Eratta for the new year

The aches and pains from having too much fun in Petersburg in August are finally gone. But I refuse to believe that a 61 year old shouldn't be able to put a row-boat on the roof of a car and then toss it in the water later by himself. And trying to set a speed record rowing it. I'd be willing to bet I forget my age the next time I want to go rowing in Petersburg as well. However, I figured that I might mount an electric trolling motor on my replica of our old Davis skiff next time, just for the sake of going further afield. Strictly an efficiency measure of course.

I'm thinking now of exploring as many nooks and crannies of the shoreline as possible. I first thought of the islands at the mouth of the Stikine river at high tide. I could throw the skiff in the water at the end of Mitkof Highway and then it's only a half mile across. Fall with a shotgun comes to mind as well. But anytime I think with such silent travel, it might be surprising how much wildlife one might find to view and photograph. And such stealth is not lost on king salmon in the spring, dragging a bait behind the boat.

Poking around like that it's easy to check the water temperature and on a sunny day after the tide has come in over a big tide-flat, there is great swimming to be had up in the sloughs. Which brings to mind going up Petersburg Creek with our parents when we were real small. Like in maybe we could see over the side of the skiff if we didn't fall off the seat. (That happened to my brother Arnold, in Pelican when they were getting ready to go Nagoonberry picking in Phonograph Cove. He got soaked in the bilge and delayed the whole outing.)

Anyway, I remember dad anchoring the speedboat and both parents abandoning us little squirts by diving off the bow. Is all I remember of the whole episode is the diving part, but I doubt we were in much jeopardy of falling over and I don't think mom and dad swam very far from the boat either. The water can get quite warm in the sloughs of Petersburg creek on a hot summer afternoon. But it's a rare phenomenon. But that's one of the charms of living in Petersburg. Natural phenomenon abounds: it's just a matter of knowing when they might happen and positioning yourself accordingly.

Speaking of that, and seining for humpies, we were batting around the big set that Tom Rustad made that yielded 55,000 fish. The matter was resolved when Linda Reeser, a bookkeeper at Whitney-Fidalgo Seafoods in Petersburg, had her new husband, Tom Rustad the second, provide the facts. The set was definitely made at Ann Ann Creek south of Wrangell and the year was '49 or '50. I suppositioned that it was in 1949 because that was the year I was born and my father was too busy with record runs of salmon as a fish buyer in Pelican to bother with baby-being-born stuff.

The story I heard was that when there is such a mass of fish schooled up near a spawning stream, they will swim in a circle with a hole in the middle. Tom set in the direct path of the swimming fish and ended up filling one tender after another. Understanding this natural phenomenon served him well. I heard someone else was in this kind of position, however he didn't understand the phenomenon as well and round hauled the hole in the middle and made a skunk set.

The natural runs around Petersburg aren't anywhere near what they used to be, but it sure is nice to see such large individual salmon return like last year. In some of the streams there is only a remnant of the run left. Since there is still some degree of catch per unit of effort remaining, the commercial fisheries are left open, but they are mostly the sum of the remnant runs. They could use some of the incubator boxes http://vimeo.com/5314044 that are being deployed in B.C., Washington, and now in Oregon.

My new 'indicator creek' is Sumner Creek down the Woodpecker Cove road. The creeks just plain need more help than what they are getting. More natural runs just keep getting skinnier. You see all sorts of game hogs in the creeks too. I've seen dynamite used on fish in Alaska just like it has been used down here in Oregon. For some people it isn't about the food supply or the enjoyment of fishing at all. And catch and release is political suicide for politicians. Just say'n.