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June 30, 2008
Arrival
We have arrived in Coffee Point, a place that barely exists. The last time I checked, it can be found on Google Maps, though you will notice that there are no roads connecting it to anywhere else. Our tiny corner of Alaska is a stretch of beach across the river from Egegik, a town with a year-round population of roughly 36. Coffee Point has a year-round population of 4, made up of our neighbor Vern and his family. For two months in the summer the place teems with people like us, here to catch the salmon and get away from billboards for a while.
Before we left Anchorage on Friday morning, we introduced Alden to her first grizzly bear. She wasn't exactly taken with the concept.
From Anchorage we flew to King Salmon, a frontier town that serves as the air hub for the various locations in the fishing district and as a jumping off point for many of the tour groups that serve this part of Alaska. Consequently, the people in the King Salmon Airport are either grubby fishing types or well-dressed people with new fleeces and telephoto cameras. There's really nothing in the middle.
In King Salmon we claimed Iggy and our coolers and chartered a plane for Coffee Point. We had figured that this particular leg of the trip would be the straw to send Alden over the edge. She had been surprisingly tranquil throughout the first three flights, but we imagined the combination of noise and erratic motion that come with flying in an unpressurized bush plane would trigger hysteria. To our surprise and delight, she fell asleep instead.
I'm ready to admit that we might have gotten a relatively good baby.
We landed in Coffee Point around 3:00pm local time, roughly 30 hours after leaving Chestertown. Roji, Maiko, Seiko, and Bob had just returned from fishing and had had a very productive day. They were tired, but also pleased, and we settled in for a big lunch followed by a long nap and a big dinner. Dinner was followed by a profound, if abbreviated sleep. We rose at 4:00am and dressed ourselves in various layers of polypropylene, cotton, latex, and rubber. We ate a hasty bowl of cereal and headed down to the beach to set up for our 5:30 opening. The Department of Fish and Game maintains tight regulation of the fishery and tells us exactly when we may begin fishing a particular tide. Starting 30 seconds early yields extreme competitive advantage and carries the risk of a $5,000 fine. And so we started fishing at 5:30 exactly. I've documented the process already elsewhere, and so I will not repeat myself here. If I am unable to insert the link, go to the top page of the Barnstorming and type Fishing 101 into the search box. You'll get the picture.
We had a disappointing catch on Saturday and so soon were back at the Behr family compound for more eating, sleeping, and eating.
Alden is taking to the tundra life quite well, though she has had to get used to certain changes. She had grown accustomed to having baths in the big tub, for example. Here, the accommodations are not so swank.
We took Alden on her first four-wheeler ride yesterday afternoon, another thing we thought might prove traumatic.
She was sanguine throughout, confirming my earlier suspicions about her tractability.
This morning we rose at 5:00 for a 6:30 opening and again were disappointed with our catch. The fish simply weren't traveling in much quantity today. At least not along our section of the beach.
Traditionally, the fishing builds gradually throughout the last few weeks of June; usually on or around the Fourth of July, the 'run' happens. The 'run' is a huge mass of fish entering the river all at once. The water is so full of salmon that they literally jump from the water, either from excitement, crowding, or (according to some theorists) to loosen egg sacs in preparation for spawning.
The run is not yet upon us. We are bracing for it. When it comes, we are at once very happy and very, very sad. Fishing is hard. It is wet and cold. It is dirty and stinky. It is uncomfortable. It is hard to pee when one is entirely enclosed in layer upon layer of fishing gear. It is often impossible to eat when the fish keep getting caught in one's net. It is frequently disruptive to one's precious sleep. The salmon are not considerate in their patterns. The Department of Fish and Game seems to delight in letting us fish at the most horrible times of day.
But last night we basked in one of the chief pleasures of being here, one of the incalculable benefits of being a commercial salmon fisherman.
Fresh king salmon sashimi, in such quantity as only a king could afford anywhere outside of Coffee Point. We ate until our bellies burst, the pains of early morning rising long forgotten.
Posted by bogenamp at June 30, 2008 12:04 AM