Salmon Life

THE MACCABEES

Shortly after 5AM, the creak of an aluminum door fissures the early morning silence, followed by a swift metallic slam. A shadowy figure emerges. Then with a similar report, other shadows emerge. One looks to the clear, cloudless sky. “Gonna be a warm one.” “Hmm,” another confirms. A truck pulls out of the lot. The crew ambles down the short drive to the roadway that terminates at the bluff’s edge.

Shuffling in their rain bibs, the crew walks to where the pavement ends and the path drops straight down the face of the bluff. The slope of ankle-deep sand is so steep they had to install a guide rope to help you climb back. Sometimes, at the end of a long day, a crew member will challenge another to make the climb without use of the rope. Fisherman’s bravado.

The sand on the beach is hard-packed from the receding tide and makes for easier walking. The inlet is calm, almost glassy, and it throws back the streaked hues of blue and pink that reach across the water toward the mighty Mount Redoubt.

Now into the six o’clock hour, the crew awakens into their duties. George works with a team stacking nets on one of the skiffs while others check the spreaders where they will set their first nets at the stroke of seven. Another group loads nets onto a platform mounted on the back of the tractor where Adam is perched.

The rumble of the tractor and the rhythmic thud of net corks on hollow aluminum, the call of a Skipper’s command and quick whistles that grab attention. No one is idle until ten minutes before seven when the prep is finished and they’re ready to set. Ten minutes for coffee, a smoke, a quick bite to eat and a few ribbing jokes. As soon as seven hits, the beaches come alive with men and women, rendered virtually indistinguishable at a distance by the neutralizing effect of layered clothing, hoodies and Helly Hansens. Skiffs hit the water and the nets drop.

A WAY OF LIFE

When most people in the lower 48 conjure images of the commercial fishing industry, few of them picture the small-scale operations that typify setnet culture. They likely imagine trawlers, purse seiners, and huge processing ships, rather than these Bohemian family operations with their 25-foot outboard skiffs that motor along the shallow fringe of the inlet, setting their nets on the sandy bottom.

Observed through one lens, setnetting is one of the simplest forms of commercial fishing. The mechanics of the Maccabee operation look a lot like they did when it was run by Adam and George’s uncle, and their grandfather before that. Tractors and open-hull skiffs, buoys anchored to the sandy bottom of the inlet, and the nets, which are drawn into the boat with the help of a hydraulic roller, the only real modern advent of the operation.

In other ways, the business has changed quite a bit over the years. “Back in the day my grandfather would put his nets out in May and leave them out until the inlet started to ice up in October.” Even into the Nineties, 24-hour openers were not uncommon and nets would stay in the water around the clock, crews heading out once per tide to pick them.

“No more,” George says. The number of openers has dropped, sometimes dramatically. The worst year in recent memory came in 2012, when ADF&G became concerned about the number of King salmon making it into the Kenai river. “That was a bad year,” Adam says with a nervous chuckle. “I had a house, that if I wasn’t able to sell I would have had to declare bankruptcy.”

Now three years later, George remembers that season down to the dates. “We fished on the 16th of July and they closed us on the 17th.” Then three more days of fishing in August and that was their year.

The scarcity of the King Salmon has sent ripples throughout the state, both economic and political, as different user groups fear that environmental changes or conservation efforts could compromise their access to this prized natural resource. But for fishermen of all stripes, it’s about more than access to a particular fish: it’s about this way of life.