I have been anxious to go out.
It is my first day commercial fishing with my father again. As he fires up our 115-horsepower Suzuki boat motor, it roars on the back of our fishing boat, a baby-blue 22-foot fiberglass hardtop. Our crew includes Mary Hyatt, my younger brother Pete, and my father, the captain. My dad will soon be idling out of the newly renovated boat harbor in Kotzebue, our village of about 3,200 people located 30 miles inside the Arctic Circle in Northwest Arctic Alaska. Soon we'll be edging under the first bridge before cruising across Swan Lake. We will be fishing primarily for chum salmon, an especially good source of heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids in the commercial salmon marketplace.
In anticipation, Mary rushes to the back of the boat to pull up the back anchor. She remains calm and relaxed, a seasoned fisherwoman even still a teenager who has pulled anchor and set out on the water multiple times before. As we zoom out of Swan Lake, I realize we are missing a key piece of equipment.
"Where are our nets?" I ask.
"We're heading to go get them," replies Mary, ever confident that everything is as it should be.
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As we head toward the point after cruising under the second bridge, I notice my father staring at a rusty old barge on the shoreline. That is when I realize that our nets are lying on the ground next to a rusty old abandoned barge. We approach the shore. I jump off the bow of our boat to pull it onto the shore. Mary bolts out of the boat to grab the nets, and I help. Pete also spins off the boat to hold it from drifting. Mary and I trudge back to the boat with the end of the lead line in my hands and the end of the cork line in hers. When we jump back into the boat, Mary and I pull in the nets with the lead line in the stern, the cork line near the bow.
Pulling the nets ignites my memory of fishing a couple years ago with my cousin Shawn Nelson and my father. I never did consider fishing fun in those days because when Shawn, my father, and I fished we simply did not catch many fish. Two years later, this is our first time fishing again for chum salmon, so we are not sure exactly what to do.
Our fishing skills are rusty. Whenever we set our net, it gets stuck in the prop of the motor. My father can erupt when we fish because so many things can go wrong. Once we get the mesh untangled from our prop, we have to straighten the net in a hurry. We are using a very small pleasure boat for fishing because we are desperate to set nets no matter how poorly equipped. Mary and my father discuss where to set net this fishing period. As I listen to their fish talk, a good vibe enters the atmosphere. I tell myself, It's different this time. My father pushes down the throttle, heading for Pike Spit.
"Where are you planning on setting the net?" I ask.
"You'll see soon enough," Dad replies.
We had left the harbor about one and a half hours into the current open commercial fishing period, so we still have a solid two hours of fishing time left. Mary and I discuss the usual places my father fishes and all the recent places where they had caught a great bounty of salmon. It is encouraging that the place we are setting the net this fishing period is the same spot they had caught some 500 fish previously. Once I hear this, I am ecstatic and cannot wait to set the net. Our trusty 22-foot fishing boat allows us to set net with ease compared to the pleasure boat we had used two years previous.
The fishing season so far had been looking great. According to The Arctic Sounder, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game had already been expecting a strong salmon run in 2014, with the commercial harvest being forecast as between 250,000 to 275,000 chum, with more than 120 registered Kotzebue Sound permit holders chasing chum that year. Also, the paper reported, an impressive four fish buyers, including Arctic Circle Wild Salmon, had registered to compete to purchase fish this year, driving up prices for fishermen, though not all buyers would end up purchasing fish throughout the whole season.
My father is calm and patient; two years ago he was aggravated a lot. As we check our nets a couple times, we keep in mind we are running out of time before we have to pull our nets out of the water.
Later we would find out just how awesome Kotzebue's 2014 commercial salmon fishing turned out to be. In fact, Alaska Dispatch News would report that, according to Jim Menard, a state biologist in Nome, Kotzebue's commercial fleet was on track to earn an impressive $3 million for 2014. The fishery had not made more than just $1 million since 1998, and commercial fishing almost collapsed in the early 2000s, the Dispatch reported, with the fishery bringing in only $7,572, for example, in 2002.
When the clock strikes midnight, our nets are out of the water. We have caught a respectable amount of chum salmon for my first day back fishing commercially. As we ride back to town, I look at my father. I look at Pete. I look at Mary. I realize that commercial fishing is much more enjoyable with the right equipment, the right atmosphere, the right price for fish, and the right amount of fish -- lots!
Gus Nelson is a Kotzebue High School senior, where he is a top student and athlete in cross-country running, basketball, wrestling, and Native Youth Olympics. Gus plans to major in computer science in college.
The preceding essay is part of a series written by volunteer students participating in the Chukchi College Honors Program, a dual-credit partnership between the Northwest Arctic Borough School District and Chukchi College, the Kotzebue branch of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. This essay is distributed by Chukchi News & Information Service, an award-winning publication project of Chukchi College.
The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)alaskadispatch.com.