It'd sure be nice if I got one more critter for the stew pot.
One decent set of buck tracks here.
Partially filled in with mud but has some respectable feet on him.
Maybe two tides ago or so.
Depends on what kind of wave action has been here,
they could have been made last night,
the tide rolled back in over it, filled them up.
One thing about hunting in this part of the world,
there's really no reliable source of cheap red meat,
it's all expensive in the fact that you gotta play all your cards right
and hopefully with the investment, and time and energy,
and sweat maybe you'll end up with something.
Well, gonna pull the chip on this,
see if anything's transpired in the last couple of days.
With the amount of deer sign that I'm seeing I have high confidence
that there's more than one decent buck in this area.
Look at this, son of a bitch, holy cow.
Nice, big, fat deer.
Real nice-looking deer.
I think I need to come over here and sit in a tree stand.
It's just a matter of me being smart enough, patient enough to,
to actually be in the right spot at the right time.
He's gonna be very tasty.
These are pretty good bait here, I,
this is one of my favorites to use for Halibut,
getting them cut up right now and, after I'm done here,
I'll start baiting my hooks up.
This is kind of the last of the hurrah there, you know,
as far as harvesting the Halibut,
we're getting a little bit more snow up in the high country
and that and whenever the temperatures start dropping
and getting colder they move to deeper water.
This is kind of a way of life for me, you know,
this is, kind of, how I live, and
this is me going to the grocery store for basically.
I'm gonna probably drop this in about
a hundred and twenty feet of water,
want the bait on, right on the bottom there
'cause that's where the Halibut are, they're bottom feeders.
My love for fishing goes as far back as I can remember.
I remember one of the first times I went fishing in a boat,
my first cast I caught my dad in the earlobe, and he was not a happy camper,
I didn't get to go out in the boat for quite a while after that.
This can be a pretty dangerous thing to do here, you,
you get one of them hooks, grab a hold of you
it could, literally ruin your day.
Now we wait and haul it first thing in the morning.
Well, wind tore up my no skid surface here.
More work, endless work around here.
This is our road system, we skiff over here and we have our vehicles parked
and this is our road to the world
where we do everything from hunting to grocery shopping,
getting firewood and getting all of our supplies.
Here we got something up here, what's this?
Damn. This is exactly what I'm looking for,
that's good burning wood.
That's a nice tree but somebody's limbed it so that means
they're coming back for it they're prepping it for their wood stove.
I'm gonna keep on keeping on where there's one there's gonna be another.
I'm not first, bummer.
My priority today is to get firewood, folks in town
and everybody's saying it's gonna be an early cold, cold winter.
And I'm kind of behind, I normally have my woodshed half-filled, but
I've just been so busy and, now I'm feeling it, it's like damn,
where the hell did the time go, the snow already fell and I don't have anything.
Where we live out here on this dirt road it's not maintained by the state
so pretty much when there's trees on it,
it's up to us to clear it to make the road passable so I'm actually filling
my woodshed and also clearing the road for the next person coming down.
Look at here man, there's another one, damn it I wish I was first today.
But it's checked inside so there's some firewood there but again it's,
somebody's gonna take that.
What a bummer man.
Damn it!
Early bird gets the worm, and the firewood.
Outgoing mail, hopefully a heck of a lot more incoming.
Mail coming in on a, on a float plane, a, a sea plane from,
from ketchikan he's got a couple of other stops as well,
couple other small communities so we are not it for those planes
so the weather has to be about right in all those spots and
they claim they're coming so we're, we're happy we'll,
we'll take it anytime we can get it.
My new job taking over our little floating post office out here
which is quite the honor.
Our last postmaster was there thirty years
and her mother before her so not something I I take lightly.
That a little seal over there?
I want to go play with him.
Right now down on the airplane float waiting,
or our life line waiting for that float plane to come and bring us all of our,
groceries, some medicine, some whatever other knickknacks people are,
are buying and needing out here.
There's a very, very good chance that the post office was going away
if somebody didn't take it on and it's something the community really, really
needs and glad that I was able to step up and,
and kind of fill that void.
Za plane, the plane.
Doing their circles, making sure there's no boats about to be in their way
or no big logs or anything out there
they're gonna run over so doing their circle
letting their, letting us know they're here and should be coming around and
landing right in, right through here.
Then the work begins.
Lifestyle hasn't changed too much around here
it's kind of nice to know that.
It's a kind of a dying breed and we're out here you know
still doing things the old school way.
When you're putting fuel in here it's definitely not cheap right now
and so you know it's kind of gotta go out there
and definitely try to catch some fish to be able to make that money back.
You know sometimes it's a hit and sometimes it's a miss.
All right, topped her off.
The winter king salmon season has officially begun
we're gonna go out about four hours north out of town and,
dump our gear in the water and see if we can drum up a few fish.
I've always heard the stories about derby winners getting caught on hot dogs
but I've never had that kind of luck, so I always got a really diligent
and anal about my bait, salted herring woo, not to be eaten.
We just bought a new boat, definitely a big steppingstone for us
in our career, we have a loan that we have to pay
so we're definitely gambling everything,
hoping that some of these returns will come back and
we can just be able to stay afloat.
All right. And we're ready, we doing this.
Okay everything's working good.
We're down here in chakan bay a couple hours
from port protection and we're dropping in the gear finally,
he's got all of his gear tied up and we're gonna set it down in about eight fathoms
and see if anything's laying right there.
Start dropping these lines down one at a time like this,
spacing them out a few fathoms apart.
There we are depth right there.
We like to, kind of troll shallow at first as we get to know a spot
or get back to fishing a zone just as, you hang up too hard
I mean best case scenario you mess up your bait,
worst case scenario you rip off your Cannon ball
and so it's definitely nice to kind of ease
into a spot and work your way into it so to speak and that way you can
you know avoid all those kind of mishaps that'll happen.
I'm just trying to really scrub the bottom here,
as close as I can get it,
that's where the king salmon lay.
- What are we at? - Twelve.
Twelve, doing all right.
I know I just see them getting up on that bank right there.
Want me to turn around? Getting kind of far back here.
Are you? You getting towards the other shallow spot or?
There's a two.
Breanna, quick, quick!
- I'm trying. - , Breanna.
You followed a three?
I didn't know how that got stuck in there.
Dude, do not do that to us again okay.
You will rip all our line right off this boat.
I got sucked in there kind of.
I don't know what I was doing.
Day dreaming, there. Well maybe I did but whatever.
Damn near gave me a heart attack woman.
I know. I got a little too close to the shallows
and so you have to speed up and get off there real quick
or you'll get snagged on the bottom and you can lose all your gear
and it's a catastrophe I've done it plenty.
It's an old man heart, thirty years old now.
Damn wore out almost. Boy.
Trolling hard, I love it.
Damn that's a lot of wood, they had their work cut out for them
moving that big old hog out.
Boy it looks like it knocked over this other dead guy,
it's a biggy but it ain't mine so I'm gonna move on.
From the, the camera I know that on that Ridge back there,
they're probably laying up there trying to wait out the storm or something,
maybe I could get one to come down.
And I'll be waiting for him.
Man it'd be nice to get a fish on the hook.
I know.
You know why you're scrubbing hard, I get it.
Yeah, trying to catch one.
That line's been soaking long enough I think, now it's,
time to go pull it and see if we got anything on there.
Hopefully there's at least one Halibut on there, if not more.
Hey, looks pretty full.
Happy community today.
All the salmon are out of the creek, a few dead ones down there,
the snow is around the corner.
Up here by red bay there's, it's just a blow hole in here
and there's always trees down with storms so hopefully
even if there's one blown down on the side of the road
that I can pull out at this point.
Ooh, my, my, my look at these.
Holy crap, here's two right here.
And they got branches, they are not claimed,
I think I found my trees.
This is cool and I got sunshine to be warm in.
Ooh.
Looks like a hemlock.
That's a good one and my saw can handle it and I can handle it,
it's not gonna be super heavy, that's good burning wood.
And quite a bit of it. I found my tree.
Raining like a cow peeing on a flat rock,
I might dip back in the woods just to see what it feels like in there,
it's obviously not raining quite as hard there as it is out in the open.
Deer don't like crappy weather either.
You'd probably stay hunkered down up in the deep timber somewhere.
I've seen enough activity on this old faithful game cam to know
that there's still a couple of bucks roaming around here.
Now it's just a matter of me having the time and the Patience to get out here
and wait for one of them to step out.
Top of this little nob here there's a muskeg going that way
and that way I'm gonna try to sneak down that way
and find a place where I can kind of see out
with a little bit of elevation if at all possible.
I'm not sure if I can pull it off, there might be too much brush,
brush is noisy, noisy is not good.
To actually be successful out here you gotta get
a pretty good idea if anything's actually moving in this area.
The forest is so dense you just can't pick a spot and go hey,
I'm just gonna go sit here and wait for a deer to walk by.
You need to pin down the trails that they walk
otherwise you're just kind of basically wasting your time.
Not a pretty big buck rubbing on those things, broke some branches off,
tore things up a little bit.
Holy cow!
I just had a distinct smell of male deer,
that's happened to, shoot just got it again.
There's a boy deer dancing around out there.
Yeah, it looks like there's some balls feed here on,
on that shallow so that's good, that's kind of where our gear is so
we'll have to see if something bites.
See our lines are jiggling a little bit so it's going over it,
now hopefully there's some king salmon feeding right there.
Well I'm gonna put on my lucky headband right now, I see it there.
Put it on.
Look at all these fish on there man.
I know it's dirty with blood spatter so. That's good.
Yeah, that's a good sign.
Does it look good? My hair's not all up?
It's a little up.
Thanks man. I'm vain.
Your hair's a little bit curly up on top.
It I'm not wearing a headband then.
I'm just telling you.
Me. I wish I cut my damn hair.
Maybe later.
I'm gonna run this side too just because, check everything out.
Make sure it looks good over here.
Oliver, I think we have one maybe. What baby?
I think we might have got a bite back there.
There's something over here.
Yeah, I saw it beat so that's why I was like
I think I got a bite on that side. What do you mean
we got a bite we got a shaker over there, guaranteed I bet.
I'll check it out and see what we got.
It hit hard at first.
There's something on there I betcha.
Breanna just said we might have had a bite,
either way I'm gonna run her up and see what the heck is going on.
Come on. Crossing my fingers.
Nope, nothing on there.
I don't know man.
We've been fishing here for quite a while just kind of seeing
during the tide if we were gonna catch anything
but right now we're not getting any bites.
I know I'm not gonna feel good until we get a bite and we get one landed.
The plan is I'm gonna pull these wires
and, we're gonna go ahead and run up there around the corner
go ahead and try the back of the bay as the tide's coming in.
You know if you drag around for a couple hours and you don't really get anything,
it's not really a good idea to just hang out forever 'cause
there could be something right up around the corner and
you don't want to waste your time here not making money.
Yeah, there's definitely a buck around here.
I'm just gonna go for a look and see if I can see out there.
Sneak back as quietly as I can.
Anytime you see a, area like that it means
there's been deer crossing back and forth
playing around and, otherwise
that would be overgrown brush.
I'm gonna blow the deer call.
See if I can't get something to come down.
Just got our mail plane in so it's kind of like Christmas morning,
Santa's here. Bringing all of our groceries
and goodies and everything from the real world.
Or the down south world.
So very exciting, it's a big moment.
My, my, my first as postmaster.
Post office and these bush planes that bring out
our supplies is such a lifeline to, to so many of us out here.
You know it's how we get out medication, our animal food, our food for ourselves,
our packages in and out to friends and family, down in the lower forty-eight
or anywhere across the world and so it
it really felt good to be able to jump in and kind of fill that void and,
and keep that tradition alive out here. Sweet.
Now we get to sort.
You do.
Here we go.
Hopefully we got some Halibut junior.
Well, there's one empty.
Nothing.
Something on the next hook.
Come on Halibut.
Star fish, can't eat that junior, nasty things.
I see something down there, way down there.
I don't know what it is.
Something's coming up,
junior, I think there's something down there.
Dang.
We got a skate, a big old skate.
They ain't too good to eat.
Dang junior, not looking so promising here.
A skate is a bottom dweller and you know they're not much good to eat,
they do make fertilizer in the garden but that just attracts bears.
I don't know they're not my cup of tea.
Come on Halibut.
Looking pretty sad here junior, pulling anchor now.
Forty-pound lead.
Well junior, that was a water haul but by golly I think we got enough bait there,
we can just throw the baited hooks down and give her another try,
I got another spot that we can down the way here,
we'll go dump it back in and see what happens.
Still got a little free time to do that so,
better take advantage of this good weather while we can,
ain't gonna be around much longer.
Okay, now for the real work.
This here is a nice dry hemlock log,
I like to burn hemlock because it burns for a long time,
it puts out heat and it holds a fire well.
Good lord.
That's hell bending over like that.
This tree already being down makes it easier
but still it's a hell of a lot of work cause each one of these rounds
I have to move four times before it's in my woodshed.
Think I'll load the heavy stuff first and work my way down to the little guys.
Folks down south don't realize that all they have to do is flip the switch
and their home is warm. Okay. This is gonna be the heaviest one.
Me, I have to work for it,
but when it gets cold in winter,
I'll appreciate all of my hard work.
Holy.
Now I gotta get it back to my skiff, get my skiff loaded,
hopefully the tide's working with me I have no clue what time it is.
So, I'm gonna head back now to the skiff.
That's a good load of wood, nice burning wood.
I've not had any luck blowing a deer call and getting a deer to step out,
might have something to do with the wolves and the hunting pressure.
I know that they walk around this son of a bitch though,
with any luck I'll be able to score a one up here.
We will see.
See if I can find a Halibut here hopefully, just getting the lines started.
This is it, we're fishing.
This hemlock will burn all night and keep me warm.
We finally got ourselves over here to the other side of the bay,
do another drag and we're gonna dump in and see
if there's anything fish on this side with the high tide.
Hopefully the high tide pushed some in and, we're get a couple more bites
and have ourselves a good day.
If there's a fish around it should, it should bite if it's hungry.
I absolutely have a certain sense of pride being a troller here in south east
as I feel like most of us trollers do,
it's not just trying to scoop up a big school fish
or trying to catch a fish just swimming by, we have to go about tricking into a salmon
into a biting the hook.
Got one. Yup, definitely.
Gear up Breanna a little bit, steer out.
Yeah, that's a fish man.
Cross my fingers.
I always get so nervous trying to land king salmon,
it's just like my heart's up in my throat.
It's like probably ten bucks a pound, maybe more right now.
So, I mean a ten-pound fish is a hundred-dollar bill.
Please don't tell me it got off. Crossing my fingers.
I don't know he might have got off.
I don't feel him on there anymore.
Yeah, he's on there though. Come on fish gods.
Help a guy out.
Yeah it's a nice one, come on bugger, come on.
Come on. Calm down please.
Ooh, no I, I think I still feel I still feel ha, ha!
Ooh, I feel it fighting okay.
Come on bugger, come on.
Come on.
- Jeez. Woo! - You got it?
Hell yeah we got it, it's a hog too, nice one.
Ooh! That's a nice one, sweet. Awesome. Woo!
Cool, well we know we're just fishing in a good spot.
Yeah, we are. I love it when I move some place
and actually get one on the first pass, hell yeah.
- What's our depth, Breanna? - What?
We got one on the other side too I think. Yeah, maybe.
Yeah, we do. Yeah, we do.
Okay, I'm going, ooh, feisty, come on bugger.
Come on bugger.
Simmer down.
Damn it.
Come on, stay away from those flashers.
Woo! Woo!
Double header baby, hell yeah!
They're jumping in there; I saw them back there jumping.
Man, I'm so pumped.
That's so cool. That's a really nice one too.
I know I gotta get the gear back down,
I'm freaking out I got both sides up at the moment,
holy smokes man, fish in the box, money in the bank.
Hell yeah, dude.
Oliver gets ecstatic when he gets a fish on it's like time stops
and it's just him and that fish and you can't even really talk to him.
Yeah!!
He just gets into this other, goes to this other place.
That's a fish we're in them.
Ooh, got him, yeah, bam.
Hell yeah, I don't even gotta measure that bugger I know he's legal.
I love seeing him just so happy and just all of that adrenaline rushing.
Got another fish over here.
Yeah, woo.
My goodness.
You know I've went out winter king fishing plenty of times
and haven't got crap in two days so to manage to go out
and land on so many fish it's just kind of like a good omen,
we're pretty stoked to get back to town,
get everything sent on the plane, get a paycheck.
Dude.
I love bogging fish! That's awesome. They're nice ones too.
Dude they are, I mean dude we definitely paid for fuel,
we're definitely over breaking even now. Yeah.
My goodness, I'm pumped.
That's awesome, that's a good feeling.
Yeah, we can definitely sell these fish.
I always gotta take a look when I do this because
you never know where the kitty cat's gonna be
and I don't want to take my cat out
throwing wood up here,
this is kind of a big one to be throwing, I think I can, I think I can.
I think I can.
I got my wood here now at the deck,
now I just gotta load it up on my cart and wheel it to my
hydraulic wood splitter, get it split and stack it up.
This is the monster.
Out here you need to be self-sufficient
because living in a community like this everybody has the same
chores I do and everybody has to get all this stuff done before the snow flies.
I hate calling upon them and pulling them off their tasks,
if I can't do it myself I really have no business being here.
Well junior, pretty much the end of the end here junior,
hopefully we got some Halibut.
Halibut's a big part of our diet in the winter time.
You know there's a, a lot of meat on a Halibut.
I feel really fortunate to have it right in my front yard.
I mean, people pay big money to go to a restaurant to buy it
or out of the grocery store.
Something down there is cleaning them up junior, ain't no bait left on them,
at least I don't have to clean the hooks up.
This is the end of it, once that window shuts to the Halibut it's,
it's over with until spring.
Either you land on them or you don't.
Getting down to the, the bottom here, we ain't got too many hooks left here,
something's coming up.
Moment of truth junior.
Star fish.
Well junior, I think it's another water hole.
You don't catch fish every time, not even in Alaska, that's just the way it is,
it's just the end of the season, they're, they're gone,
have to wait till next spring.
No fresh Halibut chowder tonight.
Would have been nice to get a, a little extra Halibut
but I guess the fishing season's over with,
it's time to clean up the hooks and we just need some venison now.
When I was a little boy, a wee little boy this was all clear cut,
was logged actually before I was born,
fifty-two or mid-fifties or something like that,
so this is what the forest looks like after re, recovering for you know
over sixty years.
You can see the old stumps.
That rock's been kicked over recently.
It rained like a bastard not too long ago
but last hour something kicked that rock over.
See it's just enough sign you know to lead me to believe
that if I put in just a little more time maybe I'll have a,
a chance at seeing one of these big guys.
I'm just gonna have to buckle down,
get my balls out of the cupboard and you know put the hammer down
and try to come up with something.
This place has changed so much over the years.
All these trees have grown up bigger, I get confused,
I don't want to go that way 'cause that's a big swamp over there,
there's a big pond over there, I think I gotta go that way, I do believe.
I'm gonna go around the corner and just do my surveillance.
And with any luck I'll see something with some horns sticking up off his head.
Let's go slow, who knows.
Stepped in a big hole.
You son of a bitch.
I think, I got water in one of my boots, went over the top.
Almost got trapped.
That went all the way to my knee, water made it in my boot.
Well one minute you're nice and dry and maybe a little warm
because you've been moving, next thing you know you're up to your ass in water,
sopping wet and half froze.
I'm not seeing a whole lot of deer activity,
I think I'm gonna turn around,
I've got a half a day's hike to get to the beach,
I don't get wet and hang out in the woods for very long.
I thought I'd give this place a rub, I've given it a rub,
sometimes you just gotta change course, go home and regroup.
And live to fight another day.
That's, nine pounds,
I mean that's a ninety-dollar fish right there.
Man that's pretty sweet.
Didn't take very long to make that money either which is kind of cool.
Yeah, it didn't.
And here's the nice one. See, anyways I'm curious.
Yup, it's the last one.
Around these parts you kind of judge your character
by the kind of stuff you can dredge up from nature.
You know I've been nervous this year because buying the whole new boat
and just kind of waiting to see how that's gonna pay off,
how it's gonna work out and it just seems that
everything has just paid off in spades.
Got a few yeah, we got about a half dozen.
Nice. Definitely want to send them out.
You probably want to get out of here as quick as possible.
They're like, gold. They are, yes, they are.
- Cool. - All right.
I appreciate it, thank you man.
You guys have a great day.
- Yeah, you too. - Yeah, you too.
Not unusual to make it back to the boat, wet, tired, cold and hungry
and nothing to show for it.
You have to be willing to put up with that if you're a hunter in,
in my part of the world.
Heading for the safety of home.
But, the days you come back with something and you're busting your ass,
you know dragging a deer out of the forest, that's why you go out every year,
year after year.
You cannot have success sitting in your easy chair next to your wood stove.
Just pulled up to Mary's dock.
Mary you want me to set it right here?
Yeah.
All right, your, letters and stuff are in there too, so.
You're very welcome.
Our mail and supplies is such a lifeline to, to so many of us out here
and so it, it, it really felt good to be able to jump in and,
and keep that tradition alive out here.
That's definitely not a seasonal job so I think they're
they're definitely stuck with me for a while now.
Ok, rocky, let's get this stuff stacked.
Living in a community like this, we enjoy doing things for our self,
and providing for ourselves.
A lot of work but we're almost there.
It's a lot of hard work but it's sense of pride,
you know I'm not afraid of hard work and hard play.
Okay. We got this, that's it, my back is saying no more.
The wood is closing in on us, I like it.
It's all worth it.
Come on, let's go where it's warm.
Well this is, kind of the last of the fishing
for the season 'till spring time unless I do winter king fishing but
it's time to get these all cleaned up and move on into the hunting mode.
I was hoping to get lucky and land on one or two but just being out here
more than anything really gives you a piece of mind
you know I mean it could get rather costly but it's a good habit to have.
Just like that, sweet man, that's how it's done.
Hell yeah, money in the bank, I'm digging it.
Let's go get inside, it's starting to rain.