Category Archives: Food

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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Ten Years of Dip Netting at Chitina

Very shortly after I returned from fieldwork in Russia this year, Rose and I packed up and headed for Chitina to catch enough salmon for another year of tasty fish. Copper River red salmon, recognized as prize gastronomic fare, is available to Alaska residents through a “personal use fishery” on the Copper River while the salmon are running. A household of two or more can catch 30 red salmon or 29 reds and a king. The latter combination is about as good as fish eating gets, raw or cooked.

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