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 | Sep 21, 2013 | Commercial Fishing, Salmon Trolling, Women in Fishing
When you leave the boat you’ve called home for the past three months, you will need two dock carts. Ridiculous as clowns spilling from a tiny car, bulging backpacks emerge from the corners of your 7 by 2 by 2 ½ foot bunk, the one space...
by Tele | May 3, 2013 | Commercial Fishing, F/V Nerka, Salmon Trolling
“Sometimes the slightest things change the directions of our lives, the merest breath of a circumstance, a random moment that connects like a meteorite striking the earth. Lives have swiveled and changed direction on the strength of...
by Tele | Apr 21, 2013 | Commercial Fishing, F/V Nerka, Hooked Favorites, Salmon Trolling, Women in Fishing
There’s something about last summer that I never told you. Remember this August post, when I shared little glimpses into the first few days of our king salmon opening? And one of those glimpses was that Joel’s hands were giving him terrible,...
by Tele | Mar 20, 2013 | Reading & Writing, Salmon Trolling
Birthdays are important to me, but I’ve been slipping lately. Just last week, I kept a close eye on the calendar, eager to call my dad on his high holy day. And I did call him – only to learn that I’d circled a date two days past due. Oops....
