Sean Ruddy's blog

Fishing in 1990 I scored some cash after my first few long line fishing trips out of Homer. And now I wanted to go salmon fishing.  I had offers to go out west on a long-liner but I really wanted to go for the good summer job.  Salmon jobs were the hard to get fishing gigs at the time.

Both of the boats I had fished on in Homer, the Trina and the Bonanza already had their salmon crew.  Things today have changed a lot since rationalization in 1995. Halibut and sablefish (black cod) have since been “rationalized” into individual fishing quota (IFQ) instead of free for all catch what you can in a limited time.   Before the IFQ’s were in place the limited time meant lots of lives, gear, fish and boats wasted as the fleet was forced to go full tilt into whatever conditions Alaska would throw at them  to grab as much as fish possible.

So I got on the phone and started calling fishermen friends around the state.  Kimett and I had taught skiing at Challenge Alaska, A ski school for people with disabilities in Girdwood.  He lined me out on where to go next.

“… get on a plane to King Salmon.  Hitch a ride out to Naknek to the Lummi and Leader Creek boatyards.  Camp out with the bears in the woods up the hill from the boats and start walking the docks.”

Kimmet gave me a list of boats and names of people to look up. Off I went in a turbo prop to King Salmon and walked out to the highway with all my gear.

Soon a little pickup stopped to pick me up.  I tossed my bags in the bed and hopped into the passenger seat.  The kind man who pulled over was one of the best Alaskans ever, Governor Jay Hammond (RIP) the former Governor was driving a small beat-up pickup on his way back to Naknek.  He had actually met me before.  Governor Hammond and my parents got to know each other back in his political days living in Juneau.  My mom would later give the eulogy at his funeral.  Alaska is unbelievably big but still a small town.  Governor Hammond had lots of questions for me about my family and what I was doing out there.  I told him of my plans.  He dropped me off at the boat yard and wished me luck.  He did later introduce me to some skippers over coffee though that was not how I scored my first salmon job.

I spent my days walking around and asking if anyone needed crew.  Walking the docks in Bristol Bay consisted more of walking around dusty boatyards and canneries.  There are no real floating docks in Naknek as it is a river mouth with mostly mud flats and big tides.   Sometimes as many as 20 boats will raft up together, tied side to side with the inside boat tied to a dock and outside boats anchored to hold the long raft against the flow of the water.  I spent my evenings at the local watering holes in hopes of making connections and landing a job.

This two pronged approach finally worked for me.  I had met the crew and skipper from the Excalibur while walking on their deck and luckily they remembered me latter when they saw me at the bar.  Mel was the skipper and his brother’s bad luck was my good fortune.  This is usually how you find a job when walking the docks.  Someone gets fired, hurt or has an emergency and has to go home.  Mel’s brother wife was sick.  They needed a deckhand.  Unlike some of the other guy’s looking for a job, I was not a greenhorn.   I negotiated my share right at the bar of the Red Dog Saloon.

Two weeks of sleep deprivation, cowboy fishing and I had $10,000 cash.   Exciting because I had never seen so much cash… and it was mine.  Terrifying because there were no bank where I could deposit it.  At this point though I was officially hooked on fishing.

I was lucky enough to fish in more than a dozen fisheries over the years.   Fishing allowed me to make a living while being on the water and see parts of Alaska that I would not otherwise.

Along with Bristol Bay and Homer I fished Prince William Sound and the South East Panhandle.  I later finished up my degree at the University of Washington, got a desk job and rode the tech boom in Seattle.  I still fish when I can and have the oyster farm too keep me on the water.

During the winter of 89 I was in Mexico and met up with some people who worked on a factory fish processor.  They talked of all the money you could make plus room and board.  The idea of having ten grand free and clear (I had lessons in taxes later) once I got off the boat was very appealing to me.  When I got back to Alaska friends who knew more about it thought I was crazy to want to go winter fishing.  They talked me down.

“Just wait until summer!  Go when it is safer and not so cold.”

Instead I got a job as an expediter for a local construction company in Anchorage.  That meant I drove a truck around town as fast as I could to pick up supplies for remote construction jobs.  I carried one of those early brick cell phones and would get calls from my boss Chuck wondering why I was so late or why I had not answered his last call.  Chuck was one of those guys with gravel in his voice box and whose volume is set to maximum. My favorite quote from Chuck, came  one day when he did not realize I had beat him into work “Where is that long haired, tree hug’n, hippy type we got work’n round here anyway?!”

It was a job, but I was not getting anywhere at eight bucks an hour.  I mostly lived to ski on the weekends.  But even the smell of diesel when I drove equipment in the yard reminded me of being at sea.  When the snow melted I gave my two weeks.  Chuck was not happy.  I always remember his Caterpillar dozer calendar on the wall behind him when he said: “You know you aren’t going to make any money fish’n!”
“Yeah, but I’m not really making any money here…”

I packed up my backpack, tent and mountain bike.  Some friends going to Homer who were interviewing for a lodge job on Kachemak Bay gave me a ride.  I planned to camp out on the spit and look for a job as a deck hand.  The first thing I did when I got to Homer was ride my bike down the ramp by the Salty Dawg and over to the first group of fishermen I saw.  I hadn’t even touched the dock.  I sat on my bike with my foot on the rail for balanced and stuck up a conversation with one of the guy’s working on deck.  Eric was the skipper of the Trina.

I asked “Need some crew? “
I answered his questions: “Nope, I haven’t fished commercially.  I grew up on boats sailing and I’ve spent weeks out in deep water.”
He was not impressed.
“I’ve been through a hurricane.  Surfed a 150 foot ship in 30 foot seas and I do not get seasick… easily”
All he cared about was the not getting seasick part.
“Great, thanks I’ll be back before we leave on the morning tide!”

What followed were two weeks of some of the hardest work long line fishing for black cod.  We did not do so well.  Fourteen, twenty plus hour days and I had $112… but hey I was not a total greenhorn anymore.  What I learned most on the trip was just get it done.  At one point we had to cut the line and Eric wanted me to marry it back together.  So I proceeded to splice the line thinking that was what he meant.  It was not.  “Just tie it, tape it and forget it!”  Coming from yachts and tall ships I was used to more fit and polish.

Eric’s mom, Trina and the crew had a surprise twenty-first birthday party for me at the Salty Dawg.  Trina had a birthday cake for me.  I tried to keep the twenty one part quite since the bartenders already knew me.  I was only on the Trina for the one trip so I moved in to the tent city.

The Icicle cannery used to be big there before it burned in 98 and the spit had so many pay for camping spots.  The cannery workers all lived out on the beach in tents. It was a fun group of people my age.  They would look out for my tent and stuff for me while I was away.

I scored a job with Tommy on the Bonanza because I had been hanging out in the Salty Dawg with some of his crew.  It took about five days of gearing up and baiting hooks.  I kept my tent home.  It was nice to get away from the boat for the nights.

The big day arrived. My first 24 hour Halibut opener… fairly calm water but a few boats went down from overloading.  Boats always sank in those crazy, short, get as much as you can openers.  Hard work cleaning all those halibut but this time I had put in about a week’s work and had a few thousand dollars for my efforts.  I was ahead of Chuck’s prediction and what I could have saved up in Anchorage.  Next I wanted a salmon job!  See my post: Scoring A Bristol Bay Job In 1990

Last weekend I decided to find out for myself what the craze is all about around winter ridding.  I quickly learned the large tires are the key advantage in snow because they spread out the load so that the rider does not sink into the snow.  The increased width also adds traction with the ability to stay on top of softer surfaces.  It really opens up terrain to ride where it would impossible with a normal bike.

The bikes have a very nice feel.  With the extra padding and the smoother surface of snow on the ground I hardly noticed the lack of shocks.

We have not received a lot of snow but we did have a few new inches of soft stuff on top of a good firm base.  The bikes are geared low so it is easy to grind up the hills without too much slippage.  Low gears surely help when out in really deep powder but we were literally on a ride in the park. The experience reminded me of ridding on sand because of the slippage but I know my old mountain bike would have sunk in much of the snow that we crossed.

This style of bike is faster way to cover a lot of ground than cross country skiing well, at my ski pace anyway!

The single track ridding is sloppier but less technical than dirt mountain biking.  Sloppy because my rear tire would slide back into the track if it got up on the edge but less technical because everything was more rounded out with a layer of snow.   Part of the fun is accessing area that we can’t in the summer.  Much of the area that we were in is a bog so no bikes in the summer.  Another nice aspect of riding in the winter is not having to worry about rolling up on a bear a common occurrence on those trails we rode.  Plus no bugs bothering us!

It was fun to cross lakes the tires doing their job floating me on the snow.   These bikes bring freedom to access the wide open areas of Alaska that are inaccessible with little skinny mountain bike tires.

We rented a our fat tire bikes from Arctic Cycle in Anchorage.   They are friendly and knowledgeable folks who want to share their enjoyment from these bikes with the broader community.  Billy Koitzsch and his wife Erica run the store from their house and take great care of the bikes.  They even let me ride Billy’s old racing bike.   Billy just finished the Alaska Ultra  Sport a grueling 1000 mile human powered race that follows the Iditarod trail from Anchorage to Nome through some treacherous terrain. Some Race pictures.

My wife and I have been drooling over these fat tire bikes as they have grown in popularity around town.  We did our test on a leisurely Alaskan spring like Saturday… nothing like the storms that Billy and others were facing that same day out on the trail racing a storm into Nome.

I have heard that people use these bikes to get around in large tidal areas like Cook Inlet where there is sand that is not traversable by normal bikes.  Light enough that they can get over the sand were four wheelers will sink in and it is easy to toss the bike into a boat or raft when you have to get across the water.

The fat tire bikes make for a fun new way to get out in Alaska.  Now I know why there are so many around lately.

I rode the tech bubble wave in Seattle through the 90’s.  First explaining to people why they want a web-page then why I was too busy to make them one.  In 2001 tech jobs were hard to come by and my mom had purchased a piece of property in one of my favorite places to go as a kid; Halibut Cove.  Mom had been looking for a place there for as long as I can remember.  She finally found the spot.

With kayak and bike mounted on my Subaru I headed north on the 2,500 mile drive to Homer, Alaska.  Friends in Homer lent me a skiff, and I headed 7 miles across Kachemak Bay to start my summer adventure in Halibut Cove.  The property is a little over a mile from the harbor where I could moor the boat. That mile felt much longer when carrying gallons of water, food and all my supplies up and down an overgrown foot trail.

On my first trip out to the land the trail was obscured by thick undergrowth and alders in full bloom.  My destination was a three-quarter acre spot at the end of the trail on the eastern tip of the island where the trail ended in crumbly metamorphic bedrock cliffs dropping to a rocky and narrow beach.

I cleared a little place on the highest point of the property for my two person tent.  My perch on the hilltop had a great view of the underside of green alders, so I began each morning by walking down to the point to the small coastguard light.  There I could wake up and enjoy the view of the cove and the mountains beyond with my first cup of coffee.

After three days of solid rain while living in a two person tent, it dawned on me this is a new kind of camping.

Chainsaws, clippers, any tool I could afford, carry and bring across the bay in the 17 foot skiff were allowed.

Soon after, the best camp I ever set up rapidly evolved.  I had a garbage can for my bedroll to keep it dry and bug free when not in use.   I could turn down the edges of my tarp if the weather got stormy or leave it most of the way open to enjoy the view that slowly emerged as I cleared the trees.  I truly slept outside while staying warm by the fire without being choked by smoke.  Most of all I could stand upright and be dry.

Soon I developed a makeshift trail up the one gully that reached to the beach.  This required clearing it from the bottom up as I could not climb down it.  Once clear I had a rope to hang onto and another to haul water and supplies up the cliff.

It was that first summer I began to appreciate those slimy expensive things my dad loved to order.  The oyster had never really appealed to me before I ate the ones from Kachemak Bay.  Halibut Cove had several oyster farms within view of my campsite.

After aquiring the taste for these oysters I began to contemplate the farms I saw each morning while drinking my coffee.  When one of my neighbors offered to sell me a farm the decision was not hard.

I was a bit nieve about how much is involved in being an oyster farmer but I do not regret the decision.

Taking advice of my dear old friend Norman Vaughan I decided to “Dream big and dare to fail”.

Word from the Writer:
Alaska and Alaskan’s are full of diversity.  I grew up living on or near the water.  I still work on the computer but I also oyster farm and commercial fish.  I like to work outside and behind the computer.  Often in Alaska you have to do things yourself so you better just figure it out and get it done.  When there aren’t many people around it is good to be a generalist.