything – literally, fishing a hookless fly – but let’s not go nuts here. If your only goal when fishing is to acquire the maximum amount of protein for your freezer, you can rig your casting rod with 50-pound test and winch your fish to the bank, or just go dipnetting. We can each find our own point on the sporting continuum where we’re catching enough fish to keep from getting bored stiff, and not just going out catching, but fishing. And realistically speaking, considering the time, effort and expense we all spend in fishing, stocking up at Safeway might be more time and dollar efficient anyway. But if your idea of a good time is spending time on the water with friends and family, or just being alone with your thoughts, getting away from the job, the phone and all the noise of everyday life, fishing fills the bill. Fly fishing can be a relaxing diversion, a lifetime pursuit that you’ll never completely master or anything in between. Either way, it’s a challenging and enjoyable way to spend your limited available time in gorgeous Alaska surroundings. ASJ

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A TRIP ALONG

THE ALCAN

inally, Alaska is beginning to thaw out after its long, dark winter. Soon, the state’s highways and byways will be full of motorists heading to ﬁshing spots and simply

taking in the views of some of the most spectacular scenery you can see from a vehicle in America. The king of the Alaska road system actually has its origins south of the

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the Last Frontier, finishing in the community of Delta Junction. So if you have the urge for an ultramarathon road trip through some of the most rugged, beautiful and unspoiled stretches of pavement around, try the Alcan. You can start with the iconic Alaska Highway sign at mile zero in Dawson Creek, explore tiny towns and spy wildlife in the BC countryside and cross into the Yukon Territory. From there, you can check out road signs from all over the world at the Signpost Forest, experience some Canadian city life (and a great meal) in Whitehorse before finally crossing the international border into Alaska to finish off your journey.

YUKON TERRITORY Whitehorse

So much of the joy of travel is getting off the beaten path and getting away from the obvious tourist traps. Driving the Alcan is about as real as it gets. ASJ

ALCAN HIGHWAY

Fort Nelson Juneau

BRITISH COLUMBIA Dawson Creek

Ketchikan Prince Rupert Prince George

Quesnel

Vancouver Seattle

Portland

ALASKAN

FLOATING HOLIDAY

FISHING, SCENERY AND FUN FOR THOSE WHO RAFT LAST FRONTIER RIVERS BY DAVE ATCHESON

s the ﬂoatplane ascends and banks with its wings waving in farewell, I try to ignore the slight pang of uneasiness that wells up. It’s the full realization of being truly alone, left to my own devices in a wilderness worthy of Jack London – a completely uninhabited land that literally spans thousands of miles. I’m a veteran of numerous adventures in the Alaskan backcountry, many before affordable satellite phones and SPOT devices. And I am nevertheless at this moment – as we begin to assemble our raft – suddenly very aware of the distance that

ALASKA SPORTING JOURNAL

MAY 2016 | aksportingjournal.com

separates us from the comfort and safety of civilization. It is in places like this, wild and pristine, that one becomes truly cognizant of just how reliant upon society we have all become. Most of us lead day-to-day lives in which, even in rural areas, information is literally at our ﬁngertips, where most of our desires or needs are no more than a phone call or computer click away, and police or pizza can be dispatched in a moments. But not here. I remind myself that we must be hyper-vigilant and make wise, well-thought-out decisions. From past trips I know that as the days progress and life begins to settle into a bit of a routine, a tentative comfort will settle in.

Alaska’s vast network of rivers bring rafters into some of the continent’s most pristine and unseen backcountry. Bring along camping gear, ﬁshing tackle and safety measures and you can ﬁnd your retreat. (DAVE ATCHESON) aksportingjournal.com | MAY 2016

ALASKA SPORTING JOURNAL

This is how most float trips begin, though it doesn’t take long before my initial unease is displaced by an overriding sense of fascination and amazement. It’s difficult not to be completely taken by the vastness of the northern latitudes and the rare opportunity I have been granted to experience its raw and untouched allure. And the fishing, even by Alaskan standards, is beyond belief. After seeing the thrift and economy of having my own raft and buying one several years ago, I’ve vowed each summer to explore another of Alaska’s wilderness rivers. And because fishing is so much a part of the adventure and fun, that usually means heading somewhere amidst the great expanse of the Bristol Bay basin, an area larger than the state of Ohio and home to all five species of northeast Pacific salmon, as well as monster rainbow trout and swarms of sea-run Dolly Varden. Trips, which in recent years have included the Goodnews, Arolik, Kenektoc and Nishlik Rivers, often begin at slightly higher elevations. Despite always having had an affinity for forests and preferring nothing

Cindy Detrow prepares to land an Arctic grayling on a Tikchik River trip. Many of Bristol Bay’s river systems are perfect for rafting. (DAVE ATCHESON)

John and Conner Pollock warm up around the ﬁre along the riverbank. It may not be ﬁve-star accommodations, but it’s the kind of place to get away from the chaos of real life. (DAVE ATCHESON) 64

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more than traipsing beneath a canopy of oldgrowth ﬁr, I nevertheless ﬁnd myself drawn to this landscape. It can be stark and otherworldly, but full of life, with legions of nesting birds calling to one another in a cacophonous celebration of spring. In the distance, caribou can often be spotted high-stepping around tussocks, the bleached and decaying bones of their ancestors occasionally dotting the surrounding grasslands, a reminder of their harsh existence and a testament to their enduring legacy.

AS WE FLOAT, WE emerge from the nearly treeless, expansive and almost ethereal highland tundra into intermittent hardwood forests, and finally into the thick birch and spruce that characterizes the lowlands. Throughout these trips, fishing will vary depending upon the time of year. June or July might mean swinging a heavy leech pattern for submarining chum or king salmon, which can reach an arm-wrenching 17 to 40 pounds, respectively. August means the acrobatics of silver salmon, one of my favorites for their propensity to hit gaudy surface flies and take

ALASKA SPORTING JOURNAL

Bruce King caught this rainbow during a ﬂoat down a “secret” Western Alaska river. (DAVE ATCHESON)

MAY 2016 | aksportingjournal.com

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ALASKA SPORTING JOURNAL

GEAR CHECK FOR THE ALASKAN BACKCOUNTRY The following is a comprehensive list of gear someone heading into the Alaskan bush might want to consider, depending upon how much room they have in the raft. While a satellite phone is not an absolute necessity for the do-it-yourselfer, with a rental price of less than $100 a week, they are a relatively cheap insurance policy in case of an emergency and a good way to call ﬂight services if there is a change of plan or weather delay. Satellite telephone SPOT or other signaling device (satellite GPS messaging) that allows you to send a preprogrammed message to friends, telling them you are OK (or in trouble) and showing your location on Google Maps; also will send a “911” alert if there is an emergency Maps, compass and GPS A top-quality three- or four-season tent Good-quality sleeping bag and back pad Small emergency kit to carry while hiking, etc., which may

include first-aid supplies, emergency fire starter, space blanket, hand warmers, bivy sack Bear protection like bear spray and/or firearm Bear fence – electrified fence to surround camp Top-quality camp stove Cook kit Camp saw Layered clothing, starting with polypro, then fleece and a shell; don’t forget a warm hat and gloves Dependable rain gear and/or wading jacket Emergency repair kit for boat, plus duct tape and/or nylon tape for general repairs Sunscreen Mosquito repellent Head net (insects can be fierce anywhere in Alaska) Water purifier Dry bags Book and\or game, such as cards or dice – great to have if weathered in somewhere. –DA

John Pollock couldn’t care less about anything else but the leap of what’s on the other end of his ﬂy line. (DAVE ATCHESON) 68

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Whether you hire an outﬁtter to handle all the gear or details or go the DIY route, the beautiful scenery, wildlife viewing and ﬁshing for mouse-pattern-snarfing rainbows like this makes the slow pace of a river-rafting trip well worth it. (DAVE ATCHESON)

to the air after they hit. Almost any time of year, sea-run Dollies ﬂood the rivers in astronomical numbers and resident rainbow trout, the envy of ﬂy anglers throughout the world,

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lie in wait. For the ﬂyrodding trout aﬁcionado, there’s simply nothing to compare to these amazing creatures or their often pre-

aksportingjournal.com | MAY 2016

ALASKA SPORTING JOURNAL

ferred meal in Western Alaska – the mouse. That’s right, the mouse – or rather shrews and red-backed voles – are no occasional morsel. On many of these streams they’re a major and beloved food source. Fishing the surface with these large unwieldy flies is something a fisherman will not soon forget. One of my first and most memorable mousing adventures occurred when my fly overshot its target. Landing amidst the scrub on the far bank, I gave the rod the slightest flick. Just as I hoped, it freed my offering, dropping the spun deer-hair faux rodent onto the nearly still water directly below. Then, all at once, as if it had been looking up waiting for one of these critters to jump in, a trout of enormous proportions immediately rose out of the deep – scales merging into a thick mosaic of black dots and a swirl of pink as it exploded with the vehemence of a sidewinder upon the surface. It startled me nearly out of my skin and almost toppled me into the water. As if the incredible vastness, the wildlife, the water thick with salmon, weren’t enough, this was it; mousing had me hooked. I’d be back!

ALASKA IS A TRUE wilderness, and heading out on one’s own should only be undertaken by those with experience in navigating and camping in the backcountry. Trip leaders should know how to use a map, compass and GPS. They should be comfortable camping in bear country, and they should know how to operate whatever watercraft they decide to go with. If your party doesn’t have someone comfortable with leading

or with the required experience, there are numerous qualified outfitters who will not only get your party down the river but will do so in comfort. Nevertheless, be sure to check references on any guide or outfitter you are planning to hire. Potential visitors, whether do-it-yourselfers or even those hiring a guide, should do their homework. Begin by getting on the web, check out where you will be going and know what you are getting into. Call the local office of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game or Alaska State Parks with any questions you have. Next, be prepared with the best gear. Despite the most upbeat attitude, weather is directly proportional to fun and sometimes safety. Sunny and dry, the fun factor is exceedingly high, but if it gets too wet and cold, it can quickly turn. One of my early float trips had me into near survival mode. The rain was relentless for nearly a week and the river we were on quickly rose to flood stage. Thank goodness we all dressed in layers of polypropylene and polar fleece; we had our breathable waders and wading jackets, and we slept in synthetic sleeping bags and topnotch tents. It made what might have been a dire situation simply a little uncomfortable. ASJ Editor’s note: Dave Atcheson’s latest book is Dead Reckoning, Navigating a Life on the Last Frontier, Courting Tragedy on its High Seas. He is also the author of the guidebook Fishing Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula, and National Geographic’s Hidden Alaska, Bristol Bay and Beyond. For more info to to daveatcheson.com.

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ONES AWAY THAT GET

LOSING THREE STEELHEAD IN A ROW ISN’T A BIG DEAL WHEN YOU LIVE IN SOUTHEAST, THOUGH IT STILL STINGS BY JEFF LUND

“C

’mon, do it … do it … do it … There he is … Yes ... got him ….” What comes next is another word for defecation, or fornication, or other -tions articulating frustration and dejection. You knew a ﬁsh was there, because they were there last time you were here, and even though that was the fall steelhead run and this is the spring steelhead run, steelhead are steelhead, so why wouldn’t they be there?

That’s what you said to yourself as you were driving the skiff just after sunrise on a glassy ocean, updating your Facebook status with a simple picture and no words. These are the precious moments that make Snapchat stories worth watching. But since there’s not enough service to broadcast the entire trip, you just question why you have one in the ﬁrst place. There were other tracks on the trail, which made sense because you docked your old skiff next to two nice boats you hope to afford someday. But the bend in the river, the place you knew was holding ﬁsh, was previously untouched by the other anglers. So you lob the pink streamer and halfway through the swing, you get the pull. Boom. You get him for long enough to feel the weight, then come those foul words that are sent downriver by the current and get lost in the thick forest. What now? You send it back. You’re hit again. It lasts for two head-

When you have daily access to all that out in front of your prow, you don’t get worried about missing one, two, even three steelhead in a row in Alaska’s Panhandle. (JEFF LUND) aksportingjournal.com | MAY 2016

ALASKA SPORTING JOURNAL

This is what many come to Southeast Alaska for: a colorful steelhead. Local resident Jeff Lund has experienced some days of struggles in his search for steel, but that doesn’t stop him from enjoying the experience. (JEFF LUND)

shakes. You’re incredulous. How does that happen? You strip the line in, and send it back. Before it gets to the sweet spot, there’s a thud you’re not ready for, but set the hook. Quick shake, ﬁsh gone.

IT WAS ONE OF those days you get all poetic about: sunny, warm, beautiful. After the first lost fish you patted yourself on the back for knowing the fish would be there, but after two more failings, the whole operation has turned south. You cast again, more frantic this time. Nothing. You move down, foot by foot, to the bottom of the run, covering all of it. You switch flies and do it all again. Nothing. You can’t see anything, but you imagine a few fish holding with absolute resolve and the curious ones darting up and down, no longer gullible. So you move. As you do, it’s hard to keep thoughts of doubt at bay. There is the legitimate possibility that you’d only get one shot; and you got three and whiffed. You can’t fish with doubt, but there is no doubt since you’re human and it’s doubtful you’ve ever maintained absolute confidence after absolute failure. 78

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You try a few other spots and get nothing. Each of those spots has been stomped by Jeff Lund’s pink streamer hooked more than wading boots. one nice fish, but it just wasn’t to be on one On the way recent outing. (JEFF LUND) down toward the mouth you see the owners of the boots. Real people. The want to hold a steelhead is almost as strong as the want to not see other people. Naturally, they are both hooked up. Fish are splashing and the guys are hollering. In your hand is a fly rod rigged to fish on the swing. It’s probably the least effective way to angle for a steelhead. These guys have jigs floating under bobbers attached to spinning rods. All the problems with angles, and line control, they don’t have. It’s easier, it’s more effective, and on this day, it’s much more productive. You don’t wish you had a spinning rod; you don’t wish they didn’t catch any (well, maybe); you just wish you didn’t

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ALASKA SPORTING JOURNAL

As Lund’s previous river trips like this one will attest: “Tomorrow will be better. And after all, today wasn’t that bad.” (JEFF LUND)

have to see it.

YEAH. IT’S ABOUT THE experience. You get to be here. There is probably a kid in Roseburg, Ore., who has never fished the Umpqua; one in Bozeman, Mont., who doesn’t know what this whole fly fishing thing is about and never saw A River Runs Through It; and there’s one in Washington, D.C., who doesn’t

know that all rivers aren’t brown. Because you live in Alaska you can have this day and live this moment, not just for the poetry of moment, but to feel that ﬁsh. Maybe the bigger picture is that you can do it again next weekend because you do live here. You’re not a quarter ﬁnished with your annual trip.

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Good for them if they are visitors who paid money for the chance to catch a spring-run Alaska steelhead – or those who saved for the opportunity to gaze through their work computer and stare at the new desktop image of them with a king salmon, halibut or massive yelloweye. You do live here. You do get this every day. You endured that two-week stretch of black ice every morning during the winter. You endured the days of 33-degree rain and, of course, the snow and slush. But that doesn’t mean you have an emotional trump card for your current emotions. You ﬁsh longer in the slightly sedated mode that comes with knowing the two other groups of people have hit every good hole between the mouth and the lake. There’s a chance, but the real chance came early, before the ﬁsh caught on to what all of you were up to. You’re not depressed, or pouty, because you’ve watched sea lions take off with your king salmon, brown trout wrap you around logs and coho salmon break your line, so whatever the steelhead did to you today is nothing but the latest in a voluntary adventure of disappointment. Tomorrow will be better. And after all, today wasn’t that bad. You get in your boat, point the bow toward home, push the throttle of the 70hp Yamaha, just as it starts to rain. Yeah, tomorrow will be better. ASJ Editor’s note: Jeff Lund is the author of Going Home, a memoir

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MAY 2016 | aksportingjournal.com

about ﬁshing and hunting in Alaska and California. For details, visit JeffLundBooks.com. What’s your path? If you live in Alaska or are heading there on a dream ﬁshing trip, you just don’t know where the trail will take you next. (JEFF LUND)

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CODE RED ALERT A LOWER 48 YOUNGSTER’S QUEST TO CATCH A KENAI SOCKEYE SALMON

Up to Alaska to ﬁsh with his uncle, Duncan Musgraves casts a ﬂy into the lower Kenai River in hopes a famed sockeye bites. (DENNIS MUSGRAVES)

BY DENNIS MUSGRAVES

rying to beat elbow-to-elbow crowds during the peak of Alaska’s sockeye run at any of the major roadside locations can be challenging. The popular species of salmon is sought by thousands of anglers every summer, making solitude virtually impossible to find. Timing is a major factor in securing a limit of these tasty and prized fish, and, of course, the busiest period for sportfishing is when the salmon are running the thickest. An early-season trip for red salmon will see fewer people fishing, but you run the risk of poor results, since the sockeye simply have yet to arrive in significant numbers. My nephew Duncan learned firsthand just how elusive “bluebacks” can be during an off-peak campaign, which I had planned for his first trip visiting the Last Frontier from his home in the Lower 48. The agenda for Duncan’s Alaska expe-

rience included both saltwater and freshwater sportfishing on the iconic Kenai Peninsula. I allowed four days devoted to fishing for reds, splitting our time in half at two different locations. Although I realized we probably would not have the river all to ourselves during Duncan’s trip, I wanted to try and avoid the “combat fishing” zoo. I rolled the dice and opted for sooner rather than later.

THE SCENIC LOWER KENAI River near Soldotna would be our first stop, followed up with two remaining days on the Russian River, just after its opener. Our first day was spent floating the upper Kenai for catch-and-release rainbow trout. Chris Cox, my longtime fishing buddy, hosted and drifted us in his 14-foot self-bailing inflatable raft. Although it was a bit discouraging that our float did not produce any hook-ups, Duncan certainly enjoyed the day on the emerald waters. The adventure was filled with aksportingjournal.com | MAY 2016

ALASKA SPORTING JOURNAL

Known as bluebacks for their freshfrom-the-ocean coat and reds for their spawning jackets, sockeye are among the most coveted salmon that swim in Alaskan waters. (DENNIS MUSGRAVES)

first-time experiences for him and the gorgeous weather provided some memorably classic panoramic views of the world-famous river. Bluebird skies continued overhead as we reached the pullout, loaded up and hopped in the truck for a drive southward to our next destination, Swiftwater Campground. The three of us were headed to the popular location situated near the city of Soldotna, which is well-known for great bank fishing access to the Kenai. All of us were excited about the prospects of finally catching something and making the outing a “fishing trip.” Being greeted by a nearly vacant campground was the first indicator that fishing was probably going to be a bit demanding. Thankfully, the lack of visitors also meant I would have plenty of room to assist Duncan in learning the basics of how to drift a line from the shoreline with a fly rod for a red. My plan for salmon fishing without a helmet and shoulder pads was coming together rather nicely; there would 88

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MAY 2016 | aksportingjournal.com

be no need for “combat” gear during our short tour of duty at Swiftwater. For his part, Duncan was versed in conventional sportfishing methods, as his dad had taken him fishing many times while growing up. But I couldn’t just turn him loose on the salmon. For one thing, Duncan had never used a fly rod – and he most certainly never employed the unusual methods used by most Alaskan anglers to catch sockeye. He was going to need a few pointers on how it’s done in the Last Frontier.

THE ACCEPTABLE METHODS ARE unorthodox, to say the least. Fishermen employ a variety of nontraditional techniques by using a modified wet fly swing called “flossing” or “lining.” Fish are caught by drifting a weighted section of leader and single-hook lure or fly. Casting is more like flipping, accomplished in short distances of less than 15 feet on the upstream side. The leader moves through the water with the assistance of

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a bouncing weight, keeping it close to the bottom, eventually getting drawn across the open mouth of a salmon during the drift. As your line drifts further downstream, the hook gets pulled into the salmon’s mouth. As the angler feels changing line tension, they set the hook. Since sockeye swim close to the bottom and near the bank to take the path of least resistance against strong-flowing current, the controversial technique is very effective when executed correctly. Needless to say, the legality, ethics and sportiness of the nontraditional method is often debated among fishermen because the fish are not actively biting. Flossing can be deployed by virtually any type of rod-and-reel combo, so fishing equipment varies in a wide range. Using an 8- or 10-weight fly rod with a super-fast-rated sinking tip is my preferred tool (allowing me to drift the line close to the bottom without the need of a sinker). Using a nail knot, I tie a leader of 20-pound-test

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SOCKEYE FISHING PRIMER Alaska sockeye salmon can be caught in freshwater from late May through August, with run timing varying by location. Anglers should become familiar with each river system and plan to cast a line during the peak of the return for best success. Researching historical fish-count data from previous years is a good idea for anglers trying to determine where and when the red salmon will most likely be available to target. Information about counts by selected species and river system can be found online at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game website (adfg.alaska.gov). Regularly published regional fishing reports can also be found on the website during the summer season. Crowded conditions along riverbanks should be expected, since sockeye are prized for their rich flavor and healthy nutritional value. Abundant numbers of returning sockeye allow for a bag limit of multiple fish on most waterways (most locations allow for harvests of three fish per day), and often emergency orders are issued to increase the harvest during the season, when certain rivers exceed escapement numbers. You will not find solitude fishing along the road system, monofilament to the end of my fly line. Heavy line is normally used by the majority of anglers, whether it’s a mono-based or a braided super line. Conventional medium/heavy-action rods in lengths of 7 feet and longer and in conjunction with either a

ALASKA SPORTING JOURNAL

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but the Kenai Peninsula and Copper River Valley host several runs in various rivers that provide public access to ﬁshermen from the highway. The Russian River is, bar none, the most-visited location for sockeye in the state. Its relatively short two-hour driving distance from Anchorage and the sheer volume of tasty ﬁsh in the water attracts the largest number of anglers. Those willing to expand their driving distance may get more elbow room on a less-populated body of water.

TACKLE BOX A good medium/heavy-action fishing rod in either bait- or spin-casting style and at least 7 feet long will be sufficient. Fly rods should be 8-weight or larger. Monofilament or the braided-line equivalent should be at least rated 15-pound test. Waders or hips boots to avoid wet shoes, a landing net to tame frisky salmon and sunglasses (as much to cut the sun’s glare as avoid inadvertent fishing hooks to the face) are useful equipment. Having a sharp fillet knife and materials for processing and storing your harvest will allow preserving the fish well and making for a great meal. –DM

spinning or baitcasting reel work well also. Duncan caught on quickly and soon needed little guidance in producing a quality drift with his ﬂy line. The only thing else he required was a cooperating salmon.

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The middle Kenai River provides some rare casting room for the anglers ﬁshing before the peak of the sockeye run. (DENNIS MUSGRAVES)

Flipping a line for Alaska sockeye requires equal portions of patience and persistence, even when employing good technique. The challenge increases further when salmon are just beginning to trickle into freshwater. Cox did not surprise me when he managed to be the ﬁrst one to fair hook and land a bright, shiny sockeye. The salmon

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was unblemished and still had sea lice. His achievement gave Duncan and I encouragement that if one ﬁsh was swimming upstream, there had to be another following close behind. So after a short celebration and a moment to admire the chrome-sided catch, we all went back to pounding the water for another salmon.

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ALASKA SPORTING JOURNAL

DUNCAN WAS TENACIOUS, MAKING making countless drifts over the next couple hours, but regrettably without any success. I ﬁnally succumbed to the lack of production and a sore back and reeled up. I found a suitable sitting position on the bank to encourage and coach my nephew as he continued ﬁshing. My desire to have him catch a salmon was probably greater than his own. But the more time that passed without Duncan hook-

ALASKA SPORTING JOURNAL

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ing a salmon, the more I thought that today simply might not be his day. Then it happened. Duncan’s fly rod bowed over and the tip section began bouncing violently, making sharp jolts from the stress of something pulling at the opposing end. His face lit up with excitement. I leaped to my feet and made my way towards him to His uncle may look stoic, but that looks take in the moment. like the beginnings of a grin on young Watching Duncan Duncan’s face – way to go, kid! (DENNIS stand ankle-deep in MUSGRAVES) the iconic Kenai River – locked in battle with a feisty sockeye, without another fishermen within 500 yards – was magnificent. Duncan skillfully played, turned and landed his prized salmon with a confidence like it was a common occurrence. Success! Grip-and-grin photos capturing the event were followed by his first lesson on how to fillet a salmon. Being a part of his special accomplishment was very re-

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ALASKA SPORTING JOURNAL

Duncan gets a lesson in sockeye ﬁlleting from his unofficial guide. (DENNIS MUSGRAVES)

warding and memorable. After all, not all fishermen can say they caught their first salmon on Alaska’s Kenai River. The remaining few days we spent together on the Kenai Peninsula targeting sockeye were certainly not epic, as far as catching fish goes. We were simply too early for stuffing a freezer full of salmon. Although Chris and I managed a handful of red salmon for the cooler during our last day at the Russian, Duncan was unsuccessful in harnessing another salmon. His solitary triumph was a trade-off in having a virtually empty shoreline or standing-room-only riverbank for his outing. Really, none of us minded the lack of production; the quality of an adventure is not always measured by the quantity of fish in an ice chest. After all, you only need one awesome sockeye salmon to make it an outstanding fishing trip in Alaska. Just ask my nephew. ASJ Editor’s note: For more on Dennis Musgraves’ Last Frontier fishing adventures, check out alaskansalmonslayers.com. 98

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SUDS OF SOLDOTNA THE CENTRAL KENAI PENINSULA HAS BECOME A CRAFT BEER MECCA BY BILL HOWELL

he central Kenai Peninsula is blessed with an abundance of excellent, locally produced craft beer. Since 2006, craft breweries and brewpubs in Soldotna and Nikiski have been brewing award-winning beers for the enjoyment of locals and visitors alike. Currently, there are two breweries Frank and Debbie Kassik built their brewery next to their home outside of Kenai. Kassik’s and one brewpub in operation. Visi- sells drafts, 22-ounce bottles and growlers at its taproom. (SOLDOTNA CHAMBER OF COMMERCE) tors to Alaska should be aware that breweries and brewpubs operate under different rules by state law. Breweries are only allowed to sell 36 ounces per person per day for consumption on site in their taprooms; brewpubs are not limited in this way. Both are restricted to selling a maximum of 5 gallons per person per day for consumption off-site. Here’s a look at the area’s craft beer scene:

KENAI RIVER BREWING COMPANY Established in 2006, this brewery has just moved into a brand-new facility located at the corner of 47th and Homestead Streets, behind the Walgreens at the intersection of the Sterling and Kenai Spur Highways in downtown Soldotna. You can enjoy a selection of outstanding beers in its taproom or on its covered and heated patio that overlooks the scenic Kenai River Valley. Try the Skilak River Scottish Ale, Sunken Isle IPA or Peninsula Brewers Reserve Ale – all available in cans throughout Alaska – or sample one of its rotating seasonal brews. For more, go to kenairiverbrewing.com.

KASSIK’S BREWERY Also established in 2006, this is the Kenai Peninsula’s version of a traditional farmhouse brewery, which was built by owners Frank and Debbie Kassik next to their home. To reach it, travel north out of the city of Kenai on the Spur Highway towards Nikiski. Look for signs at Mile 19.1 and follow them to the brewery at 47160 Spruce Haven Street. Besides selling pints and ﬁlling growlers in its taproom, Kassik’s Brewery also packages several of its beers in 22-ounce

The St. Elias Brewing Company features a brewpub where you can enjoy your favorite craft beer with pizza, salads and sandwiches. (SOLDOTNA CHAMBER OF COMMERCE)

bottles, which are widely available across the state. Look for its popular Morning Wood IPA, as well as its award-winning Caribou Kilt Wee Heavy Scotch Ale and Buffalo Head Barley Wine. For more, see kassiksbrew.com.

ST. ELIAS BREWING COMPANY Located on the south side of the Sterling Highway – just east of the Fred Meyer in Soldotna – this brewpub opened for business in 2008. Besides offering excellent beers produced onsite, St. Elias is well-known for its outstanding gourmet pizzas, salads and sandwiches. Typically, there are six ﬂagship beers always on tap, plus another ﬁve or six rotating seasonal beers on offer. Try the malty Farmer’s Friend, the Rye Ale or the hopaksportingjournal.com | MAY 2016

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py Williwaw IPA. For more, check out steliasbrewingco.com.

FESTIVALS Soldotna is home to two outstanding outdoor craft beer festivals, held annually on the ﬁrst Saturday in February and the second Saturday in August. The Frozen River Fest is held in Soldotna Creek Park each February and features music, beer, food and winter games. Admission is charged for drinkers only; nondrinkers enter for free. Children are also free but must be accompanied by their legal guardian. For more information, log onto facebook.com/FrozenRiverFest. The sixth annual Kenai Peninsula Beer Festival will be held on Saturday, Aug. 14, at the Soldotna Sports Center. This festival is always a highlight of summer for both locals and visitors alike. Created as a community event to feature craft beers from around Alaska, the festival is a primary fundraiser for the Rotary Club of Soldotna. All the beer served has been donated and all proceeds go to support local Rotary projects. In addition to great beers on offer from over a dozen breweries, there is live music and food is available as well. For more, head over to kenaibeerfest.com or facebook.com/KenaiPeninsulaBeerFestival/?fref=ts. ASJ Besides the winter-themed Frozen River Fest that took place in February, the Kenai Peninsula Beer Festival – scheduled for Aug. 14 in Soldotna – also celebrates the area’s love for craft beer. (SOLDOTNA CHAMBER OF COMMERCE)

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ARE YOU A HOOLIGAN FAN? THESE TINY FISH ENTER ALASKA RIVERS EVERY SPRING, PROVIDING DIPNETTING FUN AND TASTY TREATS

BY KRYSTIN AND BIXLER MCCLURE

ou either love hooligans or you hate them – the fish, not the English soccer fanatics. Known formally as eulachons or candlefish, when these small smelt hit Alaska’s rivers by the thousands, it makes for an exciting dipnetting event. While some people thumb their noses at these oily fish, others look forward to filling up a cooler and throwing them straight into the smoker. Whether you are a hooligan fan or not, the annual run signals that summer is right around the corner.

WE WERE DRIVING TO Anchorage for our usual Costco run when we rounded Portage and neared the bridge over the Twentymile River. It was May – just barely green with lengthening days – and already the temporary “35 mph” signs were up as we approached the bridge.

“We should check our hooligan spot,” Bixler said as we inched forward through the slow section. A few hopeful dipnetters were scooping the murky water and coming up with the occasional handful of fish. “Yeah,” I replied. “If they are running here, they should be running at home soon.” Before Bixler’s grandfather passed away, he imparted much of his local Seward knowledge on us. One of these important items was the timing of the Seward hooligan run; as soon as people start scooping hooligan out of the Twentymile, start checking the river in Seward. Our local hooligan spot is not as impressive as the sweeping Twentymile, but it does produce fish – as long as you can time the run. One way we do that is Bixler modifies his daily run, changing his route to incorporate a detour to the bridge and look for fish. Unlike the Twentymile or any of the larger rivers in Alaska, our local stream is crystal-clear in May. We simply look

The water might be cold, but Bixler McClure and other Alaskans don’t mind donning shorts and bare feet and scooping up tiny but tasty hooligan with dipnets from the state’s river systems. (KRYSTIN MCCLURE) aksportingjournal.com | MAY 2016

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An ice chest or cooler and a dipnet are the most if not only important pieces you need to bring home a small school of hooligan. For those without waders, a tolerance for toe-numbing water is also handy. (KRYSTIN MCCLURE)

into the water and hope to see a pile of swimming hooligan. A week went by and Bixler returned without spotting any ďŹ sh. We had already grabbed our cooler and hooligan dipnet just in case they happened to appear. Finally, one afternoon in early May, I got the excited phone call from Bixler that weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d both been waiting for.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;THE HOOLIGAN ARE HERE,â&#x20AC;? he said. Grab the net and cooler and meet me by the bridge!â&#x20AC;? I hopped out of the truck, handed Bixler his jacket and walked down the trail to the edge of the river. Bixler saw the hooligan running upstream just under the bridge, but they were favoring the far side of a small island in the river. Already

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ALASKA’S LITTLE FISH Hooligan fishing is an Alaskan-resident-only fishery; you locals who have never done it should definitely give it a try. There is not much of a science to it, but there are a few things you should know before going.

PICK A SPOT: Find a place that you are comfortable with because each spot has different gear requirements. Fishing the Twentymile? You will probably need waders and a long-handled net. Fishing a smaller river? You can use a short-handled net and go barefoot if you are really up to it!

TIME THE RUN: Hooligan runs are highly erratic, so it is best to

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SWEEP AND SCOOP: Start your sweeping motion upstream and move downstream. This way, any running hooligan will run right into your net. Scoop them out and repeat until your cooler is full (there’s no limit).

KEEP CLEANING SIMPLE: Don’t bother gutting these tiny ﬁsh. We made that mistake one year and all it does is make a huge mess. Hooligan are delicious smoked whole (if you want, just don’t eat the guts) and you can always clean them right before you cook.

GET CREATIVE WITH COOKING: There are plenty of recipes for

look for obvious signs that ﬁsh might be ready to enter the river. Seagulls and other seabirds feast on hooligan at the mouth of rivers. If you can’t see the ﬁsh, try dipping your net.

small ﬁsh, so try substituting them with hooligan. You will be surprised how delicious (like deep-fried hooligan) these little ﬁsh can be. Who knows, maybe you will head back to your favorite river with a second cooler! -BM

in May, the river was starting to run too deep for Xtratufs, so we did what any ﬁsh-loving Alaskan would do: We rolled up our pants and waded across the icy river. The hooligans were racing up a deep channel; as soon as they saw us, they scattered upstream and downstream. The disadvantage of a clear river is that the ﬁsh can see you too, so they tend to scatter quickly and re-evaluate their running route. Fortunately, they are no match for our sweeping meth-

od of capturing fish. A barefooted Bixler grabbed the net and swept it downstream along the primary channel where the hooligan were running. He dumped the fish into the cooler and handed off the net to me. I did a sweep and came up with another full net. “If only salmon fishing was this easy!” I joked. I passed the net to Bixler and started grabbing swimming hooligan with my hands and tossing them into the cooler. The run was so thick

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GOOD SOUP FOR YOU

If you don’t want to fry or smoke your

A few hooligan, beheaded and gutted Miso paste Udon noodles Chopped nori seaweed Chopped green onions Soy sauce Sriracha Wasabi

Cook udon noodles as hooligan catch, you can use the ﬁsh in directed. Drain and set a tasty Asian-inﬂuenced miso soup. (BIXLER MCCLURE) aside. Mix miso paste with water and bring to a simmer until dissolved. Marinate hooligan in soy sauce and sriracha. In a hot pan (or on a grill), quickly fry the hooligan until done. Put udon noodles in a bowl and ladle miso soup to cover. Add nori and green onions. Top with cooked hooligan and wasabi and sriracha taste. Grab some chopsticks and enjoy! -BM

that the hooligan ﬁlled the channel and I could pick them up with my hands. A passing car stopped on the bridge and the driver jumped out. He asked excitedly if the hooligan were in and we showed him our nearly full cooler. Soon, more anglers with dipnets arrived and contemplated how to get to the other side of the river. Like us, they simply rolled up their pants and crossed barefoot.

They joined us out on the island and started to try to scoop the fish in their net. As they had when we first arrived, the fish scattered at the sight of the moving net. Bixler continued his method of scooping fast downstream, forcing the fish to swim into his net. The others watched carefully and soon were grabbing gobs of wriggling hooligan and dumping them into their own cooler. There were smiles all around. We filled our container quickly as another group arrived

Tired of fried or smoked hooligan? Try this Japanese-inﬂuenced recipe of hooligan-miso soup. Many of the ingredients can be found at your local supermarket, but you may want to check out a specialty store with a large selection of Asian goods to get the real stuff.

INGREDIENTS

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DIRECTIONS

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smoking (we don’t gut our hooligan because it takes too long; instead, we process them whole). I finished my sealing and grabbed the remaining fish and went inside to prepare them another way. I chopped the heads off, butterflied the bodies to remove the organs, breaded them and deep-fried the fish. We sat outside munching the fresh hooligan under the May sun. It was a gorgeous day, with the endless sunshine peering over us after a long winter. What a great way to start the summer. ASJ

Krystin McClure’s rolled-up pants are typical for hooligan chasers as spring rolls into May. The water is cold but the ﬁsh are easy to net. (BIXLER MCCLURE)

and wondered how to cross the deep river. We carefully grabbed the cooler, rolled up our pants and placed our nearly numb feet into the frigid water. The other group quickly dropped their boots and started to wade out to the island. It seemed that we started a trend that day. People like us who were willing to gorge on these little ﬁsh were braving the cold water for a turn at scooping them into a cooler. When we got home, Bixler dumped the ice chest full of hooligan out on the driveway and sprayed them with a hose. I got out the vacuum sealer while he prepared a brine for

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If you don’t want to try and ﬁllet and gut these small ﬁsh, you can put the whole hooligan directly into your smoker and have some delicious eating after they’re smoked. (BIXLER MCCLURE)

BEST OF ALASKA LODGES

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Steve Stajkowski, owner of SJX Jet Boats, at his company’s shop along the banks of the Clearwater River in Oroﬁno, Idaho. A 2170 model is trailered up and ready to go behind him. (RALPH BARTHOLDT)

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BY RALPH BARTHOLDT

THE BOATBUILDER GREW up in a place made famous by animals.

The land surrounding Idaho’s Clearwater and Snake Rivers once had one of the nation’s largest elk herds, it still boasts 16 herds of bighorn sheep, and offers hunting and fishing opportunities that aren’t easy to surpass. As a kid in the region’s major city, Lewiston, Stajkowski spent most of his free time hunting and fishing in places where the lines on the map were close together, sometimes rubbing. These were the canyons of the Clearwater and Snake, where the land drops suddenly in elevation like a chukar flushed and floating from magma outcrops to a river bottom in a few fleeting seconds. The terrible touching of contour lines as the country drops like a free-fall underfoot is nowhere more pronounced than Hells Canyon – a destination place for people who keep bucket lists, but home to Stajkowski who grew up and still lives on the canyon’s liquid front steps. Because of its proximity to some of the nation’s finest white water, the Lewis and Clark Valley became home to a growing jet boat industry starting in the 1960s. The valley was dubbed the nation’s Jet Boat Capital of the World and it employs a substantial cadre of river runners, some of them drawn to boat work as teenagers with a compulsion for high-powered watercraft. Stajkowski began working in a boat shop while attending high school and spent most of his evenings heading upriver. “I was up the Snake all the time, every day after work,” Stajkowski says. “I’d haul to Heller Bar, put the boat in the water, fish until dark and then come home.” He worked for Norm Riddle, the founder of Weldcraft, as an apprentice guide and eventually a boatbuilder. And what

teve Stajkowski makes aluminum scream. But it’s not just that. He makes it dance, stop on a dime, raise its tail and jump backwards, and then buck forward and slip snakelike through rapids. He makes 21 feet of hull and free board, paint-coated, textured, bow, stern and gunwales kick, zip, rear up, dig down, swerve and snort. If he were a cowboy, Stajkowski would cash in at cutting horse championships, but he does all of this on moving water, in the boats he designs for customers from Fiji to Fairbanks to Oroﬁno, Idaho. “I was giving a demonstration in the Philippines,” Stajkowski recently recalled. “I had the authorities with me. We went up these jungle rivers that none of them had ever been on before.” That’s because they had not seen a boat that could skip effortlessly over debris, skate over rapids, through narrow, shallow channels where water spit and trickled more suitable to wading than accommodating a roaring Mercury inboard jet engine blowing speed through a tunnel hull. Especially not one wrapped in the glowering face of something akin to a World War II Warhawk, or in digital camo, or one emblazoned with brown bears and an orange sunset. Stajkowski’s SJX boats have many looks, but they all have one thing in common. “These don’t look like your typical jet boat and they don’t run like your typical jet boat,” Stajkowski says. “They’re a totally different animal.”

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he learned on the ground, and what he knew from his own experiences on the water - like river channels joining the main stem - eventually became SJX (sjxjetboats.com). The initials of the company he founded are a sort of double entendre with the X standing ﬁrm, designating “extreme,” such as extreme sports, and in this case extreme jet boating. Wide-bottomed, SJX Boats are very stable. (SJXJETBOATS.COM)

being pulled off,” he winces. It won’t stop him from putting one of the newly made boats in the water, waiting for his next touch-and-feel customer. “They travel from all over the world to do that,” Stajkowski says. He had a man ﬂy in from Estonia unannounced for a touchand-feel, and gave him a boat ride. The man wrote a check before leaving the water. When Stajkowski talks, his enthusiasm for his work and its product is masked by the quiet conﬁdence of someone who has recognized gold, and is waiting for you to catch on too. On the wall in his office, a world map is pinned with the places his boats have been shipped. “My daughter hasn’t kept up on that,” he says. Colored pins crisscross every continent.

SJX BOATS HAVE a Zen of their own that starts slowly and builds with the forward pressure of the throttle. Fat alligator tears well in the eyes of forward-leaning passengers as river air, still a moment earlier, now gussets into their face like a hitchhiker on the interstate bracing for what’s left of a passing semi. And then Stajkowski has leaned on the throttle and the boat is on step and breaking into a channel as wide as a Fruehauf tractor trailer but moving gray and sullenly with a rock shelf up

Stajkowski’s middle name is James, but packaged differently, SJ could stand for “super jet.” You decide.

THE SMALL SIGN on a hill in Orofino, which is 40 miles upriver from Lewiston and the confluence of the Snake and Clearwater, tells of Stajkowski’s commitment to a special kind of watercraft. The sign is shaped like one of his boats. It has a low profile and angles, airborne, toward the sky. Today, the sky overhead looks like rain. Snow, a foot deep last week, is mostly gone, lingering in the low hills around town that slink, wooded toward the river. A few steelheaders watch bobbers on the banks of the Clearwater, which cuts through Orofino like a broadsword. Inside the steel building, behind one of the glass doors brushed with the boatbuilder’s name in small red letters, a dozen or more employees weld, mold, emboss and otherwise busy themselves crafting broad panels of aluminum into what will become an SJX river-running tunnel hull capable of taking its passengers swiftly to places once relegated to the patient and long-winded paddlers of Zen. Wearing a hooded sweatshirt and ball cap, Stajkowski, a man of medium age and built like a football halfback, is answering emails at a desk in an office adjacent to the shop. “I get emails from all over the globe wanting quotes,” he says. Today he is weathering a pinched nerve in his neck that has shot pain to his shoulder since Thanksgiving. It hasn’t kept him off the water. When customers come visit, like the one who is on his way from the Midwest to touch and feel one of the boats – the popular 2170 (“21 feet long with a 70-inch bottom”) – Stajkowski does what he is wont to do: run and gun on the river that you could hit from the front of the shop with a rock, if you had a good arm. Stajkowski couldn’t do it today: “It feels like my shoulder is 120

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Like many West Coast-based boatbuilding outﬁts, SJX has reached into markets beyond anglers and hunters – New York ﬁsh and wildlife officers shoot through skinny water in one of the company’s craft. (SJXJETBOATS.COM)

ahead, its lip a good place for staging anadromous ﬁsh. “Hang on!” Stajkowski yelps into the wind. The multicolored SJX airs over the shelf and around a bend, and just before the rock-solid chin of land can catch the bow, Stajkowski jams the engine into reverse and the 21-foot boat that weighs 1,750 pounds empty, but a bit more loaded, gulps its bow into the river, then dances backwards like a newly hooked redside rainbow shaking its head. “Hang on” becomes the new catch phrase. The current sucks the boat downstream and Stajkowski slams the throttle forward again and, rock outcrop easily averted, the SJX leans hard starboard, folds around a bend into open water and the throttle tilts as the 2170 tail skips upstream. We’ve seen this before. It is reminiscent of a meat-eating rainbow trout at the end of a line. Landlocked or sea run, it emanates strength and a kind of whacked-out resilience that the word “wild” best describes. Stajkowski does this with all his boats. When they come freshly wrapped out of the shop, he trailers them, rolls them to the river and makes them dance. It’s part of the prerelease

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Author Louis Cusack and his wife Ruth intended to call moose at their remote hunting camp. But tornup logs they found in the area revealed another target: a huge grizzly bear. (LOUIS CUSACK)

RECORD WRECKER? WHEN A HUNTER KILLED A MASSIVE ALASKAN GRIZZLY, HE WONDERED IF HE HAD A POTENTIAL RECORD-BREAKING BRUIN Bear hunters tread all over the Last Frontier to have a chance at something majestic, like this massive brown bear that hunter Gus Congemi spotted. (LOUIS CUSACK)

BY LOUIS A. CUSACK

n September 2015, my wife Ruth and I flew into our moose hunting camp several days ahead of the rest of our hunting party. Our plan was to fly in a load of gear, pack it to the camp site and then use the rest of our time alone hunting upriver from where we usually begin our annual float hunt. Over the years, we have taken several big bulls right at the drop point, but neither of us had spent any time on the upper portion of the river. We were both excited about the opportunity to explore some new country. Our flight into the field was pretty uneventful, and before you could say “fasten your seat belt,” we had landed and were packing gear on the tundra. As we did so, we noticed a lot of roots had been dug up and logs torn to pieces, as well as piles of fresh bear scat. There was a lot more bear sign than normal, but I didn’t think much of it at the time. Something is aksportingjournal.com | MAY 2016

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Calling for bull moose proved fruitless, but led to an unexpected shot opportunity. (LOUIS CUSACK)

always different in this area. In fact, that’s one of best parts of the whole adventure! We spent our first day packing in gear and setting up camp. By sunset we had a fire going and were enjoying it with a warm cup of coffee. We have hunted this area for many years and that night we spent some time around the campfire reminiscing about our previous adventures. We talked about the unusual amount of bear sign we were seeing and reviewed our plan for the next day. We still had gear to pack, but by morning would have met the requirements for Alaska’s same-day fly-in regulation, so our plan was to hunt the morning and then finish packing in the rest of our gear. We had already made plans to hunt brown bear on the Alaska Peninsula the following spring, so with Alaska’s hunting season running from July 1 through June 30, whoever chose to take a grizzly would be tagged out for next spring. Whatever grizzly that was in the area would just have to wait – at least that’s what we were thinking at the time.

THE NEXT MORNING STARTED pretty uneventfully. We’d set up on the edge of an oxbow and call and glass for moose. After several hours without any luck we decided it was time to start packing gear, so we grabbed our pack frames, binoculars and a riﬂe and then started on the mile-long hike back to the gear pile. We were almost there when Ruth spotted a bear working its way around the lake. He was quite a ways out and when she pointed him out, I actually thought he was a moose. I made the mistake of mentioning that thought out loud, getting a response of, “Hey, you old knucklehead! Have you 128

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Cusack’s bear, an old boar with very worn teeth, took advantage of a good harvest of blueberries, as its stained lips showed. (LOUIS CUSACK)

ever seen a moose walk like that?” Well, actually I hadn’t, but I’d been hunting this area for almost 14 years and I’d never seen a bear anywhere as near as big as this one. We still weren’t planning on shooting him

and continued hiking as we crossed a creek. We were almost to our gear when I found a tussock that was just the right size to set up behind. I laid my riﬂe up on that tussock, got a good steady rest and put my scope on the

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Cusack learned a lot about how Boone and Crockett and Safari Club International standards determine if a harvested animal establishes any new records. (LOUIS CUSACK)

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bear just as he was making it around the corner of the lake. With a good rest I could see that this bear was a whole lot bigger than any grizzly I had ever laid my eyes on. “OK,” I thought, “change of plans; it looks like we’re bear hunting after all.” I knew right away that this bear was something really special and I decided to take him. Now, all of this happened with me snuggled up tight behind my riﬂe, and I just might have forgotten to mention my change of plans to Ruth. I had about as good of a riﬂe rest as I have ever had on that tussock, and by this time the bear was less than 200 yards out, so I just waited for him to give me a good shot opportunity. I put one right through his shoulder and he went down hard right where he stood. Ruth did not have the same front-row seat that I had and she was quick to remind me that we had said we weren’t hunting bear, to which I responded, “Just wait till you get a good look at this guy.” When we walked over to him and had our hands on him, we were both truly amazed at the size of this old boar. He was huge – butterball fat with a big old noggin – but it was also easy to tell that this old bruin’s best days had already passed. His claws were thick and short, all four of

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As it turned out, the bear didn’t establish any new records, and that was ﬁne with Louis Cusack. “I’ve reached a point where I am happy to return home empty-handed; I have more fun helping others take an animal than I do taking one myself,” he wrote. (LOUIS CUSACK)

his big canine teeth were worn in half and several of his back teeth were abscessed. We had had a great berry season and his lips and gums were literally stained from eating blueberries, which was a good thing for this old boy – he would have

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likely had a rough time without the easy-to-chew bumper berry crop. He was only about 150 yards from where our hunting partner would be landing, so after taking pictures and skin-

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Bearing his bruin’s coat, Cusack heads for the plane that will transport it back to civilization for further preparations. (LOUIS CUSACK)

ning him out, we made short work out of packing him over to the gear pile. We were able to stretch him across a few willow trees to cool and dry until the plane came in. We always carry a satellite phone and the next morning

I placed a call to our transporter, requesting them to bring us a transfer-of-possession form and to haul our bear back to Kotzebue. Not only did they agree, but they also offered to ship him back to Anchorage, where Northern Air Cargo

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would keep him in their freezer until we returned. With that settled, Ruth and I were free to spend the next couple of days hunting and exploring upriver.

THE MORNING BEFORE THE plane flew in, Ruth and I hiked out to help offload the rest of our gear, and I needed to be there to complete the paperwork. It wasn’t long before my bear was off and on his way to Anchorage. We spent the next 13 days floating, hunting and fishing our way downriver. The weather was pretty decent, the caribou migration was better than I’d seen in the last five years, and we were able to take a couple of really nice caribou bulls on our way downriver. We called in a number of moose, and passed on all but one big bull that got away from us when we ran out of daylight before we could get a shot at him. We’d hoped for another chance at him, but a lovesick cow picked him up and the next day they had both left the country. I guess that old cow sounded much sweeter than I did. I returned home and picked up my bear at Northern Air Cargo. Once he was thawed out, I took him down to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game office in Palmer to have him sealed. The sealing officer green scored him at 25 10/16 inches, with a hide that was in great condition that squared just under 8½ feet. A bear skull has to be cleaned and dried for 60 days before it can be scored for either Boone and Crockett (B&C) or Safari Club International (SCI) record books. I had done a little research on skull shrinkage

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and I was pretty sure that my bear would make it in both record books. The confusion started when at first I thought he might be a world-record barren ground grizzly. I mean, I shot the grizzly way out on barren ground, right? Well, yes, but wrong species! I came to find out that I had a lot to learn about records, record books and species boundaries, all of which are different depending on the organization that is categorizing them. For example, SCI separates brown bears into three subspecies. The Alaska brown bear (M02) species’ boundary is defined as ADFG Units 1-10 and 14-18. The common grizzly (M02) is often referred to as a grizzly. Its area is a bit more complicated to define, as it covers pretty much every place not defined as Alaska brown bear or barren ground grizzly, but for us it simply means all the rest of Alaska. The boundary for the barren ground grizzly (M69) covers a fairly small area in Canada, which is defined as the mainland of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, north of the treeline and east of the Mackenzie River Delta, but including the Tuktoyaktuk hunting area. The biggest difference between SCI and B&C is that SCI excludes Alaska Game Management Unit 13 (Nelcina/Upper Susitna) from the brown bear boundary, whereas B&C includes it. SCI included all of GMU 18 (Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta) in their boundary, whereas in B&C’s, the 62nd parallel of latitude cuts off the top half of the unit.

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B&C only has two subspecies: Alaska brown bear and grizzly. The boundary for Alaska brown bears starts at Pearse Canal, on the southeastern side of the panhandle, and follows the U.S.-Canada boundary northwesterly to Mount St. Elias on the 141st degree of longitude, thence north along the international boundary to Mount Natazhat; thence west-northwest along the divide of the Wrangell Range to Mount Jarvis at the western end of the Wrangell Range, and thence north along the divide of the Mentasta Range to Mentasta Pass; thence in a general westerly direction along the divide of the Alaska Range to Houston Pass; thence westerly following the 62nd parallel of latitude to the Bering Sea. The boundary definition sounds complicated, but it is clearly identified on their boundary map. Everything outside of this boundary is defined as grizzly. The two organizations also measure bears differently. SCI measures the skull with the lower jaw attached, whereas B&C measures with the lower jaw removed. By the time I figured this out, I sort of felt like I did after I blew my knee out on my snowmachine. When that happened, I didn’t know an ACL from a PCL and I had never even heard of using a cadaver ligament, but I certainly got a quick lesson in all of that and every other little gory knee detail. At least my bear lesson didn’t come with a big medical bill, a trip to the hospital and three months of physical therapy. SCI officially scored my bear at 26 1/6 inches, a gold medal bear and currently No. 25 in the record book. So far I

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have not had him scored for B&C but he will easily make the minimum of the 24 inches that is required for entry into the all-time record book. Personally I am not one to worry much about scores and record books, but you may have come to a different conclusion by the time you read this sentence. I wrote this to share what I have learned and hopefully to make it a little easier for someone else to understand. For me, hunting is all about the adventure, the camaraderie, exploring and witnessing all that Mother Nature has to offer. I’ve reached a point where I am happy to return home empty-handed; I have more fun helping others take an animal than I do taking one myself. But like any hunter who has taken a great trophy, it is pretty cool to enter it and see your name recorded alongside of other hunters who have experienced the same opportunity. It’s really not about being a great hunter. How successful you are as a hunter is all about the effort you are willing to put into researching location, improving your proficiency and the time you spend in the field. Time and effort is what put me in the right place at the right time and it gave me my chance to see all of that effort come together. But then again, as the old saying goes, “Even a blind squirrel can find a nut sometimes!” ASJ Editor’s note: For more on the author, check out facebook.com /AdventuresofLouisandRuthCusack.

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The author examined bear sign, ﬁgured out the food source and ﬁlled a tag with this Prince of Wales bear. Because bruins have poor digestive tracts, forage readily passes through their system and is easy to identify, revealing where hunters should focus their efforts. (SCOTT HAUGEN)

‘RECIPES’ FOR BRUIN SUCCESS

THREE FOOD-INSPIRED METHODS TO FILL THAT BLACK BEAR TAG BY SCOTT HAUGEN

hen it comes to spring black bear hunting in Alaska, the key to success is targeting food sources. Bears have some of the most inefficient digestive systems of any big game, and hunters can use this to their advantage. As bears emerge from their winter nap – bears are not true hibernators – they need food to replenish lost fat reserves. Here are three ways to ﬁll a tag based on a bear’s need for food.

SPOT AND STALK Spending time behind a spotting scope or binoculars is the most efficient way to ﬁnd a black bear. Covering ground with your eyes – not your feet – is a major time saver. Early in the season, focus efforts on south-facing slopes where food sources grow the fastest. Just below the snow line is a good place to start glassing, as melt-

ing snow offers valuable moisture that allows grass to quickly grow in the sun and subsurface bulbs to germinate. At lower elevations, search for bears feeding along the edges of bogs where multiple food sources come to life. Wild cabbage, grass, ferns, lichens and berries held over from fall are all prime food sources. Bears will also scavenge for winter-killed big game. Don’t dismiss beaches and tidal zones. At low tide, bears will travel to water’s edge in search of sea life, kelp and grass. Even at higher tides, bears will hit the area where grass is green. Once a bear is spotted, plan your stalk. Bears have better eyesight than many people think, but their sense of smell is uncanny. Black bears have been observed smelling a food source from up to 5 miles away and following their noses right to it.

TRACK AND GO If hunting amid thick habitat, look for

sign and follow it. Tracks, diggings and droppings are all key indicators of the number of bears in an area. Because bears have poor digestive systems, their droppings contain a lot of valuable information. Many berries are passed through the gut totally intact. Baby crabs can be found by the dozens in a single pile of dung, and grass is hard to digest due to the cellulose content. In habitats with limited visibility, study bear droppings to see what they’ve been eating and you’ll be on your way to success. Hunt these areas slowly, glassing for parts of bears hidden amongst the foliage. Look for an ear, nose or horizontal outline of the back, not always the whole bear. Often you’ll hear a bear feeding before you see it, so move quietly and listen. You should also pay attention to tracks. Sometimes bears mill around the same food source for days, as tracks will indicate. And bears can also pass through an area, with a single set of

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Tiffany Haugen says bear fat is a tastier option to use for stir-frying meats and for cooking side dishes like fried potatoes. (TIFFANY HAUGEN)

BEAR FAT A YUMMY FIT BY TIFFANY HAUGEN

endering bear fat is something we love doing, as it feels like we are really making the most of our downed bear. People wonder why they can’t make pie crust like “Grandma” did? That’s because shortening and/or butter are not the same as animal fat. The best way to achieve pie greatness is using animal fat, with bear being one of the best options. Bear fat can also be used to stir-fry other meats, and is especially tasty with fried potatoes and donuts. While I would never abandon my favorite coconut, olive and other nut oils, bear fat makes for a tasty addition to many recipes.

STEPS TO RENDERING BEAR FAT Remove fat from the bear as soon as possible. On hot days, get the fat off the meat and cooling quickly – this will also help the meat quality. Clean the fat of any debris, hair or meat. Store bear fat in the refrigerator or freezer prior to rendering. Cut bear fat into small cubes/chunks. The smaller the chunks, the faster the rendering time. For stovetop rendering (inside or outside), place fat into a heavy skillet or Dutch oven (cast iron preferred). Cover bear fat with water. Bring the fat and water to a boil. As water evaporates, fat will begin to render. When most of the water has evaporated, turn down heat to medium-low. Continue to render fat until only golden brown “cracklins” remain. Line a strainer with one layer of cheesecloth and strain liquid fat into storage jars. Cover and keep fat stored up to six months in the refrigerator. Freeze for longer-term storage.

VARIATIONS Fat can be rendered in the oven at 300 degrees in a slow cooker (high heat and covered for the ﬁrst hour, then remove the lid and decrease heat for the rest of the process); small batches can be rendered in the microwave. Editor’s note: For 100-plus more big game recipes, signed copies of Tiffany Haugen’s popular book, Cooking Big Game, can be ordered by sending a check for $20 (includes S&H) to Haugen Enterprises, PO Box 275, Walterville, OR 97489, or order online at scotthaugen.com.

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tracks moving in one direction revealing that. Should a food source be littered with tracks obviously made over the course of a few days, spend time hunting that area. If bears are passing through, follow the tracks and see if they lead to a nearby food source. If food is plentiful, bears can spend days or even weeks in that spot. If food is scarce, bears may travel several miles to ﬁnd what they’re looking for.

CALLING Calling is one of the most exciting ways to hunt bears. If cold calling – calling when you see lots of fresh sign but no actual bear – be prepared to sit in one place for an hour or more. Constantly make a range of predator sounds that will catch the attention of bears and keep them interested. Bears can have short attention spans, and constant calling is often more effective than calling for 30 seconds, waiting for ﬁve minutes and then calling again. If you see a bear, this is the best way

When calling bears, use a range of sounds, from fawn-in-distress to goats, birds to varmints, as there is no such thing as too vast a calling repertoire. Haugen had this Sitka blacktail come to his fawn cries on Prince of Wales Island, a sign he was making the right sounds to fool big game. (SCOTT HAUGEN)

to implement calling because you can observe how they respond. If a bear comes in fast, keep calling to keep their attention. If they start your way and lose interest, give them a different sound. Bears are among the toughest of all big game to pattern and ﬁgure out. But if you concentrate on hunting them on and near food sources, your chances of ﬁlling

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a tag and putting some great-eating meat on the table greatly increases. ASJ Editor’s note: For signed copies of Scott Haugen’s best-selling book, Hunting The Alaskan High Arctic, send a check for $38 (free S&H) to Haugen Enterprises, P.O. Box 275, Walterville, OR 97489, or order online at scotthaugen.com.

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GETTING THAT TROPHY HOME EXPERT ADVICE ON TRANSPORTING ALASKA BIG GAME ANTLERS, CAPES AND MEAT OUT OF THE FIELD

BY PAUL D. ATKINS

If you are on an early hunt and take a caribou or moose in velvet, it might be best to strip off the velvet before having it shipped. If packaged, the moisture in the velvet will mold and cause some serious problems. (PAUL D. ATKINS)

ou did your homework and found that magical place in Alaska where you spent a week in some of the most beautiful country you could have ever imagined. The stalk was a tough one, but you connected on an animal that you had dreamed about for ages. Your adrenaline is high and you’re still pinching yourself asking, did this really just happen?! But once you get your monster back to camp it hits you: What do I need to do now to get this thing back home? This question is not an uncommon one here in the state. Most hunters who come to Alaska to hunt or even travel within its boundaries sometimes forget about the logistics of what it really takes to get an animal from the ﬁeld to their home base. Whether you’re a resident and want to get your meat and hide to a local processor in Anchorage, or a nonresident who wants to take it across the country, you really need to have some kind of plan ahead of time. There are few options when it comes to getting your meat, cape and horns from point A to point B and I have used most of them. Some have been great experiences while others have not – like the time when TSA wanted me to magically “unfreeze” the Sitka blacktail capes I had checked as baggage. Or years later when a good friend of mine came up to the Arctic and took a moose of a lifetime, only to have it not show up when he got back to Phoenix. Luckily for

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him we froze the cape and meat solid, and when it did show up four days later it was still OK.

THE NEXT STEP When the hunt is over and it’s time to head home, most hunters like to have their trophies with them at all times. I know I do. If it was possible to get antlers and meat into a carry-on, most of us would do it, but since it isn’t, it still feels good to know that your animal is safely secured in the belly of the plane. Size, time and expense all play a major role getting big game trophies from one location to another. The species harvested also will greatly affect each of these factors as well. For example, if you shoot a moose and want to get the entire

animal back home, then size, number of boxes and expense will be quite large. But if you take a bear, you can probably get away with checking it as luggage. If you want the best care for your trophies, I recommend using an expeditor who only focuses on shipping big game trophies. Most expediting business here in Alaska are owned and operated by hunters who know the care needed for preparation and shipment of not only big game but fish too. D&C Expediters out of Anchorage (907-344-9719) is just a company that deals specifically with getting big game from one point to another. Once your trophy is taken care of in the field and you’ve made it back to civilization, D&C will do the rest. Sean Hardesty, who owns and operates the company, will

The real work starts after the shot is ﬁred. Take proper precautions preparing the meat and carefully take the best care of capes and headgear. Game bags and salt are big pluses and will keep things clean and safe on the initial trip out of the bush. (PAUL D. ATKINS) 150

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go to the extreme to make sure your trophy is taken care of. Once it arrives in their care they not only provide a variety of shipping services, but they will securely package, freeze it and even do the taxidermy work if you decide to have it done in their shop. Hardesty told me that most hunters spend a ton of money on the hunting part, but forget about the getting-it-home part. I agree; if you are going to go to all that work and expense, spend the money to get it home safely instead of trying to save a few bucks and take a risk in losing both the meat and cape. A little extra work and expense will be a lot cheaper than no meat and having to buy a new cape. You can ﬁnd D&C Expediters at dandcexpediters.com.

THE FRIENDLY SKIES Another option is to use a major airline. These days most airlines are not hunter-friendly, but Alaska Airlines is and does provide shipping services to the hunter. Almost all hunts to the bush will at ﬁrst require a ride on an Alaska Air ﬂight anyway, so in turn this will be your return route home, which includes your trophy and the rest of your gear. It is the most commonly used method in most of rural

Alaska. There was once a time when you could check about anything on an airline and not run into any problems. I remember when you could duct tape cardboard around your caribou antlers and that was good enough, but not any more. If you go to the Alaska Airlines website (alaskaair.com), they have a section on the requirements of shipping big game. Alaska Air classiﬁes big game as moose, caribou, goat and sheep, including meat, antlers and capes. Whatever you were lucky enough to take, they must all be wrapped in a leakproof polyurethane bag regardless of the outer packaging. There must be no blood, dirt or odor, and the maximum weight is 100 pounds per package. This can add up quickly if you are hauling back a moose or a couple of caribou. The airline also allows a hunter to use a maximum of 5 pounds of dry ice for shipping perishable items, such as meat and capes, but no wet ice is allowed. All packages must be labeled with the hunter or hunters’ names and addresses, plus hunting license numbers. If the package is crossing state lines, then the Lacey Act will come into effect. Hunters will need to provide shipping tags with all their information. These tags can be picked up at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game and can also be found in a copy of the hunting regulations.

Trips in an out of the ﬁeld can be greatly affected by not only the amount of gear you’re taking, but also by the size or number of animals you harvest. Taking a monster moose or more than one caribou might require an extra trip. Be sure to check with your aviation company to see their options. (PAUL D. ATKINS) (Left) Alaska Airlines ﬂies into most major hubs in Alaska and is very hunter friendly. They know the impact sportsmen and their dollars have on the state’s economy and try and ensure we’re taken care of. (PAUL D. ATKINS)

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Alaska Airlines also provides boxes to hunters to ship their trophy game. Cost varies – depending on size – but all will meet the airline’s requirements. If you’re just shipping antlers, the same criteria applies, but antler tips must be well padded to prevent damage to other luggage. Antlers must also be shipped separately from meat and capes, and 100 pounds still represents the maximum. Shipping several antlers together is pretty common, especially if there are more than one or two hunters in your group. Antlers may be shipped as regular baggage as long as they are free from blood and ﬂesh and meet regular bag requirements. Alaska Air also provides an airlineto-door service, but it does come at a cost.

PROS AND CONS Like all things there are some disadvantages to using a major airline. Most do not guarantee against spoilage and they do not guarantee freezer space, plus it gets pretty expensive if you have a lot of boxes. I highly suggest making a few phone calls or checking websites closely. Remember, this will need to be done long before the hunt begins. If you’re just shipping antlers inside Alaska

Caribou are on everyone’s list, and if you are lucky enough to take a big bull, you will want to make sure you have a way to get it back home. Padded antlers and proper meat boxes are a must, but choosing the best method to get it home will make all the difference. (PAUL D. ATKINS)

OUTFITTER SATELLITE PHONES Outﬁtter Satellite has been providing Iridium services to Alaskans for over 17 years. Now, Iridium is launching a new Push-to-Talk (PTT) service that offers unlimited PTT communications amongst groups of PTT users. A monthly fee applies for each PTT handset and for the Talk Group itself, but there are no other PTT usage fees. Talk Group costs scale with the area being covered, which can be as large as 868,000 square miles.

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The main advantages of the new service are: • small portable handset • optional interoperablity with portable radios • on-the-ﬂy web portal controls Unlike traditional Iridium telephony services, unlimited Push-to-Talk is available for a simple monthly fee. If you still need to make a conventional phone call, text or even allow others to track your position, the Iridium Extreme PTT handset can be changed from PTT-mode to telephony-mode right from the handset’s menu. Our Iridium GO! satellite hotspot lets iPhone or Android smartphones make calls or send texts from anywhere on Earth. SOS and GPS features keep your friends apprised of your location wherever you GO! 1-800-881-8514 • sales@outﬁttersatellite.com • GPSphones.com

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or to the Lower 48, I have found a great and relatively cheap service provided by Northern Air Cargo through their NAC Link service. Northern Air is located in about every hub in the state and can be found at the local airport. All hunters need to do is place their antlers on a pallet and wrap in cellophane. They will fly them to Anchorage where they can have them trucked to the Lower 48. It usually takes two to three weeks to arrive, but it will save you a bundle. One recommendation, though, is to not ship any antlers that are in velvet. The moisture inside your package will mold and cause some serious problems. Whatever method you choose to ship your caribou, moose or maybe even a sheep, you should take the time to properly prepare it and secure it in the proper package. If it takes a few extra bucks to ship it a certain way, so what? After all, your dream hunt is done and you were successful. Seeing the head on the wall or pulling meat out of the freezer will make it all worth it. ASJ Editor’s note: Paul Atkins is an outdoor writer and author from Kotzebue, Alaska. Besides publishing numerous pieces on hunting and fishing throughout North America, Africa, and South America, Paul has written hundreds of articles on hunting, fishing and surviving in the Alaskan Arctic. Paul is a monthly contributor to Alaska Sporting Journal.

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If your dream hunt included a bear, then getting it back home can be as simple as freezing the hide and skull and checking it as baggage. Just make sure you have it officially sealed, including proper documents, plus and then give it plenty of time to freeze! (PAUL D. ATKINS)

HAINES Canal Marine Co. 10 Front St (907) 766-2437 canalmarinecompany.com

KETCHIKAN Timber & Marine Supply, Inc. 2547 Tongass Ave (907) 225-6644 www.timberandmarine.com

JUNEAU Tyler Rental Inc 5295 Glacier Hwy (907) 780-2210 www.tylerrentaljuneau.com

PALMER Alaska Paciﬁc Rental 1111 Glenn Hwy (907) 746-1144 www.alaskapaciﬁcrental.com

PETERSBURG Rocky’s Marine Inc 245 Mitkof Hwy (907) 772-3949 www.rockysmarine.com

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THE CEVICHE

CHRONICLES

BY CHRISTINE CUNNINGHAM

hey were the best kind of couple, the kind that has a 50-50 chance of making it. He is the quintessential Generation X river guide; she is a Southern sorority girl turned attorney first class. The costume changes each of them make from their professional lives to after-hours lives is something from the Gatsby Era, when people still danced or had someone in their lives they called “my bootlegger.” They were the kind of people you could have over for dinner and think that it was something to write about in the paper. It was only in the past few years that I learned that small towns in North Dakota still report the visits of relatives in the weekly news. It was the kind of local familiarity that reminds me of the pathways that used to exist between the houses of Old Town Kenai, back when neighbors visited each other by foot instead of via social media networking. With our finished dinner plates still on the table, there was too much storytelling amongst livers (in the Gatsby sense of the word – i.e. drinkers – who would later have liver problems) for anyone to volunteer dish duty. We were discussing fishing, of course. It was the first time I’d heard the word “ceviche.” It was what they could 158

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have made out of the dorado that got away off the coast of Florida. But more correctly, ceviche is freshly caught white-fleshed fish marinated in lemon or lime juice. The citric acid causes the fish to cook without heat. What was once thought the Latin food trend of the 21st century had actually been practiced by Southern fishermen for years. They would make it at home with the day’s catch, soaking the fish in lime juice, chili powder, onions, garlic, cilantro and a little sea salt. They threw this mix in the fridge before going to bed. The next morning, on their way to the boat they tossed in some chopped tomatoes. Then they’d have it as salsa with chips as a snack during the day. Another way, without refrigeration, is to leave the covered mix out in the sun on the boat’s deck to help the acidic action. As I listened to the great ceviche conversation, I couldn’t help but bear in mind that I live in a country that routinely throws away every single bag of spinach in existence because of a localized E. coli threat. The media, via the FDA, encourages the parasite scare. There are countless commercials personifying germs that will come to life out of raw fish and poultry. Even though invisible to the human eye, these germs are often overweight and unshaven with mean dispositions. One commercial even has a germ clad in a white muscle shirt. He says something offensive like, “Thanks for having me over for dinner,” just before he’s wiped away in agony by a pink latex glove carrying a spray bottle of the latest germ-killer formula. While my dinner mates talked about how to cut up the fish into inch-sized pieces and then let them soak in lime juice, I wondered if lime juice was really potent enough to kill Herbie, the

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obnoxious slovenly germ? (I’m calling him Herbie because his real name, cod worm or Anisakis simplex, is even less palatable.) Will lemon or lime really cook the fish? Some conservative ceviche recipes call for a little bit of cooking, “just to be sure.” Everyone at the table agreed any cooking was unnecessary. The simple preparation of fish soaked in lime juice had an undeniable appeal: fresh, simple, healthy. My first thought was to use lake trout, but given my issues with parasites, saltwater fish would be a better bet for ceviche. I happened to have some year-old halibut in the freezer, but fish is mostly made of water and since water expands during freezing, it tears the flesh and makes it mushy. Halibut is a lean fish, so it cannot withstand the freezer after the seven-day (to kill parasites) rule. It all meant that I didn’t just want to go fishing; I needed to go fishing! After dinner was over and our worldly dinner guests left, the dinner plates remained on the table as I was still thinking about ceviche. I’m incapable of doing the dishes and thinking at the same time. The thought of a fresh fish salsa had ingredients dancing in my head: red onion, green onion, red pepper, roma tomatoes, avocado. My vegetables were well-dressed (picture fedora hats and 1920s-style flapper dresses). The next morning, I was off to the lake with my fishing partner. The dishes still weren’t done and I was still thinking about ceviche. It’s almost a week later as I write this, and I’ve been fishing twice and not yet made a single batch of my own version of ceviche. I’ve stocked all the necessary ingredients – sea salt, cocktail sauce, etc. – for different versions I will doubtless need to try. At some point, just to annoy Herbie, I went ahead and did the dishes. ASJ

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