Alaska Dispatches
# 21  —  23 June 2001

King Salmon

At the end of the day, I like King Salmon best. Roasted in a bath of olive oil and butter, sprinkled with salt and pepper, it is hard to beat. And there sure is something about eating one you caught yourself.
Kings don’t run up our river, so for their subsistence fishing Piniq folk need to travel to the Kuskokwim River. The mouth of the Kuskokwim, where it meets the Bering Sea, is about a 3 and 1/2 hour boat ride from our village. To get there we head down our river to the bay, and then south along the Bering Sea coast. Traveling by sea, rather than by river, introduces new extremes; the vagaries of weather hold a hell of a lot more sway.
We planned to get up early and catch the tide downriver, motor along the coast to the Kuskokwim, fish Kings for a full day, sleep on the boat, and then, depending on how the day went either fish the next day or start back in the morning. Although it is late June, nights on the water are frigid. Because we would be sleeping on the boat, I dressed for a snowmachine trip.
Four of us made the trip: Peter, Junior, Joe Henry and myself. We took the Stacy 2 with Junior at the helm. The Stacy 2, one of the nicest boats in Piniq, has a 25 foot-long fiberglass hull with a large storage hold up front. There is a large railed deck that covers the front quarter of the craft, and a snazzy aluminum roller up front. The cabin, also fiberglass, is decked out with a marine VHF radio, a mounted GPS receiver and an expensive combination fish finder and depth meter. We were traveling in luxury.
I spent the entire ride over outside on the front deck, basking in the sunshine, surrounded by the wind, taking in the scenery in a myriad of muted colors that seemed to drag on by. The clouds were enormous, low and a deep gray. The water stretched forever, reaching shore a few hundred yards off the bow, small whitecaps receding endlessly off our stern. The neighboring villages of Kong and then Kwiq drifted in and out of view a few miles inland as we cruised southward along the coast. We experienced some bumps, but for the  most part it was smooth sailing.
Sport fishermen catch King Salmon with rod and reel, but Alaskan Natives can fish them for subsistence with gill nets. King Salmon gear is huge. Each mesh of the gill net is twelve inches long. While you need to look closely to note the difference in the mesh size of, say, herring versus whitefish gear, King Salmon gear looks gargantuan and oversized, almost like a surreal version of the familiar.
We reached the Kuskokwim at around noon, motored upriver a bit and set our first net. We caught 3 Kings and a couple of chums. As a first-timer, I had no idea what incredible luck we had just had.
King Salmon are awesome creatures. Up to 3 feet long and weighing up to 65 pounds, they crash into the net with a thunderous splash. Even on the other side of the net, a good 250 feet from the boat, the impact is manifest. Once snagged, their shining silver tails often rise up above the water’s surface. The weight of the fish and the force of its trying to get free cause the cork line to sink perceptibly wherever a King is caught along the length of the net. There is absolutely no mistaking one, even with my untrained eyes, caught near the top of the net.
So as we fished, for the most part we knew what was in our nets before we pulled them in. Once in a while, though, an unexpected King caught closer to the bottom of the net would surprise us as we hauled the nets up and into the boat through the roller. A couple of fish got away, thrashing their way to freedom as the nets came up out of the water. We enjoyed the air, the serenity of watching the nets, the camaraderie and the beautiful summer’s day out on the water.
There were a couple of other boats from Piniq on the Kuskokwim fishing for Kings. My buddies communicated with them all day over the VHF. I imagine they discussed their luck at various locations and most likely teased each other about their fishing prowess. I listened in, wishing I understood more Yup’ik so that I could decipher what was being said.
After a few hours I climbed down into the cabin to stow a layer of clothing, and found Junior sitting at the helm eating out of a Ziploc bag. He dipped his hands into what looked like an orange and white mush soaked in oil. “Want some fish, Mike?” I reluctantly grabbed a piece and popped it into my mouth. It was one of the best things I have tasted all year. Once I began, I could not stop eating it. Junior had brought a bag of Vemathluk that he had received from a friend in Bethel. Vemathluk is a Yup’ik delicacy made by half drying salmon, boiling it with cabbage and potatoes, and then soaking it in seal oil and salt. It is unbelievably delicious and I ate a ton.
We fished all day. Setting and pulling in nets, especially the oversized King Salmon gear, is exhausting work, but great exercise; so is hauling in and throwing the anchor. Each time we pulled up an empty net we would motor to another location, working our way slowly up the Kuskokwim. Eventually the Kuskokwim leads to Bethel; we probably got about halfway there by the end of the day. We passed a few tributaries as the day wore on, each of which leads to another small village. The morning weather was perfect. In the afternoon it grew a bit windy.
I glanced at Joe Henry’s watch and noticed that it was getting toward 10:00 PM, although the sun was still visible in the sky. We had caught a total of 8 Kings a handful of Red or Chum Salmon. It was almost slack tide. Peter had told me that he usually catches lots of Kings at slack tide. We set the net the fish started hitting. Crash, crash, crash – one after another they tumbled into the net, threw up their tails in fury and thrashed about. It was a total rush, just watching the fish hit and the corks starting to sink one after another.
We attached slightly smaller gear onto the end of the King gear and set the nets for the last time. We drank hot tea and waited. In the final set we hauled in 11 Kings and 15 reds. I was so pumped; I wanted to keep fishing but the wind was picking up so my buddies decided it was time to head in. Somewhere along the way it had been resolved that we would travel back to Kwig and spend the night there, gas up and head home the next day. That sounded good to me, especially since a hot steam was also mentioned. The sun was now setting, the wind was cold and I was pretty worn out from the full day of traveling and fishing.
The ride back to Kwig was hairy. After slack water the tide started out. As we made our way down the river, the water level increased, but remained relatively shallow. We ran into sand bars and kept getting stuck. Using long wooden sticks and oars; we would work ourselves free from the thick sand and continue, going extremely slowly. Junior kept his eyes glued to the depth finder, and we tried to pay attention to the paths of the other boats, also going down river and periodically getting stuck, but darkness was falling. It took several hours to get to the mouth of the river, the air growing colder as the wind continued to pick up.
Once we left the Kuskokwim we were met with very choppy ocean waves. I grew more and more chilled and, despite countless cups of tea and several cans of soda consumed throughout the day and evening, I began to feel dehydrated. Through the dark the markers indicating the channel to Kwig finally came into view, and we evntually made it to Kwig after 2:00 AM.  We tied the boat up and walked into the village. We knocked on the door of Joe Henry and Peter’s cousin He woke up and let us in; his wife got up and prepared some food, and somehow I wound up with the only bed as my friends stretched out on the couch or in sleeping bags on the floor, and we all crashed hard.
The next morning it was too windy to make the trip back home along the coast. This was decided after we got up, loaded the boat, gassed up and motored down river to the ocean. We sat at the mouth for a couple of hours, sussing out conditions on the sea, before turning around and navigating various channels around the north side of the village, ultimately pulling up and anchoring our boat near Steven Frank’s house. I had met Steven several times in Piniq where he spent several months last fall heading up an AVCP project to redo the floors and ceilings of the public housing units.
Steven is an accomplished carpenter and he has an incredible two-story house – one of the few in the entire Delta. We basically hung around all morning until Steven’s wife made some delicious salmon soup for lunch. After lunch I watched dish network, drank gallons of Tang in a successful effort to re-hydrate myself, took a nap and then took a long walk all over town. It is amazing how different other villages feel, and how proud I am of Piniq. On the other hand, Kwig seemed somehow more clean and well put together, and you certainly hear a heck of a lot more Yup’ik being spoken, especially by young people. As Kwig is closer to the Kuskokwim, almost every home had a drying rack full of King Salmon, and several families had their smokehouses going.
I eventually learned that we weren’t going to try to make it back that night. We had a delicious dinner of salmon and halibut at Steven’s place, watched some bad movies over the satellite and took a very welcome, very hot steam. I again somehow scored the extra bed and slept like a rock.
We departed the next morning. Our ride home was intense, conjuring up scenes from The Perfect Storm in my head. The waves were too choppy to stay on deck, so we all crowded into the cabin, where we were bounced around like ping pong balls. Because the waves were so large, and we were fighting the current, it took a good six hours to make it to the mouth of the Kugkutlik. With incredible relief we navigated the remaining mile towards home, where a team of Junior’s family met us to help unload all of our beautiful fish.
After splitting up the catch, it was time to gut and prep the salmon for the freezer. I hung half of one King out to half-dry – I’m planning to take a shot at Vemathluk. We invited some friends over for supper, so I roasted a couple of the larger fillets. Yum!

©2001, Michael Thornton Wyman