Jennie@ifish
01-20-2009, 05:46 PM
Salmon on my Mind
Francis E. Caldwell
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Chapter Five
Nature’s Precious Gift, Pacific Salmon
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About the same time I joined the Navy in Illinois, somewhere in the icy waters of the
Pacific Ocean a small female king salmon moved westward through the sea. As a tiny smolt
she had recently descended her stream of origin in a wilderness valley surrounded by snowy
peaks and forested slopes covered with virgin Sitka spruce, hemlock and red cedar. A temperate rainforest, where up to 20 feet of precipitation fell annually.
Before reaching salt water, she sensed her true purpose, to grow large and strong so she
would have the strength to return up her native river, then reproduce. Her trip down stream
was long and dangerous. Blue herons tried to stab her with their long, sharp beaks. Mink
and otter lurked in the pools and tried to catch her. The school learned to seek cover during
daylight under overhanging brush or beneath windfalls.
Eventually the school reached the estuary where salt water mixed with fresh. Here they
stayed for weeks, taking shelter in the beds of green, waving eelgrass, Zostera marina. Still
too small to feed on herring, needlefish and other small fish, they feasted on tiny organisms,
such as harpacticoid copepods, that grew on the eelgrass. This diverse marine ecosystem
fed the tiny salmon until they were large enough to catch small fish and shrimp.
As they left the estuary, a new sense of purpose drove them rapidly through long tidal
channels, past islands and reefs until at last they entered their true environment, the open
sea. Now began a lifetime of wandering in the Pacific Ocean.
Her appetite became veracious as she grew. She learned to work in unison with her
mates as they slashed through schools of herring and needlefish, then circled back and fed
on the cripples.
Her wanderings took her north and west toward islands, where schools of fat herring
provided ample nourishment. She increased in size. The school roamed widely, sometimes
hundreds of miles from land. By her sixth year she had grown larger than most of her companions and had wandered thousands of miles from home.
King salmon may reach sexual maturity in their fifth through seventh year, a vital plan
of survival. In case of natural destruction of a particular run, such as a flood on the spawning
beds, different age groups have a better chance of survival than if only one age group
spawned in the area.
Her lateral line, the almost invisible row of modified scales that create a series of overlapping
chambers, between the dark blue upper scales and the silvery scales along the side
and belly, could detect minute changes in water temperature and pressure. The functions
of the lateral line provides salmon with an extra, special sense, part of a mysterious, unexplainable sensory system vital to the fish’s existence. With this system the fish could navigate, detect minute currents, determine the presence of other animals, including predators,
and maintain close formation with schools of its kind. Scientists know very little about this
important lateral line.
She learned to avoid sea lion and orca attacks by leaving the school, then quickly diving
into the depths. When she rejoined her mates after marine mammal attacks she noticed
their numbers had been greatly reduced. Some were bleeding and soon died.
At age six the female, and the school she prowled the ocean with, became restless. An
unexplainable urge to move east overwhelmed their senses. By now the female was much
larger than the rest, the result of genes passed down from her parents. Her belly bulged with
thousands of tiny, pink eggs.
The males in the school also became restless as their roe sacks expanded. Hormones
were released which triggered a migratory urge that fisheries scientists are completely unable
to comprehend. The school began to migrate towards the far distant Southeast Alaskan
coast. At first they moved slowly, then faster as the urge to spawn increased, until movement
became a consuming passion.
As the school reached the coast their progress slowed. They fed voraciously on schools
of herring among the coastal fiords and fattened at an extraordinary rate.
One day the school was feeding off Cape Edgecumbe, a prominent cape jutted out
from Kruzof Island near Sitka, Alaska. Suddenly they were attracted by many strange, glittering, wobbling, vibrating objects passing through the water. A strange rumble came from
above. The big female was attracted to the troller’s brass spoons, but before she decided to
grab one, she noticed that several of her school chums who had already had the strange
objects in their mouths, were frantically trying to get rid of them. After thrashing around
they disappeared towards the surface and didn’t rejoin the school. Cautious and suspicious,
she and most of her schoolmates fled the area and sought refuge in a secluded bay where
they were undisturbed.
While roaming the ocean the school had intermingled with fish from several watersheds.
As they migrated along the coast they frequently swam near the surface so their sensitive
olfactory nerves could sample the minute scent of their native river water. Those that
detected the odor indicating home, split away from the school and pursued the source.
The water of the largest river has only a tiny influence upon the immense volume of ocean
water, but the salmon’s extraordinary sense of smell can detect minute amounts of scent
unique to their home stream that enables them to return to exactly the location they were
hatched, a sense beyond human comprehension. This compares to humans traveling
across the United States after being away from their birthplace for years and detecting home
after breathing a certain whiff of air, or taste of water.
Other salmon in the school continued to cruise along the coast, their internal guidance
system steering them towards home, searching for the tell-tale scents which would direct
them back to their rivers of origin.
The beautiful female now weighed about 80 pounds. Her fat sides below the lateral
line, and her belly, glowed like a newly-minted silver. The shades of her olive-green back
were perfectly adapted so she was invisible to predators from above. Her silvery undersides
made it more difficult for predators to see her from below.
Off Cape Muzon, the west entrance to Dixon Entrance, she suddenly detected a scent
in the ocean which excited her greatly. With a dozen of her mates she left the school she had
traveled with for thousands of miles and turned eastward, searching for the tell-tale microscopic scents of her native river water. As the scent grew stronger she became tremendously excited and pushed on rapidly.
She cruised east into Nichols Passage, a few miles from Ketchikan, one hundred miles
from the mouth of the Unuk River where she had been hatched. There were no herring to
feed upon. She became ravenous.
Near a small island she detected a strange vibration. Investigating, it appeared to be a
large, swimming herring. Her usual caution dimmed by hunger, without thinking she
grabbed it.......!
Quite by chance this giant female king salmon and the author, who had never caught
a salmon, were destined by fate to connect with one another off Blank Island, Alaska.
Wow! Think of the odds? Me from the mid-West, the salmon a product of a wild
Alaskan river and Pacific Ocean, coming together with only a thin wire between us! An
insignificant occurrence, perhaps, but a happening which would have profound effects on
both the author’s future and king salmon as a resource for almost the next half century.
Unknown to me at the time, I would spend much of my life in pursuit of king salmon like
this giant female. Searching for and harvesting them from California to Cape Suckling,
Alaska. Small, but significant beginnings.
She battled long and hard for her freedom. Suddenly something struck the back of her
head and she was momentarily dazed as she fled from the strange object floating overhead.
Suddenly free again, she tried to shake the strange object dangling from her lower jaw. The
urge to find and enter her native river grew so strong she didn’t stop to rest or feed. Miles
up the Unuk River she paused to estimate if the water levels were sufficient for spawning in
the tributary where she had been hatched.
For several days she lingered in the main river. Then a rainstorm dumped a deluge
of rain on the watershed. This send her rapidly upstream. For the first 40 miles she had
unobstructed travel. Then one day she realized that the scent she had been following suddenly ended. Turning back, she found what she was looking for, a side stream, where the odor of home was strong. The stream was small, with a gentle current, and led into a thick forest of spruce and hemlock. Thick brush and grass overhung the stream’s banks. Gravel and sand covered the bottom.
Here, in shallow water, bears attempted to catch her, pawing her sides and biting at
her in the riffles. Her tremendous size and strength allowed her to escape.
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Finally she found what she was looking for, a clean bed of gravel beneath an overhanging
windfall that provided both shade and cover. The female began digging a nest, or
redd with her tail. Before she finished a small male salmon approached and attempted to
help dig the redd. He was not only small but his coloration was sickly, his skin scared by
tooth marks and his lower teeth protruded. She drove him away. No runt like that was
suitable to father her offspring.
The following day another male appeared. This fish was big, strong and beautiful.
Much to her surprise, he ignored her and swam upstream. She chased after him, but the
spoon slowed her progress and he was too fast for her. Disappointed, she returned to her
nest. Perhaps it had been the despised object hanging from one corner of her mouth that
had frightened him off.
Surely some mate would find her, she thought. As an enticement she laid several
hundred eggs, thinking no male could resist the odor of such tempting, beautiful eggs. She
was right. Another large male suddenly appeared, sniffed the eggs and began aggressively
chasing away other nearby males. He left no doubt that she was his exclusive property, that
this redd was not to be disturbed by any other male salmon.
The female liked his strong show of support. Encouraged, she deposited 14,000 large,
soft, pink eggs into the nest. The male frequently hovered over her eggs and spewed his
white milt to fertilize them. After she was through they took turns carefully covering the
eggs with the proper amount of clean sand and gravel.
Neither had eaten since leaving salt water and their body conditions had deteriorated.
Their purpose complete, they both died, the destiny of all Pacific Salmon, including the
largest of all, the King, Oncorhynchus tshawytscha. How long have salmon existed?
Item: About 100 salmon fossils were discovered embedded in a sandstone deposit along
the banks of the Skokomish River in Washington State in 2002. The deposit is believed to
date back to the Pliestocene Age, 1.6 million years ago. The fossils are estimated to be at
least 50,000 years old. (The Daily Olympian/Peninsula Daily News, July 5, 2002)
Few animals can claim such a magnificent, useful life cycle. Little wonder Northwest
Coast natives believed salmon to be a gift from the Creator. Why else would salmon ascend
as much as 2000 miles up some of the large rivers, such as the Columbia, Snake and Yukon,
to provide food for the people? In reverence, they performed elaborate ceremonies on the
salmon’s behalf.
The following is pure conjecture, but entirely possible:
A biologist counting spawning salmon along a tributary to the Unuk river found the carcass
of a giant salmon. He stooped, a tape measure in his hands, to measure her. Attached to
her jaw was a large, badly tarnished, brass spoon. A stainless steel leader was still attached to the spoon. Only a super salmon could possibly have reached this remote place with a spoon like that hindering its progress, he reasoned. He bent down, measured the carcass, and wrote in his notebook.
He had seen thousands of king salmon carcasses along a dozen watersheds where he had
worked, but nothing as large as this. He removed the spoon, coiled the leader and placed it in
his pack. Back at the Fish & Game office he tacked the spoon to a bulletin board, along with a
neatly-typed note indicating where it had been found in a female king salmon. He estimated the
fish to have weighted between 80 and 90 pounds. The spoon joined other lures that he and
other stream walkers had found over the years.
But death wasn’t the end of this salmon’s contributions to the ecology. Her extraordinary
life cycle was far from complete. Hers, and other salmon’s rotten flesh would serve as
food for her tiny, transparent offspring, or alevins, as they emerged from the egg sacs
months later.
Her offspring would also discover a cruel, hostile environment after leaving the protection
of the windfall above their nest. Cormorants, blue herons and terns, dolly varden
trout and other fish gobbled thousands as they slowly migrated down stream. By the time
they reached salt water only a small percentage of the alevins that hatched from the 14,000
eggs remained. But those that survived were the strongest and wisest and would migrate to
sea as their mother had. Many others would not survive the rigors of life in the ocean. It’s
estimated that a return of only two or three percent of the salmon that hatch and reach the
sea survive to return and spawn again. Perhaps only 200 of this female’s offspring would
return to the Unuk River.
Even after serving as food for her offspring, the giant king’s usefulness had not ended.
It was late fall and the main run of salmon had long ended. A hungry otter dragged her body
partly out of the water. A female grizzly chased away the otter, then carried the carcass
ashore for her yearling cubs. The cubs tore the carcass apart, scattering pieces into the forest.
Remaining scraps became food for eagles, crows, ravens, mink, and other animals.
They scattered portions of the rich nutrients, calcium, phosphorus and other vital minerals,
onto the shore or bank and into the trees where the flesh enhanced the soil and other
vegetation in a well-designed, natural enrichment plan that has no equal anywhere on the
globe. Traces of the vital minerals derived from salmon carcasses have recently been detected
during research by laboratory testing of riparian vegetation along rivers where salmon spawn.
http://www.ifish.net/board/../fc5a.jpg
With five species of Pacific salmon returning to streams and rivers on both Asian and
North American Pacific coasts, unimaginable tens of thousands of tons of vital nutrients
find their way from the sea into the soil “In all, more than 130 species of vertebrates eat salmon at some stage of the fish’s lives. Many transfer those nutrients into the forest, boosting the growth rate of vegetation. Studies show that recycled salmon can account for an average of 20 percent of the nitrogen in stream side vegetation (up to 40 percent in the case of huckleberry bushes) and 25 to 50 percent of the carbon and nitrogen in aquatic insects and salmon fry. Like a fallen rain forest tree, a spawning salmon doesn’t die so much as begin serving the ecosystem in different ways.
Salmon have helped restore the ecology along countless rivers ravaged, and partially
destroyed by natural causes. One example is the White River, a tributary of the Yukon
River, where spawning beds were destroyed, not once but at least twice, after volcanos erupted in the St. Elias Mountain Range and spewed layers of volcanic ash up to 10 feet thick
over the land.
Salmon helped restore the ecology of the mighty Columbia River at least five times,
when catastrophic floods occurred after glacier-dammed Lake Missoula broke, diverting the
river in places by many miles and washing away, or redepositing hundreds of millions of
tons of gravel from traditional spawning beds that had been used for thousands of years.
Evidently the floods occurred during periods while salmon, either juveniles or mature
adults, were in a tributary, perhaps the Yakima or Wenatchee, tributaries unaffected by the
floods. Although the runs must have been severely impacted by such floods, salmon were
not totally eliminated. Different runs, spring and fall, are nature’s way of insuring perpetuation
of the runs.
By the time Lewis & Clark canoed down the river centuries after the last flood, they
reported that salmon were plentiful, proof that runs had reestablished themselves.
In North America, king salmon range from Monterey Bay, California to the Chukchi
Sea in Alaska. On the Asian coast, king salmon occur from the Anadyr River of Siberia
southward to Hokkaido, Japan. King salmon are Alaska’s state fish, and one of the most
important sport and commercial fish native to the Pacific coast. The largest on record, 126
pounds, was caught in a fish trap near Petersburg, Alaska in 1949.
When Del found out I was painting the inside of the hotel with a brush he couldn’t
believe it. Especially now that I could use only one hand. “Haven’t you heard of the new
rollers?” he asked. “Go and buy one,” he said. “You’ll never use a brush again, except for
trim. We’ve been using a roller for copper painting the bottom. They work great.”
I’d never heard of a roller. It didn’t take me long to realize their value, especially for
ceiling work. I completed painting the hotel with one hand.
I had been concerned when the doctor mentioned fish poisoning while sewing up my
hand. When I went to get the stitches removed I questioned the doctor.
“Fish poisoning?” It’s a particularly dangerous form of blood poisoning. It can spread
rapidly. Some people are more susceptible to contacting it than others. The best preventative
is keeping the hands clean.”
I laughed. “Keep your hands clean while fishing?”
“At least wash them thoroughly in warm soapy water as often as possible, especially
before you go to bed. Use Bag Balm. It’s a mild antiseptic.”
“Bag Balm! That’s what we used on the milk cow’s udders back home!”
“That right.”
I took his advice and never once had fish poisoning. I insisted my shipmates followed
this practice, and none of them ever contacted it either. I know others who neglected to
keep their hands clean, lost fishing time and suffered terribly. Fish poisoning can be deadly.
It wasn’t long until my left hand healed up enough I decided to go out to Mountain
Point and see if I could catch a salmon with a choked herring. All I caught were rock cod
and a 20 pound halibut. I gave the halibut to Ole Fosse.
When Jean found out about it she was furious. “I’d have bought it from you,” she said.
“We could use about 40 pounds a week.”
“I don’t have a commercial licence.”
Jean looked at me as if I was stupid. “Don’t let that bother you. They only cost five dollars.”
The next halibut I caught I sold to Jean for $.15 a pound. Being paid cash for fish
provided me with an incentive to keep at it.
A few days later I brought in another halibut.
“Can’t use it today,” Jean said. “Just bought 20 pounds from another fellow.”
I learned my first lesson about marketing fish.
Now that I was out of work I had plenty of time on my hands to fish. I bought a commercial
licence so I could sell my catch to anyone who would buy it. But first I had to
catch a salmon. Out by Cutter Rock, off Mountain Point, there is a long reef running
towards George Inlet. I caught a fat, twenty pound ling cod by lowering my choked herring
to the bottom for lack of anything else to do. I knew Ole Fosse loved ling cod so I took
it to his apartment. He was delighted and invited me to come for dinner the following night
for codfish balls. The codfish balls were the finest eating imaginable. I wish I had the recipe.
After dinner Ole asked me what I was going to do now that I’d finished painting?
“I don’t know.”
“Well, I just got a job doing the plumbing and sheet metal at the Beanery. I could use
some help.”
“I’d love to, Ole, but I’m no plumber.”
“I know. I just need a laborer.”
The Beanery was a small lunch room across the street from the Post Office and Federal
Building. Today it has been remodeled into one of dozens of “tourist traps” catering to the
tour ship passengers who arrive daily. The owner’s name was Alex.
I enjoyed the work. I learned how to drill holes through the floor and ceiling for pipes,
thread galvanized pipe for water and waste lines and caulk cast iron sewer pipe.
I got along great with Ole. When he found out I kept right on working while he was
away tending other business, he was delighted. I thought as soon as the Beanery was done
I’d be through, but he never mentioned laying me off. More work kept coming in and we
kept working, five and a half days a week.
This seriously curtailed my fishing time, but at least I could send money to my family
on a steady basis. The days were long in June, so I sometimes went fishing after work.
Ole’s son Earl and his wife Christine had recently moved from Fairbanks to Ketchikan.
Earl had attended the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and graduated as a mining engineer.
He’d worked for a time at Livengood, then decided to join his father in the plumbing business.
Earl was busy remodeling the apartment over the plumbing shop at the corner of
Bawden and Dock street. Ole’s apartment was on the lower floor beside the plumbing shop.
One day a halibut fisherman by the name of Benny Thomalson came into the shop for
plumbing supplies. He asked if we knew anyone who might be interested in renting his
house out at Dehorn Cove for the summer, as he was going westward on a halibut schooner
for the season.
“I said sure! Me.” He gave me a key. That night I pedaled my bike out for a look.
Dehorn Cove was a small indentation one mile south of the Coast Guard Base. Several
houses are located there. Two were built out over the tidal beach on pilings. At high tide the
sea came up to within about five feet from the floor. What a view we had from the living
room. It was like living on a boat. Tongass Narrows is a busy waterway with ships and small
craft passing constantly. Although the pilings beneath the house were boxed in with lumber
to keep drift logs from actually coming under the house, some of the cribbing had rotted,
and logs frequently found their way under. If a vessel’s wake occurred during high tide
the logs beat on the support pilings, creating quite a noise.
At low tide the house stood high on pilings, and water was 50 yards away. I didn’t know
how my wife would like that, with two small children to watch out for.
My family came up on the steamer. The house was about two miles out of town and I
didn’t have a car. Leta wasn’t excited about moving to Alaska, even though her girl friend
Jerry and brother Mike lived there. Mike had quit the sawmill and was working for the
Ketchikan Soda Works, a soft drink bottling and distribution business on North Tongass
Avenue.
As expected, Leta didn’t like living over water. The boys and I thought it was great. We
had a great view as all kinds of vessels passed by.
Not long after my family arrived I took them for a ride up and down the waterfront in
the Chinook. Leta was terrified of boats. Dale, two and a half, and Bobby, three and a half,
thought the boat ride was great, especially if we crossed a boat’s wake and splashed up and
down.
Lots of work was coming into the shop and I didn’t have much time to fish.
Earl finished the apartment and moved his family in. He had a 14-foot wood-planked,
round-bottomed, Davis-built row boat. We took it inside the shop and repaired and painted
it. It fit in the back of the pickup. Some evenings we would load the boat into the back
of the shop pickup after work and drive out to Clover Pass, a popular fishing area. . We’d
take turns rowing and caught a few king salmon, halibut and cod.
That fall Bill Goodale returned after a season of long line fishing and went back to
work at Fosse’s. Bill hailed from Maine and was the nephew of Ed Bugden, a well known
Ketchikan halibut fisherman. Bill worked on halibut boats during the summer and at Fosse
Plumbing during the winter. Bill and I became good friends and enjoyed many hunting and
fishing trips together. We worked together for several years, at both Fosse Plumbing,
Heating and Sheet Metal and later at Hugo Schmolck Plumbing and Heating. Bill kept me
entertained with stories about long lining halibut. I thought about trying to get a job next
season on a halibut boat but Bill discouraged me, saying they hardly ever hired inexperienced men.
Watch for Chapter Six!
New chapters around the 15th of each month!
Francis E. Caldwell
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Chapter Five
Nature’s Precious Gift, Pacific Salmon
http://www.ifish.net/board/../fc5c.jpg
About the same time I joined the Navy in Illinois, somewhere in the icy waters of the
Pacific Ocean a small female king salmon moved westward through the sea. As a tiny smolt
she had recently descended her stream of origin in a wilderness valley surrounded by snowy
peaks and forested slopes covered with virgin Sitka spruce, hemlock and red cedar. A temperate rainforest, where up to 20 feet of precipitation fell annually.
Before reaching salt water, she sensed her true purpose, to grow large and strong so she
would have the strength to return up her native river, then reproduce. Her trip down stream
was long and dangerous. Blue herons tried to stab her with their long, sharp beaks. Mink
and otter lurked in the pools and tried to catch her. The school learned to seek cover during
daylight under overhanging brush or beneath windfalls.
Eventually the school reached the estuary where salt water mixed with fresh. Here they
stayed for weeks, taking shelter in the beds of green, waving eelgrass, Zostera marina. Still
too small to feed on herring, needlefish and other small fish, they feasted on tiny organisms,
such as harpacticoid copepods, that grew on the eelgrass. This diverse marine ecosystem
fed the tiny salmon until they were large enough to catch small fish and shrimp.
As they left the estuary, a new sense of purpose drove them rapidly through long tidal
channels, past islands and reefs until at last they entered their true environment, the open
sea. Now began a lifetime of wandering in the Pacific Ocean.
Her appetite became veracious as she grew. She learned to work in unison with her
mates as they slashed through schools of herring and needlefish, then circled back and fed
on the cripples.
Her wanderings took her north and west toward islands, where schools of fat herring
provided ample nourishment. She increased in size. The school roamed widely, sometimes
hundreds of miles from land. By her sixth year she had grown larger than most of her companions and had wandered thousands of miles from home.
King salmon may reach sexual maturity in their fifth through seventh year, a vital plan
of survival. In case of natural destruction of a particular run, such as a flood on the spawning
beds, different age groups have a better chance of survival than if only one age group
spawned in the area.
Her lateral line, the almost invisible row of modified scales that create a series of overlapping
chambers, between the dark blue upper scales and the silvery scales along the side
and belly, could detect minute changes in water temperature and pressure. The functions
of the lateral line provides salmon with an extra, special sense, part of a mysterious, unexplainable sensory system vital to the fish’s existence. With this system the fish could navigate, detect minute currents, determine the presence of other animals, including predators,
and maintain close formation with schools of its kind. Scientists know very little about this
important lateral line.
She learned to avoid sea lion and orca attacks by leaving the school, then quickly diving
into the depths. When she rejoined her mates after marine mammal attacks she noticed
their numbers had been greatly reduced. Some were bleeding and soon died.
At age six the female, and the school she prowled the ocean with, became restless. An
unexplainable urge to move east overwhelmed their senses. By now the female was much
larger than the rest, the result of genes passed down from her parents. Her belly bulged with
thousands of tiny, pink eggs.
The males in the school also became restless as their roe sacks expanded. Hormones
were released which triggered a migratory urge that fisheries scientists are completely unable
to comprehend. The school began to migrate towards the far distant Southeast Alaskan
coast. At first they moved slowly, then faster as the urge to spawn increased, until movement
became a consuming passion.
As the school reached the coast their progress slowed. They fed voraciously on schools
of herring among the coastal fiords and fattened at an extraordinary rate.
One day the school was feeding off Cape Edgecumbe, a prominent cape jutted out
from Kruzof Island near Sitka, Alaska. Suddenly they were attracted by many strange, glittering, wobbling, vibrating objects passing through the water. A strange rumble came from
above. The big female was attracted to the troller’s brass spoons, but before she decided to
grab one, she noticed that several of her school chums who had already had the strange
objects in their mouths, were frantically trying to get rid of them. After thrashing around
they disappeared towards the surface and didn’t rejoin the school. Cautious and suspicious,
she and most of her schoolmates fled the area and sought refuge in a secluded bay where
they were undisturbed.
While roaming the ocean the school had intermingled with fish from several watersheds.
As they migrated along the coast they frequently swam near the surface so their sensitive
olfactory nerves could sample the minute scent of their native river water. Those that
detected the odor indicating home, split away from the school and pursued the source.
The water of the largest river has only a tiny influence upon the immense volume of ocean
water, but the salmon’s extraordinary sense of smell can detect minute amounts of scent
unique to their home stream that enables them to return to exactly the location they were
hatched, a sense beyond human comprehension. This compares to humans traveling
across the United States after being away from their birthplace for years and detecting home
after breathing a certain whiff of air, or taste of water.
Other salmon in the school continued to cruise along the coast, their internal guidance
system steering them towards home, searching for the tell-tale scents which would direct
them back to their rivers of origin.
The beautiful female now weighed about 80 pounds. Her fat sides below the lateral
line, and her belly, glowed like a newly-minted silver. The shades of her olive-green back
were perfectly adapted so she was invisible to predators from above. Her silvery undersides
made it more difficult for predators to see her from below.
Off Cape Muzon, the west entrance to Dixon Entrance, she suddenly detected a scent
in the ocean which excited her greatly. With a dozen of her mates she left the school she had
traveled with for thousands of miles and turned eastward, searching for the tell-tale microscopic scents of her native river water. As the scent grew stronger she became tremendously excited and pushed on rapidly.
She cruised east into Nichols Passage, a few miles from Ketchikan, one hundred miles
from the mouth of the Unuk River where she had been hatched. There were no herring to
feed upon. She became ravenous.
Near a small island she detected a strange vibration. Investigating, it appeared to be a
large, swimming herring. Her usual caution dimmed by hunger, without thinking she
grabbed it.......!
Quite by chance this giant female king salmon and the author, who had never caught
a salmon, were destined by fate to connect with one another off Blank Island, Alaska.
Wow! Think of the odds? Me from the mid-West, the salmon a product of a wild
Alaskan river and Pacific Ocean, coming together with only a thin wire between us! An
insignificant occurrence, perhaps, but a happening which would have profound effects on
both the author’s future and king salmon as a resource for almost the next half century.
Unknown to me at the time, I would spend much of my life in pursuit of king salmon like
this giant female. Searching for and harvesting them from California to Cape Suckling,
Alaska. Small, but significant beginnings.
She battled long and hard for her freedom. Suddenly something struck the back of her
head and she was momentarily dazed as she fled from the strange object floating overhead.
Suddenly free again, she tried to shake the strange object dangling from her lower jaw. The
urge to find and enter her native river grew so strong she didn’t stop to rest or feed. Miles
up the Unuk River she paused to estimate if the water levels were sufficient for spawning in
the tributary where she had been hatched.
For several days she lingered in the main river. Then a rainstorm dumped a deluge
of rain on the watershed. This send her rapidly upstream. For the first 40 miles she had
unobstructed travel. Then one day she realized that the scent she had been following suddenly ended. Turning back, she found what she was looking for, a side stream, where the odor of home was strong. The stream was small, with a gentle current, and led into a thick forest of spruce and hemlock. Thick brush and grass overhung the stream’s banks. Gravel and sand covered the bottom.
Here, in shallow water, bears attempted to catch her, pawing her sides and biting at
her in the riffles. Her tremendous size and strength allowed her to escape.
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Finally she found what she was looking for, a clean bed of gravel beneath an overhanging
windfall that provided both shade and cover. The female began digging a nest, or
redd with her tail. Before she finished a small male salmon approached and attempted to
help dig the redd. He was not only small but his coloration was sickly, his skin scared by
tooth marks and his lower teeth protruded. She drove him away. No runt like that was
suitable to father her offspring.
The following day another male appeared. This fish was big, strong and beautiful.
Much to her surprise, he ignored her and swam upstream. She chased after him, but the
spoon slowed her progress and he was too fast for her. Disappointed, she returned to her
nest. Perhaps it had been the despised object hanging from one corner of her mouth that
had frightened him off.
Surely some mate would find her, she thought. As an enticement she laid several
hundred eggs, thinking no male could resist the odor of such tempting, beautiful eggs. She
was right. Another large male suddenly appeared, sniffed the eggs and began aggressively
chasing away other nearby males. He left no doubt that she was his exclusive property, that
this redd was not to be disturbed by any other male salmon.
The female liked his strong show of support. Encouraged, she deposited 14,000 large,
soft, pink eggs into the nest. The male frequently hovered over her eggs and spewed his
white milt to fertilize them. After she was through they took turns carefully covering the
eggs with the proper amount of clean sand and gravel.
Neither had eaten since leaving salt water and their body conditions had deteriorated.
Their purpose complete, they both died, the destiny of all Pacific Salmon, including the
largest of all, the King, Oncorhynchus tshawytscha. How long have salmon existed?
Item: About 100 salmon fossils were discovered embedded in a sandstone deposit along
the banks of the Skokomish River in Washington State in 2002. The deposit is believed to
date back to the Pliestocene Age, 1.6 million years ago. The fossils are estimated to be at
least 50,000 years old. (The Daily Olympian/Peninsula Daily News, July 5, 2002)
Few animals can claim such a magnificent, useful life cycle. Little wonder Northwest
Coast natives believed salmon to be a gift from the Creator. Why else would salmon ascend
as much as 2000 miles up some of the large rivers, such as the Columbia, Snake and Yukon,
to provide food for the people? In reverence, they performed elaborate ceremonies on the
salmon’s behalf.
The following is pure conjecture, but entirely possible:
A biologist counting spawning salmon along a tributary to the Unuk river found the carcass
of a giant salmon. He stooped, a tape measure in his hands, to measure her. Attached to
her jaw was a large, badly tarnished, brass spoon. A stainless steel leader was still attached to the spoon. Only a super salmon could possibly have reached this remote place with a spoon like that hindering its progress, he reasoned. He bent down, measured the carcass, and wrote in his notebook.
He had seen thousands of king salmon carcasses along a dozen watersheds where he had
worked, but nothing as large as this. He removed the spoon, coiled the leader and placed it in
his pack. Back at the Fish & Game office he tacked the spoon to a bulletin board, along with a
neatly-typed note indicating where it had been found in a female king salmon. He estimated the
fish to have weighted between 80 and 90 pounds. The spoon joined other lures that he and
other stream walkers had found over the years.
But death wasn’t the end of this salmon’s contributions to the ecology. Her extraordinary
life cycle was far from complete. Hers, and other salmon’s rotten flesh would serve as
food for her tiny, transparent offspring, or alevins, as they emerged from the egg sacs
months later.
Her offspring would also discover a cruel, hostile environment after leaving the protection
of the windfall above their nest. Cormorants, blue herons and terns, dolly varden
trout and other fish gobbled thousands as they slowly migrated down stream. By the time
they reached salt water only a small percentage of the alevins that hatched from the 14,000
eggs remained. But those that survived were the strongest and wisest and would migrate to
sea as their mother had. Many others would not survive the rigors of life in the ocean. It’s
estimated that a return of only two or three percent of the salmon that hatch and reach the
sea survive to return and spawn again. Perhaps only 200 of this female’s offspring would
return to the Unuk River.
Even after serving as food for her offspring, the giant king’s usefulness had not ended.
It was late fall and the main run of salmon had long ended. A hungry otter dragged her body
partly out of the water. A female grizzly chased away the otter, then carried the carcass
ashore for her yearling cubs. The cubs tore the carcass apart, scattering pieces into the forest.
Remaining scraps became food for eagles, crows, ravens, mink, and other animals.
They scattered portions of the rich nutrients, calcium, phosphorus and other vital minerals,
onto the shore or bank and into the trees where the flesh enhanced the soil and other
vegetation in a well-designed, natural enrichment plan that has no equal anywhere on the
globe. Traces of the vital minerals derived from salmon carcasses have recently been detected
during research by laboratory testing of riparian vegetation along rivers where salmon spawn.
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With five species of Pacific salmon returning to streams and rivers on both Asian and
North American Pacific coasts, unimaginable tens of thousands of tons of vital nutrients
find their way from the sea into the soil “In all, more than 130 species of vertebrates eat salmon at some stage of the fish’s lives. Many transfer those nutrients into the forest, boosting the growth rate of vegetation. Studies show that recycled salmon can account for an average of 20 percent of the nitrogen in stream side vegetation (up to 40 percent in the case of huckleberry bushes) and 25 to 50 percent of the carbon and nitrogen in aquatic insects and salmon fry. Like a fallen rain forest tree, a spawning salmon doesn’t die so much as begin serving the ecosystem in different ways.
Salmon have helped restore the ecology along countless rivers ravaged, and partially
destroyed by natural causes. One example is the White River, a tributary of the Yukon
River, where spawning beds were destroyed, not once but at least twice, after volcanos erupted in the St. Elias Mountain Range and spewed layers of volcanic ash up to 10 feet thick
over the land.
Salmon helped restore the ecology of the mighty Columbia River at least five times,
when catastrophic floods occurred after glacier-dammed Lake Missoula broke, diverting the
river in places by many miles and washing away, or redepositing hundreds of millions of
tons of gravel from traditional spawning beds that had been used for thousands of years.
Evidently the floods occurred during periods while salmon, either juveniles or mature
adults, were in a tributary, perhaps the Yakima or Wenatchee, tributaries unaffected by the
floods. Although the runs must have been severely impacted by such floods, salmon were
not totally eliminated. Different runs, spring and fall, are nature’s way of insuring perpetuation
of the runs.
By the time Lewis & Clark canoed down the river centuries after the last flood, they
reported that salmon were plentiful, proof that runs had reestablished themselves.
In North America, king salmon range from Monterey Bay, California to the Chukchi
Sea in Alaska. On the Asian coast, king salmon occur from the Anadyr River of Siberia
southward to Hokkaido, Japan. King salmon are Alaska’s state fish, and one of the most
important sport and commercial fish native to the Pacific coast. The largest on record, 126
pounds, was caught in a fish trap near Petersburg, Alaska in 1949.
When Del found out I was painting the inside of the hotel with a brush he couldn’t
believe it. Especially now that I could use only one hand. “Haven’t you heard of the new
rollers?” he asked. “Go and buy one,” he said. “You’ll never use a brush again, except for
trim. We’ve been using a roller for copper painting the bottom. They work great.”
I’d never heard of a roller. It didn’t take me long to realize their value, especially for
ceiling work. I completed painting the hotel with one hand.
I had been concerned when the doctor mentioned fish poisoning while sewing up my
hand. When I went to get the stitches removed I questioned the doctor.
“Fish poisoning?” It’s a particularly dangerous form of blood poisoning. It can spread
rapidly. Some people are more susceptible to contacting it than others. The best preventative
is keeping the hands clean.”
I laughed. “Keep your hands clean while fishing?”
“At least wash them thoroughly in warm soapy water as often as possible, especially
before you go to bed. Use Bag Balm. It’s a mild antiseptic.”
“Bag Balm! That’s what we used on the milk cow’s udders back home!”
“That right.”
I took his advice and never once had fish poisoning. I insisted my shipmates followed
this practice, and none of them ever contacted it either. I know others who neglected to
keep their hands clean, lost fishing time and suffered terribly. Fish poisoning can be deadly.
It wasn’t long until my left hand healed up enough I decided to go out to Mountain
Point and see if I could catch a salmon with a choked herring. All I caught were rock cod
and a 20 pound halibut. I gave the halibut to Ole Fosse.
When Jean found out about it she was furious. “I’d have bought it from you,” she said.
“We could use about 40 pounds a week.”
“I don’t have a commercial licence.”
Jean looked at me as if I was stupid. “Don’t let that bother you. They only cost five dollars.”
The next halibut I caught I sold to Jean for $.15 a pound. Being paid cash for fish
provided me with an incentive to keep at it.
A few days later I brought in another halibut.
“Can’t use it today,” Jean said. “Just bought 20 pounds from another fellow.”
I learned my first lesson about marketing fish.
Now that I was out of work I had plenty of time on my hands to fish. I bought a commercial
licence so I could sell my catch to anyone who would buy it. But first I had to
catch a salmon. Out by Cutter Rock, off Mountain Point, there is a long reef running
towards George Inlet. I caught a fat, twenty pound ling cod by lowering my choked herring
to the bottom for lack of anything else to do. I knew Ole Fosse loved ling cod so I took
it to his apartment. He was delighted and invited me to come for dinner the following night
for codfish balls. The codfish balls were the finest eating imaginable. I wish I had the recipe.
After dinner Ole asked me what I was going to do now that I’d finished painting?
“I don’t know.”
“Well, I just got a job doing the plumbing and sheet metal at the Beanery. I could use
some help.”
“I’d love to, Ole, but I’m no plumber.”
“I know. I just need a laborer.”
The Beanery was a small lunch room across the street from the Post Office and Federal
Building. Today it has been remodeled into one of dozens of “tourist traps” catering to the
tour ship passengers who arrive daily. The owner’s name was Alex.
I enjoyed the work. I learned how to drill holes through the floor and ceiling for pipes,
thread galvanized pipe for water and waste lines and caulk cast iron sewer pipe.
I got along great with Ole. When he found out I kept right on working while he was
away tending other business, he was delighted. I thought as soon as the Beanery was done
I’d be through, but he never mentioned laying me off. More work kept coming in and we
kept working, five and a half days a week.
This seriously curtailed my fishing time, but at least I could send money to my family
on a steady basis. The days were long in June, so I sometimes went fishing after work.
Ole’s son Earl and his wife Christine had recently moved from Fairbanks to Ketchikan.
Earl had attended the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and graduated as a mining engineer.
He’d worked for a time at Livengood, then decided to join his father in the plumbing business.
Earl was busy remodeling the apartment over the plumbing shop at the corner of
Bawden and Dock street. Ole’s apartment was on the lower floor beside the plumbing shop.
One day a halibut fisherman by the name of Benny Thomalson came into the shop for
plumbing supplies. He asked if we knew anyone who might be interested in renting his
house out at Dehorn Cove for the summer, as he was going westward on a halibut schooner
for the season.
“I said sure! Me.” He gave me a key. That night I pedaled my bike out for a look.
Dehorn Cove was a small indentation one mile south of the Coast Guard Base. Several
houses are located there. Two were built out over the tidal beach on pilings. At high tide the
sea came up to within about five feet from the floor. What a view we had from the living
room. It was like living on a boat. Tongass Narrows is a busy waterway with ships and small
craft passing constantly. Although the pilings beneath the house were boxed in with lumber
to keep drift logs from actually coming under the house, some of the cribbing had rotted,
and logs frequently found their way under. If a vessel’s wake occurred during high tide
the logs beat on the support pilings, creating quite a noise.
At low tide the house stood high on pilings, and water was 50 yards away. I didn’t know
how my wife would like that, with two small children to watch out for.
My family came up on the steamer. The house was about two miles out of town and I
didn’t have a car. Leta wasn’t excited about moving to Alaska, even though her girl friend
Jerry and brother Mike lived there. Mike had quit the sawmill and was working for the
Ketchikan Soda Works, a soft drink bottling and distribution business on North Tongass
Avenue.
As expected, Leta didn’t like living over water. The boys and I thought it was great. We
had a great view as all kinds of vessels passed by.
Not long after my family arrived I took them for a ride up and down the waterfront in
the Chinook. Leta was terrified of boats. Dale, two and a half, and Bobby, three and a half,
thought the boat ride was great, especially if we crossed a boat’s wake and splashed up and
down.
Lots of work was coming into the shop and I didn’t have much time to fish.
Earl finished the apartment and moved his family in. He had a 14-foot wood-planked,
round-bottomed, Davis-built row boat. We took it inside the shop and repaired and painted
it. It fit in the back of the pickup. Some evenings we would load the boat into the back
of the shop pickup after work and drive out to Clover Pass, a popular fishing area. . We’d
take turns rowing and caught a few king salmon, halibut and cod.
That fall Bill Goodale returned after a season of long line fishing and went back to
work at Fosse’s. Bill hailed from Maine and was the nephew of Ed Bugden, a well known
Ketchikan halibut fisherman. Bill worked on halibut boats during the summer and at Fosse
Plumbing during the winter. Bill and I became good friends and enjoyed many hunting and
fishing trips together. We worked together for several years, at both Fosse Plumbing,
Heating and Sheet Metal and later at Hugo Schmolck Plumbing and Heating. Bill kept me
entertained with stories about long lining halibut. I thought about trying to get a job next
season on a halibut boat but Bill discouraged me, saying they hardly ever hired inexperienced men.
Watch for Chapter Six!
New chapters around the 15th of each month!