In 2017, during our last summer at fish camp, the fish take a holiday and stay out to sea for days instead of heading upriver into our nets. We’re closed for commercial fishing, so we decide to charter a float plane to go to Katmai National Monument to see the bears. We take the bikes up toward Float Plane Lake to meet the plane, but before we arrive at the lake, we’re flagged off by the pilot because of the weather. On our way back to camp we stop to build a fire on the beach by the abandoned cannery and have a picnic. As we lollygag around the fire, we see salmon leaping clear out of the river, silver flashes flopping and twisting before splashing back into the water. Jumpers! Why do they jump? It’s not like there’s a big herd of sharks or seals or orcas chasing them. They seem to jump just from the joy of life, the anticipation of spawning bursting out of their sleek, powerful bodies and sending them airborne. More and more jumpers! Their sheer abundance ignites a primal food-gathering lust in our hearts. They’ll surely open us for fishing now! We put out the fire in a hurry and ride back to camp, past the faded blue cannery buildings and the spring where we get our drinking water, past the cluster of cabins at Coffee Point, past the Red Cliff, splashing through Bishop Creek, past the ladder up the bluff to Rolf’s green cabin, past Tunno’s camp, and up the steep sandy driveway home.
By now it’s early evening and still broad daylight. The tide is coming in, and there’s a strong wind blowing water onshore. Line after line of deceptively small breakers curl and crash. We dress out in a hurry and rack the nets into the rafts, then pull ourselves out along the running line through the surf to the outer buoy. I’m kneeling on the floor in the bow, pulling the running line, with our helper Seth pulling in the stern. Normally this is my favorite part of fishing, like riding a bucking bronco, getting splashed as the raft plunges through the waves. Today the current holds the running line tautly close to the water and I lean way over the gunnel to keep hold of it. A wave catches the bow and the raft rears up and I flash on the raft flipping end-over-end and us in the water with a net – a bad situation. But the weight of the net is on our side. The raft drops down on the backside of the wave and we keep pulling. When we reach the outer buoy, we spin the raft, I clip off to the buoy and arrange the net so the cork and lead lines feed out smoothly. I skootch over to the right so the net leaving the boat is close to the side of the raft; if I’m too far over to my left, the wind could push the boat away from the running line and a wave can yank the running line out of my hand. If Seth also lets go, we drift, powerless.
After the net’s arranged I look around. On my left there’s Brian at our outer net, and up the beach past him, there’s Tunno’s crew with their outboard motors, all sitting at their outer buoys. I look at my watch, still three minutes to go. To my right there’s Scott, ready to go. John Paul ambles down to his raft and pulls out alone, late as usual. I look over the waves toward shore at our cabin with its blue metal roof and tan siding, at my smoker loaded with red strips, at Tunno’s compound with his metal containers and his cabin with the bay window. The state troopers’ plane flies over us, watching for rash fishers setting nets early. I look at my watch. “Thirty seconds,” I tell Seth, and I unclip from the buoy and hold onto the running line. Now it’s time, according to my watch, but first I check to see if Tunno’s going – no one wants to set first in case our watches don’t tell the same time as the state troopers’ watches. “Now!” I call, and we pull like crazed weasels. Seth is strong and before he flags there’s too much slack in the running line for me to help much; with one hand I shake loose any tangles in the net as it flies out the stern. “Give me ten!” I shout, and Seth finds more strength somehow to give me ten. Then as he weakens, I throw myself into it. Breathing hard, we clip off the end of the net to the middle buoy and surf into shore.
The wind blows all night, and all night the surge of fish swims upriver. By dawn both nets have rolled, lead line over cork line, making a twisted rope of mangled fish, webbing, lines and corks. The nets have to be out of the water by the end of the opener, so we must either roundhaul, pulling nets full of fish into the rafts, or release them at the outer buoy and let them wash into shore. The waves are still breaking and it’s too dangerous to pick from the raft, so we roundhaul one net, then Brian and Tom pull out and release the other. As the tide recedes, all of us kneel in the mud along the nets and pick fish. Each fish is a unique tangle of silver skin, red flesh, and clear nylon webbing: some are basketed over the running line, some are nearly cut in half by webbing pulled tight by the waves, some are both. Our fingers fly to tug and coax webbing over heads, fins, tails. Every fish has to come out, and there are hundreds in each net. We line up the least mangled fish along the stretched-out nets so we can pitch them into a trailer and try to sell them. The processor will sell them for pet food. The rest are left for the bears, the seagulls, the eagles, the ravens, the foxes, the crabs, the worms, the microbes.
We finish picking in the early morning. The run is so big that ADFG has opened us for the next tide too, so we have only hours to clean up, eat, and sleep as well as we can before we dress out and set our net again. By the time we are finished with these two tides my fingers are swollen and aching, and there’s a shooting pain in the tendon to my left forefinger every time I try to bend it. When we look out in the morning, several fishing boats are aground, keeled over and anchored in place by the heavy fish-laden nets they were unable to pull out of the water before the tide went out.
Even though my fingers hurt, it feels good to have had a big run before we have to close the cabin for what may be the last time. We are planning to sell the business this year. A college student now, Tom has other plans for his summers. Without Tom, we have to hire helpers and it’s just not the same as the days when we fished with Tom and one of his friends. I’ll miss the waving grasses, the cranes, eagles, whimbrels, foxes – even the bears. I’ll miss the bustle of the openers and the camaraderie of this ephemeral beach community.