Fish Tails, Bear Tales & Breakfast at the Red Dog

The salmon have arrived.

In a stunning flash of silver scales, the Naknek River (one of 4 river districts in Bristol Bay) broke a record for the largest harvest ever. Over 500,000 individual sockeye salmon were caught between drift boat and setnet fishermen. The following picture depicts the bounty reaped by a set netter on the Naknek beach:

As you can see in the picture, a gill net is strung between two lines: the cork line and the lead line. This creates a 'wall' of net that the salmon swim into in their quest for up-river spawning. A setnet is defined by one end of the net being attached to the beach. A drift boat (seen in the background of the picture) drifts along with the net behind him.
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Last night Sage, my mom, Marie (a coworker of ours) and I took Inca for a walk on the beach. We were planning on looping from the beach, up through a cannery and then to the road and back. However, halfway down the beach, we noticed a group of grizzlies feeding at the edge of the cannery dock. We stopped and surveyed the scenario and decided to turn back.
At that moment, a sow and her cub came ambling down the beach right towards us., from the opposite direction. We were trapped by bear, water and cliff.

A setnetter yelled at us to get in her jeep and chase them off (to save her heavily laden net from the approaching grizzlies). Feeling gallant and far less scared, we revved the engine of the old car and sped towards the approaching bears, hand on the horn. The bears stopped and turned curiously at the noise being emitted from the horn. It was a stuttering toot that was more soothing than scary. However, the approach of the car was enough and soon they sped up the cliff and out of sight.

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I woke up to a gentle growl from Inca followed by the thumping of her tail on the floor. My brothers had transferred fishing districts and had to wait out 48 hours before fishing (part of the salmon management program that prevents fishermen from running district to district undercutting other, more patient fishermen). In the transfer interim, Ben and Nick stopped by the office to take a shower, do laundry and take their big sister out for a 6 am breakfast at the Red Dog. Neither brother had slept in 42 hours and this was the first hot meal they had sat down to in over two weeks.



It is 4th of July, 2007. Outside is miserably cold and wet, but inside is cozy with people. The fish are swimming, my brothers are safe and all is well.