August 25, 2025 • 76 mins
Steven Rinella talks with Mike Douville, Heather Douville, Janis Putelis, Seth Morris, and Jimmy Rinella in Alaska.
Topics discussed: Fishing to support the family; building your own boat; herring fisheries; naming a boat after your daughter; forced into boarding schools; sea stars and salmon sharks; long lining for black cod; diminishing quota allowances; recreational catch yields troucing commercial yields; Heather's new show, "Our Way Of Life" launching on September 29th on MeatEater; and more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
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Speaker 2 (00:15):
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Speaker 1 (00:20):
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dot com. That's f I R S T L I
T E dot com. Welcome everybody. If you are a
(00:44):
regular listener to the show, you first met at least
from this podcast standpoint, you first met Heather Duville sitting
in this kitchen, yeah, or whatever you call this is
this main area. About a year ago, how they do
Ville on social media? A K moosey. She came out
on the show. We talked a bunch about sea otter hunting,
(01:05):
her life growing up, sewing for all kinds of things.
And now a year later, Heather's back. She came over
in her uh what she calls a skiff, which we
would call a large vessel, and uh, she's brought her father. Mike,
would you like to introduce your father?
Speaker 3 (01:26):
This is my dad. His traditional name is git Wayne,
English name is Mike look up to him in so
many ways, and I'm so grateful that he's here today.
We came over in his skiff, which your kids love,
by the.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Way, it's got a little bit of a like a
Navy seal undercover.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
It's all black, so he painted black so blended, you know,
with the beach. And yeah, he just put a fresh
coat of paint on it this year.
Speaker 4 (02:00):
Not just any block.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
It's flat block, got it, not gloss black, Mike. The
thing that surprised me to hear and I tried to
argue out of it when I heard you knew the
guy that built this place. That's correct, And I thought
to myself, he must mean that the success A frame
(02:26):
because I hear about the people that built the A frame.
I never heard anything about. We only know back two owners.
But our neighbor, Ron Layton, who passed away a year ago,
is the one that introduced us to the area. And
Ron Layton would talk about he grew up in Catchcan.
(02:50):
Ron Layton would talk about the people that we bought from,
the people they bought from, and then a guy who
was very tough, and Ron pays no compliment to anybody,
might the very tough person be the person you know
(03:11):
that raised children here?
Speaker 4 (03:13):
Yeah, or by foss uh he uh, he grew up
I'm not sure where he grew up in Myers Chuck maybe,
but I know we built a home here with this house.
When he got married, he married Marian and she was
from Myers Chuck. Okay, yeah, Yeah, he's a pretty stout
(03:35):
boy and he's still fishing.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Uh huh.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
I actually have a picture of his boat and my phone.
I took a couple of weeks ago. Had I asked
him about just to make sure I knew what I
was talking about. But he did build his ouse, yeah,
any I think seventies. Uh. When I first met him,
he had a boat called the Isis. It was a
(04:02):
double edded wood boat. But now he's got a fiberglass boat.
Oh that is also the Isis.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
But what's the what's the word you're saying isis iceol?
What does that mean? I mean, I know the means
it's spelled like, Yeah, I looked it up.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
There has a I sent it to you. I think
there's like a mythology tied to it.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
But got it.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
But yeah, he had two daughters.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
See I had it that he had I had my
recollection from Ron is that he had two sons.
Speaker 4 (04:36):
No, two girls, did he He lived here with those.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Girls, Yeah, isn't.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
It well for a while, and then he eventually moved
to uh Mayrastuck and he built an ice log cabin there.
I think he sold it anyway.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
So what was he doing when he lived here?
Speaker 4 (04:56):
He was probably fishing.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Commercial fishing, Yeah, like a trolling for salmon.
Speaker 4 (05:02):
Yeah, trolling and long line for I know he fished
block cod for many years. All but okay, and uh
in the winter roll for king salmon. Uh, long line
for yellow.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Eye, got it? Oh, long line for yellow eye.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
So Ron that I keep talking about, he had, uh
he had held a long line license into that for
a while. He had a troller as well. Then down
the beach a little bit was mel Fairbanks. Yeah, he
trolled salmon and ran shrimp pots.
Speaker 4 (05:47):
Right business. I know, Ron Lighton. Uh you know he
was on our regional advisory council for the federal one.
Speaker 5 (05:57):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
He was living in Cassan for a while. Then he
moved to salt Cod.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Yep, and then moved to craig Thorn sorry Thorn Bay.
Speaker 4 (06:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Yeah, so you knew Ron. Yeah, did you ever did.
Did you ever have a uh, any kind of confrontations
with Ron?
Speaker 4 (06:14):
No? No, we got a long fighting.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Ye but all but he we got along good through confrontation.
Speaker 4 (06:25):
No, he was He was easy to get along with,
you know. Uh, we all get along with each other
on the council, okay, And we meet twice a year, yep,
and there are generally three day meetings. So that he
was fine.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
He was a he was a dear, dear friend of ours.
And like I said, uh, we got this. We bought
this from being friends of Ron. And he called us
one day and told us this was for sale. And
when I had been to his place and stayed with
him and Joan, I never I mean, if I looked
(07:03):
over in this direction, I wasn't paying any particular attention.
And when he called and said it was for sale,
we just bought it without looking at it out of
being buddies with him. And he was the one that
showed us all about anything right, like how to do
all the kind of stuff up here that you need
to do was all taught. Was all taught by Ron.
(07:25):
And then when his wife passed away, he didn't want
to be out here anymore. And and and moved out
and did. What's kind of an odd practice here is
sas place was like this. My place is like this.
Ron's place is like this. Odd practices when you sell it,
(07:47):
it seems people don't move out. They just walk away
and you buy their possessions like there's no moving out.
N Ron, You what did.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
You acquire when you got it? What's the most memorable
on the beach?
Speaker 6 (08:06):
I when I when we bought the A frame, there
was like totes of clothes and just like personal items.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Yeah, we burned. We burned everything, but everything and we
got rid of most of it. Most of it was
just old, moldy and tore up.
Speaker 4 (08:21):
You know, I believe Ron. Uh, what's a placement on
catchcount for It's right?
Speaker 1 (08:26):
He was a detective. You don't you know that's not true.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
No, I believe it is. You know, I just didn't
know him before he.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Was a door gunner. He was a door gunner in Vietnam. Yeah,
he had been shot down two times in Vietnam.
Speaker 4 (08:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (08:44):
Did he say that he had a great time there?
Speaker 1 (08:47):
He always that was the thing we used to laugh
about ron As he was the only guy we knew
that it had just like seemed to have nothing but
a good time, A good time when he used to Vietnam.
Speaker 4 (08:58):
One of my friends that lives in the k it
was a crew chief on Hweie in Vietnam as well.
When I asked him, why weren't you a door runner,
he said, well, we had a guy that was better
at it than me.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Oh but see no, because Ron, I feel like a
crew chief is on the at that time, the crew
chief is on the left or right door I can't remember.
I thought it was something like that. Either way, he
had a heck of a time. Later, I went to
Vietnam for a visit and growing up like my dad
(09:36):
was a World War Two guy, but my most my buddies'
dads were Vietnam guys. I went to Vietnam for a
visit and it was funny that one of my good
friend's dads didn't even want to look at me. Having
couldn't believe, really, you would go to Vietnam. Ron was
(10:01):
thrilled and wanted to know how everybody was. It was
his attitude about He was eager for a report, you know,
to share notes. But Mike, how did you spent most
of your life commercial fishing? Is that right?
Speaker 4 (10:20):
Yeah? All my life. Actually, this is the first year
in sixty five years I did not go trolling.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
So and how did it come out?
Speaker 4 (10:31):
Actually, I've been a fisherman for since I was eleven
years old. I've been out fishing, and I didn't buy
my own boat until nineteen seventy, So since nineteen seventy
this year is the first year I did not fish.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
How did it come about when you were eleven? How
did it come about that you became a fisherman.
Speaker 4 (10:54):
I had this s burning desire to be a fisherman
for some reason. Then I talked my stepfather into taking
me out, and then I became sort of like slave labor,
you know, uh huh yeah, So you didn't get paid,
you know. And the second year I fished with him,
I got I got paid. My pay was a a
(11:18):
Mossburg twenty two magdum. It cost thirty five dollars some
serious in a row book.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
That was your pay for the season.
Speaker 4 (11:26):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
What was the understanding if you weren't being if you
weren't being compensated at that age? Was the understanding that
you were learning a trade, that you were learning a discipline,
like what was how did you understand the arrangement.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
You were helping to support the family. Okay, there was
no personal gain. It was just something you did. You're
expected to.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
Before you bought your boat. You built one right.
Speaker 4 (12:02):
No, When I was like sixteen years old or fifteen,
I didn't have any money, and that was about the
time the wild herring spawn on Kelp was taking off.
(12:24):
One of the shipwrights there was building boats for that fishery,
and they built a pretty good little like a riverboat
plywood s gift. And not having any money, my partner
and I my lifelong friend Art Kennedy, had a rowboat
(12:45):
with a five horse motor on it. We used to
go everywhere with it. Before we had the motor, we
wrote it that double set of oarlocks and two guys
could grow and we could go anywhere we wanted pretty fast.
But anyway, we went to fish Egg and used to
be more lumber around those days on the beach, and
(13:08):
we salvaged everything we could with more than one trip
two by fours and stuff like that, and gathered enough
so I could build a framework for a boat. And
I copied Henry Elegance. He was the one that originally
built this boat and made a frame and scraped the
(13:30):
money for the plywood to put on the bottom. And
one of my mentors, Bud Thomas, had this twenty eight
horsepower outboard which he loaned to me, and I put
on that and I used that for well, that was
my first boat.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
When you say that the herring fishery was taking off,
what does that mean? Does it mean that the market
was developing or like the something with the I don't
know how to exploded in population?
Speaker 4 (14:05):
Yeah, I don't know how developed originally, but you could
see these guys picking wild hering on kelp and we
heard they were getting ten or fifteen cents a pound there.
It wasn't that much.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
The hearing row yeah, well.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
It's on microsister scalp and the hearing legs on it.
But they were harvesting it and they were selling it.
So the next year, ooh, you know, it started to
develop and seemed like when I first picked picked up
did the wild harvest, it was like fifty cents a
(14:50):
pound or I can't remember, twenty five and then fifteen,
and then it went to a dollar a pound, and
there was so much interest that the participation grew just
out of control. God, people were flying from different places,
(15:12):
landing their plane and harvesting and putting it on the pondtoons,
I mean all kinds of so ye. The last harvest
I did the season was twenty minutes, and the quota
for the fish egg island area was one hundred tons.
(15:33):
What so it took a twenty minutes to harvest one
hundred tons.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
That you're saying one hundred tons of eggs. They removed
not from the fish, but removed from the kelp with
the kelp with oh on, okay, so not scrape from
the leaf. Yeah, I got you. And then that fisheries
switched over eventually to where they sin the herring for
(16:01):
the road or is that a different.
Speaker 4 (16:03):
That's a Sitka fishery where I lived around fish egg
they never to do that, but there was a sane
bait fishery. Oh so the fishery went away. Sitka was
a fifty ton wild rowand kel harvest. Heiderberg was fifty ton.
(16:24):
I think they opened Sitka second time. Craig was one
hundred and years later. I asked one of the biologists,
John Valentine, said why did that fishery go away? He
said it was decimating the herring and to this day,
Heidelberg doesn't have a spawn. Yeah, it literally wiped it out.
(16:50):
It wasn't that big to begin with, and Craig was
decimated for it still is compared to what I remember
when I was growing up. You would spawn for a
couple of weeks there here there, I mean continuous spawning.
Now it lasts about three days. And if you don't
(17:10):
get your branches, which we put no water for harring
to spawn on, if you don't get there the first day,
you're not going to get good eggs. So it's that quick.
And oh, I think it's just beat down and will
not recover, will not recover. No, because they several years
(17:35):
back they developed this what they call pounding where they
capture the herring and put the kelp in there and
then they add herring and for like they can hold
them like for five days and they come out with
a real thick product and a lot of times that
(17:58):
is a lot of times they harvest one hundred tons
or more and the herring are considered dead by the department,
but you know, they do release them, but they're in
pretty bad shape. So this pounding started in Prince William Sound. Yeah,
(18:18):
they came down and gave lessons to the boys down
in the southeast here about how to do it, and
you know, and they were selling it to the most
of Japanese and making pretty good money. But in Prince
William Sound the herring went away as well, and the
(18:39):
biologists there had a chance at one of our reasonaal
Visory Council meetings to ask him what happened to the herring?
Did the oil spill kill him? And he said no,
he said the pounding did so. I don't think it's
recovered yet. But they actually used to send airplanes down
here harvest microso to help because it didn't grow there
(19:02):
are not good enough quality in any case, and fly
it up to court over wherever they're based from and
use that in their pounds.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Wow, geez, extreme value to this stuff. Yeah, someone to
do that. So now you guys still harvest it now
and sell it commercially.
Speaker 4 (19:22):
No, I had a license that I got rid of it.
I never could make any money out of it, but
there are a couple of groups I probably do okay
on it.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
But you guys, you said you are still harvesting it now,
for that's personal harvest.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
So our one of our episodes covers traditional harvest of
hairing eggs cutting down a young hemlock tree and we
submerged in the spawn and the herring spawn on the
bows and then we harvest it later. So we that
was but.
Speaker 4 (19:58):
We do personal harvest on the wildcilt, which does not
get as thick as what the pounds would. Where they
captured these herring and hold them and force them to
spawn them, you know, and it gets pretty.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Thick, you know. WEKEI talking about Ike, you talking about
Ron Layton. Ron Layton was always very upset about the
herring fishery. Yeah, well, yeah he didn't. He was always
thought that it was ill advised. It is the herring
(20:32):
because it is a forage fish. Yeah, I mean everything
well co host king salmon are dependent on herring.
Speaker 4 (20:45):
Yeah. I think they've been massacred and started off back
and the early nineteen hundreds if you well, I'm not
sure the take, but they had big herring reduction plants
and Chatham Straits where the cats all herring and run
them through the reduction plant. I don't know if they
saved any of it for animal feed or what, but
(21:06):
they wanted the herring oil.
Speaker 5 (21:08):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 4 (21:09):
Yeah, all those stocks has never recovered. So we just
have a few small places seems to be doing better
than anywhere else. But every place they've had a pound
fishery uh or a heavy gilnet fishery like keshakes the
(21:32):
gilnet fishery that's all gone ere in a sound Huna
sound Cordova uh, all of Seymour Canal, all of us
that have gone away. They don't have a commercial fishery
either anymore.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
When what was the what was when you were younger
and starting out fishing. What was the first time that
you were fishing for your own money? Like that you
were in charge catching fish, selling the fish and using
it to support yourself and not using it to support
like not doing it as an employee, but doing it
(22:09):
as your own, as your own boss.
Speaker 4 (22:13):
Well, I crewed on boats trolling and sainting later in
my later teens and did Halbert fishing. But nineteen seventy
I was able to save enough money to buy my
own boat.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
And then you did like what activities did you do
out of your own boat?
Speaker 4 (22:36):
I trolled for salmon primarily, and I had that boat
for eight years. In the last two of the eight years,
I guess I did fish for Halbot, but I wasn't
really good at it, and then I bought a bigger
boat and started. After a couple of years, owning that
(23:01):
I can, I changed it over so I can fish
a blackout in halib It.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
Tell him about the name. The name of your boat, Dad, And.
Speaker 4 (23:12):
Well, I made this deal to buy this boat, and
this guy lived in Tacoma, and okay, we agreed twelve thousand.
So I quit my job so I could go get
the boat. And then he decided, well, I'm not going
(23:33):
to sell it, and I said why not. Well, this
guy offered me more money, and my wife's giving me
a hard time, and so I wound up paying him
fourteen thousand, and then I went to Tacoma and brought
the boat home. I can't remember what else. He asked me.
The name, Oh, the name of it was Franjo. It
(23:55):
just so happened that my younger sister was Joanie and
my old their sister had two sisters, was Francis. And
they thought my sister Joanie thought I named it after them,
but I didn't. Then it never didn't tell her any different.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
It came with that name, and they were all, oh
he named the Wow, I love that story because when
dad got his newest troller, I thought for sure because
I saw, oh, all the dads had named their boats
(24:36):
after their daughters. So when he got this boat, I
thought for sure, he's going to name it after me, right,
So I'm telling everyone, Well, he had a different name
picked out, but then he heard that. I was so
excited they named it after me. And I didn't find
out till like fifteen years later that he had a
difference second choice. I was like, oh my gosh. So
(25:01):
I think about that, and it reminds you of his
first boat in that name, and I.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
Wonder where that came from, because yeah, Jennifer has an
uncle and his boat is named after his daughter, oldest daughter.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
His tradition, Mike, Cassie, Cassie, the tattoo on your hand.
Heather explained the tattoos on her hands before Cassie, your
left hand, you have the same right or you have
the same hook?
Speaker 4 (25:28):
Correct, Yeah, oh you should.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
So he's teaching the crew how to say nah, it's
in slinkett, it's nah, that's a wood hook.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
Well, Garrett's calling it knocks. So all last week, Mike,
can I see the knocks? And my task like, what
are you talking about? And so we had lessons, but
this is the only nah we've ever retired. Sea Monster.
He carved it in like nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
And so you share that one. And then Mike, what
is your left hand?
Speaker 4 (26:09):
That's a beaver raven till that is my clown.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Heather. Heather was telling me that I can't know if
we talked about this before, but yeah, we did talk
about this a year ago, and maybe you have recollections
of it as well that I don't know what years
this would have been that and I don't even know
how it came.
Speaker 4 (26:36):
To be, but like.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Tribal people were discouraged from any kind of markings permit. Yeah, yeah,
we're like where did that? Who did? Like how like
according to who? And how is it enforced? And how
is that expressed?
Speaker 3 (27:00):
I don't know all the answers to those questions. But
for about one hundred years, it was illegal to practice
like cultural tattooing, so it would normally take place during
like a kuek, which is like also known as a potlatch,
So it was illegal to even have a potlatch practice
(27:24):
your culture ceremonies are you know, there's different words used
in English or you know, our traditional language, and so
a lot of this went away because it wasn't legal
to do so. So then you see a lot of
like jewelry cuffs, carved earrings, and in that way people
(27:46):
could wear their clan crests and remove it when required too.
But this is permanent regalia.
Speaker 6 (27:53):
This was.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
Traditionally, you know, during a ku week or potlatch, you'd
get tattooed. And so Dad and I got our clan
crest tattooed, you know, and as a way to reclaim
what's ours. We're opposite, so you follow your mother's lineage.
(28:20):
So I'm an Ego and he's a raven, so we're
opposite clans. And I see a lot of this coming back.
So there is like a revitalization of the cultural tattooing
and even like the hand hand poke tattoos.
Speaker 4 (28:41):
Yeah, so most of that was imposed by what's referred
to as missionaries, and they didn't want to speak your
own native language. So if Ron was growing up, my
mother did not teach us, I knows, but she was
(29:02):
very fluent. Your mother was, yeah, my grandmother and my aunts,
but they didn't teach kids because it really wasn't okay.
They were taught that it wasn't okay. A lot of
the kids were forced to go to boarding schools in
(29:28):
the lower forty eight. My mother did not go there,
but she did go to Rankle Institute, but they forbade
them to speak their own language there, and you know,
just basically destroyed a lot of culture. So you didn't
see new Totem poles for many, many years. They did
(29:53):
start during the Three Sea Days and the Depression days.
They had the three C program.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
I can't civilian you mean the Civilian Conservation.
Speaker 4 (30:08):
Yeah, core. Yeah, So they did build some poles during
now and they paid them under that program. So that's
where the original Totem poles came from in Claw, Okay.
And they've been recarved since then, but that's where those
poles came from. So there was thirty or forty years
(30:29):
where probably not many poles were carved at all. It
just made a mess out of the culture, really, you know,
so I think, and yeah, effort is made now to
try to restore some of it, but you know, these
(30:51):
are modern times. It's all different, you know, but you know,
it is working a little bit. H I can see, oh,
some pride, restoration, and the people themselves. And I think
that's important. When I was growing up, it really wasn't
(31:17):
okay to be native. So I've seen a change in
my lifetime. Yeah, sad as maybe, but that's the attitude
even natives that that were better off, oh, treated natives
that weren't so well off, you know.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
So I don't understand.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
It's like lateral violence.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
Oh I'm sorry, I do. Yeah, I got what you're saying.
You mean that that well off, like natives that were
well off treated other natives.
Speaker 4 (31:49):
Looking down on the ones that weren't so well off,
you know. So, you know, and I felt that when
I was growing up. So I'm glad to see that
not so much anymore.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
You guys had shown me when we were boating around.
There's a couple of interesting things you showed me over
by your place. Maybe you could speak to them. One,
I'll just go in the order in which we saw them.
One was you showed me a location where there had
been a smokehouse. Oh yeah. And I believe that once
(32:27):
they did the once they kind of parceled Alaska out,
being like Fort Service gets this, tribe gets this. Whatever
the BLM gets this. However, they divided it. They went
around and would kind of destroy some relics what they
regarded as relics. But what we're actually like active smoke
(32:50):
houses is my understanding of this.
Speaker 4 (32:52):
Correct, that's crack, But that didn't happen until.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
Jeez, between the thirties and.
Speaker 4 (33:00):
Right after statehood. I guess that. Okay, the Forest Service,
you know, owned x amount most of the law. For
some reason, they decided to clean up all the old
smokehouses and stuff like that there were on federal law.
Not really well, they didn't care about village sites. My
(33:26):
great grandfather was chief of Tuxican. It was when I
was a young kid. There was a lot of poles
and h houses that you could tell we're all there
and everything when we went by. I remember seeing it
on our way to Starcar. But they logged shortly after
(33:51):
that and logged right through the old village site. You know,
in fact today you can see cables still laying on
the ground there, and you alsoee garden mound remnants of
uh house posts, the corner posts, and there's a few
of those left. But there was numerous totem poles when
(34:12):
I was a kid. But you know, they're floating logging camps,
and the loggers cut sections of those and had them
as ornaments on their floating camps. Really yeah, yeah, but
no one cared. You know today, if you did that,
(34:33):
they'd put you in jail, I suppose, but they're they're
more protected now, but no one cared. They got rid
of all this. One of the smokehouses is on the island.
We used to go there where kids with that little
out rowboat with a five horse we'd go out there
and we'd hang out there, and it was big enough
(34:54):
to where you could actually stay in there. You know,
everybody had pretty good sized smokehouses than today, Like the
big is just real.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
Where the smokehouses positioned to be close to a spawning run. Yeah,
so you could stay there fish and smoke fish.
Speaker 4 (35:15):
Well, there was old village sites there, or at least
of summertime fish camps. And that's a real protected place
where I showed showed you and there's numerous fish drops.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
That was the second thing that I was gonna ask
you about. When we were out we went. You pointed
out some things that I would never ever have noticed,
But once you pointed them out, that was so obvious.
What I was looking at but and I meant to
go investigate the creeks around here and look for the
(35:53):
same clues. You pointed out canoe landings at Creek Miles
where the lark the rocks are cleared away, and there's
actually like a little concave groove going way up the beach.
Never you would you could live there your whole life.
(36:16):
If someone didn't say, like you see, look line up
and look that way, you'd live there your whole life
and not realize what you were looking at. It was
a place to drag a canoe aboat up, and then
the remnants of the fish traps that you could also
live there your whole life and just think that that's
the rocks, how God laid them down. And then you
(36:40):
show me and're like, oh, like once you see it,
you're like, oh my god, it's like they're arranged like weirs.
You know, that was very surprising to me, and I
haven't looked here for that.
Speaker 4 (36:54):
Almost all our criecks have those, and the ones that
didn't have a good supply of rocks, ah, they drove
steaks in the ground to make the fish trap. So
you know, if there's no rocks, apply to do that.
(37:15):
Then they used wooden steaks, and like up in Clock Lake,
there's wooden steaks up in the lake that are ah
they have even been carbon dated, and I can't remember
the dates. But my good friend Steve Langdon is a
professor of anthropology. He did a lot of study and
(37:38):
pulled some of those up and had him dated. What
let's see. Oh, there's a couple of places where I
could show you where there's actually what you call clam
gardens where the rocks were laid out and it's filled
with the proper substrate, if you will, for a climb garden,
(38:03):
and there's still visible and still clams of them today
and the otter been digging at them. Oh really, But
the actually practice amriculture hundreds of years back, and a
lot of the villages were close to a good clambed,
(38:26):
like the one John Darrow he referred to it as
empty clamshell village at uh Agnes's where we we've we've
found artifacts there and the only things left is stone.
You know, uh because in the winter time dark and
(38:50):
the days are short, but you could always go get clowns,
you know, bad weather whatever, there was always something you
could harve us.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Do you remember from uh, do you remember from your
relatives or maybe things you've heard how people dealt with
the risk of paralytic shellfish poisoning when there was no
government funded testing.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
They'd put I was told they'd put them in their
mouth and see if it turn your mouth, they'd spit
them out. But that's what all the elders told me.
Rub it on their lips and then wait.
Speaker 4 (39:38):
But on the other hand, we had colder weather, colder
water then we do have today, which is spawning a
lot of these things. But there are some places where
there just seemed to be a hawk all the time,
and it could be in the the gravel they grow.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
And I guess you mean hot with the alt with
the algae.
Speaker 3 (40:04):
Yeah, call them hot clams, you know, like yeah, but
you know, do you know a sea otter won't eat
a hot clam? They can tell they know, they have
like a mechanism where they.
Speaker 5 (40:18):
Really that's why we don't eat them out of the cove,
right or is that something else?
Speaker 1 (40:23):
No, we when we used to eat clams before I
got too scared of shellfish poisoning. When we used to
eat clams, we didn't eat clams in the cove because
back then people would run these very not well functioning
sewage systems into the cove.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
Jimmy, we want to go get one and we'll rub
it on a slip and.
Speaker 5 (40:43):
See, I think the tides too high to find one
goes down?
Speaker 1 (40:48):
Would you now eat?
Speaker 4 (40:49):
Like?
Speaker 1 (40:49):
Not now? But let's say like, are you comfortable eating
clams in the winter or no?
Speaker 4 (40:55):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (40:56):
What do you do?
Speaker 4 (40:59):
Well?
Speaker 3 (40:59):
So the te staying the test for.
Speaker 4 (41:01):
Mere what do I do you eat part of one?
Speaker 1 (41:05):
You do?
Speaker 4 (41:06):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (41:07):
And wait how long the.
Speaker 4 (41:08):
Off It doesn't make your lips tingle or anything. They're fine,
you know. But on the other hand, we have a
clam fishery that goes on yeah, gooey duck fishery, and
they're right next door and they're harvesting those and they
passed the test. So I've seen no reason why normal
butter clams when I could get them, which are all
(41:31):
gone now, would be fine to eat.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
M hmm.
Speaker 4 (41:37):
They're they're filtering the same water. Ye.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
So you're like, if I took you over yonder right here,
and it was January February and we dug some clams,
you would eat a part of one. Yeah, And if
your lips didn't get numb. You dig in, Yeah, if
it was a good clam. Particular about where I dig them.
(42:01):
I don't dig him out of the mud. I like
to dig him out of the mixture of clamshell or
clamshell where they're nice and white and good color and
healthy fat clams. That's the preferred places I would dig them.
Speaker 5 (42:22):
Do you ever use like clams as hal a de
bait doo his work or do you.
Speaker 4 (42:27):
The guy ducks do? But you know, I had never
used them, but a friend of mine did. They had
a bunch of her. I don't know what was wrong
with him, but he used for albut bait and they
work fine. But we're using that type of thing or
putting clams in your crab pot to catch the crab.
We used to have a lot of these, uh sunfishy
(42:49):
call them. Yeah, they all got killed by a bacteria,
not a virus of that bacteria killed them. But those
things are run as fast as they could to get
those clowns. Was that right? It wasn't the best bait?
Speaker 1 (43:05):
Yeah, a few years ago. There's still so many down
like uh, I mean they're all over the place down
off Washington. The oceanic sunfish. A few years ago there
was a giant right out here in the arm and
people got video of it. They had no idea what
they're looking.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
At the mola.
Speaker 1 (43:26):
Yeah, not around.
Speaker 5 (43:28):
Aren't there some fish of those that are like targeted?
Speaker 4 (43:30):
And what are you talking about? Sunfish? I'm talking about
these starfish that are.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
Oh sea stars.
Speaker 4 (43:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
Oh, I thought you meant that big you know that
oceanic sunfish that like lays on the surface. I thought that,
Oh so the see yeah, the sea stars. Yeah, they're
all gone. I always thought I always heard as a virus,
it's a bacteria. Yeah, they're gone. I mean those things
are gone.
Speaker 4 (43:52):
They just discovered it was a bacteria. That's that's new news.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
Yeah, okay, I was confused because.
Speaker 4 (43:59):
So if you clams in the crab pot a these
uh sea stars, you could have a crab pot full
of those instead.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
Of crab like they like it better than it like clams.
Speaker 4 (44:10):
That's one of the main stays that they eat.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
Okay, okay, when you said that about you know, you
know that fish I'm talking about right, yeah, because they
make it up here. Sometimes I thought I thought you
meant that there was more before like that somehow there
was more of those fish around now that lay on
their side. And do you know what I'm talking about now?
Speaker 4 (44:32):
I know exactly because rub them.
Speaker 1 (44:34):
With a brush. You can rub them with a scrub
brush and they like it that. It's a crazy.
Speaker 4 (44:38):
Fish fishing out mus on Once some one day, the
sunfish was on the kind of and see his fin
and stuff, and I thought it was a big shark.
And before I saw it, it was coming right by
my trolling lines and I thought, oh crap, I'm going
to hit that shark, you know, but it went right
by his high end. Nothing there was one of those
(45:01):
big sunfish.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
Gosh, I thought it was.
Speaker 4 (45:06):
I thought I was gonna run right into it, but
actually it wasn't a shark.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
It was yeah sunfish swimming around his fin out of
the water.
Speaker 4 (45:15):
They don't have no tail on them.
Speaker 5 (45:16):
You also, do you like, do you target salmon sharks
or do you know people that do?
Speaker 1 (45:22):
No, He's very interested in salmon.
Speaker 5 (45:24):
I love salmon sharks as am. I.
Speaker 4 (45:26):
Yeah, I've seen them jump out of water down at
head off for whatever reason, just like I don't know
what they were doing, but salmon sharks and we catch
one once in a while trolling.
Speaker 5 (45:39):
I've heard they taste amazing.
Speaker 4 (45:42):
I don't know they might be, but I don't eat sharks.
I've got a lot of blue sharks and dogfish. Yeah,
I just can't. Uh they have her? Are you real
to him?
Speaker 5 (46:00):
Know that?
Speaker 4 (46:00):
I don't know how to deal with that. I've cut
steaks and soaked it in salt water and good no
when your people do eat them.
Speaker 1 (46:13):
You know, when you were in the black cod in
the black cot fishing business, were you were you longlighting
black cod?
Speaker 5 (46:21):
Or did you?
Speaker 1 (46:22):
Okay? What was that? What was that like as a
you know, what was that like as a business? Was
that like a profitable business to be in?
Speaker 4 (46:31):
It was very good for me. I started like eighty four.
I think it turned into a derby everybody. Well, what
happened was the Medicine Stephens Act kind of opened the
(46:52):
door for that. Before that, the foreign longliners would come
across Japanese Koreans and fish block God and the market
was really poor two bits a pound or whatever. If
you couldn't do anything else, you could go fish block God.
(47:14):
But the market wasn't that great. So when the two
hundred mile limit came in, it allowed the American fishermen
to participate more. Yeah, they claimed, you're never going to
catch all those cod, but Yankee ingenuity, we figured out
how to catch them, I mean way better than they did.
(47:35):
So as we took more of the quota, they got less,
and then pretty soon they were just moved completely out
because we could harvest it all. Yeah, it was actually
pretty good fishery, but because everybody wanted to jump in
(47:57):
on the halbut and blockod fishery, they turned into and
the fleet was increasing at twenty percent a year. So
then the if Q program was finally put in place
to save lives, if you well, because people were literally
killing themselves to get out and get their share of
(48:18):
the quota. The quota, I mean both shuldn't have been
out there in bad weather, you know, but they would
do it, and you know it was costing. Yeah, So
then the if Q program, now we have it did
(48:43):
stabilize things. But I have less quota than I used
to catch, you know, like I started off with thirty
two thousand pounds of qualified for thirty two thousand pounds
a hell, but and I think I'm just under nine
thousand now because of conservation cuts and so on. Yeah,
(49:04):
that's a pretty bad hit too. What's that stand for?
I f qu individual fish quota, so you actually own
the quota, got it? You can sell it, you can fish.
Speaker 1 (49:18):
It, and you can catch it when you want and
opening wind opening day window.
Speaker 4 (49:25):
Yeah, you have from March to December almost you know,
to catch your halbut or or cod. So it's a
better fishery in that respect.
Speaker 1 (49:39):
So do you mostly fish alone?
Speaker 4 (49:43):
I used to do all my fishing a loan except
for Halbert black Gott. I had a crew but halibuta. Raymond,
my boy, and I used to do that ourselves. But
now I'm old and creaky, so I go out with
him and h I can't say I didn't fish this
year because I did. I just didn't fish salmon, but
(50:05):
I did go get the hell.
Speaker 1 (50:06):
But do you like fishing with your boy?
Speaker 4 (50:10):
Yeah? I was fun. There is tough, you know, and
he's a fisherman, which never encouraged him be one, but
he is. So he's pretty good at it.
Speaker 1 (50:23):
What was if you would if you were going to
discourage someone from it? On what grounds would you discourage it?
Speaker 4 (50:31):
It's really an unstable way to make a living. Hu
We've taken a lot of cuts, and you know, everybody
wants a piece of the pie, a bigger piece. Uh,
like the sport charter group. Oh, you can't have unlimited
(50:54):
effort on a limited resource, and that's what we're seeing
with that group. There's still no restriction. Anybody can get
licensed up and start the charter business. You know, got it,
But it is a limited resource. So the last couple
of years prior to this, they had virtually an unlimited
(51:19):
season where there was no in season management. They okay,
you get twenty percent, but we're not going to manage
you in season. So they got more than their twenty percent,
so they took it out of the commercial trollers. So
we didn't get a second opening.
Speaker 1 (51:38):
Oh, got it.
Speaker 4 (51:41):
So this year they've changed that to where there is
in season management. So they got shut down on Kings
and June sometime, and then they decided that they had
four thousand fish more coming and so they could keep
(52:02):
one the non residents keep one at it's an annual limit.
Speaker 1 (52:08):
Yep, we're well aware, but.
Speaker 4 (52:11):
That's what happened this year. That's why the restriction. For
the last two years, two or three years prior to that,
there was no inn season management, which was really unfair
to the commercial fleet because they just took the fish
away from them to make up the difference.
Speaker 1 (52:35):
In resource management, you often find that different user groups
always blame the user groups always blame other user groups.
Speaker 4 (52:51):
I don't blame those guys, but my suggestion at our
AC meetings is you guys should try to do a
limited entry on yourselves so you have some stability in
what you're doing, and your licenses would be worth a fortune.
Oh but you got to curb this gross somehow, just
(53:14):
like the individual fish quota on the federal side and
the limited entry on the state side for commercial sainting
and trolling, there's a limit of how many boats. But
right now the sport commercial is totally unlimited, and it's
(53:36):
a limited amount of fishs. So everybody's scrapping for a
bigger piece of the pie all the time, at least
they are. They're always lobbying for more.
Speaker 1 (53:47):
The point I was going to make about that the
way different user groups, and this goes across the board.
Different user groups look to other user groups as the problem.
But I was shocked when I was reading some a
report that the state put out. I would have thought,
just by guessing I would have thought in southeast Alaska
(54:11):
you would see that commercial harvest unlike these key species.
The commercial harvest, in my mind, I would have been like,
it's got to be ninety percent compared to recreational harvest.
But for a lot of a lot of the main
target species, recreational harvests surpasses commercial harvest.
Speaker 4 (54:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (54:35):
I had no idea because we always blame right epeconically
on the commercial guys caught them all.
Speaker 4 (54:41):
I know one lodge that lounds more fish than the
commercial fleet and Craig so hmm, yeah, and they don't
talk about it anymore, but they made the break. They
caught a million pounds or chipped out a million pounds
of you know, process fish like you did. That doesn't
(55:02):
count all the waste stuff that.
Speaker 1 (55:06):
That's a million pounds a yeah, skinless, boneless.
Speaker 4 (55:12):
Yeah, really that's a lot. And that's more.
Speaker 2 (55:16):
It's probably four million in actual fish bodies.
Speaker 4 (55:19):
That's more than the the troll fleet and Craig catches
and lands and sells commercially.
Speaker 1 (55:28):
Huh.
Speaker 4 (55:30):
So it's significant. But without that hattery in Claw, which
is licensed for five million eggs, they'd probably all go
broke there. And it's funded by a fisherman. For the
most part, three percent off the top goes into a
(55:51):
hattery enhancement. Got its.
Speaker 3 (55:57):
Fish.
Speaker 4 (55:59):
They hatch co hos in that hat tree. It's five million,
five million eggs of coho eggs and has been fairly successful.
This year is kind of we're seeing uh for a
fifty three million prediction. I'm not seeing the fish. I
(56:21):
see a feel out here. Doesn't look too bad. There's
a few scattered jumps coming inside Cassambey. But on the
other side it's not very good.
Speaker 1 (56:32):
Also, I don't this is just observational. I don't know
what this year is appears. This year appears to be
very different on a salmon situation, I didn't know if
this is a very poor hatch a few years ago.
Speaker 4 (56:48):
I don't know. They're saying humpies, but some of the
co hosts aren't showing like I think they should. There's
there's kink salmon. Yeah, yeah, there's plenty of king salmon.
I mean, you know, it's it's pretty good. We can't
keep or catch them, you know. I think on the
(57:11):
second opening that my share is seventeen fish for the
second opening as a commercial fisherman. Yeah, seventeen seventeen. When
I started fishing in nineteen seventy, I could fish on
the ot on the ocean from April fifteenth till September twentieth,
(57:34):
and I could keep king salmon the whole time. And
now the king salmon season lasted what four or five days?
Speaker 1 (57:42):
Huh?
Speaker 4 (57:44):
So I've seen some change.
Speaker 1 (57:46):
What's those seventeen fish? What's one of those fish worth?
Speaker 4 (57:50):
I don't even know. I didn't land the king salmon
commercially this year yet. I think they're six and a
quarter pounds. So oh, I think that's the first opening
they were paying six and.
Speaker 1 (58:05):
A quarter of a pounds as gutted and guild.
Speaker 4 (58:08):
So a twenty pound fishes is you know? It's okay?
Speaker 1 (58:13):
Hmm. What has it been like for you guys together
as you've been working on the show you're working on.
What's that been like? I don't work on the show,
but you participate.
Speaker 4 (58:33):
I've been in just kind of enjoying life this year.
I'm taking a heather out, a lot of fish kinks,
having fish alba hana otter, get greens, go after soccer
eyes and stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (58:51):
There's a common like recurring thing that I hear Dad saying,
and he goes, I'm just the driver. So he's anytime
we give him a little responsibilities like I'm just the driver.
Speaker 4 (59:06):
So this is the first time in my whole life,
if you will, that I've just done what I wanted
for the summer.
Speaker 3 (59:12):
Not this is the first time I've had my dad,
been able to spend summer with my dad in my
whole life. So this is a special time being able
to do the show with it. We have an incredible group,
you know that has joined us to capture all of
these moments from you know, meat Eater, but we couldn't
(59:35):
have asked for a better group. Dad and Garrett totally
hit it off, and the girls are great. And this
is my first summer with Dad, so he's been gone,
you know, from spring till fall fishing my whole life.
So if we could catch king salmon to other you know,
(01:00:00):
just like going out and the skiff and catching king salmon,
we'd get them in like before the middle of June.
So in years past I would catch one or two
king salmon total because he'd go commercial fishing for that.
So in June, I'm like, oh, I got my king
for the year, and that's it, you know. So this
(01:00:23):
has been great, and yeah, thank you Dad, because it.
Speaker 5 (01:00:30):
Is a lot.
Speaker 3 (01:00:30):
It's a lot, it's a lot, but being able to
capture some of these moments that we just wouldn't have
otherwise been able to, and with my niece joined us
this last round with Halibit, and just being able to
take up space for our you know, our culture and
(01:00:53):
indigenous people, and we represent such a large group of people,
but you know, each tribe and each individual within their
own community deserves to be uplifted and celebrated in their
own right. And so this is just this show is
an opportunity to just get a kind of like a
(01:01:14):
peekin through that window of our view and I'm thankful
that we get to capture some of it.
Speaker 1 (01:01:24):
What can you name the episodes for people so they
know what to look for.
Speaker 3 (01:01:28):
Yeah, so I'm I believe we're in a kickoff with
the sea otter episode, and then.
Speaker 5 (01:01:37):
We have.
Speaker 3 (01:01:39):
The harring eggs, so we have the herring spawn harvesting
herring eggs, and then we have a seal hunt and
we process the seal and make seal oil in the cracklings,
which you've tried, and then we're fishing with the knach
so the woodhooks, and then the last two episodes will
(01:02:03):
be I think two parts, which is Gonne fish Camp,
so dried fish making the cold smoked strips, jarring the fish,
and fermenting coho eggs. So in September and the co
host you know, come in. We're gonna do Coho fish
(01:02:25):
camp and ferment some skeins. And I'm worried about Samantha
because she walks around my property like this, and I'm like,
what's wrong? And She's like, there's just a lot of
smells in Alaska that I've become nose blind to and
I forget everything smells.
Speaker 1 (01:02:46):
And Mike, were you making a peer? Are you in
all of them? Or are you just driving?
Speaker 4 (01:02:51):
Like?
Speaker 1 (01:02:51):
Do you talk in all of them?
Speaker 2 (01:02:53):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (01:02:53):
He's he's a highlight.
Speaker 4 (01:02:54):
I I don't think, so, I don't know. I just
do what I do.
Speaker 1 (01:02:58):
But I told them, you.
Speaker 3 (01:03:00):
Know, my dad, the reason why I'm able to do
all this stuff and know the things that I know
is because my dad, you know, through all the stuff
we mentioned earlier here, he was able to still learn about,
you know, our culture and and practice that even through
(01:03:21):
all of those attempts to make us not anymore. And
that's the greatest gift I could have ever received. And
so I told, you know, the team that I really
want to highlight and uplift my dad and he deserves
all that recognition. So I do think you're going to
see a lot of him. And anytime I post anything
(01:03:43):
anyway on social media, they're like, we don't want this,
we want your dad. More videos of your dad. So
he deserves it. He's awesome, and he's so funny, and
this a little subtle dry humors you know there throughout.
So I'm excited to see.
Speaker 4 (01:04:03):
It's kind of nice. I didn't have a chance to
Hea there wasn't a hunter and went out so much
of this. Raymond did a lot of it. And then
she moved away and came back and she goes out
with me every opportunity, and she's learned considerable amount, much
(01:04:25):
more than Raymond actually about different tuffs. He's paying attention
to the cultural part of it. And I was going
to say I was going to go king salmon fishing.
It wasn't my intention just not to go, but I
got COVID just days before the season opened. It just
(01:04:46):
knocked me totally off the game. So once I missed
that part of it, I don't care about coho is
that too much work for the amount of pay again?
And now with seventeen kings, Amon just doesn't get my
heart started. So I'm just having a good time.
Speaker 1 (01:05:05):
Yeah, if you did go to get the seventeen, how
long would you expect to fish to catch the seventeen?
Speaker 4 (01:05:13):
One day or not even a day one day season? Yeah.
So the last time we got a one day fishery,
which was three years ago, I got over one hundred.
Speaker 3 (01:05:25):
Okay, Dad was out there too, old guys. I think
his crew is what in his seventies too, Yeah, and
they were. They did so good. I think they got
the most or second most out of the fleet Dad
that comes back. I you know, I helped Dad with
all his healthcare stuff, appointments and everything, so I've learned
(01:05:48):
the older he gets seventy six now, but to always
book an appointment for because he comes back with like
a broken back or needing backs. So he does all
his maintenance in the winter, all repairs.
Speaker 1 (01:06:04):
Yeah, but steroid.
Speaker 3 (01:06:07):
Injections in his hands and everything to keep him going.
Speaker 4 (01:06:12):
Lots of repair work. The older, you get, everything hurts,
so fish for many many years. It's just like twenty
four hour openings of hal but he has spend it
all at the roller hauling in fish. You know, I
got some good video of doing exactly that. But yeah,
(01:06:36):
you come home and for two or three days of
your hounds or but yeah you loaded the boat and
did really well. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:06:45):
I didn't learn how to hunt until I was twenty eight.
I never punted at all, never shot a rifle. So
that was last year. I'm just kidding. I'm thirty nine,
but I'm gonna be twenty nine forever. But anyway, when
we went, when I started hunting with my dad, I
(01:07:07):
would take one of my best friends, guy friends with
me and we'd go with him, and he packed two
deer out at a time till he was sixty nine
years old. We looked at each other, I'm like, we
just have to be able to pack one deer out
until we're that old. So he's a bad accid. He's yeah, tough,
and it's hard to believe.
Speaker 4 (01:07:29):
I'm a mess. B well man.
Speaker 1 (01:07:33):
I appreciate that you came to talk to us and
tell people. Tell everybody like when when can they come watch?
When when they go to watch all the stuff this fall.
Speaker 3 (01:07:45):
This I believe in September. Am I allowed to say? Yeah,
just go and see September. I don't have a date actually,
but this September, this next month, and is.
Speaker 1 (01:07:56):
It gonna be called our world of life for real title?
Speaker 3 (01:07:59):
So it's called our way of life in our language,
it's haku stay So yeah, look for I'm excited.
Speaker 4 (01:08:09):
It's uh.
Speaker 6 (01:08:11):
September twenty ninth. Good job, perfect, thank you and media
YouTube channel and outdoor channel.
Speaker 4 (01:08:18):
So there you go. Eight pm.
Speaker 3 (01:08:22):
Okay, that is my first time learning this.
Speaker 4 (01:08:28):
How how fluent are you?
Speaker 3 (01:08:30):
We're not fluent?
Speaker 1 (01:08:31):
You're not?
Speaker 4 (01:08:32):
Yeah, so.
Speaker 3 (01:08:34):
We know some words, Dad's my grandma is fluent, but
then wasn't. Yeah, a lot of that was lost.
Speaker 2 (01:08:41):
For a generation with boarding school.
Speaker 4 (01:08:46):
Too old, I forget everything I learned.
Speaker 3 (01:08:47):
So yeah, I teach my nephew you know what I know,
and he picks up right away. So we try to
use a lot of traditional place names and words and
learn new words all the time. And that's something I
really would like to do, is learn our traditional language.
Speaker 2 (01:09:06):
Yeah, but you know, is there anybody that kicks around
in the village, like just speaking the tongue someone else?
Speaker 4 (01:09:17):
Some of the older ladies and are a fluent.
Speaker 3 (01:09:22):
Yeah, there's classes offered to through.
Speaker 5 (01:09:26):
UA.
Speaker 3 (01:09:27):
It's the uas the University of Alaska, and then through
the tribe, our regional tribe.
Speaker 1 (01:09:39):
Mike, do you call Garrett Garrett or do you call
him Dirt?
Speaker 3 (01:09:44):
He calls him fat ass because because when we're on
the boat, you know, Garrett's a made incredible you know,
he's right there with the camera, but we all can't
be on the same side of the boat at funt huh.
But when Garrett takes one step on the boat, the
whole boat, he's dense, he is, and he's not a
(01:10:07):
big dude. I mean, he's fit. But finally after we
got we were filming the first time we all met.
We filmed for three weeks straight, so twenty one days.
It was a lot, and it forced us to get
very comfortable with each other. So after a few days,
my dad just start calling him a fat ass because sure,
(01:10:29):
but he lost weight. So when he came back this time,
we're like, hey, you're not as fat anymore.
Speaker 1 (01:10:36):
But I noticed he's got a little tin of dip there,
So I thought maybe him and Dirt formed a little Yeah.
I heard about the dipping a partnership. Yeah, we called diplomacy.
Speaker 3 (01:10:46):
It was like he gave us a detailed description and
was telling my dad about how awesome.
Speaker 1 (01:10:53):
No diplomacy with Dirt myth we call.
Speaker 3 (01:10:56):
Him, I call him Garrett. But we can have asked
for better people to work with. They're they're a lot
of fun.
Speaker 5 (01:11:03):
Dad.
Speaker 3 (01:11:04):
Dad's a got his own way of communicating. So the
last day goes, I'm thinking about going fishing tomorrow, and
that's like his way of inviting you, and Dirt goes, oh,
oh yeah, I'll go, and Smith goes, yeah, I want
to go too, and Dad just ignores her and she goes, actually,
(01:11:27):
never mind, I'm going to go to the coffee shop.
It gets all cream puffs tomorrow morning instead, because we
could tell they just wanted to go out and hang
out together.
Speaker 4 (01:11:35):
That it was crappy, and I think she changed her
mind anyway. Yeah, so we were what we were doing
all we were waiting for the last set of hooks.
It took us a while to catch a fish. Yeah,
while we're waiting, I cruised over the We're going to
see if there's any co hos here. So we did
catch co hos and I've ever seen anybody get so
(01:11:58):
excited as Garrett. Uh huh.
Speaker 1 (01:12:03):
Have you ever eaten dinner with them?
Speaker 4 (01:12:04):
Totally?
Speaker 5 (01:12:05):
You're going to bring that up. Did you talk about
that last night?
Speaker 3 (01:12:08):
Everything's like a brand new experience. I wow, look at this,
oh sunset, you know, like, look, guys, so pretty night.
Speaker 4 (01:12:16):
Yeah, but I've never seen anybody get so excited over
catching a few co hos, you know. So the girls
were in the other boat and they were fishing as well, and.
Speaker 1 (01:12:30):
Anyway, he's a good guy.
Speaker 4 (01:12:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:12:35):
Well, Mike, thank you so much for joining us day
to talk about what you guys got coming up. And
I appreciate you participating in it. Yeah, with Heather. I
appreciate you coming to discuss it with us and for you.
Speaker 4 (01:12:49):
One of the most fun things I do in my
life is get that boat and go cruising. You have
the right idea. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (01:13:00):
Yeah, that is.
Speaker 4 (01:13:03):
I spent a lot of time in there. I've had
it since ninety one and that's the number six out
word on it.
Speaker 1 (01:13:09):
So huh.
Speaker 3 (01:13:11):
Yeah, that dad, I just found finally. I searched Craigslist
for years trying to find a boat like that, and
I found the same boat in ninety one exact same boat.
Speaker 4 (01:13:23):
I was born.
Speaker 3 (01:13:24):
There's one for sale in my town right now.
Speaker 1 (01:13:27):
I just got to see if they got flat black paint.
Speaker 4 (01:13:29):
Yeah, yeah, you gotta have flat black.
Speaker 3 (01:13:32):
But when dad, when we try to mic him up,
now they learn to give me the mic to give
to him. And I tried to do it, and he said,
I'll put this on when I'm ready. So we're like, okay,
we just said it in the.
Speaker 4 (01:13:46):
Dash now and we're not doing anything else. You don't
need this on after an hour before you're yeah, that's right. Yeah,
is it okay, Okay, we're done.
Speaker 3 (01:13:59):
We just yeah, he goes.
Speaker 4 (01:14:03):
You never know what I might say, So.
Speaker 1 (01:14:07):
I understand.
Speaker 2 (01:14:08):
Are we gonna skin a seat?
Speaker 1 (01:14:10):
No, yeah, we're gonna do it as a separate thing.
Speaker 3 (01:14:12):
Yeah, I'm worried. On the cruise over here, we saw
a bunch moving in here on you.
Speaker 1 (01:14:17):
So they're coming. I've seen more this year than it's
been amazing.
Speaker 5 (01:14:21):
Man, I've never seen like it's just so recently. It's
just like they were just here.
Speaker 1 (01:14:26):
It was the first one maybe five years ago. Now
it's the first time you ever see where you can
look and there's like a group of a dozen. Then
there's a group of six. It used to be like
people would be like I saw one, and everybody like, no,
you did not, we saw. We'd argue about it.
Speaker 4 (01:14:39):
We could have been those when we first came here.
But they must have moved out in the middle of
the bay or something.
Speaker 1 (01:14:44):
They lay out deep. I don't understand it.
Speaker 3 (01:14:46):
It's different than on our side. You go to the
same spots and they're there, big pots of them. But here,
you know, I marked, I marked on my onyx where
they were in the depth and how many. I collect
data as much as I can on it's the otter.
But then we went back out what half hour later,
and they're all gone yep, Whereas on our side they
(01:15:09):
just all stay and if if you scare them away,
they'll come right back to that.
Speaker 4 (01:15:13):
These are nomads, man, there's a general rule when you
spoke about they try to get the open water. I
think that's what those did.
Speaker 1 (01:15:21):
Got it. We're gonna skin one on camera just so
people can see, and it'll be released as as a
flop episode.
Speaker 3 (01:15:29):
Okay, you're ready, good?
Speaker 1 (01:15:32):
Thanks, thanks again for coming on. I can't wait to see.
I think people are gonna love it, man, I hope so.
I think it's gonna be such a because I like
the time I've had to hang out with you guys.
I thought it was great.
Speaker 5 (01:15:42):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (01:15:43):
Yeah, I think it's gonna be a little different. Got
the same same soft voice. I think I'm talking fast,
you know, and I listen to myself, I'm like, what
the how slow I talk? So it's gonna be a
little different pace.
Speaker 1 (01:15:58):
I think talk just you're good.
Speaker 5 (01:16:00):
You'll get used to it would be good shake.
Speaker 1 (01:16:03):
Thank you again, Ma,
This is the me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
bug bitten, and in my case, underwear.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Listenerst you can't predict anything.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Brought to you by first Light. When I'm hunting, I
need gear that won't quit. First Light builds, no compromise,
gear that keeps me in the field longer, no shortcuts,
just gear that works. Check it out at first light
dot com. That's f I R S T L I
T E dot com. Welcome everybody. If you are a
(00:44):
regular listener to the show, you first met at least
from this podcast standpoint, you first met Heather Duville sitting
in this kitchen, yeah, or whatever you call this is
this main area. About a year ago, how they do
Ville on social media? A K moosey. She came out
on the show. We talked a bunch about sea otter hunting,
(01:05):
her life growing up, sewing for all kinds of things.
And now a year later, Heather's back. She came over
in her uh what she calls a skiff, which we
would call a large vessel, and uh, she's brought her father. Mike,
would you like to introduce your father?
Speaker 3 (01:26):
This is my dad. His traditional name is git Wayne,
English name is Mike look up to him in so
many ways, and I'm so grateful that he's here today.
We came over in his skiff, which your kids love,
by the.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Way, it's got a little bit of a like a
Navy seal undercover.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
It's all black, so he painted black so blended, you know,
with the beach. And yeah, he just put a fresh
coat of paint on it this year.
Speaker 4 (02:00):
Not just any block.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
It's flat block, got it, not gloss black, Mike. The
thing that surprised me to hear and I tried to
argue out of it when I heard you knew the
guy that built this place. That's correct, And I thought
to myself, he must mean that the success A frame
(02:26):
because I hear about the people that built the A frame.
I never heard anything about. We only know back two owners.
But our neighbor, Ron Layton, who passed away a year ago,
is the one that introduced us to the area. And
Ron Layton would talk about he grew up in Catchcan.
(02:50):
Ron Layton would talk about the people that we bought from,
the people they bought from, and then a guy who
was very tough, and Ron pays no compliment to anybody,
might the very tough person be the person you know
(03:11):
that raised children here?
Speaker 4 (03:13):
Yeah, or by foss uh he uh, he grew up
I'm not sure where he grew up in Myers Chuck maybe,
but I know we built a home here with this house.
When he got married, he married Marian and she was
from Myers Chuck. Okay, yeah, Yeah, he's a pretty stout
(03:35):
boy and he's still fishing.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Uh huh.
Speaker 4 (03:40):
I actually have a picture of his boat and my phone.
I took a couple of weeks ago. Had I asked
him about just to make sure I knew what I
was talking about. But he did build his ouse, yeah,
any I think seventies. Uh. When I first met him,
he had a boat called the Isis. It was a
(04:02):
double edded wood boat. But now he's got a fiberglass boat.
Oh that is also the Isis.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
But what's the what's the word you're saying isis iceol?
What does that mean? I mean, I know the means
it's spelled like, Yeah, I looked it up.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
There has a I sent it to you. I think
there's like a mythology tied to it.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
But got it.
Speaker 3 (04:27):
But yeah, he had two daughters.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
See I had it that he had I had my
recollection from Ron is that he had two sons.
Speaker 4 (04:36):
No, two girls, did he He lived here with those.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
Girls, Yeah, isn't.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
It well for a while, and then he eventually moved
to uh Mayrastuck and he built an ice log cabin there.
I think he sold it anyway.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
So what was he doing when he lived here?
Speaker 4 (04:56):
He was probably fishing.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Commercial fishing, Yeah, like a trolling for salmon.
Speaker 4 (05:02):
Yeah, trolling and long line for I know he fished
block cod for many years. All but okay, and uh
in the winter roll for king salmon. Uh, long line
for yellow.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Eye, got it? Oh, long line for yellow eye.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
So Ron that I keep talking about, he had, uh
he had held a long line license into that for
a while. He had a troller as well. Then down
the beach a little bit was mel Fairbanks. Yeah, he
trolled salmon and ran shrimp pots.
Speaker 4 (05:47):
Right business. I know, Ron Lighton. Uh you know he
was on our regional advisory council for the federal one.
Speaker 5 (05:57):
Uh.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
He was living in Cassan for a while. Then he
moved to salt Cod.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Yep, and then moved to craig Thorn sorry Thorn Bay.
Speaker 4 (06:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Yeah, so you knew Ron. Yeah, did you ever did.
Did you ever have a uh, any kind of confrontations
with Ron?
Speaker 4 (06:14):
No? No, we got a long fighting.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Ye but all but he we got along good through confrontation.
Speaker 4 (06:25):
No, he was He was easy to get along with,
you know. Uh, we all get along with each other
on the council, okay, And we meet twice a year, yep,
and there are generally three day meetings. So that he
was fine.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
He was a he was a dear, dear friend of ours.
And like I said, uh, we got this. We bought
this from being friends of Ron. And he called us
one day and told us this was for sale. And
when I had been to his place and stayed with
him and Joan, I never I mean, if I looked
(07:03):
over in this direction, I wasn't paying any particular attention.
And when he called and said it was for sale,
we just bought it without looking at it out of
being buddies with him. And he was the one that
showed us all about anything right, like how to do
all the kind of stuff up here that you need
to do was all taught. Was all taught by Ron.
(07:25):
And then when his wife passed away, he didn't want
to be out here anymore. And and and moved out
and did. What's kind of an odd practice here is
sas place was like this. My place is like this.
Ron's place is like this. Odd practices when you sell it,
(07:47):
it seems people don't move out. They just walk away
and you buy their possessions like there's no moving out.
N Ron, You what did.
Speaker 3 (07:58):
You acquire when you got it? What's the most memorable
on the beach?
Speaker 6 (08:06):
I when I when we bought the A frame, there
was like totes of clothes and just like personal items.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
Yeah, we burned. We burned everything, but everything and we
got rid of most of it. Most of it was
just old, moldy and tore up.
Speaker 4 (08:21):
You know, I believe Ron. Uh, what's a placement on
catchcount for It's right?
Speaker 1 (08:26):
He was a detective. You don't you know that's not true.
Speaker 4 (08:32):
No, I believe it is. You know, I just didn't
know him before he.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
Was a door gunner. He was a door gunner in Vietnam. Yeah,
he had been shot down two times in Vietnam.
Speaker 4 (08:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (08:44):
Did he say that he had a great time there?
Speaker 1 (08:47):
He always that was the thing we used to laugh
about ron As he was the only guy we knew
that it had just like seemed to have nothing but
a good time, A good time when he used to Vietnam.
Speaker 4 (08:58):
One of my friends that lives in the k it
was a crew chief on Hweie in Vietnam as well.
When I asked him, why weren't you a door runner,
he said, well, we had a guy that was better
at it than me.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Oh but see no, because Ron, I feel like a
crew chief is on the at that time, the crew
chief is on the left or right door I can't remember.
I thought it was something like that. Either way, he
had a heck of a time. Later, I went to
Vietnam for a visit and growing up like my dad
(09:36):
was a World War Two guy, but my most my buddies'
dads were Vietnam guys. I went to Vietnam for a
visit and it was funny that one of my good
friend's dads didn't even want to look at me. Having
couldn't believe, really, you would go to Vietnam. Ron was
(10:01):
thrilled and wanted to know how everybody was. It was
his attitude about He was eager for a report, you know,
to share notes. But Mike, how did you spent most
of your life commercial fishing? Is that right?
Speaker 4 (10:20):
Yeah? All my life. Actually, this is the first year
in sixty five years I did not go trolling.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
So and how did it come out?
Speaker 4 (10:31):
Actually, I've been a fisherman for since I was eleven
years old. I've been out fishing, and I didn't buy
my own boat until nineteen seventy, So since nineteen seventy
this year is the first year I did not fish.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
How did it come about when you were eleven? How
did it come about that you became a fisherman.
Speaker 4 (10:54):
I had this s burning desire to be a fisherman
for some reason. Then I talked my stepfather into taking
me out, and then I became sort of like slave labor,
you know, uh huh yeah, So you didn't get paid,
you know. And the second year I fished with him,
I got I got paid. My pay was a a
(11:18):
Mossburg twenty two magdum. It cost thirty five dollars some
serious in a row book.
Speaker 1 (11:25):
That was your pay for the season.
Speaker 4 (11:26):
Yep.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
What was the understanding if you weren't being if you
weren't being compensated at that age? Was the understanding that
you were learning a trade, that you were learning a discipline,
like what was how did you understand the arrangement.
Speaker 4 (11:41):
You were helping to support the family. Okay, there was
no personal gain. It was just something you did. You're
expected to.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
Before you bought your boat. You built one right.
Speaker 4 (12:02):
No, When I was like sixteen years old or fifteen,
I didn't have any money, and that was about the
time the wild herring spawn on Kelp was taking off.
(12:24):
One of the shipwrights there was building boats for that fishery,
and they built a pretty good little like a riverboat
plywood s gift. And not having any money, my partner
and I my lifelong friend Art Kennedy, had a rowboat
(12:45):
with a five horse motor on it. We used to
go everywhere with it. Before we had the motor, we
wrote it that double set of oarlocks and two guys
could grow and we could go anywhere we wanted pretty fast.
But anyway, we went to fish Egg and used to
be more lumber around those days on the beach, and
(13:08):
we salvaged everything we could with more than one trip
two by fours and stuff like that, and gathered enough
so I could build a framework for a boat. And
I copied Henry Elegance. He was the one that originally
built this boat and made a frame and scraped the
(13:30):
money for the plywood to put on the bottom. And
one of my mentors, Bud Thomas, had this twenty eight
horsepower outboard which he loaned to me, and I put
on that and I used that for well, that was
my first boat.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
When you say that the herring fishery was taking off,
what does that mean? Does it mean that the market
was developing or like the something with the I don't
know how to exploded in population?
Speaker 4 (14:05):
Yeah, I don't know how developed originally, but you could
see these guys picking wild hering on kelp and we
heard they were getting ten or fifteen cents a pound there.
It wasn't that much.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
The hearing row yeah, well.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
It's on microsister scalp and the hearing legs on it.
But they were harvesting it and they were selling it.
So the next year, ooh, you know, it started to
develop and seemed like when I first picked picked up
did the wild harvest, it was like fifty cents a
(14:50):
pound or I can't remember, twenty five and then fifteen,
and then it went to a dollar a pound, and
there was so much interest that the participation grew just
out of control. God, people were flying from different places,
(15:12):
landing their plane and harvesting and putting it on the pondtoons,
I mean all kinds of so ye. The last harvest
I did the season was twenty minutes, and the quota
for the fish egg island area was one hundred tons.
(15:33):
What so it took a twenty minutes to harvest one
hundred tons.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
That you're saying one hundred tons of eggs. They removed
not from the fish, but removed from the kelp with
the kelp with oh on, okay, so not scrape from
the leaf. Yeah, I got you. And then that fisheries
switched over eventually to where they sin the herring for
(16:01):
the road or is that a different.
Speaker 4 (16:03):
That's a Sitka fishery where I lived around fish egg
they never to do that, but there was a sane
bait fishery. Oh so the fishery went away. Sitka was
a fifty ton wild rowand kel harvest. Heiderberg was fifty ton.
(16:24):
I think they opened Sitka second time. Craig was one
hundred and years later. I asked one of the biologists,
John Valentine, said why did that fishery go away? He
said it was decimating the herring and to this day,
Heidelberg doesn't have a spawn. Yeah, it literally wiped it out.
(16:50):
It wasn't that big to begin with, and Craig was
decimated for it still is compared to what I remember
when I was growing up. You would spawn for a
couple of weeks there here there, I mean continuous spawning.
Now it lasts about three days. And if you don't
(17:10):
get your branches, which we put no water for harring
to spawn on, if you don't get there the first day,
you're not going to get good eggs. So it's that quick.
And oh, I think it's just beat down and will
not recover, will not recover. No, because they several years
(17:35):
back they developed this what they call pounding where they
capture the herring and put the kelp in there and
then they add herring and for like they can hold
them like for five days and they come out with
a real thick product and a lot of times that
(17:58):
is a lot of times they harvest one hundred tons
or more and the herring are considered dead by the department,
but you know, they do release them, but they're in
pretty bad shape. So this pounding started in Prince William Sound. Yeah,
(18:18):
they came down and gave lessons to the boys down
in the southeast here about how to do it, and
you know, and they were selling it to the most
of Japanese and making pretty good money. But in Prince
William Sound the herring went away as well, and the
(18:39):
biologists there had a chance at one of our reasonaal
Visory Council meetings to ask him what happened to the herring?
Did the oil spill kill him? And he said no,
he said the pounding did so. I don't think it's
recovered yet. But they actually used to send airplanes down
here harvest microso to help because it didn't grow there
(19:02):
are not good enough quality in any case, and fly
it up to court over wherever they're based from and
use that in their pounds.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Wow, geez, extreme value to this stuff. Yeah, someone to
do that. So now you guys still harvest it now
and sell it commercially.
Speaker 4 (19:22):
No, I had a license that I got rid of it.
I never could make any money out of it, but
there are a couple of groups I probably do okay
on it.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
But you guys, you said you are still harvesting it now,
for that's personal harvest.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
So our one of our episodes covers traditional harvest of
hairing eggs cutting down a young hemlock tree and we
submerged in the spawn and the herring spawn on the
bows and then we harvest it later. So we that
was but.
Speaker 4 (19:58):
We do personal harvest on the wildcilt, which does not
get as thick as what the pounds would. Where they
captured these herring and hold them and force them to
spawn them, you know, and it gets pretty.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
Thick, you know. WEKEI talking about Ike, you talking about
Ron Layton. Ron Layton was always very upset about the
herring fishery. Yeah, well, yeah he didn't. He was always
thought that it was ill advised. It is the herring
(20:32):
because it is a forage fish. Yeah, I mean everything
well co host king salmon are dependent on herring.
Speaker 4 (20:45):
Yeah. I think they've been massacred and started off back
and the early nineteen hundreds if you well, I'm not
sure the take, but they had big herring reduction plants
and Chatham Straits where the cats all herring and run
them through the reduction plant. I don't know if they
saved any of it for animal feed or what, but
(21:06):
they wanted the herring oil.
Speaker 5 (21:08):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 4 (21:09):
Yeah, all those stocks has never recovered. So we just
have a few small places seems to be doing better
than anywhere else. But every place they've had a pound
fishery uh or a heavy gilnet fishery like keshakes the
(21:32):
gilnet fishery that's all gone ere in a sound Huna
sound Cordova uh, all of Seymour Canal, all of us
that have gone away. They don't have a commercial fishery
either anymore.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
When what was the what was when you were younger
and starting out fishing. What was the first time that
you were fishing for your own money? Like that you
were in charge catching fish, selling the fish and using
it to support yourself and not using it to support
like not doing it as an employee, but doing it
(22:09):
as your own, as your own boss.
Speaker 4 (22:13):
Well, I crewed on boats trolling and sainting later in
my later teens and did Halbert fishing. But nineteen seventy
I was able to save enough money to buy my
own boat.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
And then you did like what activities did you do
out of your own boat?
Speaker 4 (22:36):
I trolled for salmon primarily, and I had that boat
for eight years. In the last two of the eight years,
I guess I did fish for Halbot, but I wasn't
really good at it, and then I bought a bigger
boat and started. After a couple of years, owning that
(23:01):
I can, I changed it over so I can fish
a blackout in halib It.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
Tell him about the name. The name of your boat, Dad, And.
Speaker 4 (23:12):
Well, I made this deal to buy this boat, and
this guy lived in Tacoma, and okay, we agreed twelve thousand.
So I quit my job so I could go get
the boat. And then he decided, well, I'm not going
(23:33):
to sell it, and I said why not. Well, this
guy offered me more money, and my wife's giving me
a hard time, and so I wound up paying him
fourteen thousand, and then I went to Tacoma and brought
the boat home. I can't remember what else. He asked me.
The name, Oh, the name of it was Franjo. It
(23:55):
just so happened that my younger sister was Joanie and
my old their sister had two sisters, was Francis. And
they thought my sister Joanie thought I named it after them,
but I didn't. Then it never didn't tell her any different.
Speaker 3 (24:13):
It came with that name, and they were all, oh
he named the Wow, I love that story because when
dad got his newest troller, I thought for sure because
I saw, oh, all the dads had named their boats
(24:36):
after their daughters. So when he got this boat, I
thought for sure, he's going to name it after me, right,
So I'm telling everyone, Well, he had a different name
picked out, but then he heard that. I was so
excited they named it after me. And I didn't find
out till like fifteen years later that he had a
difference second choice. I was like, oh my gosh. So
(25:01):
I think about that, and it reminds you of his
first boat in that name, and I.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
Wonder where that came from, because yeah, Jennifer has an
uncle and his boat is named after his daughter, oldest daughter.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
His tradition, Mike, Cassie, Cassie, the tattoo on your hand.
Heather explained the tattoos on her hands before Cassie, your
left hand, you have the same right or you have
the same hook?
Speaker 4 (25:28):
Correct, Yeah, oh you should.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
So he's teaching the crew how to say nah, it's
in slinkett, it's nah, that's a wood hook.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:40):
Well, Garrett's calling it knocks. So all last week, Mike,
can I see the knocks? And my task like, what
are you talking about? And so we had lessons, but
this is the only nah we've ever retired. Sea Monster.
He carved it in like nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
And so you share that one. And then Mike, what
is your left hand?
Speaker 4 (26:09):
That's a beaver raven till that is my clown.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
Heather. Heather was telling me that I can't know if
we talked about this before, but yeah, we did talk
about this a year ago, and maybe you have recollections
of it as well that I don't know what years
this would have been that and I don't even know
how it came.
Speaker 4 (26:36):
To be, but like.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
Tribal people were discouraged from any kind of markings permit. Yeah, yeah,
we're like where did that? Who did? Like how like
according to who? And how is it enforced? And how
is that expressed?
Speaker 3 (27:00):
I don't know all the answers to those questions. But
for about one hundred years, it was illegal to practice
like cultural tattooing, so it would normally take place during
like a kuek, which is like also known as a potlatch,
So it was illegal to even have a potlatch practice
(27:24):
your culture ceremonies are you know, there's different words used
in English or you know, our traditional language, and so
a lot of this went away because it wasn't legal
to do so. So then you see a lot of
like jewelry cuffs, carved earrings, and in that way people
(27:46):
could wear their clan crests and remove it when required too.
But this is permanent regalia.
Speaker 6 (27:53):
This was.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
Traditionally, you know, during a ku week or potlatch, you'd
get tattooed. And so Dad and I got our clan
crest tattooed, you know, and as a way to reclaim
what's ours. We're opposite, so you follow your mother's lineage.
(28:20):
So I'm an Ego and he's a raven, so we're
opposite clans. And I see a lot of this coming back.
So there is like a revitalization of the cultural tattooing
and even like the hand hand poke tattoos.
Speaker 4 (28:41):
Yeah, so most of that was imposed by what's referred
to as missionaries, and they didn't want to speak your
own native language. So if Ron was growing up, my
mother did not teach us, I knows, but she was
(29:02):
very fluent. Your mother was, yeah, my grandmother and my aunts,
but they didn't teach kids because it really wasn't okay.
They were taught that it wasn't okay. A lot of
the kids were forced to go to boarding schools in
(29:28):
the lower forty eight. My mother did not go there,
but she did go to Rankle Institute, but they forbade
them to speak their own language there, and you know,
just basically destroyed a lot of culture. So you didn't
see new Totem poles for many, many years. They did
(29:53):
start during the Three Sea Days and the Depression days.
They had the three C program.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
I can't civilian you mean the Civilian Conservation.
Speaker 4 (30:08):
Yeah, core. Yeah, So they did build some poles during
now and they paid them under that program. So that's
where the original Totem poles came from in Claw, Okay.
And they've been recarved since then, but that's where those
poles came from. So there was thirty or forty years
(30:29):
where probably not many poles were carved at all. It
just made a mess out of the culture, really, you know,
so I think, and yeah, effort is made now to
try to restore some of it, but you know, these
(30:51):
are modern times. It's all different, you know, but you know,
it is working a little bit. H I can see, oh,
some pride, restoration, and the people themselves. And I think
that's important. When I was growing up, it really wasn't
(31:17):
okay to be native. So I've seen a change in
my lifetime. Yeah, sad as maybe, but that's the attitude
even natives that that were better off, oh, treated natives
that weren't so well off, you know.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
So I don't understand.
Speaker 3 (31:38):
It's like lateral violence.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
Oh I'm sorry, I do. Yeah, I got what you're saying.
You mean that that well off, like natives that were
well off treated other natives.
Speaker 4 (31:49):
Looking down on the ones that weren't so well off,
you know. So, you know, and I felt that when
I was growing up. So I'm glad to see that
not so much anymore.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
You guys had shown me when we were boating around.
There's a couple of interesting things you showed me over
by your place. Maybe you could speak to them. One,
I'll just go in the order in which we saw them.
One was you showed me a location where there had
been a smokehouse. Oh yeah. And I believe that once
(32:27):
they did the once they kind of parceled Alaska out,
being like Fort Service gets this, tribe gets this. Whatever
the BLM gets this. However, they divided it. They went
around and would kind of destroy some relics what they
regarded as relics. But what we're actually like active smoke
(32:50):
houses is my understanding of this.
Speaker 4 (32:52):
Correct, that's crack, But that didn't happen until.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
Jeez, between the thirties and.
Speaker 4 (33:00):
Right after statehood. I guess that. Okay, the Forest Service,
you know, owned x amount most of the law. For
some reason, they decided to clean up all the old
smokehouses and stuff like that there were on federal law.
Not really well, they didn't care about village sites. My
(33:26):
great grandfather was chief of Tuxican. It was when I
was a young kid. There was a lot of poles
and h houses that you could tell we're all there
and everything when we went by. I remember seeing it
on our way to Starcar. But they logged shortly after
(33:51):
that and logged right through the old village site. You know,
in fact today you can see cables still laying on
the ground there, and you alsoee garden mound remnants of
uh house posts, the corner posts, and there's a few
of those left. But there was numerous totem poles when
(34:12):
I was a kid. But you know, they're floating logging camps,
and the loggers cut sections of those and had them
as ornaments on their floating camps. Really yeah, yeah, but
no one cared. You know today, if you did that,
(34:33):
they'd put you in jail, I suppose, but they're they're
more protected now, but no one cared. They got rid
of all this. One of the smokehouses is on the island.
We used to go there where kids with that little
out rowboat with a five horse we'd go out there
and we'd hang out there, and it was big enough
(34:54):
to where you could actually stay in there. You know,
everybody had pretty good sized smokehouses than today, Like the
big is just real.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
Where the smokehouses positioned to be close to a spawning run. Yeah,
so you could stay there fish and smoke fish.
Speaker 4 (35:15):
Well, there was old village sites there, or at least
of summertime fish camps. And that's a real protected place
where I showed showed you and there's numerous fish drops.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
That was the second thing that I was gonna ask
you about. When we were out we went. You pointed
out some things that I would never ever have noticed,
But once you pointed them out, that was so obvious.
What I was looking at but and I meant to
go investigate the creeks around here and look for the
(35:53):
same clues. You pointed out canoe landings at Creek Miles
where the lark the rocks are cleared away, and there's
actually like a little concave groove going way up the beach.
Never you would you could live there your whole life.
(36:16):
If someone didn't say, like you see, look line up
and look that way, you'd live there your whole life
and not realize what you were looking at. It was
a place to drag a canoe aboat up, and then
the remnants of the fish traps that you could also
live there your whole life and just think that that's
the rocks, how God laid them down. And then you
(36:40):
show me and're like, oh, like once you see it,
you're like, oh my god, it's like they're arranged like weirs.
You know, that was very surprising to me, and I
haven't looked here for that.
Speaker 4 (36:54):
Almost all our criecks have those, and the ones that
didn't have a good supply of rocks, ah, they drove
steaks in the ground to make the fish trap. So
you know, if there's no rocks, apply to do that.
(37:15):
Then they used wooden steaks, and like up in Clock Lake,
there's wooden steaks up in the lake that are ah
they have even been carbon dated, and I can't remember
the dates. But my good friend Steve Langdon is a
professor of anthropology. He did a lot of study and
(37:38):
pulled some of those up and had him dated. What
let's see. Oh, there's a couple of places where I
could show you where there's actually what you call clam
gardens where the rocks were laid out and it's filled
with the proper substrate, if you will, for a climb garden,
(38:03):
and there's still visible and still clams of them today
and the otter been digging at them. Oh really, But
the actually practice amriculture hundreds of years back, and a
lot of the villages were close to a good clambed,
(38:26):
like the one John Darrow he referred to it as
empty clamshell village at uh Agnes's where we we've we've
found artifacts there and the only things left is stone.
You know, uh because in the winter time dark and
(38:50):
the days are short, but you could always go get clowns,
you know, bad weather whatever, there was always something you
could harve us.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
Do you remember from uh, do you remember from your
relatives or maybe things you've heard how people dealt with
the risk of paralytic shellfish poisoning when there was no
government funded testing.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
They'd put I was told they'd put them in their
mouth and see if it turn your mouth, they'd spit
them out. But that's what all the elders told me.
Rub it on their lips and then wait.
Speaker 4 (39:38):
But on the other hand, we had colder weather, colder
water then we do have today, which is spawning a
lot of these things. But there are some places where
there just seemed to be a hawk all the time,
and it could be in the the gravel they grow.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
And I guess you mean hot with the alt with
the algae.
Speaker 3 (40:04):
Yeah, call them hot clams, you know, like yeah, but
you know, do you know a sea otter won't eat
a hot clam? They can tell they know, they have
like a mechanism where they.
Speaker 5 (40:18):
Really that's why we don't eat them out of the cove,
right or is that something else?
Speaker 1 (40:23):
No, we when we used to eat clams before I
got too scared of shellfish poisoning. When we used to
eat clams, we didn't eat clams in the cove because
back then people would run these very not well functioning
sewage systems into the cove.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
Jimmy, we want to go get one and we'll rub
it on a slip and.
Speaker 5 (40:43):
See, I think the tides too high to find one
goes down?
Speaker 1 (40:48):
Would you now eat?
Speaker 4 (40:49):
Like?
Speaker 1 (40:49):
Not now? But let's say like, are you comfortable eating
clams in the winter or no?
Speaker 4 (40:55):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (40:56):
What do you do?
Speaker 4 (40:59):
Well?
Speaker 3 (40:59):
So the te staying the test for.
Speaker 4 (41:01):
Mere what do I do you eat part of one?
Speaker 1 (41:05):
You do?
Speaker 4 (41:06):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (41:07):
And wait how long the.
Speaker 4 (41:08):
Off It doesn't make your lips tingle or anything. They're fine,
you know. But on the other hand, we have a
clam fishery that goes on yeah, gooey duck fishery, and
they're right next door and they're harvesting those and they
passed the test. So I've seen no reason why normal
butter clams when I could get them, which are all
(41:31):
gone now, would be fine to eat.
Speaker 1 (41:36):
M hmm.
Speaker 4 (41:37):
They're they're filtering the same water. Ye.
Speaker 1 (41:41):
So you're like, if I took you over yonder right here,
and it was January February and we dug some clams,
you would eat a part of one. Yeah, And if
your lips didn't get numb. You dig in, Yeah, if
it was a good clam. Particular about where I dig them.
(42:01):
I don't dig him out of the mud. I like
to dig him out of the mixture of clamshell or
clamshell where they're nice and white and good color and
healthy fat clams. That's the preferred places I would dig them.
Speaker 5 (42:22):
Do you ever use like clams as hal a de
bait doo his work or do you.
Speaker 4 (42:27):
The guy ducks do? But you know, I had never
used them, but a friend of mine did. They had
a bunch of her. I don't know what was wrong
with him, but he used for albut bait and they
work fine. But we're using that type of thing or
putting clams in your crab pot to catch the crab.
We used to have a lot of these, uh sunfishy
(42:49):
call them. Yeah, they all got killed by a bacteria,
not a virus of that bacteria killed them. But those
things are run as fast as they could to get
those clowns. Was that right? It wasn't the best bait?
Speaker 1 (43:05):
Yeah, a few years ago. There's still so many down
like uh, I mean they're all over the place down
off Washington. The oceanic sunfish. A few years ago there
was a giant right out here in the arm and
people got video of it. They had no idea what
they're looking.
Speaker 2 (43:24):
At the mola.
Speaker 1 (43:26):
Yeah, not around.
Speaker 5 (43:28):
Aren't there some fish of those that are like targeted?
Speaker 4 (43:30):
And what are you talking about? Sunfish? I'm talking about
these starfish that are.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
Oh sea stars.
Speaker 4 (43:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
Oh, I thought you meant that big you know that
oceanic sunfish that like lays on the surface. I thought that,
Oh so the see yeah, the sea stars. Yeah, they're
all gone. I always thought I always heard as a virus,
it's a bacteria. Yeah, they're gone. I mean those things
are gone.
Speaker 4 (43:52):
They just discovered it was a bacteria. That's that's new news.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
Yeah, okay, I was confused because.
Speaker 4 (43:59):
So if you clams in the crab pot a these
uh sea stars, you could have a crab pot full
of those instead.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
Of crab like they like it better than it like clams.
Speaker 4 (44:10):
That's one of the main stays that they eat.
Speaker 1 (44:12):
Okay, okay, when you said that about you know, you
know that fish I'm talking about right, yeah, because they
make it up here. Sometimes I thought I thought you
meant that there was more before like that somehow there
was more of those fish around now that lay on
their side. And do you know what I'm talking about now?
Speaker 4 (44:32):
I know exactly because rub them.
Speaker 1 (44:34):
With a brush. You can rub them with a scrub
brush and they like it that. It's a crazy.
Speaker 4 (44:38):
Fish fishing out mus on Once some one day, the
sunfish was on the kind of and see his fin
and stuff, and I thought it was a big shark.
And before I saw it, it was coming right by
my trolling lines and I thought, oh crap, I'm going
to hit that shark, you know, but it went right
by his high end. Nothing there was one of those
(45:01):
big sunfish.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
Gosh, I thought it was.
Speaker 4 (45:06):
I thought I was gonna run right into it, but
actually it wasn't a shark.
Speaker 1 (45:11):
It was yeah sunfish swimming around his fin out of
the water.
Speaker 4 (45:15):
They don't have no tail on them.
Speaker 5 (45:16):
You also, do you like, do you target salmon sharks
or do you know people that do?
Speaker 1 (45:22):
No, He's very interested in salmon.
Speaker 5 (45:24):
I love salmon sharks as am. I.
Speaker 4 (45:26):
Yeah, I've seen them jump out of water down at
head off for whatever reason, just like I don't know
what they were doing, but salmon sharks and we catch
one once in a while trolling.
Speaker 5 (45:39):
I've heard they taste amazing.
Speaker 4 (45:42):
I don't know they might be, but I don't eat sharks.
I've got a lot of blue sharks and dogfish. Yeah,
I just can't. Uh they have her? Are you real
to him?
Speaker 5 (46:00):
Know that?
Speaker 4 (46:00):
I don't know how to deal with that. I've cut
steaks and soaked it in salt water and good no
when your people do eat them.
Speaker 1 (46:13):
You know, when you were in the black cod in
the black cot fishing business, were you were you longlighting
black cod?
Speaker 5 (46:21):
Or did you?
Speaker 1 (46:22):
Okay? What was that? What was that like as a
you know, what was that like as a business? Was
that like a profitable business to be in?
Speaker 4 (46:31):
It was very good for me. I started like eighty four.
I think it turned into a derby everybody. Well, what
happened was the Medicine Stephens Act kind of opened the
(46:52):
door for that. Before that, the foreign longliners would come
across Japanese Koreans and fish block God and the market
was really poor two bits a pound or whatever. If
you couldn't do anything else, you could go fish block God.
(47:14):
But the market wasn't that great. So when the two
hundred mile limit came in, it allowed the American fishermen
to participate more. Yeah, they claimed, you're never going to
catch all those cod, but Yankee ingenuity, we figured out
how to catch them, I mean way better than they did.
(47:35):
So as we took more of the quota, they got less,
and then pretty soon they were just moved completely out
because we could harvest it all. Yeah, it was actually
pretty good fishery, but because everybody wanted to jump in
(47:57):
on the halbut and blockod fishery, they turned into and
the fleet was increasing at twenty percent a year. So
then the if Q program was finally put in place
to save lives, if you well, because people were literally
killing themselves to get out and get their share of
(48:18):
the quota. The quota, I mean both shuldn't have been
out there in bad weather, you know, but they would
do it, and you know it was costing. Yeah, So
then the if Q program, now we have it did
(48:43):
stabilize things. But I have less quota than I used
to catch, you know, like I started off with thirty
two thousand pounds of qualified for thirty two thousand pounds
a hell, but and I think I'm just under nine
thousand now because of conservation cuts and so on. Yeah,
(49:04):
that's a pretty bad hit too. What's that stand for?
I f qu individual fish quota, so you actually own
the quota, got it? You can sell it, you can fish.
Speaker 1 (49:18):
It, and you can catch it when you want and
opening wind opening day window.
Speaker 4 (49:25):
Yeah, you have from March to December almost you know,
to catch your halbut or or cod. So it's a
better fishery in that respect.
Speaker 1 (49:39):
So do you mostly fish alone?
Speaker 4 (49:43):
I used to do all my fishing a loan except
for Halbert black Gott. I had a crew but halibuta. Raymond,
my boy, and I used to do that ourselves. But
now I'm old and creaky, so I go out with
him and h I can't say I didn't fish this
year because I did. I just didn't fish salmon, but
(50:05):
I did go get the hell.
Speaker 1 (50:06):
But do you like fishing with your boy?
Speaker 4 (50:10):
Yeah? I was fun. There is tough, you know, and
he's a fisherman, which never encouraged him be one, but
he is. So he's pretty good at it.
Speaker 1 (50:23):
What was if you would if you were going to
discourage someone from it? On what grounds would you discourage it?
Speaker 4 (50:31):
It's really an unstable way to make a living. Hu
We've taken a lot of cuts, and you know, everybody
wants a piece of the pie, a bigger piece. Uh,
like the sport charter group. Oh, you can't have unlimited
(50:54):
effort on a limited resource, and that's what we're seeing
with that group. There's still no restriction. Anybody can get
licensed up and start the charter business. You know, got it,
But it is a limited resource. So the last couple
of years prior to this, they had virtually an unlimited
(51:19):
season where there was no in season management. They okay,
you get twenty percent, but we're not going to manage
you in season. So they got more than their twenty percent,
so they took it out of the commercial trollers. So
we didn't get a second opening.
Speaker 1 (51:38):
Oh, got it.
Speaker 4 (51:41):
So this year they've changed that to where there is
in season management. So they got shut down on Kings
and June sometime, and then they decided that they had
four thousand fish more coming and so they could keep
(52:02):
one the non residents keep one at it's an annual limit.
Speaker 1 (52:08):
Yep, we're well aware, but.
Speaker 4 (52:11):
That's what happened this year. That's why the restriction. For
the last two years, two or three years prior to that,
there was no inn season management, which was really unfair
to the commercial fleet because they just took the fish
away from them to make up the difference.
Speaker 1 (52:35):
In resource management, you often find that different user groups
always blame the user groups always blame other user groups.
Speaker 4 (52:51):
I don't blame those guys, but my suggestion at our
AC meetings is you guys should try to do a
limited entry on yourselves so you have some stability in
what you're doing, and your licenses would be worth a fortune.
Oh but you got to curb this gross somehow, just
(53:14):
like the individual fish quota on the federal side and
the limited entry on the state side for commercial sainting
and trolling, there's a limit of how many boats. But
right now the sport commercial is totally unlimited, and it's
(53:36):
a limited amount of fishs. So everybody's scrapping for a
bigger piece of the pie all the time, at least
they are. They're always lobbying for more.
Speaker 1 (53:47):
The point I was going to make about that the
way different user groups, and this goes across the board.
Different user groups look to other user groups as the problem.
But I was shocked when I was reading some a
report that the state put out. I would have thought,
just by guessing I would have thought in southeast Alaska
(54:11):
you would see that commercial harvest unlike these key species.
The commercial harvest, in my mind, I would have been like,
it's got to be ninety percent compared to recreational harvest.
But for a lot of a lot of the main
target species, recreational harvests surpasses commercial harvest.
Speaker 4 (54:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (54:35):
I had no idea because we always blame right epeconically
on the commercial guys caught them all.
Speaker 4 (54:41):
I know one lodge that lounds more fish than the
commercial fleet and Craig so hmm, yeah, and they don't
talk about it anymore, but they made the break. They
caught a million pounds or chipped out a million pounds
of you know, process fish like you did. That doesn't
(55:02):
count all the waste stuff that.
Speaker 1 (55:06):
That's a million pounds a yeah, skinless, boneless.
Speaker 4 (55:12):
Yeah, really that's a lot. And that's more.
Speaker 2 (55:16):
It's probably four million in actual fish bodies.
Speaker 4 (55:19):
That's more than the the troll fleet and Craig catches
and lands and sells commercially.
Speaker 1 (55:28):
Huh.
Speaker 4 (55:30):
So it's significant. But without that hattery in Claw, which
is licensed for five million eggs, they'd probably all go
broke there. And it's funded by a fisherman. For the
most part, three percent off the top goes into a
(55:51):
hattery enhancement. Got its.
Speaker 3 (55:57):
Fish.
Speaker 4 (55:59):
They hatch co hos in that hat tree. It's five million,
five million eggs of coho eggs and has been fairly successful.
This year is kind of we're seeing uh for a
fifty three million prediction. I'm not seeing the fish. I
(56:21):
see a feel out here. Doesn't look too bad. There's
a few scattered jumps coming inside Cassambey. But on the
other side it's not very good.
Speaker 1 (56:32):
Also, I don't this is just observational. I don't know
what this year is appears. This year appears to be
very different on a salmon situation, I didn't know if
this is a very poor hatch a few years ago.
Speaker 4 (56:48):
I don't know. They're saying humpies, but some of the
co hosts aren't showing like I think they should. There's
there's kink salmon. Yeah, yeah, there's plenty of king salmon.
I mean, you know, it's it's pretty good. We can't
keep or catch them, you know. I think on the
(57:11):
second opening that my share is seventeen fish for the
second opening as a commercial fisherman. Yeah, seventeen seventeen. When
I started fishing in nineteen seventy, I could fish on
the ot on the ocean from April fifteenth till September twentieth,
(57:34):
and I could keep king salmon the whole time. And
now the king salmon season lasted what four or five days?
Speaker 1 (57:42):
Huh?
Speaker 4 (57:44):
So I've seen some change.
Speaker 1 (57:46):
What's those seventeen fish? What's one of those fish worth?
Speaker 4 (57:50):
I don't even know. I didn't land the king salmon
commercially this year yet. I think they're six and a
quarter pounds. So oh, I think that's the first opening
they were paying six and.
Speaker 1 (58:05):
A quarter of a pounds as gutted and guild.
Speaker 4 (58:08):
So a twenty pound fishes is you know? It's okay?
Speaker 1 (58:13):
Hmm. What has it been like for you guys together
as you've been working on the show you're working on.
What's that been like? I don't work on the show,
but you participate.
Speaker 4 (58:33):
I've been in just kind of enjoying life this year.
I'm taking a heather out, a lot of fish kinks,
having fish alba hana otter, get greens, go after soccer
eyes and stuff like that.
Speaker 3 (58:51):
There's a common like recurring thing that I hear Dad saying,
and he goes, I'm just the driver. So he's anytime
we give him a little responsibilities like I'm just the driver.
Speaker 4 (59:06):
So this is the first time in my whole life,
if you will, that I've just done what I wanted
for the summer.
Speaker 3 (59:12):
Not this is the first time I've had my dad,
been able to spend summer with my dad in my
whole life. So this is a special time being able
to do the show with it. We have an incredible group,
you know that has joined us to capture all of
these moments from you know, meat Eater, but we couldn't
(59:35):
have asked for a better group. Dad and Garrett totally
hit it off, and the girls are great. And this
is my first summer with Dad, so he's been gone,
you know, from spring till fall fishing my whole life.
So if we could catch king salmon to other you know,
(01:00:00):
just like going out and the skiff and catching king salmon,
we'd get them in like before the middle of June.
So in years past I would catch one or two
king salmon total because he'd go commercial fishing for that.
So in June, I'm like, oh, I got my king
for the year, and that's it, you know. So this
(01:00:23):
has been great, and yeah, thank you Dad, because it.
Speaker 5 (01:00:30):
Is a lot.
Speaker 3 (01:00:30):
It's a lot, it's a lot, but being able to
capture some of these moments that we just wouldn't have
otherwise been able to, and with my niece joined us
this last round with Halibit, and just being able to
take up space for our you know, our culture and
(01:00:53):
indigenous people, and we represent such a large group of people,
but you know, each tribe and each individual within their
own community deserves to be uplifted and celebrated in their
own right. And so this is just this show is
an opportunity to just get a kind of like a
(01:01:14):
peekin through that window of our view and I'm thankful
that we get to capture some of it.
Speaker 1 (01:01:24):
What can you name the episodes for people so they
know what to look for.
Speaker 3 (01:01:28):
Yeah, so I'm I believe we're in a kickoff with
the sea otter episode, and then.
Speaker 5 (01:01:37):
We have.
Speaker 3 (01:01:39):
The harring eggs, so we have the herring spawn harvesting
herring eggs, and then we have a seal hunt and
we process the seal and make seal oil in the cracklings,
which you've tried, and then we're fishing with the knach
so the woodhooks, and then the last two episodes will
(01:02:03):
be I think two parts, which is Gonne fish Camp,
so dried fish making the cold smoked strips, jarring the fish,
and fermenting coho eggs. So in September and the co
host you know, come in. We're gonna do Coho fish
(01:02:25):
camp and ferment some skeins. And I'm worried about Samantha
because she walks around my property like this, and I'm like,
what's wrong? And She's like, there's just a lot of
smells in Alaska that I've become nose blind to and
I forget everything smells.
Speaker 1 (01:02:46):
And Mike, were you making a peer? Are you in
all of them? Or are you just driving?
Speaker 4 (01:02:51):
Like?
Speaker 1 (01:02:51):
Do you talk in all of them?
Speaker 2 (01:02:53):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (01:02:53):
He's he's a highlight.
Speaker 4 (01:02:54):
I I don't think, so, I don't know. I just
do what I do.
Speaker 1 (01:02:58):
But I told them, you.
Speaker 3 (01:03:00):
Know, my dad, the reason why I'm able to do
all this stuff and know the things that I know
is because my dad, you know, through all the stuff
we mentioned earlier here, he was able to still learn about,
you know, our culture and and practice that even through
(01:03:21):
all of those attempts to make us not anymore. And
that's the greatest gift I could have ever received. And
so I told, you know, the team that I really
want to highlight and uplift my dad and he deserves
all that recognition. So I do think you're going to
see a lot of him. And anytime I post anything
(01:03:43):
anyway on social media, they're like, we don't want this,
we want your dad. More videos of your dad. So
he deserves it. He's awesome, and he's so funny, and
this a little subtle dry humors you know there throughout.
So I'm excited to see.
Speaker 4 (01:04:03):
It's kind of nice. I didn't have a chance to
Hea there wasn't a hunter and went out so much
of this. Raymond did a lot of it. And then
she moved away and came back and she goes out
with me every opportunity, and she's learned considerable amount, much
(01:04:25):
more than Raymond actually about different tuffs. He's paying attention
to the cultural part of it. And I was going
to say I was going to go king salmon fishing.
It wasn't my intention just not to go, but I
got COVID just days before the season opened. It just
(01:04:46):
knocked me totally off the game. So once I missed
that part of it, I don't care about coho is
that too much work for the amount of pay again?
And now with seventeen kings, Amon just doesn't get my
heart started. So I'm just having a good time.
Speaker 1 (01:05:05):
Yeah, if you did go to get the seventeen, how
long would you expect to fish to catch the seventeen?
Speaker 4 (01:05:13):
One day or not even a day one day season? Yeah.
So the last time we got a one day fishery,
which was three years ago, I got over one hundred.
Speaker 3 (01:05:25):
Okay, Dad was out there too, old guys. I think
his crew is what in his seventies too, Yeah, and
they were. They did so good. I think they got
the most or second most out of the fleet Dad
that comes back. I you know, I helped Dad with
all his healthcare stuff, appointments and everything, so I've learned
(01:05:48):
the older he gets seventy six now, but to always
book an appointment for because he comes back with like
a broken back or needing backs. So he does all
his maintenance in the winter, all repairs.
Speaker 1 (01:06:04):
Yeah, but steroid.
Speaker 3 (01:06:07):
Injections in his hands and everything to keep him going.
Speaker 4 (01:06:12):
Lots of repair work. The older, you get, everything hurts,
so fish for many many years. It's just like twenty
four hour openings of hal but he has spend it
all at the roller hauling in fish. You know, I
got some good video of doing exactly that. But yeah,
(01:06:36):
you come home and for two or three days of
your hounds or but yeah you loaded the boat and
did really well. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:06:45):
I didn't learn how to hunt until I was twenty eight.
I never punted at all, never shot a rifle. So
that was last year. I'm just kidding. I'm thirty nine,
but I'm gonna be twenty nine forever. But anyway, when
we went, when I started hunting with my dad, I
(01:07:07):
would take one of my best friends, guy friends with
me and we'd go with him, and he packed two
deer out at a time till he was sixty nine
years old. We looked at each other, I'm like, we
just have to be able to pack one deer out
until we're that old. So he's a bad accid. He's yeah, tough,
and it's hard to believe.
Speaker 4 (01:07:29):
I'm a mess. B well man.
Speaker 1 (01:07:33):
I appreciate that you came to talk to us and
tell people. Tell everybody like when when can they come watch?
When when they go to watch all the stuff this fall.
Speaker 3 (01:07:45):
This I believe in September. Am I allowed to say? Yeah,
just go and see September. I don't have a date actually,
but this September, this next month, and is.
Speaker 1 (01:07:56):
It gonna be called our world of life for real title?
Speaker 3 (01:07:59):
So it's called our way of life in our language,
it's haku stay So yeah, look for I'm excited.
Speaker 4 (01:08:09):
It's uh.
Speaker 6 (01:08:11):
September twenty ninth. Good job, perfect, thank you and media
YouTube channel and outdoor channel.
Speaker 4 (01:08:18):
So there you go. Eight pm.
Speaker 3 (01:08:22):
Okay, that is my first time learning this.
Speaker 4 (01:08:28):
How how fluent are you?
Speaker 3 (01:08:30):
We're not fluent?
Speaker 1 (01:08:31):
You're not?
Speaker 4 (01:08:32):
Yeah, so.
Speaker 3 (01:08:34):
We know some words, Dad's my grandma is fluent, but
then wasn't. Yeah, a lot of that was lost.
Speaker 2 (01:08:41):
For a generation with boarding school.
Speaker 4 (01:08:46):
Too old, I forget everything I learned.
Speaker 3 (01:08:47):
So yeah, I teach my nephew you know what I know,
and he picks up right away. So we try to
use a lot of traditional place names and words and
learn new words all the time. And that's something I
really would like to do, is learn our traditional language.
Speaker 2 (01:09:06):
Yeah, but you know, is there anybody that kicks around
in the village, like just speaking the tongue someone else?
Speaker 4 (01:09:17):
Some of the older ladies and are a fluent.
Speaker 3 (01:09:22):
Yeah, there's classes offered to through.
Speaker 5 (01:09:26):
UA.
Speaker 3 (01:09:27):
It's the uas the University of Alaska, and then through
the tribe, our regional tribe.
Speaker 1 (01:09:39):
Mike, do you call Garrett Garrett or do you call
him Dirt?
Speaker 3 (01:09:44):
He calls him fat ass because because when we're on
the boat, you know, Garrett's a made incredible you know,
he's right there with the camera, but we all can't
be on the same side of the boat at funt huh.
But when Garrett takes one step on the boat, the
whole boat, he's dense, he is, and he's not a
(01:10:07):
big dude. I mean, he's fit. But finally after we
got we were filming the first time we all met.
We filmed for three weeks straight, so twenty one days.
It was a lot, and it forced us to get
very comfortable with each other. So after a few days,
my dad just start calling him a fat ass because sure,
(01:10:29):
but he lost weight. So when he came back this time,
we're like, hey, you're not as fat anymore.
Speaker 1 (01:10:36):
But I noticed he's got a little tin of dip there,
So I thought maybe him and Dirt formed a little Yeah.
I heard about the dipping a partnership. Yeah, we called diplomacy.
Speaker 3 (01:10:46):
It was like he gave us a detailed description and
was telling my dad about how awesome.
Speaker 1 (01:10:53):
No diplomacy with Dirt myth we call.
Speaker 3 (01:10:56):
Him, I call him Garrett. But we can have asked
for better people to work with. They're they're a lot
of fun.
Speaker 5 (01:11:03):
Dad.
Speaker 3 (01:11:04):
Dad's a got his own way of communicating. So the
last day goes, I'm thinking about going fishing tomorrow, and
that's like his way of inviting you, and Dirt goes, oh,
oh yeah, I'll go, and Smith goes, yeah, I want
to go too, and Dad just ignores her and she goes, actually,
(01:11:27):
never mind, I'm going to go to the coffee shop.
It gets all cream puffs tomorrow morning instead, because we
could tell they just wanted to go out and hang
out together.
Speaker 4 (01:11:35):
That it was crappy, and I think she changed her
mind anyway. Yeah, so we were what we were doing
all we were waiting for the last set of hooks.
It took us a while to catch a fish. Yeah,
while we're waiting, I cruised over the We're going to
see if there's any co hos here. So we did
catch co hos and I've ever seen anybody get so
(01:11:58):
excited as Garrett. Uh huh.
Speaker 1 (01:12:03):
Have you ever eaten dinner with them?
Speaker 4 (01:12:04):
Totally?
Speaker 5 (01:12:05):
You're going to bring that up. Did you talk about
that last night?
Speaker 3 (01:12:08):
Everything's like a brand new experience. I wow, look at this,
oh sunset, you know, like, look, guys, so pretty night.
Speaker 4 (01:12:16):
Yeah, but I've never seen anybody get so excited over
catching a few co hos, you know. So the girls
were in the other boat and they were fishing as well, and.
Speaker 1 (01:12:30):
Anyway, he's a good guy.
Speaker 4 (01:12:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:12:35):
Well, Mike, thank you so much for joining us day
to talk about what you guys got coming up. And
I appreciate you participating in it. Yeah, with Heather. I
appreciate you coming to discuss it with us and for you.
Speaker 4 (01:12:49):
One of the most fun things I do in my
life is get that boat and go cruising. You have
the right idea. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (01:13:00):
Yeah, that is.
Speaker 4 (01:13:03):
I spent a lot of time in there. I've had
it since ninety one and that's the number six out
word on it.
Speaker 1 (01:13:09):
So huh.
Speaker 3 (01:13:11):
Yeah, that dad, I just found finally. I searched Craigslist
for years trying to find a boat like that, and
I found the same boat in ninety one exact same boat.
Speaker 4 (01:13:23):
I was born.
Speaker 3 (01:13:24):
There's one for sale in my town right now.
Speaker 1 (01:13:27):
I just got to see if they got flat black paint.
Speaker 4 (01:13:29):
Yeah, yeah, you gotta have flat black.
Speaker 3 (01:13:32):
But when dad, when we try to mic him up,
now they learn to give me the mic to give
to him. And I tried to do it, and he said,
I'll put this on when I'm ready. So we're like, okay,
we just said it in the.
Speaker 4 (01:13:46):
Dash now and we're not doing anything else. You don't
need this on after an hour before you're yeah, that's right. Yeah,
is it okay, Okay, we're done.
Speaker 3 (01:13:59):
We just yeah, he goes.
Speaker 4 (01:14:03):
You never know what I might say, So.
Speaker 1 (01:14:07):
I understand.
Speaker 2 (01:14:08):
Are we gonna skin a seat?
Speaker 1 (01:14:10):
No, yeah, we're gonna do it as a separate thing.
Speaker 3 (01:14:12):
Yeah, I'm worried. On the cruise over here, we saw
a bunch moving in here on you.
Speaker 1 (01:14:17):
So they're coming. I've seen more this year than it's
been amazing.
Speaker 5 (01:14:21):
Man, I've never seen like it's just so recently. It's
just like they were just here.
Speaker 1 (01:14:26):
It was the first one maybe five years ago. Now
it's the first time you ever see where you can
look and there's like a group of a dozen. Then
there's a group of six. It used to be like
people would be like I saw one, and everybody like, no,
you did not, we saw. We'd argue about it.
Speaker 4 (01:14:39):
We could have been those when we first came here.
But they must have moved out in the middle of
the bay or something.
Speaker 1 (01:14:44):
They lay out deep. I don't understand it.
Speaker 3 (01:14:46):
It's different than on our side. You go to the
same spots and they're there, big pots of them. But here,
you know, I marked, I marked on my onyx where
they were in the depth and how many. I collect
data as much as I can on it's the otter.
But then we went back out what half hour later,
and they're all gone yep, Whereas on our side they
(01:15:09):
just all stay and if if you scare them away,
they'll come right back to that.
Speaker 4 (01:15:13):
These are nomads, man, there's a general rule when you
spoke about they try to get the open water. I
think that's what those did.
Speaker 1 (01:15:21):
Got it. We're gonna skin one on camera just so
people can see, and it'll be released as as a
flop episode.
Speaker 3 (01:15:29):
Okay, you're ready, good?
Speaker 1 (01:15:32):
Thanks, thanks again for coming on. I can't wait to see.
I think people are gonna love it, man, I hope so.
I think it's gonna be such a because I like
the time I've had to hang out with you guys.
I thought it was great.
Speaker 5 (01:15:42):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (01:15:43):
Yeah, I think it's gonna be a little different. Got
the same same soft voice. I think I'm talking fast,
you know, and I listen to myself, I'm like, what
the how slow I talk? So it's gonna be a
little different pace.
Speaker 1 (01:15:58):
I think talk just you're good.
Speaker 5 (01:16:00):
You'll get used to it would be good shake.
Speaker 1 (01:16:03):
Thank you again, Ma,
Host
Steven Rinella
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