Pod Insights The MeatEater Podcast Ep. 753: A Life On The Sea About this episode Steven Rinella https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella/?hl=en talks with Mike Douville, Heather Douville https://www.themeateater.com/people/heather-douville, Janis Putelis https://www.instagram.com/janis_putelis/, Seth Morris https://www.instagram.com/sethmorris_45/?hl=en, and Jimmy Rinella https://www.instagram.com/jimmyrinella/ 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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Transcript 12,980 words · 7 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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3:26 Steven Rinella? Welcome everybody. If you're a regular listener to the show, you first met, um, at least from this podcast standpoint, you first met Heather DuVille sitting in this kitchen.
3:38 Speaker 00 Yeah.
3:38 Steven Rinella? Or whatever you call this, this main area, a year, about a year ago. Heather DuVille on social media, A K Moosey. She came on the show. We talked a bunch about sea otter hunting, her life growing up, sowing fur, all kinds of things.
3:54 Steven Rinella? 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?
4:09 Speaker 00 Sure. This is my dad. His traditional name is Git Wayne. English name is Mike.
4:17 Speaker 00 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 way.
4:24 Speaker 02 Yep, they walk all around.
4:25 Speaker 00 They're putting in their order for four ones.
4:27 Speaker 03 It's got a little bit of a, uh, like a Navy SEAL undercover. It's all black.
4:34 Speaker 00 So he painted it black.
4:36 Speaker 03 Why?
4:36 Speaker 00 So it blends in, you know, with the beach and yeah. He just put a fresh coat of paint on it this year.
4:43 Speaker 04 Not just any black, it's flat black.
4:46 Speaker 02 Got it. Not gloss black.
4:48 Speaker 03 Not shiny.
4:50 Speaker 02 Mike, the thing that surprised me to hear, and I tried to argue out of it when I heard that you knew the guy that built this place.
5:02 Speaker 04 That's correct.
5:03 Speaker 02 And I thought to myself, he must mean that the S A frame, because I hear about the people that built the A frame. I never heard anything about, we only know back two owners.
5:20 Speaker 02 But our neighbor, Ron Layton, um, 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 Ketchikan.
5:33 Speaker 02 Ron Layton would talk about the people that we bought from, the people they bought from, and then a guy who was very tough.
5:46 Speaker 02 And Ron pays no compliment to anybody.
5:50 Speaker 02 Might the very tough person be the person you know that raised children here?
5:56 Speaker 04 Yeah, that's Rory Bifos. Uh, he, uh, he grew up, I'm not sure where he grew up, in Myers Chuck, maybe, but I know he built a home here with, uh, this house when he got married. He married Marion and she was from Myers Chuck.
6:15 Speaker 02 Okay.
6:16 Speaker 04 Yeah, he's a pretty stout boy and he's still fishing.
6:21 Speaker 02 Huh.
6:23 Speaker 04 I actually have a picture of his boat in my phone. I took a couple of weeks ago. And I asked him about, just to make sure I knew what I was talking about, but he did build this house, yes.
6:36 Speaker 02 In the eighties?
6:37 Speaker 04 And I think seventies.
6:42 Speaker 04 When I first met him, he had a boat called the Isis. It was a double end wood boat. But now he's got a fiberglass boat, uh, that is also the Isis.
6:53 Speaker 02 What's the, what's the word you're saying?
6:56 Speaker 00 Isis.
6:56 Speaker 04 Isis.
6:57 Speaker 02 What does that mean? I mean, I know the meaning.
6:59 Speaker 04 It spelled like is is.
7:01 Speaker 02 Yeah.
7:01 Speaker 00 I looked it up. There has a, I sent it to you. I think there's like a mythology tied to it, but.
7:08 Speaker 02 Got it.
7:08 Speaker 00 Mm hmm. Um, yeah, he had two daughters.
7:12 Speaker 02 See, I had that he had, I had, my recollection from Ron is that he had two sons.
7:19 Speaker 04 No, two girls.
7:21 Speaker 02 Did he? He lived here with those girls?
7:23 Speaker 04 Yeah.
7:25 Speaker 00 Isn't it?
7:25 Speaker 04 Well, for a while and then he eventually moved to, uh, Myers, Chuck, and he built a nice log cabin there. I think he sold it. But, uh, anyway.
7:37 Speaker 02 So what was he doing when he lived here?
7:39 Speaker 04 He was probably fishing.
7:42 Speaker 00 Commercial fishing.
7:43 Speaker 02 Yeah, like a trolling for salmon.
7:45 Speaker 04 Yeah, trolling and long line for. I know he fished black cod for many years, halibut.
7:53 Speaker 02 Okay.
7:54 Speaker 04 Uh, in the winter, uh, troll for king salmon and, uh, long line for yelloweye.
8:04 Speaker 02 Got it. Oh, long line for yelloweye.
8:06 Speaker 04 Yeah.
8:06 Speaker 02 So Ron that I keep talking about, he had a, he had a halibut long line license and did that for a while. He had a troller as well. Then down the beach a little bit was Mel.
8:22 Speaker 02 Um, Fairbanks.
8:23 Speaker 04 Yeah.
8:24 Speaker 02 He trolled salmon and ran shrimp pots.
8:30 Speaker 04 Right.
8:30 Speaker 02 For business.
8:32 Speaker 04 I know Ron Leighton, uh, you know, he was on our regional advisory council for the federal one. And, uh, he was living in Cassan for a while, then he moved to Saltre Cove.
8:43 Speaker 02 Yeah, and then moved to Craig. Thorn, sorry Thorn Bay.
8:48 Speaker 04 Yeah.
8:48 Speaker 02 Yeah. So you knew Ron?
8:50 Speaker 04 Yeah.
8:51 Speaker 02 Did you ever, um, did, did you ever have a, uh, any kind of confrontations with Ron?
8:57 Speaker 04 No, no, we got along fine.
8:59 Speaker 02 Yeah, us too, but I, but all, but he, um, we got along good through confrontation.
9:08 Speaker 04 No, he was,
9:11 Speaker 04 he was easy to get along with, you know, uh, we all get along with each other on the, the council.
9:17 Speaker 02 Okay.
9:18 Speaker 04 And we meet twice a year.
9:20 Speaker 02 Yep.
9:20 Speaker 04 And they're generally three day meetings. So, no, it's fine.
9:25 Speaker 02 He was a, um, he was a dear, dear friend of ours. And, 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,
9:45 Speaker 02 I never, I mean, if I looked 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. Um, 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. And then when his wife passed away, he didn't want to be out here anymore. Um, and, and, and moved out and, and did what's kind of an odd practice here is
10:22 Speaker 02 Seth's place was like this, my place is like this, Ron's place is like this, odd practices. When you sell it, um, it seems people don't move out. They just walk away. And you buy their possessions. Like there's no moving out. Ron, Ron didn't move out.
10:41 Speaker 00 What did you acquire when you bought it?
10:45 Speaker 00 What's the most memorable thing?
10:47 Speaker 02 No, I found this on the beach.
10:48 Speaker 05 Found the hat. I, when I, when we bought the A-frame, there was like totes of clothes and just like personal items.
10:56 Speaker 02 Yeah, we burned.
10:57 Speaker 00 When you came here.
10:57 Speaker 02 We burned most of everything, but yeah, everything. And we got rid of most of it. Most of it was just old, moldy and tore up, you know?
11:05 Speaker 04 I believe Ron was a policeman in Ketchikan for some time.
11:09 Speaker 02 That's right. He was a detective.
11:13 Speaker 02 You don't, you don't, that's not true?
11:15 Speaker 04 Uh, no, I believe it is. You know, I just didn't know him before.
11:18 Speaker 02 Oh, he was a door gunner. He was a door gunner in Vietnam.
11:22 Speaker 04 Yeah.
11:23 Speaker 02 He had been shot down two times in Vietnam. Yeah.
11:27 Speaker 05 Didn't he say that he had a great time there?
11:30 Speaker 02 He always, that was the thing we used to laugh about Ron is he was the only guy we knew that had just like seemed to have nothing but a good time. A good time when he was in Vietnam.
11:41 Speaker 04 One of my friends that lives in the cake, uh, was a crew chief on the Huey hole in Vietnam as well.
11:50 Speaker 02 When I.
11:51 Speaker 04 I asked him, why weren't you a door gunner? He said, well, we had a guy that was better at it than me. So.
11:56 Speaker 02 Oh, but see, no, cause 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
12:18 Speaker 02 growing up, like my dad was a World War Two guy, but my, most of my buddies dads were Vietnam guys. Um, I went to Vietnam for a visit and it was funny that one of my good friends dads didn't even want to look at me.
12:36 Speaker 02 Having, couldn't believe.
12:38 Speaker 05 Really?
12:39 Speaker 02 You would go to Vietnam.
12:42 Speaker 02 Ron was thrilled and wanted to know how everybody was.
12:50 Speaker 02 Was his attitude about he was eager for a report, you know, huh, to share notes. But, uh, Mike, how did you spent most of your life commercial fishing? Is that right?
13:03 Speaker 04 Oh, yeah, all my life, actually.
13:07 Speaker 04 This is the first year in sixty five years I did not go trolling, so.
13:12 Speaker 02 And how did, how did it come about?
13:14 Speaker 04 Actually, I've been a fisherman for, since I was, uh, eleven years old. I've, 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.
13:30 Speaker 02 How did it come about? When you were eleven, how did it come about that you became a fisherman?
13:36 Speaker 04 Oh, I had this burning desire to be a fisherman for some reason, and I talked my stepfather into taking me out. And then I became sort of like slave labor, you know? Yeah, so you didn't get paid.
13:51 Speaker 02 No.
13:53 Speaker 04 And the second year I fished with them, I got, I got paid, uh, my pay was a, uh,
14:01 Speaker 04 a Mossberg twenty-two Magnum that cost thirty-five dollars from Sears and Roebuck.
14:08 Speaker 02 Those you pay for the season?
14:09 Speaker 04 Yep.
14:10 Speaker 02 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, the arrangement?
14:24 Speaker 04 You were helping to support the family.
14:27 Speaker 02 Okay.
14:29 Speaker 04 There was no personal gain. It was just, uh, something you did, you know? You're expected to.
14:38 Speaker 00 And then before you bought your boat, you built one, right?
14:44 Speaker 04 Uh, no, I,
14:47 Speaker 04 when I was like sixteen years old or fifteen, uh, I could, I didn't have any money.
14:55 Speaker 04 And that was about the time the, uh, wild herring spawn on kelp was, uh,
15:04 Speaker 04 taking off. And one of the shipwrights there was building boats for that fishery and they built a pretty good little, like a riverboat plywood skiff.
15:16 Speaker 04 And, uh,
15:20 Speaker 04 Not having any money, uh, my partner and I, my lifelong friend Art Kennedy had a rowboat with a five horse motor on it. We used to go everywhere with it. Before he had the motor, we rode it. It had double set of orlocks and two guys could row and we could, uh,
15:40 Speaker 04 we could go anywhere we wanted, pretty fast.
15:44 Speaker 04 But anyway, we went to fish egg and it used to be more lumber around, uh, in those days on the beach.
15:49 Speaker 02 Uh.
15:51 Speaker 04 And we salvaged everything we could, um, with more than one trip, two by fours and stuff like that. And, uh, gathered enough so I could build a framework for a boat. And I copied Henry Nelligan's. He was the one that originally built this boat.
16:10 Speaker 04 And, uh, made a frame and scraped the money for,
16:16 Speaker 04 uh, the plywood to put on the bottom and,
16:20 Speaker 04 uh, one of my mentors, Bud Thomas, had this 28 horsepower outboard, which he loaned to me and I put on that and I used that for, well, that was my first boat.
16:35 Speaker 02 When you say that the herring fishery was taking off, what, what does that mean? Does it mean that the market was developing or like the, the, the something with the,
16:45 Speaker 04 I don't know how it developed.
16:47 Speaker 02 Fish kind of exploded in population?
16:48 Speaker 04 Yeah, I don't know how it developed originally, but you could see these guys picking wild, uh,
16:58 Speaker 04 uh, herring on kelp. And we heard they were getting 10 or 15 cents a pound or it wasn't that much.
17:07 Speaker 00 The herring roe.
17:08 Speaker 02 Mm hmm.
17:09 Speaker 00 Yeah.
17:10 Speaker 04 Well, it's on microcystis kelp and the herring 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, uh,
17:25 Speaker 04 Seemed like when I first picked, picked, uh,
17:30 Speaker 04 did the wild harvest, it was like 50 cents a pound, or I can't remember, 25 and then 50 and then it went to a dollar a pound.
17:38 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
17:40 Speaker 04 And there was so much interest
17:44 Speaker 04 that
17:46 Speaker 04 the participation grew just out of control.
17:49 Speaker 02 Got it.
17:51 Speaker 04 Uh, people were flying from different places, landing their plane and harvesting and putting it on the pontoons, uh, I mean, all kinds of. So it,
18:04 Speaker 04 the last harvest I did, the season was 20 minutes. And the quota for the Fish Egg Island area was 100 tons.
18:16 Speaker 02 What?
18:17 Speaker 04 So it took, uh, 20 minutes to harvest 100 tons.
18:22 Speaker 02 Jeez. That's, you're saying 100 tons of eggs removed, not from the fish, but removed from the kelp?
18:31 Speaker 04 With the kelp.
18:33 Speaker 02 With, oh, oh, on, okay, so not scraped from the leaf?
18:36 Speaker 04 Yeah.
18:37 Speaker 02 I got you.
18:38 Speaker 04 Yeah.
18:38 Speaker 02 And then that fishery switched over eventually to where they, they sane the herring for the roe? Or is that a different?
18:46 Speaker 04 That's a Sitka fishery, where I live, around Fish Egg, they never did do that, but there was a sane bait fishery.
18:54 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm. Oh.
18:55 Speaker 04 So
18:58 Speaker 04 the fishery went away. Uh, Sitka was a 50-ton wild roe on kelp harvest. Heidelberg was 50-ton. I think they opened Sitka a second time. Craig was 100.
19:15 Speaker 04 And years later, I asked one of the biologists, John Valentine, I said, why did that fishery go away? He said it was decimating the herring.
19:23 Speaker 02 Mm hmm.
19:25 Speaker 04 And to this day, Heideberg doesn't have a spawn.
19:29 Speaker 02 Yeah.
19:30 Speaker 04 It literally wiped it out. It wasn't that big to begin with.
19:36 Speaker 04 And Craig was decimated for, it still is compared to what I remember when I was growing up. It would spawn for a couple of weeks there, here, there, and they continue spawning. Now it lasts about three days. And if you don't get your branches, which we put in the water for herring 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.
20:07 Speaker 04 I think it's just beat down and it
20:10 Speaker 04 oh will not recover.
20:12 Speaker 02 Will not recover.
20:14 Speaker 04 No, because they uh several years back, they developed this uh what they call pounding. Where they capture the herring and put the kelp in there.
20:26 Speaker 02 Mm hmm.
20:27 Speaker 04 And then they add herring and uh 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
20:41 Speaker 04 is uh a lot of times they harvest a hundred tons or more.
20:48 Speaker 04 And the herring are considered dead by the department, but you know, they do release them, but they're in pretty bad shape.
20:55 Speaker 02 Okay.
20:56 Speaker 04 So this pounding started in Prince William Sound. And they came down and gave lessons to the boys down in southeast here about how to do it and you know, and they were selling it to the mostly Japanese and making pretty good money.
21:17 Speaker 04 But in Prince William Sound, the herring went away as well. And the biologist there had a chance at one of our regional advisory council meetings to ask him, what happened to the herring? Did the oil spill kill them? 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 microcystis kelp because it didn't grow there or not good enough quality in any case and fly it up to, Cordova, wherever they're basing from and use that in their pounds. Wow. Geez, it's extreme value to this stuff. Yeah.
22:00 Speaker 04 Someone to do that. So you guys still harvest it now and sell it commercially? No, I had a license and I got rid of it. I never could make any money out of it, but there are a couple of groups that probably do okay on it. But you guys, you said you are still harvesting it now for personal use?
22:19 Speaker 00 Yeah, traditional harvest. So our, one of our episodes covers traditional harvest of herring eggs.
22:29 Speaker 00 Cutting down a young hemlock tree and we submerged it in the spawn, the herring spawn on the boughs and then we harvest it later. So we, that was.
22:41 Speaker 04 But we do personal harvest on the wild kelp, which does not get as thick as what the pounds would where they capture these herring and hold them and force them to spawn on, you know, and it gets pretty thick.
22:55 Speaker 02 You know, we keep talking about, or I keep talking about Ron Layton. Ron Layton was always very upset
23:04 Speaker 02 about the herring fishery.
23:08 Speaker 04 Yeah, well.
23:09 Speaker 02 Yeah, he, he didn't, he, he was always thought that it was ill-advised.
23:14 Speaker 04 It is.
23:15 Speaker 02 The herring.
23:15 Speaker 04 Because it is a forage fish.
23:18 Speaker 02 Yeah.
23:19 Speaker 04 I mean, everything, well, cohoes, king salmon,
23:25 Speaker 04 are, are dependent on herring. And I think they've been massacred. It started off back in.
23:35 Speaker 04 Early nineteen hundreds, if you will, I'm not sure of the date, but they had big herring reduction plants in Chatham Straits where they'd catch all the herring and run them through the reduction plant. I don't know if they saved any of it for animal feed or what, but they wanted the herring oil.
23:51 Speaker 02 Hmm.
23:52 Speaker 04 And all those stocks has never recovered. So we just have a few small places. Sitka Duiya seems to be doing better than anywhere else, but every place they've had a
24:08 Speaker 04 pound fishery, or a heavy gill net fishery like Keshakes, the gill net fishery, that's all gone. Erna Sound, Hunna Sound, Cordova, all of Seymour Canal, all of those have gone away. They don't have a commercial fishery there anymore.
24:31 Speaker 02 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 as your own, as your own boss?
24:56 Speaker 04 Well, I crewed on boats, trolling and sailing later in my later teens and did the halibut fishing, but nineteen seventy I was able to save enough money to buy my own boat.
25:12 Speaker 02 Hmm.
25:14 Speaker 02 And then you did, what, like what activities did you do out of your own boat?
25:19 Speaker 04 I trolled for salmon primarily. Yeah, I had that boat for eight years. The last two of the eight years, I guess I, I did
25:32 Speaker 04 fish for halibut, but I wasn't really good at it. And then I bought a, a bigger boat and started
25:43 Speaker 04 after a couple of years owning that, I can, I changed it over so I could fish blackfin and halibut.
25:48 Speaker 00 Tell them about the name, the name your boat dad and.
25:55 Speaker 04 Well, I made this deal to buy this boat and this guy lived in Tacoma.
26:03 Speaker 04 Um, okay, we agreed twelve thousand.
26:09 Speaker 04 So. I quit my job so I could go get the boat and then he decided, well, I'm not going 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.
26:24 Speaker 03 Ah.
26:25 Speaker 04 Then I went to Tacoma and brought the boat home.
26:29 Speaker 04 Uh. I can't remember what else you asked me.
26:33 Speaker 00 The name.
26:33 Speaker 04 Oh, oh, the name of it was Frango.
26:38 Speaker 04 The, it just so happened that I, my younger sister was, uh, Joanie and my older sister, I had two sisters, was, uh, Frances and they thought, my, my sister, Joanie, thought I named it after them, but I didn't, and I never did tell her any different.
26:56 Speaker 00 It came with that name.
26:57 Speaker 03 It came.
26:57 Speaker 00 Are you serious?
27:00 Speaker 00 And they were all, oh, he named the boat after.
27:04 Speaker 03 What a coincidence.
27:05 Speaker 00 Wow. I love that story because when dad got his newest troller, I thought for sure, cause I saw, oh, all the, the dads had named their boats after their daughters. So when he got this boat, I thought, thought for sure he's going to name it after me. 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 different.
27:38 Speaker 03 That you were his second choice.
27:40 Speaker 00 I was like, oh my gosh. So I think about that and it reminds me of his first boat and how, and that name and.
27:48 Speaker 03 I wonder where that came from. Cause yeah, Jennifer has an uncle and his boat is named after his daughter. Oldest daughter.
27:56 Speaker 00 It's tradition.
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30:07 Steven Rinella? the podcast. Hands down, these are my absolute favorite hunting knives. Every blade they make is a high-performance durable tool that you can rely on whether you're butchering, hunting, working on the farm, out in the field, doing chores, whatever. And I've got a massive update for you. People have been asking for this forever. MKC finally did it. I've been asking it forever. The wait is over. They're launching their very first folding knife. It's called the Montana. It's going to be dropping very soon. I'm telling you right now, these things are going to sell out fast. If you aren't ready the moment they go live, you're probably going to miss out. So here's what you need to do. Get over to MKC.com right now. Make
30:47 Steven Rinella? sure you sign up for their email and text message notifications. So you get the alert the exact second the knife drops. Montana Knife Company, working knives for working people. Head to MKC.com today. That's MKC.com. I can't wait to check out one of these folders. Mike, can I see, can I see the tattoo on your hand? Heather explained tattoos on her hands before. Can I see your left hand? You have the same right, or you have the same hook, correct?
31:19 Speaker 04 Yeah.
31:21 Speaker 00 You should, so he's teaching the crew how to say "nuck." It's in fling it, it's "nuck." That's a wood hook.
31:28 Steven Rinella? Yeah.
31:29 Speaker 00 Well, Garrett's calling it "nocks." So all last week, Mike, can I see the "nocks" in my test? Like, what are you talking about? And so we had lessons, but this is the only "nuck" we've ever retired. Sea Monster, he carved it in like 1992.
31:53 Steven Rinella? And so you share that one. And then Mike, what is your left hand?
31:58 Speaker 04 That's a beaver raven tail.
32:03 Speaker 04 That is my clan.
32:06 Speaker 02 Heather Heather was telling me that. I can't remember if we talked about this before. But um 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. Um. And I don't even know how it came to be, but like.
32:30 Speaker 02 Tribal people were discouraged from any kind of. Um markings.
32:37 Speaker 00 Permanent regalia, yeah.
32:38 Speaker 02 Yeah, where like where did that like? Who did like how?
32:43 Speaker 00 The government.
32:44 Speaker 02 Like according to who and how is it enforced and how is that expressed?
32:50 Speaker 00 I don't know all the answers to those questions, but for about a hundred years it was illegal to practice. Um like cultural tattooing, so it would normally um. Take place during like a couick, which is like also known as a potlatch, so. It was illegal to even have a potlatch, practice your culture ceremonies or. You know, there's different words used in English or, you know, our traditional language. And so um a lot of this went away because it wasn't legal to do so. Um.
33:30 Speaker 00 So then you see a lot of like jewelry cuffs, carved earrings and. And that way people could wear their clan crest and remove it when required to. But this is permanent regalia. This was. Um traditionally, you know, during a couick or potlatch, you'd get tattooed. And so dad and I. Got our clan crest tattooed, you know, kind of as as a way to reclaim what's ours.
34:00 Speaker 02 Mm hmm.
34:01 Speaker 00 Um. We're opposite, so.
34:05 Speaker 00 Um.
34:08 Speaker 00 You follow your mother's lineage, so I'm an eagle and he's a raven.
34:13 Speaker 02 Okay.
34:13 Speaker 00 So we're opposite clans. And I see a lot of this coming back. So there is a like a revitalization of
34:23 Speaker 00 the cultural tattooing and even uh like the hand hand poke tattoos.
34:30 Speaker 02 Yeah.
34:30 Speaker 00 Yeah.
34:32 Speaker 04 So most of that was imposed by what's referred to as missionaries.
34:37 Speaker 02 Mm hmm.
34:37 Speaker 04 And uh they didn't want to speak your own native language. So even when I was growing up, my mother did not teach us. So I know some, but uh she was very fluent, you know?
34:53 Speaker 02 Your mother was.
34:54 Speaker 04 Yeah. My grandmother and my aunts, but they didn't teach kids because it really wasn't okay. So
35:04 Speaker 04 they were taught that it wasn't okay.
35:06 Speaker 02 Uh huh.
35:08 Speaker 04 A lot of the kids uh were
35:14 Speaker 04 uh forced to go to boarding schools in the lower forty eight. Uh, my mother did not go there, but she did go to uh
35:25 Speaker 04 Rankle Institute.
35:29 Speaker 04 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.
35:42 Speaker 04 They did start during the three C days and the depression days, they had the three C program. Uh, I can't.
35:54 Speaker 02 Civilian, you mean the civilian conservation?
35:57 Speaker 04 Yeah.
35:57 Speaker 02 Core?
35:58 Speaker 04 Yeah. So they did build some poles during that and they paid them under that program. So that's where the original totem poles came from in Kaua.
36:09 Speaker 02 Okay.
36:10 Speaker 04 And they've been re-carved since then, but that's where those poles came from. So there was uh thirty or forty years where probably not many poles were carved at all.
36:24 Speaker 04 It just made a mess out of the culture, really, you know, so I think.
36:31 Speaker 04 Yeah, the effort is made now to
36:38 Speaker 04 try to restore some of it, but you know, these are modern times, it's all different, you know?
36:47 Speaker 04 But, you know, it is working a little bit. I can see
36:55 Speaker 04 some pride restoration in the people themselves.
37:00 Speaker 04 And I think that's important.
37:04 Speaker 04 When I was growing up, it really wasn't okay to be native, so I've seen a change in my lifetime.
37:15 Speaker 04 That as may be, but that's the attitude even natives had that were better off.
37:22 Speaker 04 Treated natives that weren't so well off, you know?
37:26 Speaker 02 I don't understand.
37:28 Speaker 00 It's like lateral violence.
37:31 Speaker 02 Oh, I'm sorry. I do. Yeah, I got what you're saying. You mean that well off, like natives that were well off?
37:37 Speaker 00 Treated other natives.
37:39 Speaker 04 Looked down on the ones that weren't so well off, you know? You know, and I felt that when I was growing up, so I'm glad to see that.
37:50 Speaker 04 Not so much anymore.
37:52 Speaker 02 You guys had showed me when we were boating around, there was 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 a smokehouse.
38:13 Speaker 04 Oh, yeah.
38:14 Speaker 02 And I believe that once they did the once they kind of parcel Alaska out, being like Forest Service gets this, tribe gets this, whatever, BLM gets this, however they divided it. They went around and would kind of destroy some relics. What they regarded as relics, but what were actually like active.
38:40 Speaker 02 Smoke houses. Is my understanding of this correct?
38:43 Speaker 04 That's correct, but that didn't happen till geez.
38:48 Speaker 00 Between the 30s and.
38:49 Speaker 04 Right after statehood, I guess that.
38:51 Speaker 02 Okay.
38:52 Speaker 04 The forest service, you know, owned X amount, most of the land.
38:56 Speaker 02 Uh huh.
38:57 Speaker 04 Um, for some reason, they decided to clean up all the old smoke houses and stuff like that. They were on federal land.
39:09 Speaker 04 Not village. Well, they didn't care about village sites, so.
39:15 Speaker 04 My great grandfather was chief of Tuxican, um.
39:21 Speaker 04 It was when I was a young kid, there was a lot of poles and, uh, houses that you could tell were all there and everything, uh. When we went by, I remember seeing it.
39:34 Speaker 04 On our way to Sarkar.
39:38 Speaker 04 But they logged shortly after that, logged right through the old village site, you know? In fact, today you can see cables still laying on the ground there and you also garden mounds, uh, remnants of, uh,
39:53 Speaker 04 uh, house posts, the corner posts, you know, there's a few of those left. But there was numerous totem poles when I was a kid.
40:05 Speaker 04 But, you know, they're floating logging camps and the loggers cut sections out of those and had them as ornaments on there.
40:14 Speaker 02 Oh.
40:15 Speaker 04 Floating caps.
40:16 Speaker 02 Really? Yeah.
40:18 Speaker 04 Yeah, but no one cared, you know? Uh, today, if you did that, they'd put you in jail, I suppose. But they're, they're more protected now, but no one cared. They, they got rid of all this. One of the smoke houses was on the island. We used to go there when we were kids with that little out, uh, rowboat with the five horse. We'd go out there and we'd hang out there. And it was big enough to where you could actually stay in there, you know? Everybody had pretty good sized smoke houses than today. Like as big as this room.
40:54 Speaker 02 Were the smoke houses positioned to be close to a spawning run?
41:00 Speaker 04 Yeah.
41:02 Speaker 02 So you could stay there, fish and smoke fish?
41:04 Speaker 04 Well, there was old village sites there, or at least
41:10 Speaker 04 of summertime fish camps. And that's a real protected place where I showed showed you that there's numerous fish traps there.
41:20 Speaker 02 Yep. That was the second thing that I was gonna ask you about.
41:27 Speaker 02 When we were out, we went, you you pointed out some things that I would never ever have noticed. But once you pointed them out, it was so obvious what I was looking at, but um, and I meant to go investigate the creeks around here and look for the same clues. You pointed out canoe landings at Creek Miles where the large, 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. 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.
42:12 Speaker 02 That it was a place to drag a canoe, a boat up.
42:15 Speaker 04 Yeah.
42:15 Speaker 02 And then the remnants of the fish traps that you could also live there your whole life.
42:24 Speaker 02 And just think that that's the rocks, how God laid them down.
42:30 Speaker 02 And then you show me and like, oh, like, once you see it, you're like, oh, my God, it's like
42:36 Speaker 02 they're arranged like weers, you know? That was uh, very surprising to me and I, and I haven't looked here for that.
42:44 Speaker 04 Almost all the creeks have those and the ones that didn't have a good supply of rock.
42:51 Speaker 04 Uh, they drove stakes in the ground uh, to make the fish trap. So, you know, it's if there's no rock supply to do that.
43:03 Speaker 02 Mm hmm.
43:03 Speaker 04 Uh, then they used uh, wooden stakes and uh,
43:09 Speaker 04 like up in Clark Lake, there's wooden stakes up in the lake that are uh, they've even been carbon dated, I can't remember the dates, but my uh, good friend, Steve Langdon is a professor of anthropology. He did a lot of studying and uh, pulled some of those up and had them dated.
43:32 Speaker 04 What? Let's see, uh, oh.
43:38 Speaker 04 There's a couple places where I could show you where there's actually what you call clam gardens. Where the rocks were laid out, it's filled with the proper substrate, if you will. Uh, for a clam garden.
43:53 Speaker 02 Hmm.
43:53 Speaker 04 And they're still visible and still clams of them today and the otter been digging at them.
43:59 Speaker 02 Oh, really?
43:59 Speaker 04 But they actually, um, practiced mariculture hundreds of years back. And a lot of the villages were close to a good clam bed.
44:15 Speaker 04 Like the one John Darrow, they, he referred to it as, uh, Empty Clam Shell Village. At, uh,
44:25 Speaker 04 Ignis where we, we've, we've found artifacts there.
44:28 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
44:29 Speaker 04 And the only things left is stone, you know, but,
44:33 Speaker 04 uh,
44:35 Speaker 04 because in the wintertime, dark and the days are short, but you could always go get clams, you know? Uh, bad weather, whatever, there was always something you could harvest.
44:49 Speaker 02 Do you remember from, uh, do you remember from your relatives? Or, or maybe things you've heard? How people dealt with the risk of paralytic shellfish poisoning? When there was no government funded testing?
45:10 Speaker 00 They'd put, I was told they'd put them in their mouth.
45:15 Speaker 00 And see if it.
45:18 Speaker 04 Turn your mouth, lips them.
45:19 Speaker 02 That's what Ron.
45:20 Speaker 00 They'd spit them out, but that's what all the elders told me.
45:23 Speaker 02 Ron, rub it on his lip.
45:25 Speaker 00 They'd rub it on their lips and then wait just a little bit.
45:27 Speaker 04 But on the other hand, we had colder weather, uh, colder water, you know?
45:35 Speaker 04 Then we do have today, which is spawning a lot of these things.
45:40 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
45:41 Speaker 04 But there are some places where there just seem to be hot all the time. Um, it could be in the, the gravel they grow in, I guess.
45:51 Speaker 02 You mean hot with the al, with the algae?
45:53 Speaker 04 Yeah.
45:55 Speaker 00 We call them hot clams, you know, like.
45:57 Speaker 02 Yeah.
45:57 Speaker 00 But you know, do you know a sea otter won't eat a hot clam? They can tell.
46:02 Speaker 02 They know?
46:03 Speaker 00 Mm hmm.
46:05 Speaker 00 They have like a mechanism where they.
46:08 Speaker 02 Really?
46:09 Speaker 05 That's why we don't eat them out of the cove, right?
46:12 Speaker 05 Or is that something else?
46:12 Speaker 02 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
46:26 Speaker 02 not well functioning sewage systems into the cove.
46:29 Speaker 00 Jimmy, you wanna go get one and we'll rub it on his lip and see?
46:34 Speaker 05 I think the tide's too high to find one, but we'll try it when it goes down.
46:37 Speaker 02 Yeah, would you now eat, like, not now, but let's say, like, are you comfortable eating clams in the winter or no?
46:44 Speaker 04 Yeah.
46:46 Speaker 02 What do you do?
46:48 Speaker 00 Well, so the testing, they test.
46:51 Speaker 04 I mean, what do I do?
46:52 Speaker 02 Rub it on your lips?
46:53 Speaker 04 No, I eat part of one.
46:55 Speaker 02 You do?
46:55 Speaker 04 Yeah.
46:56 Speaker 02 And wait how long?
46:58 Speaker 04 If 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.
47:07 Speaker 02 Yeah.
47:08 Speaker 04 A gooey duck fishery. And they're right next door and they're harvesting those and they pass the test, so I see no reason why. Normal butter clams, when I could get them, which are all gone now.
47:23 Speaker 04 Would be fine to eat.
47:26 Speaker 04 They're, they're filtering the same water.
47:29 Speaker 02 Yeah. So you're com- like, if I took you over yonder, right here, and it was January, February, and we dug some clams, you would eat a bar- part of one?
47:42 Speaker 04 Yeah.
47:42 Speaker 02 And if your lips didn't get numb, you'd dig in?
47:45 Speaker 04 Yeah. If it was a good clam, you know, I'm particular about where I dig them. I don't dig them out of the mud. I like to dig them out of a. A mixture of clam shell or clam shell, uh, where they're nice and white and.
48:01 Speaker 02 Yeah.
48:02 Speaker 04 Good color and healthy, you know, fat clams. That's the preferred places I would dig them.
48:10 Speaker 02 Yeah. Do you ever use like clams as halibut bait? Do those work or do you?
48:16 Speaker 04 The gooey ducks do, but uh, you know, I had never used them, but a friend of mine did. They had a bunch that were, I don't know what was wrong with them, but he used halibut bait and they worked fine.
48:29 Speaker 04 But we're using that type of thing or putting clams in your crab pot to catch crab. We used to have a lot of these, uh, sunfish, you call them.
48:39 Speaker 02 Yeah.
48:40 Speaker 04 They all got killed by a bacteria, not a virus of that bacteria killed them, but those things would run as fast as they could to get those clams.
48:53 Speaker 02 Oh, is that right?
48:53 Speaker 04 It wasn't the best bait.
48:55 Speaker 02 Yeah. Uh, a few years ago, um, 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. Uh, they had no idea what they're looking at.
49:14 Speaker 04 The mola?
49:16 Speaker 02 Yeah, not around. Aren't there some species of those that are like targeted in different parts of the world?
49:21 Speaker 04 What are you talking about sunfish? I'm talking about these starfish that are.
49:25 Speaker 02 Oh, sea stars.
49:26 Speaker 04 Yeah.
49:27 Speaker 02 Oh, I thought you meant that big, you know, that oceanic sunfish that like lays on the surface?
49:31 Speaker 04 I've seen those too.
49:32 Speaker 02 That's what you're talking, oh, so the sea, yeah, the sea stars. Yeah, they're all gone. I always thought, I always heard it was a virus. It's a bacteria.
49:39 Speaker 04 Bacteria.
49:40 Speaker 02 Yeah, they're gone. I mean, those things are gone, gone.
49:42 Speaker 04 They just discovered it was a bacteria. That, that, that's new news.
49:46 Speaker 02 Okay, yeah, okay. I was confused because.
49:49 Speaker 04 So if you put clams in a crab pot, all these, uh, sea stars, you get a crab pot full of those instead of crab.
49:57 Speaker 02 Like they like it better than they like fish or whatever.
49:59 Speaker 04 Clams, that's one of the mainstays that they eat.
50:02 Speaker 02 Okay, okay. When you said that about, you know, you know that fish I'm talking about, right?
50:06 Speaker 04 Yeah.
50:07 Speaker 02 Cause they, they make it up here sometimes. I thought, I thought you meant that there was more before. Like somehow there was more of those fish around that lay on their side and.
50:19 Speaker 00 Give him the
50:20 Speaker 02 Do you know what I'm talking about?
50:21 Speaker 04 Yeah, I know exactly because
50:23 Speaker 02 You can rub them with a brush, you can rub them with a scrub brush and they like it that it's a crazy fish. I'm not joking.
50:30 Speaker 04 I was fishing out Muzan once and um, one day a sunfish was on the kind of sea's 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 gonna hit that shark, you know, but it went right by his hide and nothing touched. And it was one of those big sunfish.
50:51 Speaker 02 Okay, alright.
50:54 Speaker 02 Gosh.
50:54 Speaker 04 I thought it was, I thought I was gonna run right into it, but actually it wasn't the shark. It was a
51:02 Speaker 02 Yeah.
51:02 Speaker 04 A sunfish.
51:03 Speaker 02 Swimming around his fin out of the water.
51:04 Speaker 04 They don't have no tail on them, you know, so.
51:07 Speaker 02 Do you um, like, do you target salmon sharks or do you know people that do?
51:11 Speaker 04 No. He's very interested in salmon sharks.
51:14 Speaker 02 I love salmon sharks.
51:15 Speaker 04 As am I.
51:16 Speaker 02 Yeah.
51:16 Speaker 04 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 shark.
51:26 Speaker 04 And we'd catch one once in a while trolling.
51:29 Speaker 02 I've heard they taste amazing.
51:31 Speaker 04 I don't know.
51:34 Speaker 04 They might be, but I don't eat sharks.
51:38 Speaker 04 I've caught a lot of blue sharks and um,
51:42 Speaker 04 dogfish. And I just can't, uh, they have a, you know, urea to them, you know, and I don't know how to deal with that.
51:53 Speaker 04 I've cut steaks and soaked it in salt water and
52:00 Speaker 02 No good.
52:00 Speaker 04 No. But people do eat them, you know?
52:04 Speaker 02 When you were in the black cod, in the black cod fishing business, were you, were you longlining black cod or did you?
52:11 Speaker 04 Yeah.
52:11 Speaker 02 You, okay, uh, what, 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?
52:20 Speaker 04 It was very good for me. I started in like eighty-four, I think.
52:27 Speaker 04 Um, it turned into a derby.
52:32 Speaker 04 Everybody, well. What happened was the Megs and Stevens Act. Uh, kind of opened the door for that.
52:44 Speaker 04 Uh, before that, the foreign long liners would come across Japanese Koreans. And fish black cod and the market was really poor.
52:56 Speaker 06 Hmm.
52:57 Speaker 04 Two bits a pound or whatever. If you couldn't do anything else, you could go fish black cod, but the market wasn't that great.
53:07 Speaker 04 So when the 200 mile limit came in, uh, 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. Uh, 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.
53:36 Speaker 04 Yeah, it was actually pretty good fishery, but.
53:41 Speaker 04 Uh.
53:43 Speaker 04 The, because everybody wanted to jump in on the halibut and black cod fishery, they turned into derbies. And the fleet was increasing at 20% a year.
53:53 Speaker 06 Hmm.
53:54 Speaker 04 So then the IFQ program was finally, uh, put in place to, uh.
54:02 Speaker 04 Save lives, if you will, because people are literally killing themselves to get out and get their share of the, the quote, the, uh, quota.
54:11 Speaker 06 Hmm.
54:12 Speaker 04 I mean.
54:14 Speaker 04 Uh.
54:17 Speaker 04 Boats shouldn't have been out there in bad weather, you know, but they would do it and, you know, it was costing.
54:24 Speaker 06 Yeah.
54:26 Speaker 04 So then the IFQ program would, now we have, uh.
54:32 Speaker 04 It did stabilize things, but I have less quota than I used to catch, you know.
54:39 Speaker 04 Like I started off with thirty-two thousand pounds of, uh, qualified for thirty-two thousand pounds of halibut. And I think I'm just under nine thousand now because of conservation cuts and so on.
54:53 Speaker 04 Yeah, that's a pretty bad hit, too.
54:55 Speaker 02 Mm-hmm.
54:56 Speaker 04 What's that stand for, the IFQ? Uh, individual fish quota.
55:02 Speaker 04 So you actually own the quota?
55:04 Speaker 02 Got it.
55:05 Speaker 04 You can sell it, you can fish it.
55:09 Speaker 02 And you can catch it when you want and not have to participate in that opening win- opening day window.
55:14 Speaker 04 Yeah, you have a, from March till December or almost, you know, to catch your halibut or cod. So it, it's a better fishery in that respect.
55:30 Speaker 02 Do you mostly fish alone?
55:32 Speaker 04 I used to do all my fishing alone except for halibut. Uh, black cod I had a crew, but halibut I, uh, Raymond, my boy, and I used to do that ourselves. But now I'm old and creaky, so I go out with him and, uh,
55:51 Speaker 04 can't say I didn't fish this year because I did, I just didn't fish salmon, but I did go get the halibut.
55:57 Speaker 02 Do you like fishing with your boy?
56:00 Speaker 04 Yeah, it was fun, it was tough, you know.
56:04 Speaker 04 He's a fisherman, which I'd never encouraged him to be one, but he is, so. He's pretty good at it.
56:13 Speaker 02 Wha- what was, if you would, if you were going to discourage someone from it, on what grounds would you discourage it?
56:20 Speaker 04 It's really an unstable, uh, way to make a living.
56:25 Speaker 04 Uh, we've taken a lot of cuts and, you know, everybody wants a piece of the pie, a bigger piece. Uh.
56:37 Speaker 04 Like the sport charter group?
56:38 Steven Rinella? Yeah.
56:41 Speaker 04 Oh, you can't have unlimited 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?
56:56 Steven Rinella? Got it.
56:57 Speaker 04 But it is a limited resource.
57:03 Speaker 04 So the last couple of years, prior to this, they had virtually unlimited season where there was no in-season management. They, okay, you get 20%, but we're not going to manage you in season. So they got more than their 20%. So they took it out of the commercial trailers.
57:25 Steven Rinella? Hmm.
57:26 Speaker 04 So we didn't get a second opening.
57:28 Steven Rinella? Got it.
57:30 Speaker 04 So this year, they've changed that to where there isn't season management. So, uh,
57:39 Speaker 04 they got shut down on Kings in June sometime and then, uh, they decided that they had 4,000 fish more coming and so they could keep one. The non-residents keep one.
57:54 Steven Rinella? Hmm.
57:55 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's an annual limit.
57:57 Steven Rinella? Yep, we're well aware.
58:00 Speaker 04 But that's what happened this year. That's why the restriction for the last two years, two or three years prior to that,
58:08 Speaker 04 there was no in-season management, which was really unfair to the commercial fleet.
58:14 Steven Rinella? Hmm.
58:16 Speaker 04 Because they, um, just, uh, took the fish away from them to make up the difference.
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1:00:56 Speaker 02 In Resource Management.
1:01:00 Speaker 02 You often find that different user groups
1:01:05 Speaker 02 always blame.
1:01:08 Speaker 02 User groups always blame other user groups.
1:01:11 Speaker 04 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.
1:01:31 Speaker 02 Oh.
1:01:32 Speaker 04 But you gotta curb this growth somehow, just like uh, the individual fish quota on the federal side. And the limited entry on the state side for commercial, uh, seining and trolling. There's a limit of how many boats.
1:01:52 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:01:52 Speaker 04 But right now, the sport commercial is totally unlimited.
1:01:55 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:01:56 Speaker 04 And it's a limited amount of fish. So everybody's scrapping for a bigger piece of the pie all the time. Or at least they are. They're always lobbying for
1:02:06 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:02:06 Speaker 04 more.
1:02:07 Speaker 02 The, the point I was gonna 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, a report that the state put out.
1:02:24 Speaker 02 I would have thought just by guessing. I would have thought in Southeast Alaska. You would see that commercial harvest on like these key species, the commercial harvest. Uh, in my mind, I would have been like, it's gotta be 90%.
1:02:42 Speaker 02 Compared to recreational harvest. But for a lot of the, a lot of the main target species.
1:02:50 Speaker 02 Recreational harvest surpasses commercial harvest.
1:02:54 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:02:55 Speaker 02 I had no idea. Cause we always blame
1:02:58 Speaker 04 Particularly on
1:02:59 Speaker 02 the commercial guys caught them all.
1:03:01 Speaker 04 I know one lodge that lands more fish, uh, than the commercial fleet in Craig. So.
1:03:09 Speaker 02 Hmm.
1:03:12 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:03:13 Speaker 04 They don't talk about it anymore, but they made the brag they caught a million pounds or shipped out a million pounds of, you know, processed fish like you did. That doesn't count the, all the waste stuff that.
1:03:27 Speaker 02 That's a million pounds of filet.
1:03:29 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:03:29 Speaker 02 Skinless, boneless.
1:03:32 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:03:33 Speaker 02 Really?
1:03:34 Speaker 05 That's a lot.
1:03:35 Speaker 04 And that's more than.
1:03:36 Speaker 05 More than I thought.
1:03:36 Speaker 03 It's probably four million in actual fish bodies.
1:03:39 Speaker 05 Yeah.
1:03:40 Speaker 04 That's more than the, uh, the troll fleet and Craig catches. And lands and sells commercially.
1:03:49 Speaker 02 Huh.
1:03:51 Speaker 04 So it's significant.
1:03:54 Speaker 04 But without that hatchery and claw, which is licensed for five million eggs. They'd probably all go broke there. And it's funded by fishermen, you know, for the most part, three percent off the top goes into hatchery enhancement.
1:04:15 Speaker 02 Got it.
1:04:16 Speaker 04 And that's.
1:04:16 Speaker 00 What fish are commercial fishermen?
1:04:19 Speaker 03 What fish are they hatching?
1:04:21 Speaker 04 Cohoas.
1:04:23 Speaker 04 In that hatchery, it's five million, uh, five million eggs of, uh, Coho eggs. And it's been fairly successful. This year is kind of,
1:04:36 Speaker 04 we're seeing, uh, for a fifty-three million prediction, I'm not seeing the fish. I see a few out here. It doesn't look too bad. There's a few scattered jumps, uh, coming inside Cassan Bay. But on the other side, it's not very good. Also.
1:04:55 Speaker 02 I, I don't. This is just observational. I, I don't know what, um, this year is, appears, this year appears to be very different. On a salmon situation. I didn't know if there was just a very poor hatch a few years ago.
1:05:09 Speaker 04 I don't know. They're saying humpies, but some of the Cohoas aren't showing like I think they should.
1:05:15 Speaker 02 Hmm.
1:05:16 Speaker 04 There's, there's king salmon.
1:05:18 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:05:19 Speaker 04 Yeah, there's plenty of king salmon. I mean, you know, it's, it's pretty good. We can't keep, keep or catch them, you know? Uh, I think on the second opening, the, uh, my share is seventeen fish.
1:05:37 Speaker 04 For the second opening.
1:05:38 Speaker 02 For as a commercial fisherman.
1:05:40 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:05:40 Speaker 02 Seventeen?
1:05:41 Speaker 04 Seventeen. When I started fishing in nineteen seventy, I could fish on the odd on the ocean.
1:05:50 Speaker 04 From April fifteenth till September twentieth, and I could keep king salmon the whole time. And now, uh, the king salmon season lasted, what, four or five days?
1:06:03 Speaker 02 Huh.
1:06:04 Speaker 04 So I've seen some change.
1:06:07 Speaker 02 What what's those seventeen fish? What's one of those fish worth?
1:06:10 Speaker 04 Uh, I don't even know. I didn't land a king salmon commercially this year yet.
1:06:17 Speaker 04 I think they're six and a quarter pounds, so, uh.
1:06:22 Speaker 04 Oh, I think that's the first opening. They were paying six and a quarter a pound.
1:06:27 Speaker 02 That's gutted and gilled.
1:06:28 Speaker 04 So a twenty pound fish is is, uh, you know, is okay.
1:06:34 Speaker 02 Hmm hmm. What has it been like? For you guys together as you've been working on? The show you're working on?
1:06:46 Speaker 02 Um.
1:06:48 Speaker 02 What's that been like?
1:06:50 Speaker 04 I don't work on the show, but, um.
1:06:53 Speaker 02 You participate.
1:06:54 Speaker 04 I've been. In just kind of enjoying life this year, taking Heather out a lot, uh, fish king salmon, fish halibut, uh, hunt a otter, uh. Get greens, uh, this.
1:07:09 Speaker 04 Go after sock eyes and stuff like that.
1:07:12 Speaker 00 There's a common like recurring thing that I hear dad saying, and he goes, I'm just the driver. So he's. Any anytime we, um, give him a little responsibility, he's like, I'm just the driver.
1:07:26 Speaker 02 Uh.
1:07:27 Speaker 04 So this is the first time in my whole life, if you will, that I've just. Done what I wanted for the summer, not worry about fishing.
1:07:35 Speaker 00 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. 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 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.
1:08:15 Speaker 00 So if we could catch king salmon together, you know, just like going out in 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.
1:08:36 Speaker 00 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 has been great and
1:08:48 Speaker 00 yeah, thank you dad, because it is a lot. It's a lot.
1:08:53 Speaker 00 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 Halibut and
1:09:08 Speaker 00 just being able to take up space for our, you know, our culture and 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 peek in through that window of our view.
1:09:41 Speaker 00 And I'm thankful that we get to capture some of it.
1:09:44 Speaker 02 What, can you name the, the episodes for people so they know what to look for?
1:09:49 Speaker 00 Yeah, so I, I'm, I believe we're going to kick off with the sea otter episode. And then we have the herring eggs, so.
1:10:05 Speaker 00 We have the herring spawn, harvesting herring eggs, and then we have a seal hunt. We process the seal and make seal oil in the cracklings, which you've tried.
1:10:15 Speaker 02 Hmm.
1:10:15 Speaker 00 And then we're fishing with the noch, so the wood hooks. And then the last two episodes will be, I think, two parts, which is going to be fish camp. So dried fish, making the cold smoked.
1:10:29 Speaker 02 Hmm.
1:10:31 Speaker 00 Strips, jarring the fish and um
1:10:38 Speaker 00 fermenting coho eggs. So in September, when the cohos, you know, come in, we're gonna do coho fish camp and ferment some skeins and I'm worried about Samantha because she walks around my property like this.
1:10:52 Speaker 02 Plugging her nose?
1:10:53 Speaker 00 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.
1:11:03 Speaker 04 Her crop post pile is what it is.
1:11:07 Speaker 02 And Mike, were you making appear? Are you in all of them or are you just driving? Like, do you talk in all of them?
1:11:14 Speaker 00 Oh, he's, he's a highlight. I said.
1:11:16 Speaker 04 I don't think so. I don't know. I just do what I do, but.
1:11:19 Speaker 00 I told them, you know, my dad, the reason why I'm able to do all this stuff and know the things that I know is because my, my dad, um, you know, through all the stuff we mentioned earlier here, um, he was able to still learn about, you know, our culture and, and practice that even through all of those attempts to make us not anymore. And um, 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 um, he, he deserves all of that recognition.
1:11:59 Speaker 00 So I do think you're going to see a lot of him and anytime I post anything 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, he's awesome and he's so funny. And this little subtle, dry humors, you know, there throughout. So I'm excited to see.
1:12:24 Speaker 04 It's kind of nice. I didn't have a chance to. Heather wasn't a hunter and went out so much of this Raymond did a lot of it. Then she moved away and came back and.
1:12:39 Speaker 04 She goes out with me every opportunity. She's learned considerable amount. Much more than Raymond, actually.
1:12:53 Speaker 04 Paying attention to the cultural part of it.
1:12:58 Speaker 04 And I was gonna say, I was gonna go King Salmon fishing. It wasn't my intention just not to go. But I got COVID just days before the season opener. It just knocked me totally out of the game. So, once I missed that part of it. I don't care about COHOS. That's too much work for the amount of pay you get. And now with seventeen King Salmon, this doesn't get my heart started.
1:13:22 Speaker 04 So, I'm just. Uh, having a good time.
1:13:26 Speaker 02 Yeah. How, if you did go to get the seventeen. How long would you expect to fish to catch the seventeen?
1:13:34 Speaker 04 One day.
1:13:36 Speaker 04 Or not even a day.
1:13:37 Speaker 02 A one day season.
1:13:38 Speaker 04 Yeah. So, the last time we had a one day fishery, which was three years ago, I got over a hundred.
1:13:47 Speaker 00 Dad was out there, two old guys. I think his crew is what in his seventies too? And they were. They did so good. I think they got the most or second most out of the fleet. Dad comes back, I. You know, I helped dad with all his healthcare stuff, appointments and everything. So, I've learned. 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 back surgery. So, he does all his maintenance in the winter, all his repairs.
1:14:24 Speaker 02 On himself.
1:14:25 Speaker 00 Yeah, or what steroid injections in his hands and everything to keep him going.
1:14:33 Speaker 04 Lots of repair work. The older you get.
1:14:38 Speaker 04 Everything hurts, so. I fish for many, many years. This is.
1:14:44 Speaker 04 Like 24 hour openings on a halibut and you spend it all at the roller hauling in fish, you know. I got some good video of doing exactly that, but yeah, you come home and for two or three days your hounds are, but yeah, you loaded the boat and did really well, you know.
1:15:05 Speaker 02 Uh.
1:15:06 Speaker 00 I didn't learn how to hunt until I was like 28.
1:15:11 Speaker 02 Uh.
1:15:11 Speaker 00 I'd ever
1:15:12 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:15:13 Speaker 00 hunted at all. Never shot a rifle. Um, so that was last year. I'm just kidding. I'm 39, but I'm gonna be 29 forever.
1:15:24 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:15:24 Speaker 00 But anyway, when we went, when I started hunting with my dad, I 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 69 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 badass and
1:15:44 Speaker 02 Hmm.
1:15:45 Speaker 00 he's, yeah, tough and it's hard to believe.
1:15:50 Speaker 04 I'm gonna mess her up though.
1:15:53 Speaker 02 Well, man, I appreciate that you came to talk to us and tell, tell, tell people, tell, tell everybody where, like, when, when can they come watch? When would they be able to watch all the stuff?
1:16:04 Speaker 00 This fall, um, this, I believe in September. I, I, am I allowed to say?
1:16:11 Speaker 02 Yeah.
1:16:11 Speaker 04 Yeah.
1:16:11 Speaker 02 Yeah, just go and say it.
1:16:12 Speaker 00 I think September. I don't have a date actually, but this September, this next month.
1:16:16 Speaker 02 And is it gonna be called Our Way of Life for real?
1:16:18 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:16:18 Speaker 02 Or is that a working title?
1:16:20 Speaker 00 So it's called Our Way of Life. In our language, it's Hakustei, so, um, yeah, look for it. I'm excited.
1:16:29 Speaker 05 It's, uh, September 29th.
1:16:33 Speaker 02 Good job, Seth.
1:16:33 Speaker 00 Perfect. Thank you.
1:16:34 Speaker 05 And media YouTube channel and outdoor channel. So there you go. 8pm.
1:16:42 Speaker 00 Okay.
1:16:43 Speaker 05 Eastern time.
1:16:44 Speaker 00 That is my first time learning this as well.
1:16:45 Speaker 02 Now you know. There you go.
1:16:47 Speaker 00 Thank you, Seth.
1:16:48 Speaker 05 How, how fluent are you?
1:16:51 Speaker 00 We're not fluent.
1:16:52 Speaker 05 You're not?
1:16:53 Speaker 00 Yeah, so we know some words. Dad's, you know, my grandma was fluent, but then wasn't.
1:17:00 Speaker 02 Hmm.
1:17:00 Speaker 00 Yeah, a lot of that was lost for
1:17:02 Speaker 05 Generation was skipped there.
1:17:04 Speaker 00 Boarding school.
1:17:06 Speaker 04 Yeah, I'm too old. I forget everything I learned, so.
1:17:10 Speaker 00 Yeah, I teach my nephew, you know, what I know and he picks it up right away. So we try to use a lot of traditional place names and words is and learn new words all the time.
1:17:22 Speaker 00 And that's something I really would like to do is learn our traditional language.
1:17:26 Speaker 02 Oh, that'd be great.
1:17:27 Speaker 00 Yeah, but you know.
1:17:31 Speaker 03 Is there anybody that kicks around in the village, like just speak in the tongue, someone else?
1:17:36 Speaker 04 There's a few.
1:17:37 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:17:38 Speaker 04 Some of the older ladies. Can, uh, are fluent, yeah.
1:17:43 Speaker 00 There's classes offered too through.
1:17:47 Speaker 00 UA, I think it's UAS, the University of Alaska, and then.
1:17:55 Speaker 00 Through the tribe, our regional tribe.
1:17:59 Speaker 02 Mike, do you call Garrett Garrett or do you call him Dirt?
1:18:05 Speaker 00 He calls him fat ass.
1:18:08 Speaker 00 Because, because when we're on the boat. You know, Garrett's amazing, incredible. You know, he's right there with the camera, but we all can't be on the same side of the boat at once. But when Garrett takes one step on the boat, the whole boat tips.
1:18:25 Speaker 02 He's dense.
1:18:26 Speaker 00 He is, and he's not a 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. For twenty one days. It was a lot and it forced us to get very comfortable with each other.
1:18:43 Speaker 00 So after a few days, my dad just started calling him a fat ass because.
1:18:48 Speaker 02 Sure, I understand.
1:18:49 Speaker 00 But he lost weight. So when he came back this time, we're like, hey, you're not as fat anymore.
1:18:56 Speaker 02 Well, I know, but I noticed he's, he's got a little tin of dip there. So I thought maybe him and Dirt formed a little.
1:19:02 Speaker 00 Yeah, I heard about the dip in Africa.
1:19:04 Speaker 02 Partnership. Yeah, we call it diplomacy.
1:19:06 Speaker 00 It was like, he, he gave us a detailed description and was telling my dad about how awesome.
1:19:13 Speaker 02 Yep, diplomacy with Dirt Miff.
1:19:16 Speaker 00 We call him, I call him Garrett, but. We couldn't have asked for better people to work with. They're, they're a lot fun. Dad. 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.
1:19:39 Speaker 00 Dirt goes, oh, yeah, I'll go and Samantha goes, yeah, I want to go too. And dad just ignores her and she goes, actually, never mind. I'm going to go to the coffee shop. I guess I'll cream puffs tomorrow morning instead. Cause we could tell they just wanted to go out and hang out together.
1:19:56 Speaker 04 That was crappy and I think she changed her mind. Anyway.
1:20:01 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:20:01 Speaker 04 So we were, what were we doing? Oh, 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 and uh, we're gonna see if there's any coho's here. So we did catch coho's and uh, I'd never seen anybody get so excited as uh Garrett.
1:20:20 Speaker 02 Uh huh.
1:20:23 Speaker 02 Have you ever eaten dinner with them?
1:20:25 Speaker 04 Total. I knew you were gonna bring that up. You talked about that last night.
1:20:28 Speaker 00 Everything's like a brand new experience. I go, wow, look at this. Oh, the sunset, you know? Like, look at the sky. So pretty night. Yeah.
1:20:38 Speaker 04 But I'd never seen anybody get so excited over catching a few coho's, you know?
1:20:42 Speaker 00 Uh huh. Yes.
1:20:44 Speaker 04 So the girls were in a, the other boat and they were fishing as well. And uh, anyway.
1:20:52 Speaker 00 It was a good time.
1:20:53 Speaker 02 He's a good guy.
1:20:54 Speaker 00 He is.
1:20:56 Speaker 02 Well, Mike, thank you so much for joining us today to talk about what you guys got coming up and I appreciate you participating in it.
1:21:02 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:21:03 Speaker 02 With Heather. I appreciate you coming to discuss it with us.
1:21:08 Speaker 04 And for you,
1:21:10 Speaker 04 one of the most fun things I do in my life is get in that boat and go cruising. And you have the right idea. Thank you.
1:21:20 Speaker 04 There you go, Jimmy.
1:21:21 Speaker 00 Yeah.
1:21:23 Speaker 04 That is, I'd spend a lot of time in there. I've had it since 91 and that's the number six outboard on it. So. Huh. You're that bad?
1:21:33 Speaker 00 I just found, finally, I searched Craigslist for years trying to find a boat like that. And I found the same boat, 91, exact same boat.
1:21:43 Speaker 02 It's the year of
1:21:43 Speaker 00 There's one, there's one for sale in my town right now.
1:21:46 Speaker 02 Alright, I just gotta see if they got flat black paint.
1:21:50 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah, you gotta have flat black.
1:21:52 Speaker 00 But when dad, when we tried to mic them up, now they learned to give me the mic to give to him. And um, I tried to do it and he said, I'll put this on when I'm ready. So we're like, okay, we just set it at the dash now.
1:22:08 Speaker 04 We're not doing anything yet. You don't need this on for an hour before your, you know.
1:22:14 Speaker 02 That's right.
1:22:15 Speaker 00 Yeah. It's okay.
1:22:18 Speaker 04 Okay, we're done?
1:22:19 Speaker 00 We just, yeah. He goes.
1:22:24 Speaker 04 You never know what I might say, so.
1:22:27 Speaker 02 I understand.
1:22:28 Speaker 04 Uh, are we gonna skid, skid a sea otter now?
1:22:31 Speaker 02 Yeah, we're gonna do it as a separate thing.
1:22:32 Speaker 00 Yeah. I'm worried. On the cruise over here, we saw a bunch moving in here on you, so.
1:22:38 Speaker 02 They're coming. I've seen more this year than. It's been amazing, man. Yeah, I've never seen, like, it's just so recently. It's just like, they were just here. 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.
1:22:57 Speaker 00 We saw ten.
1:22:58 Speaker 02 We'd argue about it.
1:22:59 Speaker 04 We could have seen those when we first came here, but they must have moved out in the middle of the bay or something.
1:23:05 Speaker 02 They lay out deep. I don't understand it.
1:23:07 Speaker 00 It's different than on our side. You go to the same spots and they're there. Big pods of them. But here, you know, I marked, I marked on my onyx where they were in the depth and how many. Try to collect data as much as I can on sea otter. But then we went back out, what, half hour later and they're all gone.
1:23:27 Speaker 02 Yep.
1:23:27 Speaker 00 Whereas on our side, they just all stay. And if, if you scare them away, they'll come right back to that same spot.
1:23:33 Speaker 02 These are nomads, man.
1:23:35 Speaker 04 As a general rule, when you spook them bad, they try to get to open water. I think that's what those did.
1:23:42 Speaker 02 Got it. We're gonna skin one on camera, just so people can see. And it'll be released as a, as a flop episode. Flop!
1:23:50 Speaker 00 Okay, we're ready.
1:23:52 Speaker 02 Good. Thanks, thanks again for coming on. I can't wait to see it. I think people are gonna love it, man.
1:23:57 Speaker 00 Hope so.
1:23:57 Speaker 02 I think it's gonna be such, cause I, I like, uh, one of the time I've had to hang out with you guys, I thought was great.
1:24:02 Speaker 00 Thank you. Yeah, I think it's gonna be a little different. About the same, same soft voice. I think I'm talking fast. You know, and I'm, I listen to myself, I'm like, what? Is that how slow I talk? So it's gonna be a little different pace, I think.
1:24:20 Speaker 02 Talk just fine. You're good. You'll get used to it. You'll be in good shape. Thank you again.
1:24:24 Speaker 00 Yeah.
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Previous Ep. 752: The American Chestnut and Fishing Infomercials | MeatEater Radio Live! Next Ep. 754: How to Skin a Sea Otter Page updated November 1, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated