Seldovia on Memorial Day Weekend, 1975

Four of us stayed at the end of the Homer Spit in Land’s End bunkhouse Friday night while awaiting our Memorial holiday adventure to Seldovia. Two guys from Kodiak joined Dan and I on the excursion. Roger was an old friend of Dan. The other’s name has escaped me. The three had purchased property in Seldovia, and wanted to walk over and inspect their new acquisition. They had bought about 25 acres on the Slough near town. Each had a two acre lot on the water, and the rest of the property, laying adjacent to the lots and climbing to the top of a hill behind, was held jointly by the three. So we had a two part objective. The other - to retrieve our fishing gear from Yukon Island, where we had stashed it a week earlier

This time out the waves were not so big, the wind not so calm. Calm seas usually occur in early morning or late evening. In between, as the day bores on, the sun warms the air, and starts it to moving. High winds and high tides go together. We were in a high tide cycle that weekend, and higher winds were definitely with us - choppy seas rocked the boat as we rounded the Spit and headed for Yukon Island. A gentle morning breeze pushed two and three foots waves at us, a little spray portended heavier stuff to come.

The four of us, big deckhands, quickly hustled the gear off Yukon, and directed the skiff into the Eldred Passage, running parallel to and just off the island‘s shore. We decide to stop for a break, though it escapes me as to why. Maybe it was for lunch, maybe we wanted to do some clamming, or maybe the weather was picking up. I no longer remember, but we put to shore on either Yukon or Hesketh.

We spent a couple hours on the island. The first thing we discovered was that none of us had thought to bring food. There wasn’t a candy bar between us, and we were all prepared to dine. Nothing! Dan had brought some old frozen fish to use as bait. Roger and his buddy stuck pieces on the end of a stick and tried roasting them over the campfire; can’t remember if any were consumed; don’t recall any accolades about the seafood cuisine.

Dan and I retrieved our fishing poles and used an old fish to try an catch a fresh one. No fish, but we were flabbergasted to land a small King Crab. Its legs probably measured a two feet span. We broke the leg joints into pieces small enough to fit into a like-sized pan, and suspended it over the fire. There was enough to provide four modest meals. No butter! I did not know King Crab were in the bay, and never heard of anyone catching them before or after.

Entrance to Seldovia Bay

We made it to Seldovia without further incident, but I can’t tell much about that visit as memories of it have merged with hundreds of later ones. We probably ate at the Seldovia Lodge. We did slept on Dan’s land, on bare ground, with sleeping bags laid on plastic sheeting with other piece draped over us - tent like. In the morning we probably returned for breakfast at the Seldovia Lodge and then set sail for home.

Seldovai Boat Harbour

The passage out of Seldovia Bay proved easy. We rounded Seldovia Point, Barber Point, passed McDonald Spit, and tacked into the Eldred Passage without much trouble. When we came to the end of Yukon Island and started across the open bay, the boat began to ship water. Wind knocked the top off waves and sent a continual spray into the boat. Within a short interval there was several inches of salt water sloshing around in the bottom. I grabbed a coffee can we used for bailing and started scooping water over the side. Two buckets of clams sat in the bilge, and before long the two Kodiak guys dumped the clams to the side and started bailing. We were able to keep up but decided the wiser move would be to turn back, find shelter, and wait out the wind for a few hours.

Crab boats in Seldovia Harbour

Dan directed the skiff onto the leeward side of a small peninsula projecting into the bay. It lay almost due south and about four miles off the tip of the Homer Spit. We beached the boat, water logged, and clothes soaked through, but happy to be on dry land. Roger built a fire, while the rest of us finished bailing the boat, and restoring the clams to their buckets.

The peninsula was narrow, jutting out a hundred yards from the mainland. A homestead sat at the junction of land with smoke flowing from its chimney. Before long three or four left the cabin and headed out the peninsula toward us. The men arrived well armed. They carried rifles and at least two had holstered revolvers strapped to their side. They wanted to know our intention. Why were we camping on private property?

We apologized for trespassing, and explained our dilemma; that we were returning from Seldovia and thought it prudent to wait out a dangerous sea. We told them we were four harmless seafarers temporarily cast upon their shore - two teachers and two Alaska Fish and Game biologist taking refuge from the storm. They accepted our explanation and withdrew. A short time later they sent am unarmed emissary to invite us to share their Memorial Day dinner. We thanked them for their gracious invitation and ask when they should expect our presence.

We four tidied up as much as possible (combed out hair), and preceded, single file, down the path to the house. After introductions to maybe a dozen people, adults and children, we were all seated at a very long table to share a pleasant dinner - fried chicken wings being the main entrée. The unusual offering was pickled kelp, that tasted like…pickles.

Before leaving we had a chance to return their gracious hospitality. Upon stepping from the house we noticed the owner was in the act of removing debris from a nearby area, and were told the place use to be a fox farm. Fox farms were found all over the Bay in the 1930s and 40s - a major industry of the region. The fox cages had to be wired on all sides, including the bottom, to keep them from digging out. Now they wanted to put in a garden but found that old chicken fencing lay beneath the ground and was matted in the sod, nearly impossible to dig out.

We took long coils of rope, laced them through the fencing at strategic points and harnessed them to two teams of pullers. Like plow horses, we strained against the buried obstacle, broke it loose, and rolled the ancient fencing out of its shallow grave. Half hour later we were walking single file back down the path to the boat and heading toward Homer over a moderate sea.

Counting Salmon - Part 8, A Fisherman's Paradise

It was a fisherman’s paradise. I brought a new spinning rod equipped with a Mitchell 300 reel and fifteen pound test line. I was ready for a summer of fishing, and I never looked upon the sport quite the same after that. Red, Chums, Silvers and King salmon spawned in the river. The Reds came in first and then Chums. Silvers were the last to run the river starting in September. I was interested in the Kings. These were the big ones, the tackle breakers, the trophies.The Kings started showing up not long after the Reds, but they did not appear in large schools - usually only a few crossed the panels at a time. One day, while I was on the tower counting, a loner crossed close by my shore. I was truly stunned. It was the largest fish I’d ever seen in the water. It was at least six feet long, like a submarine.I hooked into Kings nearly every day, and landed many that ranged fifteen to twenty-five pounds - the biggest was maybe forty to fifty, but I wanted a really big one.

I had lots of fun for a while, but soon realized that my reel had a flaw I sat the drag so a fish had to work to take line, but after I hooked one and it made several runs, the line became frayed. On the third or forth run it would break, and I’d loose a spoon and thirty or more feet of line.

Little by little my tackle box emptied of lures and my spool dwindled to almost nothing. I was down to my last lure, a little red “Dare Devil” spoon, an inch long. I replaced its small treble-hook with a larger one, added some weights, and went out one more time. Yes! You guessed it. I hooked into the Submarine King. It didn‘t jump, but made a ran for the far shore. Its back, a foot wide, raised out of the water as it headed downstream. I never turned it. It kept going…with my last lure and all my line.

THE END

Counting Salmon - Part 7, Tagging Salmon

Arnie came in to help at the height of the Red Salmon run. We set up a small tapered net to catch salmon smolt, newly hatched salmon making their way to sea. The net funneled the smolt into a small chamber which we emptied everyday. We counted and measured the smolt and included the info with our nightly report.
A wide bend with a deep hole lay further down stream. I often walked up the gentle slope behind the cabin to the high ground overlooking it. The high perch gave me a bird’s eye view of the large schools that congregated there, sometimes in the thousands, swimming in slow circles before continuing upstream.The three of us spent several days tagging fish. We used a purse seine to catch them. A purse seine has lead weights on bottom and cork floats on top. Ours was maybe a hundred feet long, and six feet deep. A person would see only the top row of corks if it lay straight in the water . It would look like a six foot fence below the waterline. We anchored one end to shore, and using the boat, pulled the other in a wide arc encircling a number of fish. The net was taken in and soon there would be fifty salmon thrashing about in the shallow water. We would toss a dozen salmon at a time into the tagging box which sat close to shore in a foot of water.The fish were “tagged” with round plastic disks. Different colored disks might be used at different times and places. Each was two inches in diameter with a hole in the center. Arnie would place a disk just below the dorsal fin, shove a pin through it, the fish, and through another disk, then bend the pin with pliers. A survey of the upper river would be conducted by the ADF&G in September. They would register the locations along the stream where the tagged fish were found.
GO TO: Part 8, A Fisherman's Paradise

Counting Salmon - Part 6, The Ground Squirrel

We usually saw Ken about once a week. He would bring in kerosene and gasoline, along with a week’s supple of fresh and canned food. I remember there were always two T-bone steaks, which went first, a canned ham, that went second, bacon, a dozen eggs, bread, canned fruits and vegetables. We were fed well, or at least the intention was to keep us happy. But all depended on the weather.

There are no roads, all transportation depends on planes. On one occasion, when the climate showed its ugly side, we looked into grey, empty skies for nearly three weeks before seeing Ken‘s plane. By that time we had consumed all the store-bought food, and were existing on Krusteaz blueberry pancakes and salmon.

There was a small ground squirrel living under the cabin that we fed leftover-pancakes each morning. It became grossly overweight, waddled when it ran, and went missing by summer’s end. I guess we did it a disservice.

GO TO: Part 7,Tagging Salmon

Counting Salmon - Part 5, The Runway & the Bear

If I developed a fixation that summer it had to do with the runway (photo above taken from runway). George and I decided we should work an hour each day. The project started as a way to fill time, of which we had a surplus. It soon became something more for me, and it might have been the same with George, though we never talked about it. Neither of us missed our stint at the shovel, even on rainy days.

There is a rhythm to wilderness. Digging the earth in solitude, without traffic noise, or other civilized distractions can produce a beat similar to the tempo of music, and its just as hypnotic. I’d get to the runway and begin my daily symphony with shovel in hand; push the blade in with the foot, crank the handle down, heave the load to the side. Push, crank, heave. Push, crank, heave. And before long I would be lost in the rhythm while revisiting things I thought I‘d long ago forgotten.

One day the hum of an airplane roused me from my revelry. I turned to see Ken’ Super Cub (photo above). Instead of coming in low, on final approach, he was adding throttle and banking to the right. The plane swooped over head and made a shallow dive toward a clump of willow thirty yards from me.
A brown bear shot from the thicket and started running up the hill. It was large and seemed to have an unusually long body. Ken (photo above) buzzed it, circled, and buzzed it again. I can still see that bear looking over its shoulder at the Super Cub as the plane’s wheels passed just above its head. The bear disappeared over the hill with Ken in hot pursuit.

I was amazed to find the bear had been that close. I had toiled in silence, shoveling for nearly an hour. The patch of willow stood alone in open country. Was it there all the time or had it moved in while I was digging? What was its intention? Curiosity? Or perusing the local menu?
GO TO: Part 6, The ground squirrel

Counting Salmon - Part 4, The Count

We started counting salmon early the next day. The first count each morning was at sunrise, about four in the morning. The initial morning count was twenty minutes long, thereafter we counted ten minute on the hour throughout the remaining of the day. The days total was called in using a short wave radio each evening. The department used a formula to estimate the daily escapement.

George and I reached agreement to alternate the early risings. The first to rise would count every hour until the other got up at about eight. Thereafter we would alternate through the day - count ten minutes and have two hours off. Mostly we lay in our bunks and read. Sometimes we go out for a walk, but that seemed strangely pointless as you could see as far in the distance as you could walk - no trees. We’d often go over to the runway and dig for an hour adding a few more feet to its length. Each morning one of us climbed the steps of the tower and looked down upon the white panels shimmering through a rippling current. We used a counter that nested in the palm of our hand. It had a thumb operated button that advanced by one number each time we pressed it. The session might pass without a single fish crossing, or they would transit in numbers beyond our thumb’s capacity to keep up.

Schools usually approached the panels with caution, the leader often circling back, and pulling the rest in an orchestrated swirl of bodies. One would eventually dart across, then a couple more would chance it, and then the whole school would stampede to the other side.

We measured velocity and direction of the wind each day and included the results in the daily shortwave report. The breeze never stopped, a constant that blew at fifteen to twenty miles-per-hour every day. I had neglected to bring a hat, never thought to wear one in the summer, and the wind played havoc with my hair, twisting it into a variety of creative styles. We pined for a calm interlude, and were eventually rewarded, but mosquitoes rose from the tundra in swarms of biblical proportion. We were thankful when the wind commenced blowing.

GO TO: Part 5, The Runway and The Bear

Counting Salmon - Part 3, The Set-up

Our primary purpose was escapement, to determine if enough salmon were evading commercial fishermen and swimming up the river to spawn. We did this by counting the salmon that passed each day. Fish are difficult to see in the the water, because their dark colored backs and light bellies allow them to escape notice of predators, potential prey, and us. We set out to make them visible by turning part of the river bottom into a light colored background so we could see them as they crossed. Arnie flew in shortly after I arrived to direct preparations for the count.

We began by taking eight wooden panels from storage. Each measured three feet by ten. We proceeded by giving each a new coat of white paint. George and I hammered a long metal stake into the bank at waters edge. A steel cable was attached and dragged across the river, two of use holding the cable while George piloted the skiff. Another stake was driven into the far bank and the cable secured. One by one we attached panels onto the cable, and shoved them out. After a couple hours we had eight panels, arcing with the current, but floating on the surface. We had to sink them.

The skiff was tethered to an up-current cable that spanned the river’s width, hanging several feet above its surface. Arnie, manning the boat, sidled it across with its stern at the panels edge. George and I donned chest-waders, and held on to the gunwales as Arnie dropped sand bags onto the panels. We weighed down the panels and maneuvered bags into position with our feet. The river was about five feet deep in the middle, so it was a bit hairy at midstream when the water came close to the top of our waders. It took a hundred bags to sink the panels. Some were used to plug holes, preventing fish from swimming under.
GO TO: Part 4, The Count

Counting Salmon - Part 2, The Cabin

The one-room cabin, about sixteen feet square, with bunk beds built into three walls, sufficed as our home. The “kitchen counter” ran along the front wall to the right of the door. A two-burner Coleman sat on the countertop next to the canned food, and a curtain covered the cookware on the lower shelf. A small kerosene stove sat in the corner next to the counter. A tea kettle sitting on top served as our water heater.

The cabin was not insulated so the interior temperature seldom rose much above that outside. When we were both in the cabin one of us sat huddled over the stove, while the other lay in his sleeping bag - each with his nose in a book. A small window in each wall lighted the cabin‘s interior, and a couple Coleman lanterns added heat and more light for reading.

There are those who might describe me as somewhat reserved, not much inclined for talk, but compared to George Carnes I was a motor-mouth. This taciturn man, a recent veteran of Vietnam, had almost nothing to say. He was friendly, and we got along, but he seldom communicated, and we parted, two months later, as near strangers. It might have been that he was still coming to terms with his war experience. I don’t know. We never discussed that. Most exchanges that summer were to the point, usually dealing with the business at hand, and except for the Fourth of July we never got into any deep philosophical discussions.

Arnold (Arnie) Shawl, our supervisor, asked what sort of libation we preferred for the Independence Day celebration. We each selected a fifth of booze though I no longer recall the types - maybe whiskey and rum. Both of us consumed our fifth that day, and proceeded to fill the Fourth with gravid conversations of profound meaning. The exchange lasted till the wee hours of morning, but the specific nature of our discourse managed to escape me by the time I roused from blurry eyed slumber the next day.
GO TO: Part 3, The Set-up

Counting Salmon - Part 1, Sand Point

The plane lifted off the runway into an overcast sky. The pilot, a young guy named Ken, climbed a few hundred feet and then ventured across Unga Strait which separated Popof Island from the Alaska Peninsula. We left the village of Sand Point, and were soon across the strait, and winding our way through a pass with mountain peaks towering on each side. The landscape changed to low hills and then flattened to lake dotted tundra.It was June of 1970.
I had just finished my first year of teaching high school biology in Anchorage, and was set for an Alaskan adventure that summer.

The take-off out of Sand Point marked the third day of a journey in which each succeeding aircraft was smaller that the one before. I flew the 270 air mile leg from Anchorage to Kodiak in a Boeing 707, transferred the next day to a Grumman Goose for the 350 mile flight to Sand Point, and now sat in tandem behind the pilot in a Super Cub. My backpack, small suitcase, and supplies were strapped in behind me.

A structure appeared in the distance - a small red speck on a vast green matrix - nothing more for as far as the eye could see. The red speck, some sixty miles distant, was a cabin maintained by the Alaska Department of Fish & Game (ADF&G). Ken directed the plane toward a short runway, one so narrow that the wingspan exceeded its width. Its length seemed to shrink on approach. We crossed the Sapsuk River, touched down on the end , and quickly ran the runway’s meager span. The plane passed the far limit and bumped over rough terrain before coming to a “complete stop”. I think we landed with a slight tailwind, but there was a low hill at the other end, and Ken would have had to fly just above it and then quickly drop to make an even more perilous landing. The runway needed lengthening.A man left the cabin and walked the fifty yards separating us. George Carnes got to the plane as we finished setting my gear and supplies to the side. The three of us lifted the tail, spun it around, and shoved the Super Cub back onto the runway. Ken took off in the direction from which he had come. We stood watching as the plane climbed into the gray canopy. Its size soon dwindled to a speck, and its barely audible hum diminished to silence. George reached for a box of supplies; I grabbed my gear and we started for the cabin.

GO TO: Part 2, The Cabin