Fresh off the boat.

The 2006 Sockeye Salmon run on Bristol Bay was quite the experience. I kept a fairly consistent notebook and will fill-in-the-blanks on this Greenhorn's brief foray into the Last Frontier's famous salmon run.

For now, a brief photo essay.


Roundhauling... e.g. the set has to be hauled in, hand-over-hand, over the stern deck. The bottom line is lead, top is cork, and there are about 2500 lbs of Sockeye and chum (aka Coho Salmon) stuck in this thing on our first afternoon on the water. Searingly burning forearms, hands perma-cramped into c-shaped claws and a few hours later... we made this delivery.


This is what a "set" looks like, view off the stern deck. A hydraulic reel on the back deck releases 150 fathoms of net approximately 10' deep. The top is, as described above, cork (to float the line)... the bottom is lead (to sink it). The mesh size varies depending on type of fish you are trying to catch- for Sockeye (also known as "reds") it was 5 1/8" or 5 1/16" mesh... though the fish were running on the small size this year and we'd have done better to have a 5" or smaller mesh size.

The Aquila; our store/ post office/ gas station/ spare- net- holding tender for the Peter Pan Fleet based out of Dillingham, Alaska.







My deckmate, Max, looking out over a typical Alaskan sunset... though the term "sunset" is a misnomer. The latitude that far north provided a few hours of less-than-daylight darkness, but never enough to see stars.



Nearly every evening was an explosion of color unlike anything I have seen elsewhere on earth.








Dillingham, Alaska Airport (Airport code: DLG). Many exciting destinations await you.