There was one big reason I was aboard a Nordic tug with Cap’n Fred out of Clover Pass a couple years back. That was because he almost guaranteed we would tie into some Silver salmon. “For sure, the silvers will be running,” he told me. Hearing that, I went on-line and bought an out-of-state fishing license and my airline ticket from Seattle to Alaska. Once we’d stocked up on supplies and frozen herring in Ketchikan and headed across Behm Canal for Camano Point, it felt really good to be back in SE Alaska.
Naturally, I was looking forward to potential photo op encounters with wild life: killer whales, seals, sea lions, bald eagle, osprey, bears, and off-camera with mosquitoes, ticks, and deer flies. Yet what I really wanted to re-experience was the thrill of trolling, a fishing pole in my hands, feeling a nudge at the slice of herring at the end of my line, then setting the hook and having a wild salmon bending my pole like a bow, fighting for its life, the line zinging off the reel. The energy surge of battling a strong salmon, yao, now you’re talking pure wildness.
There are times when you’re fishing on an in-coming tide, and you can visually see where the schools of anchovies are pooling, their silvery flashes, and you know salmon are after them. But dang if you can entice one of those salmon to chase after the lovely silver flash of herring you have on your hook. So, how do you summon a salmon?
You get inventive. I can clearly recall standing at the stern of the boat with my cousin Ben, our feet (his bare) spread for balance, Cap’n Fred at the helm, as we were trolling, four lines in the water, all poles in their holders, when the two of us spontaneously started doing a native chant. The chant had a great “hiya hiya hiya” resonance welcoming the silvers to strike. And strike they did! Within minutes there was an energy-charged time when the clickers on all four lines went zinging and we had to call out, “Come grab a pole!”
Granted, there were also times we experienced some wildness that you want only to be an distant observer of. The supreme highlight being a close-up (within 20 ft of the boat!) of three humpback whales coordinating a ‘bubble feed’ where they dove down in unison, exhaled a huge amount of oxygen from below to corral and confuse their prey (thrill the krill for the kill), then came surging up with mouths wide open to scoop up lunch and lunge their huge bodies into the sky. Watching this happen, I was so transfixed, I forgot I had a camera. I took not a single picture. Could’ve taken video. Dang!
Along on this quest was Cap’n Fred’s friend Dan Green as co-captain/navigator and, it turns out, gun-bearer. Guns, bears, hey, this is Alaska. And there were some days we didn’t fish, we cruised. One of those days we cruised into Margaret Bay off Behm Canal where the Forest Service has a float-dock and where we tied up for an afternoon to get our shore-legs back. We planned to hike a couple miles up-stream to a bear-watching observation platform built above a set of cascading waterfalls and fish ladder on Margaret Creek. Scuttlebutt had it that pinks were running thick upstream, and there would be bears aplenty.
As we left the dock in Margaret Bay behind, Dan called our little group together in a huddle to confirm that we might well meet a bear at any time. And that he was packing heat. “I admit, it was only a .38 caliber. Not much firepower, and as they say, firing less than a .45 caliber at a charging bear will probably only be helpful in marking the bear that got you.” I started wondering if we should sing as we hiked along the road and trail to kind of announce ourselves. I thought of suggesting we sing ‘we’ll be coming round the mountain when we come, when we come, and we’ll be packing .38 specials as we come ..’. But then again, I didn’t want to make light of meeting a bear.
“Just remember,” Dan continued, “if there is an encounter, keep cool, no running. We bunch up in a group and try to look big.” And off we went into the forest. Just days earlier we had seen a big mama brown bear and her two cubs cross a gravel bar at the mouth of the stream we’d anchored off. So, I was greatly relieved to hear Dan mention we were now in black bear country. It was highly unlikely that a black bear would approach us. As it happened, the closest we got to encountering a bear was when two young ones wrestled over a flopping fish right below the observation platform. They either couldn’t see us or they ignored us. After all, we were safely hidden behind a canvas shelter on the viewing post, peeking through window flaps. We watched black bear fish from the rocks while bald eagles fished from the sky. If one’s quest for observing wildlife included the cycle of life and death, Margaret Creek near Ketchikan certainly is one place for it.
All cruising done, all fish flash-frozen at Clover Pass, Cap’n Fred took us back to Ketchikan. And that gave us a day to go exploring the zig-zag maze of wooden walkways above Ketchikan Creek, once the town’s red light district, with spawn-ready sockeyes turning red in the stream below us.
Now that’s pretty wild, right?
Vintage film of Ketchikan via Ellis Air