Category Archives: Fishing/Hunting

Walking Wild Shores

The book is out:Walking Wild Shores book cover
Walking Wild Shores: Portraits of the Natural World.

If you enjoy this blog, you might enjoy this book. It is based on the emailed stories sent out before this blog began.

Update: David James reviewed the book for the Daily News Miner. Now I can actually have one of those ridiculously brief review quotes that all the page-turners display:

“…damned good.” David A. James.

It is a great review. He summarizes it better than I could have.

Back during the publishing process an email came asking me whether there were any reviews that should be used in the book’s promotion. There were no formal reviews, but three were rattling around in my head:

“Please to come byack to Russia.” V. Putin
“Surprisingly little corncob; I actually enjoyed it.” Anonymous
“You write so well.” Author’s mother

 

Fish Heads can be Remarkably Good

Randy Pyle with a yelloweye rockfish.

Randy Pyle with a yelloweye rockfish.

I took a quick trip down to Valdez to go out with a charter boat for halibut. Randy Pyle of Lady Luck Charters took a group of us out for an all-day fishing charter on the Aleashia. We had a great day on the water. We saw whales, sea otters, great birds—and we caught fish. Then I zoomed home with the fish gutted and on ice: two halibut and two yelloweye rockfish. They fileted up quickly and easily enough, and I vacuum-packed most of the filets and put them in the freezer. I held out two nice pieces for a side-by-side taste test of the fish—baked: a little olive oil in the pan and seasoned only with salt and pepper to keep it simple for a flavor comparison. (I liked the yelloweye better, but both were very good).

 

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Moose!

Having not gotten a moose on our float trip, I carved out a couple of days to go out to Standard Creek, where I’d last gotten one several years ago. I hadn’t had any luck crossing paths with a bull during the season out there since, but the biggest part of moose hunting is just putting time in where they are likely to be. I hunted two evenings and mornings in my usual area, but judging by sign the densities were the lowest I’ve seen in many years of hunting there. The visit was great, especially because I’d avoided the weekend by working then and taking a couple days mid-week, which really reduces the hunter activity. Coyotes were howling at dawn on the second day, and the weather was excellent, but I left feeling strongly that it was not worth returning. Moose densities have been too high across this entire hunting zone, apparently, and they’ve been issuing a lot of cow tags to push those densities down. I guessed that a lot of those tags have probably been being filled out here.

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A Fall Float Trip

After returning from a wonderful trip to Europe, life was back to its hectic norm for a couple of weeks, but Rose and I planned to take a float trip down the Chatanika River—just like the one Dad and I had gone on moose hunting back in September 2000. During that former trip, I remembered thinking how much Rose would enjoy such a float, and rumor had it that the 15-mile road off of Murphy Dome Road (which had been very bad before) had been improved for fire fighting earlier this year. So we planned to go. When Dad and I had gone, we’d taken a standard 18-foot aluminum canoe, but we’d worried about the extra load a moose would add and so had brought along an inflatable raft to tow if necessary. That scheme unfortunately was never put to the test, but in talking with some guys at work I heard a resounding recommendation for an inflatable Pro Pioneer made by Soar. I was able to rent one from the folks at Test the Waters, and we were set.

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The Bold Vole of the Meat Hole

What a summer. Cool, wet weather. Too much traveling and running around. And a rather poor season for salmon on the Copper River at Chitina—on top of many constraints keeping us from going at the few, brief good times. On the bright side, we had a lot of great visitors this year, which was fun. But when the traveling was finished in mid-August, Rose and I were both home at the same time, and the fishing report sounded decent enough to make a run for it. We’ve become fairly addicted to Copper River red salmon, and not even attempting to fill the freezer with those tasty beauties just didn’t feel right. So we made a fast run during the last week that the charter operated.

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