Alaska Blues

  A great morning of salmon fishing had ended. I grabbed the radio mic and called one of my guide buddies.
  "How were the blue sharks here on the Cape yesterday?" I asked.
  "There were some that gave us trouble," came his voice over the radio.
  "Thanks. That gives me the info I need for halibut fishing," I replied.
  I motored the boat out of the salmon troll area and drifted while cleaning the twenty four silver salmon. I wanted all the fresh blood completely gone before I anchored for halibut.
  When the blue sharks move into our area they can completely shut down your halibut fishing by biting off every bait you try to send to the bottom for halibut. Once they gather below the boat you are just feeding sharks instead of getting the halibut bait to the bottom.
  I baited the four halibut lines and sent them to the bottom. The eager fishermen and one fisherwoman were anxious to catch some good halibut and other bottom fish.
  "I feel a bite!" shouted one of the clients. He did indeed "feel" the bite, as he is blind.
  Bud came up for a fishing trip with his son, daughter, and son-in-law. A remarkable man who is not letting his blindness stand in his way of what he has loved his entire life.
  I watched his halibut rod bend over and coached, "Reel, reel, reel. Get him Bud!"
  Bud cranked the reel handle as hard as he could to get the circle hook set in the fish.
  "Wow, you've got a good one, Bud," I encouraged.
  The rod bent way over as the big fish pulled.
  Snap! the line parted.
  "Oh oh, I know what that was," I said, "A silly blue shark."
  Sure enough, upon inspecting his broken line, we could see where the shark's rough hide had sanded the line in half.
  I rebated his line and sent him back down. The bait did not reach the bottom before the shark had him again. Snap! Another broken line.
  "O.K., now we've got our work cut out for us," I told the clients. We are going to have to really bomb the baits quickly to the bottom to miss the sharks. I added another pound to the weights in order to get them down faster.
  It was quite some time later when Bud's son, Cory, had a big fish bite.
  "Crank, crank, get him!" I coached as he powered the reel into the big fish.
  The rod was bending but not throbbing like a halibut, and suddenly the line started taking off away from the boat.
  Halibut always fight to get back to the bottom, not running away from the boat.
  "You've got a shark on,Cory!" I shouted to him. I raced to his rod and grabbed it out of the rail handing it to him.
  "You're going to have to fight it by hand in order to chase this fish around the boat!"
  The shark did its best to tangle in everything. We were racing around the boat grabbing halibut lines out of the way.
  "Go over that line! Under this one! Look out he is heading around the motors!"
  There were times that big shark pulled so hard it had Cory plastered to the side of the boat, hanging on for dear life!
  What an exciting fight with a huge fish.
  I kept waiting for the line to snap as the shark bit the leader in two, but we just kept on gaining on it.
  "I see it!" I shouted, as a huge blue shape appeared out of the deep water.
  "Let me have your line. You just stay by me and be ready in case he makes another run. I'll have to let go of the line if he does," I told Cory.
  I eased the big shark up close and at last got a big shark hook into its mouth.
  "Hang tough!" I shouted as the shark went crazy rolling over and over. I held him to the side of the boat until he was done thrashing.
  "Fish coming on board!" I shouted, as I heaved the big shark onto the deck.
  We all stood there panting and looking at the massive shark.
  We hi-fived and whooped it up for a while then took some great pictures.
  Cory had won the battle against a great fish.
  What an exciting day in Alaska.

MONSTER OF THE DEEP

Salmon fishing was over. The fish hold contained four very nice king salmon.

I had the clients baited for halibut on one of my good chicken halibut areas. Chicken halibut are the nice eating size ranging from 20 to 40 pounds.
  “Fish on!” shouted one of the guys, while reeling like crazy on the bending rod.
   “Wait, wait, stop!” I shouted back, “you are snagged on the bottom.”
Sure enough,  the poor guy was just reeling on a big rock and would have worn himself out trying to land the bottom of the ocean.
 We all had a good chuckle at his expense as I fed line to the snagged bait and sinker.
I tried my best to jerk the snagged line free, but it would not give an inch.
  “We’ll give it slack and see if the ocean current will work it free… or maybe a fish will be kind enough to free it for us. Take a break and eat lunch while you wait,” I told the client.
We waited and watched. Small halibut were biting the other lines but seemed to ignore the snagged bait.
We were nearing an hour wait time on the snagged line and I was just about ready to cleat the line to the boat and break it off.
 I glanced at the snagged line and saw the pole pounding away like a halibut was on the hook.
  “Now you have a fish on, reel, reel reel!” I shouted as one of the guys raced for the throbbing rod.
Right away we could tell this was a big fish. It over powered the drag as I tightened it more and more. It was like we couldn’t pry the fish off the bottom.
 Big Ron was on the reel, a very bit guy, standing close to 6’5” tall and broad in the shoulders. If anyone could win the battle with some monster of the deep, it should be Ron.
 I had the shark hook lashed to the boat, all the halibut hooks on standby, the gaff ready, and the guys prepped should I need help bringing the fish over the rail. I was still not sure how big the fish was as it was more of a huge hanging weight than a fighting fish. We could tell it was huge, but without the fish running to the bottom again and again it was hard to really know how big.

“Ok, you’re getting close to seeing color,” I comment as big Ron kept on cranking the reel handle. I could tell he was about tuckered out.
 “Color!” I shouted, “stop reeling. Let me get the line. Wow this is a huge fish!” I shouted.
 I eased the big fish to the surface and got the shark hook into it and the battle began. The docile fish exploded in fury!
I need to bring the fish on board alive to measure it as there is a limit on the size of big fish we can keep. To keep a large halibut they need to measure over 68 inches. That weigh’s out at about 160 pounds.
The more I looked at this monster hanging on the line the more sure I was that it was certainly a keeper.
I grabbed the gaff and rapped it on the head to stun it to bring it on board
  “Everyone help!” I ordered.
Hands came from all around me to grab the shark hook line and the halibut hooks.
   “One, two, three… heave!” I begged. The big fish was not coming over the rail at all.
A huge hand came over my shoulder and big Ron grabbed the line. The massive halibut landed on the deck with a boom.
We all stood stunned. What a fish! It was huge.
 I grabbed a tape and we stretched a good honest measurement on the fish. 93 inches!
I raced in for the tide book to get a live weight on the big fish. As close as we could figure on the book weight, the monster weighted about 450 pounds.
A true monster of the deep.

FISHING FARMERS

   “Let’s take Robert to the river and see if we can catch some bass.” Wayne said over the phone. "He has been busy farming but has an evening free to fish." 

Spring and all the hunting is over, most of the “honey-do’s” caught up, I was more than ready to try my hand at fishing.
You’d think being a fishing guide would make one never want to fish again, but I can hardly wait for the next fishing trip in the spring.
 I met Robert at Wayne’s place and we loaded our poles into his jet boat.
 Launching the boat became our first adventure. The river was down a couple of feet, so finding deep enough water to get the boat off the trailer was a mission.
“On back, On Back,” Robert guided Wayne. His truck was puffing water in the exhaust pipe and the boat still set solid on the trailer. We tried upstream, mid stream, and finally found a little drop down stream. With me in the boat, Robert on a rope and Wayne backing the truck we finally managed to get the boat floating and the truck and trailer stowed on the bank.
We bundled in our heavy coats and made a short run up river. At the first stop we found some bass.  One nice one and a couple of smaller ones. We released them after the fun of reeling a fighting smallmouth in heavy river current. This is just what the doctor ordered for spring fever!
 Each place we stopped at produced a few bass.
We were just getting ready to jump from one spot to another when a big fish smashed the lure I was fishing. “Fish on!” I shouted.
Line was peeling off my reel as the big fish caught current and raced down stream.
“Are you going to stop him?” Wayne asked, watching my line strip off the reel.
“I don’t think so… man, this is a big fish,” I replied.
 Wayne raced past me and started hauling in the anchor line. I moved to the back of the boat with line still burning off the reel.
Wayne fired up the engine and the chase was on.
We chased the fish down stream until it finally stopped its run in a deep hole. I was tugging as hard as I thought I could on the 8 pound test fishing line, but the fish just held close to the bottom.
“I’ll bet it’s a carp,” Wayne said watching the end of my pole for the tell tale throb.
 “It’s probably not a bass,” I commented back, “the tail motion is just too slow.”
The fish worked its way under the boat so Wayne started the outboard. As soon as that motor roared to life the fish took off like it had been shocked.
“Hey, what did you do?” I quipped to Wayne, “You scared the fish half to death. Look at it run.” Line was once again burning off my reel.
Of course, Wayne and Robert got a good laugh at me.
 I slowly worked the fish into sight and all three of us said at the same time, “Catfish!”
 It was a big channel catfish.
I grabbed my pliers and gently worked the hook out of its mouth and we all chuckled as the big fish slid out of sight into the river water.
 Robert needed to change line on one of his reels so Wayne and I beached the boat on a small gravel bar. We jumped out of the boat and began fishing at the top end of the bar.
Robert spooled up and tied on a thirty year old jig and grub from many, many years ago. He strolled to the lower end of the gravel bar and made a cast.
“Got one!” Robert shouted.
 “Wow, a big one!”
 I looked over in time to see a big small mouth bass jump on the end of his line.
 Wayne and I raced down the gravel bar to help Robert land the fish. After quite a fight, Wayne had a beautiful small mouth bass in his hands.
 “Wow, that is a great fish,” we both said while admiring the bass. Robert stood there grinning like crazy.
 “That’s probably the biggest small mouth I’ve caught,” he beamed.
We ended the evening’s fishing the same way we started it… tugging, pushing, and straining to get the boat back on the trailer.
We all agreed that we had experienced a very fun day on the water.
I must admit, those two farmers sure did some good fishing!
Robert headed off in the late evening to go set a head of water on his early spring crop.
 What a fun day fishing with farmers.

 

WINTER FISHING

  Wayne called the other day wanting to set up a day or two to go pre fishing for an up coming bass tournament on Brownlee Res.

 I love fishing bass on Brownlee as the Small Mouth are usually hungry and come in some very nice sizes.
 We planned the trip for either Wednesday , Thursday, or Saturday. Tuesday night rolled around and the weather forecast called for blowing winds up to 35 miles per hour. Not fishing weather for sure, so I bowed out of the Wednesday trip. Thursday was much the same so we opted to stay home and let the wind blow itself out and just try Saturday.
 I arrived at Wayne’s farm on a frosty Saturday morning. The thermometer was reading a chilly 19 degrees.
We loaded our heavy shirts, coats, and coveralls into Wayne’s truck, hooked to his bass boat, and headed to the upper end of Brownlee.
We arrived at the parking lot full of already launched boats, the empty trailers telling the story, and a friend standing waiting for his turn to launch.
“Got to watch that ramp,” he said. “It’s covered in ice.”
 Roger was alone so Wayne backed him down the ice covered ramp and launched him. We just locked his truck and hid his keys in a specified place so he could just stay in his boat and go off fishing.
I was laughing to myself. It looked more like the start of the Iditarod sled dog race than a day of fishing. Everyone was bundled up so much you could not recognize them.
We stood around for a while trying to let the day warm up a tad bit before launching the boat. At last we splashed it into the cold, murky water and took off.
“This is a perfect speed,” I yelled over to Wayne as we headed down the lake.
“Ha, ha,” he shouted back, “You wish.”
We were idling out of the no wake zone.
 The big 200 roared as Wayne punched the throttle and the boat jumped out of the water. There is just no going slow in a bass boat. He took us on plane and then dropped the throttle back so we were just holding planning speed. The speed odometer read about 45 miles an hour.
 We both crouched behind our little windshields as best we could to stay out of the biting wind, but it still penetrated every area of your body.
 Once we got to our first fishing place we found out that the boat ride was just the beginning of the day’s misery.  Wayne had fingerless mittens so he had a little warmth, all I had was heavy gloves so I had to take them off for casting and reeling. In just a few minutes my hands were numb with cold.
 At about noon the day started warming just a bit. The water was showing a chilly 49 degrees and warmed to a whole 50 by afternoon.
We managed to find some good fish for Wayne.  He will be going back after them next weekend in the tournament. It is a real challenge to find fish this weekend and hope they will be in the same areas and biting the same baits an entire week later. Only time will tell.
Our final boat ride was just as the sun set behind the mountains on the west side of the lake. Wayne opened the big motor and I could feel the boat lock on the planning pad. The wind roars past your ears and makes communicating almost nonexistent. I crouched low and glanced at the speedometer. The needle was slicing through the 70 miles per hour. Man is that flying on water!
Through the cold air and cold water we still managed a great fishing day. We had so much fun chatting about old times and dreaming about the future.
I felt ten pounds lighter once I got out of all the heavy clothing at the truck.
Winter fishing… fun but has a little price to pay, look at my numb, red fingers if you don't believe it. 

GREAT RETRIEVE

  A big flock of snow geese was circling the decoys, slowly losing altitude. The little blond lab was watching intently, quivering with excitement, and quietly whining each time the geese passed right over the blind. I gently put my hand on her back to keep her still and whispered for the umpteenth time for her to, “sit, sit, sit…hold still”. White in the muzzle at nine years of age, she looks old but the eyes and her desire still seem young.

If you don’t think hunting dogs get into the sport as much as the hunters, you have never spent much time in a duck blind with retrievers. They live for the action.
 “Let’s take them this pass,” I whispered to Wayne and Jimmy. We slowly reached for our guns and then waited for that magical moment when the birds would pass the closest.
“Take them now!” We jumped up and began shooting.
Jasmine (I call her Jaz) lunged off the floor of the blind with a bark and out to see where the geese would fall from our shots.
We managed a couple of birds and watched as the flock flew out over the Snake River about a quarter mile away.
The flock was right over the river when one bird fell dead into the swirling water. That is the reason you always watch birds into the distance once you shoot into a flock.
Jaz was bringing a bird from the decoys to the blind. I took it from her and then took off running for the river.
At the river’s edge I found the goose, not floating in the center where it looked to have fallen, but on the far side of the river in the water under the brush. That is a long, long ways for an old dog to swim. The downed bird was in the brush enough that it was not floating down stream so we had all the time we needed.
 I looked at the current rushing by and knew I could not send Jaz from where we stood.
 I walked Jaz up river a long ways and then sent her on a “blind” retrieve.
As a puppy I have worked with Jaz to find things by following my voice and arm commands. I can send her “over” to the right by saying, “Over” and pointing with my whole arm to the right. I send her “back” by saying, “Back” and holding my arm straight over my head. She has retrieved hundreds of birds with those commands, but never one this far away.
At nine years old I did not know if she would have the strength to make such a long swim, but I would watch her closely and if it looked like she was tiring I would call her back.
“Jaz, Back. Way Back!” I commanded the little dog. She took off swimming like a little muskrat.
 She looked back at me twice and I just kept sending her “back” as I walked down river to keep pace with the current sweeping her down. If she turned back I would let her come, as I felt she would know her limitations. If it seemed too far for her, than I would not insist that she try, she is much too good a dog to push her beyond her limits.
 It was going to be close as the current pulled her down stream to where the goose lay.
She was pretty much on her own now as she was so far away. I could see when she caught sent of the bird, her head came up and she quickened her swimming pace. At last her feet hit the far shore and she raced over to the goose. She stood for a while catching her breath and resting, then she picked up the goose and began the long swim back to me. The snow goose was all I could see, just a white dot getting larger and larger.
 I walked down the river bank once again keeping pace with her and giving her encouragement as she made her long way back. I was bursting with pride as she just kept a slow and steady pace.
At last she made her way to the bank I was on and I made sure I was right at the water’s edge to take the goose from her. She had worked hard enough and I did not want the old dog to have to carry the heavy goose up the steep bank.
“Good girl! What a great girl!” I kept telling her over and over.
 What a great retrieve! I just could not stop petting her and telling her what a great dog she was. At nine years old she had just made her longest retrieve of her life.
 I raced back to the blind to tell Wayne and Jimmy. We all petted and made over her the rest of the day.
That whole hunt was secondary to that one retrieve the little blond dog made that day. It is burned into my memory. Jaz will be one of the best dogs of my life, if not the very best dog. I am so thankful to still be hunting and doing things with her.
 What a good girl you are Jaz.

 

SNOW GOOSE HUNTING

I purchased a sewing machine. Not for my wife, but for me. In the course of several years I have just about worn out that machine making snow goose decoys.

Hundreds  upon hundreds of white decoys have been boxed up, taken from my “man cave” and stacked in the garage. My shed out back is already full of decoys.
 I can’t figure out this crazy fixation with snow geese. I hunt Canadian geese all fall, and even though it is quite a rush it has not addled my brain like these little white geese.
I was watching a you tube video and the warning flashed across the screen telling all to be aware that snow goose hunting was a contagious disease, causing grown men to learn to sew! Hmmm… wonder who would do that?
Opening morning found Jimmy, Wayne and I on Wayne’s farm early in the morning setting out nearly six hundred decoys. Much too large of a job for three more than middle age men. Jimmy passed me in the breaking daylight with sweat dripping from his face.
“How many more do we have?” He questioned.
I glanced at the trailer and gave him the disappointing news, “only three or four more boxes.” Of course that equated to over one hundred decoys.
Way past daylight we finally managed to have all the decoys set in the field and the motion spinners spinning, the flyers flying, and the sound system blaring out squawking snow goose sounds.
 We collapsed into our chairs in the blind for a nice cup of coffee and some rock hard doughnut holes Jimmy had found in his hunting bag from a month’s ago Canada goose hunt. Nothing like quality to go with our quantity! The dog seemed to enjoy the morning snack more than the rest of us.
The snow geese came trickling in most of the day, making all our hard work almost worth it. We tried our best to melt our gun barrels each time a flock drifted into shotgun range.
We learned very quickly that snow geese just don’t decoy like other geese. They come from an altitude that would make astronauts proud, slowly drift down in spiraling circles gaining flocks of geese from the distance on each pass. Snow goose hunters refer to this as a tornado, and it certainly does resemble a white tornado descending on the decoys.  The snows just keep circling and circling slowly dropping altitude. It is nothing to be fifteen, twenty, or even up to a half hour working these crazy birds.
All the time they are circling the wary birds are looking every inch of decoy spread and blind area for anything that does not look real. The closer they get the more wary they become.
 Many times that opening day we would whisper to each other, “Should we take them this pass?”
“No they are just a little too high, let’s let them go one more turn.” On that last turn those wary birds would spot something they did not like and just drift off into the distance leaving behind three frustrated hunters and a dog that kept looking at us like she would have shot them the pass before. I’m glad we fed her stale doughnut holes just to keep the peace.
 We did manage to shoot our fair share of the little white geese, but after such hard work we always feel like we should have had a few more.
 One of the geese had a leg band and getting the information back from fish and game we found that it was more than ten years old and had been banded way up in the artic tundra.  
 The reason for the spring snow goose season is to thin out the vast flocks of snow geese as they are eating the tundra grass down so much it cannot recover and is creating a big problem for nesting migrating birds.
 We always use the excuse that we are just doing our part to help out fish and game by hunting these geese.
Every person I have taken snow goose hunting has been amazed by the sight of hundreds if not thousands of white geese tornadoing out of the stratosphere into the decoys. It is a sight that makes your blood pump and your eyes bulge, and causes perfectly good grown men to buy sewing machines and learn to sew!
 I think snow goose hunting is like chucker partridge hunting, the first time you hunt them for sport, every time after that you hunt them for revenge!
After my sore muscles recover from the last hunt, I think I’ll go after those crafty little white birds again... for revenge, of course!

DO OVERS

  Have you ever had one of those days you’d like to do over? Me too.

I pulled into Wayne’s driveway in dense fog. I dropped over the hill onto the farm groping my way to the river bank. We had planned on setting out our goose decoys for a morning  goose hunt.  The problem is that with it being so cold the geese just won’t fly in the fog.  Once again the thermometer was showing a chilly zero to three below zero. Very cold.I wanted to check out the river. It has been flowing ice for a nearly a week and the ice ledge on the edge was making its way to the half way point of the flowing river in places.Sure enough, the Snake river was flowing ice like crazy.  I watched it for a while listening for the sounds of geese to see if they were still on the river. I could hear little goose honks down river giving me a little hope for hunting if the fog ever broke.I drove back to Wayne’s house and enjoyed a morning chatting with Wayne and his wife, Mona and their son-in-law Tyler. Tyler was there to hunt with me.We waited until nine and the fog still had not broken so Tyler took off  home.

“I think I’ll go set out the decoys and just stick it out,” I told Wayne.
“How about helping me drop hay to the cows first,” he asked.
 I hooked up to his trailer with my already warmed up truck and with Wayne riding the trailer, drove through the cow pasture dropping hay to the cattle herd and the few horses.
 I unhooked the trailer and drove out to the goose blind. I only set out a few goose decoys due to the cold and being by myself, and then drove back to the farm house to park the truck.
Walking back to the blind I watched some hunters on a neighboring farm make a sneak on some ducks in a drain ditch. I walked as they sneaked over the edge and jumped a bunch of ducks. Bang, bang, bang they shot. All the ducks they spooked flew right over the top of me. Of course, I had left my gun in the goose blind not thinking I would need it until the fog lifted.
  “You lucky ducks,” I said out loud to them as they flew low over my head, “I’ll get you next time.
 I had walked straight across the field to the goose blind just like we always do. When I reached the edge of the blind something caught my eye out in the decoys. Movement!
I stood, stunned, to watch a flock of about twenty geese take off out of the middle of my decoys. They never made a sound.
“You’ve got to be kidding!” I shouted to myself, running for my gun inside the blind. Of course, it had no shells in it and the geese were long gone before I could even get to the gun.
I stood in the cold in total dis-belief. How could I have walked all the way across the field and not once glanced at the decoys? I was so riveted on the guys sneaking the ducks I had been totally distracted.
I called Wayne on the phone and told him about my stupidity. He got a good laugh at it. We have an easy way to sneak into the blind from the back side for just that reason.
 I loaded my gun and was still grumbling to myself when I heard a honk in the fog down river. Geese coming!
 I gave a couple honks on my call and watched as a flock of four geese came out of the fog straight for my decoys.
I was ready. I crouched low in the blind and just let the big birds come. Something caught my eye ahead of the four geese. A lone goose right on the ground low coming right into the decoys!
He was very close to the blind and dropping right into the decoys, and easy shot for sure.
As his big wings back peddled him down I decided to let him land and then try for the four following him in.
“I might get a couple of geese instead of just the one,” I reasoned.
I was glued to the four dropping closer and closer, but still out of shotgun range. I heard a honk out by the decoys and turned to see the loner take off and head for the river.  He was leaving. He should just circle one more time and then land I thought.
Not so. He took off into the fog, and his warning honk spooked the four coming behind. They flared out away from my decoys and blind and followed the loner into the fog and across the river. Gone!
A few minutes later Wayne made his way into the blind.
“See anything more?” he asked.
 “I don’t want to talk about it,” I replied, sitting in my chair like a pouting child.
I told him about my second blown chance at geese for the day. He stood there laughing and laughing.
I looked up at him and then asked, “Can I go back to bed and just start this day over again?”
 We still had a good time talking and telling stories about all the ones that got away while fishing or hunting and made a great morning of it. Thinking back like we did it is amazing how many times in life you would like to have a moment back or just start a day over again.
 We did manage to shoot a couple geese and a duck before freezing completely out.
 It was a good day… but… I’d still like to have that morning as a do over!