by Tele | May 16, 2020 | Alaska, Commercial Fishing, Environment, Hooked Favorites, Salmon Trolling
For Southeast Alaska’s salmon trollers, the longest day of the year falls on July 1: opening day of Chinook salmon season. Every July 1 finds us – two humans and our boat, the 43-foot Nerka – forty miles offshore in the Gulf of Alaska. We’ll be...
by Tele | Apr 10, 2020 | Commercial Fishing, Hooked Favorites, Salmon Trolling, Women in Fishing
Back in Sitka from a coho trip, I feed 17 days’ worth of rank socks, hoodies, soap, & quarters into the fishermen’s Co-op washing machines. Nearby deckhands slump into a battered couch, stare down at phones or up at the TV, salmon...
by Tele | Nov 5, 2017 | Commercial Fishing, Hooked Favorites
August: The Mayday wakes me. The radio volume is low, but it reaches the fo’c’sle. A man, his voice an octave shy of hysteria, yanks me from the bunk, pulling me upstairs. “There’s a boat one mile off Cape Addington taking on water! It’s...
by Tele | Feb 19, 2017 | Commercial Fishing, Culture, Reading & Writing, Women in Fishing
We’re less than a week away from Oregon’s annual FisherPoets Gathering, friends! The highlight of our winter, FisherPoets is always special — this one especially so, as we celebrate the 20th year of commercial fishing women and men from across...
by Tele | Feb 16, 2016 | Commercial Fishing, Culture, Reading & Writing, Women in Fishing
It’s almost time, friends! Oregon’s nineteenth annual FisherPoets Gathering is less than two weeks away, with storytellers, musicians, and poets readying to flood Astoria this February 26 – 28. It’s an immersion into the authentic, captains and...
by Tele | Aug 13, 2015 | Alaska, Commercial Fishing, Environment, Sustainability
Joel and I went to a movie the other night. We finally saw The Breach, an award-winning film I’ve been anxious to see since its 2014 release. Described as a love story for wild salmon, it’s a love story in all the truest ways – risk,...
