Looking out on the swirling blue water and neon bouys in front of our house, the wake from Tollef skiffing by breaking in white, I could be convinced that it’s still summer. Raising my eyes above sea level brings me to the reality of beautiful fall in Uganik. Our little black birches are shivering in yellow, fireweed patches flame in red, and 1500 feet up, the glare of the first snow caps it all off brilliantly. All this glorious color makes me feel many things – one of which is that I’m behind! It’s fall already and I haven’t wrapped up the summer of 2021. So here goes….

The summer seemed in general to be a little on the cool and damp side, especially the month of June. While it was easy to complain about the weather, I liked to comment that it was more like a “normal” June – one that I remember from childhood. We had reason to enjoy lots of little fires in our wood-stove and endured plenty of storms with gusts my mom always called “cabin slammers.” The chimney cap and a solar panel were casualties of a couple of these blows, though easily fixable. I was just grateful, watching water sucked up from the ocean into twisting sheets of williwaws, that I could choose to stay on shore, not to fish every single day.

When casting our minds back on any summer, our thoughts first go to those who share the life with us. We live so closely in our little plywood cabins doing everything together from eating to fishing to mending nets to socializing that it’s hard to separate the fishing from the fishers. Luckily the people around me this summer were enthused by what others could consider to be challenging weather conditions.

After a special time of fishing together for the first bit in June, Tollef and I then organized into our separate fishing ventures as we normally do. I hosted my nieces and sister as crew at Trap 6 for a couple weeks, and these are true Kodiak kids who are used to going outside in raingear in any weather to play. What a joy it was to teach them bits of what it is to be a Uganik Bay setnetter, to feed their enthusiasm!

Stormy Day low-tide beach play at Trap 6

After they left, for the serious part of my fishing season, I had wonderful Lizza return to work with me after a couple years doing other things, and for the peak few weeks in August, we were joined by awesome Ky. The three of us had fished together in 2017, so it was a great re-creation of the dream team, and lots of fun was had by all, plus some great fishing. Watching these two athletic, driven, inspiring and capable women work together to pick fish made me wish I had had a video of them, to show future new crew members what to aspire to in terms of speed, dexterity, hustle. However, since I was also working alongside them, I couldn’t take the time to shoot a video in the midst of heavy fishing. I’ll just have to relish the memory. I could not have asked for a greater set of people to share my summer life-work with.

Adelia and Lizza getting it done. (The numbers are crooked on my skiff because I let a 5 year old put them on!)

Meanwhile, Tollef was off having a grand adventure. The pull of the legendary Bristol Bay was finally too strong to resist, and so he took about 6 weeks off from the 3.5 month Uganik salmon season to go experience this intense, fast-paced fishery. He came back so strong, so tired, and happy. He writes:

I’ve always loved picking sockeye and many of my friends touted the intensity of fishing on a 32-foot boat with little sleep and seemingly endless nights with almost every fish being a red. So I had to see the grey horizon of Bristol Bay for myself. It eats at some people, the mountains are too far away from the giant river mouths of the different districts to see much but brownish waters. It reminded me of another home I once had in Kotzebue, also on the western coast of Alaska. It too is flat with not a lot of eye candy but a place I grew to appreciate the subtleties of. Bristol Bay felt like coming home to this similar type of environment, this time on a small boat, not running a dog team. The suffering was familiar, a cold wind blowing nearly constantly, the sleep deprivation, acute manic activity, from the whole salmon season packed into 6 weeks. Our boat managed to hit some mega big runs starting in the “Nush” with a 40,000 pound day(!!) with a giant storm and later in Ugashik with a 43,000 pound day (!!!). The skipper said it was his best season ever and the best single fishing sets of his career. What’s not to like about that and getting to fish with some great guys, and I, being the cook, took pleasure in keeping them well fed even if it meant sacrificing some rest and sleep.

After the energy expenditure in Bristol Bay, Tollef was glad to settle in to enjoy life back at Broken Point for the last 7 weeks of our season. His crew, Jeff, the son of the couple Tollef bought Broken Point from back in 2007, is well experienced in setnetting, and comfortable at the site – kind of like the feeling of extended family. Tollef’s mom also came for a month to help with all the camp-related tasks and tend the chickens.

Aside from the people aspect of our summer, we can of course consult the records and remind ourselves that the fish were there too! Similarly to 2020, the season started off slowly this year, with not much fishing happening in June (hence Tollef’s drive to fish elsewhere in the state). July brought regular weekly openings and increasingly more fish, and then in August we started fishing non-stop, with no closures, as the salmon had been swimming strongly up their natal streams and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game had determined that a biologically sustainable number of salmon had escaped the fishermen to spawn and thereby perpetuate the salmon runs for future generations. It felt like a very steady season, no huge pulses but also no totally dead days, just day after day of honest and satisfying work.

As tiring as it can be to fish non-stop, I also greatly value being able to get in a rhythm, closer to a state of flow. By August, all the chores and projects of the summer have mostly been tended to, our little skiffs with 2-3 person crews are running like well-oiled machines, and we have repeated these motions so often for weeks that nothing needs to be explained or directed. As I pull up to the net, the ballet begins of coordinated moves, synchronized in pulling up the web, the skiff dancing with the swells, while making small talk about the day or planning the next meal, or just silently feeling the web in our hands, the ocean moving beneath us, the breeze in our hair and rain on our faces.

Adelia with a gutted Coho (aka a HAWG) bound for one of our salmon fans

It’s also delightful, in late August and into September, to watch the silver salmon – or coho – begin to hit, then build, their bodies so much bigger than the other species we catch, strong and brilliant. Though we spend quite a bit of extra time bleeding and gutting them to ensure maximum quality for our customers, that work feels like honoring the salmon. These special fish always make me feel like I’m ending the season on a high note, and glad that we can share this goodness with the wider world!

-Adelia and Tollef

2021 Salmon Season Wrap-up