Alaska Chapter #2

Larry Marshburn and I were friends in High School. Larry's father, Ellis, was our family minister. My mother was Ellis' secretary for 35 years. Shortly after my father died, my mother married Ellis, making Larry my stepbrother.

In 1968 Larry was an air force doctor stationed in Alaska. He stayed there. Larry’s wife, Mary was born in Alaska. Larry works two jobs, one in Homer and the other in Anchorage. Mary works in Anchorage.

Barb does not fish. She says and I don't remember, that I took her fishing the first year we were married and she caught a trout, I didn’t catch anything and I got angry with her. She figured I was always going to be easy to beat and a bad loser so she quit fishing. She went on this trip mostly to see Larry and Mary and Alaska.

My friend Spelman Evans Downer is an artist who spends his summers in Cooper Landing on the bank of the Kenai River where he sometimes works as a fishing guide and other times he creates art. Evans was not guiding this year, because he was building a studio. His wife, Nancy was working in the office of the guide company coordinating fishing trips.

At Larry and Mary's house we sat at the kitchen table looking at Sand Lake and several mountains in the background, most of which were blocked by clouds. I asked, “Do people climb these mountains?”

“Yes”, Larry replied, “They have contests to see how many peaks can be climbed in a five day period.”

“Really?” I am amazed at how many games humans invent to relieve their boredom.

Larry said, “The lake is stocked with rainbows by the Alaska Fish and Game. Just before you arrived I was watching the trout surface feed about 10 feet from the end of the pier. I went to get Mary’s fly rod, but due to our remodeling, the rod couldn’t be found.”

The next morning, after breakfast, Barb and I purchased fishing licenses. On the way to the store, we talked about the wildlife in Alaska. Larry said they have black tail deer instead of white tail deer.

Next we caravaned, to Cooper Landing; Larry in his camper, Barb and I in Larry’s car. Mary planned to meet us in Homer on Thursday. When we arrived at Evans and Nancy’s place at noon, Evans was close to being ready to take the three of us rafting down the Kenai River to fish for Rainbow, King Salmon, Dolly Varden and Red Salmon (Sockeye). Evans showed us the river map and pointed out his favorite spots. As he pointed to one spot, he said, “The last time I fished there, the governor was there.”

After Larry and Barb made sandwiches and Evans showed me some of his early art that was hanging on the walls of his house, art studio and fishing supply building, we drove to the “put in” place. The state charges $5.00 to launch a boat and $5.00 to park a vehicle. Alaska the last frontier.

We launched the raft where the Russian River comes into the Kenai, where the ferry takes fishermen across the Kenai to fish what Evans calls, “The hog line; where all the pictures are taken of people combat fishing. When someone catches a fish some of the fishermen reel in and get out of the way and others don’t care about other people and sometimes they end up with their lines tangled causing the fish to be lost. “During this year’s first run of Reds there were about five thousand people fishing the bank, right next to each other.”

Barb and I waited twenty minutes while Larry and Evans took the van to our take out place. We could see the ferryboat taking a few fishermen across the river, but there were only ten or twenty people there, implying the second run hadn’t started yet.

Evans rowed to a spot where the rapids were just right for King Salmon. The three of us drifted our lines downstream while Evans rowed up stream just enough to keep us moving slowly downstream.

He rowed and drifted to another historically good spot. This one wasn’t quite as fast moving water, so after we drifted the first time, Evans was able to row back up and do it again.

We stopped on an island to eat sandwiches and some Salmon that Evans had smoked. The Salmon left a taste in our mouths that lasted for hours.

Larry lost his lure, so Evans took us to shore to re-rig Larry’s pole. I kept fishing. “Hey! I got a fish.”

Barb said, “It’s going to go behind a log and you won’t be able to get it.”

Larry laughed, “We have nice Carp here in Alaska.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised as they’re in every other state.”

Evans said, “No Carp in Alaska.”

I caught a real nice Rainbow.

We fished two more drifts with Larry having a hit in each one. We fished several more drifts with no luck.

I knew Larry was having a good time when he said, “The nice thing about the Kenai is that there are no beepers or cell phones.”

Evans said, “People do have them and they work on the river.”

“The last frontier”, I wondered as we went through another drift where Larry had another strike.

The Magpies were making lots of noise as we came up to the take out ramp. Evans said, “They are such ornery birds. They nest at our place. They’re around all the time. They raise hell! They go after the eagles. They chase squirrels. I saw one chasing a mink the other day.”

That was it for fishing today. No keepers. Dinner would be chicken we brought from Anchorage.

On the way back we stopped at a log cabin bar so I could buy a six pack of beer. I was actually supposed to be in the liquor store in the adjacent building, but I was waiting to be told that when everything started swaying. When I got to the store there was a guy on the steps with a broom. I asked, “Was that an earthquake?”

He was grinning, “Yeah. Cool!” I figure he was a working tourist, because I can't imagine the locals think earthquakes are “cool”. When I got back to the van, Evans and Barb said they felt it too, but thought someone was rocking the van.

In Cooper Landing at mile 49.5 on the Sterling Highway at Evans’ and Nancy’s compound called Turquoise Bend, named after the color of the river water, we sat by a fire between the house and the river beneath a cottonwood tree with a nest of baby bald eagles. “Nice spot!”

“Remember Jim’s Landing where we took the raft out of the water? They were the founding fathers of the upper Kenai River Valley, Big Jim and Little Jim. This was their place. They had the pick of the entire valley and they picked this place right here. They had another little cabin near where we put in earlier today. They were prospectors, looking for gold.”

“They never found it?”

“Across from Jim’s landing up Surprise Creek they hit an ancient placer stream deposit and they struck it rich in 1952. They built the house we live in.”

“They were still finding gold in Alaska in 1952?”

“It was pretty unusual, finding an ancient placer deposit in an area that had been prospected for years . They homesteaded five acres and two were sold off and subdivided. I got the other three.

“I got here in eighty three, catching the tail end of the eighty’s boom in Alaska. The price of oil dropped from $40.00 a barrel to $15.00 a barrel and it wiped out the economy, including the real estate market. People couldn’t get anything for their property. I was just old enough to see ‘It’s a buyers market! I’m interested’ I went on a two year search for a place. I looked here. I looked on the lower river. I looked on a couple of other rivers. I always wanted a river spot and in eighty eight I found this place. I never went to a realtor, I just drove in here and I figured it’s on the river and it’s on the highway and it’s income producing property and that place pays my mortgage.” He pointed at the end of his property where there are a dozen white tents and an out house and a shower house. He rents this to the guide service with whom he sometimes guides and where Nancy works. The tents are home to the guides and other employees of the guide service company.

Evans has a big fire pit so he can move the coals from the bigger fire to a second hotter, flame-less fire for cooking. You could tell Evans has done his share of cooking on the fire. He turned the chicken like an Asian uses chop sticks. The fire pit is next to an outdoor kitchen with a refrigerator and a sink with running water and a range for cooking whatever goes with the fire grilled items. There is a large hand made smoker.

While Evans was cooking, I showed my art and then we talked about flying in small planes. I said, “I feel safer in a boat.”

Evans jokingly asked, “Ever have a boat sink on you or anything like that?”

I looked at Larry and he said, “Yeah! As a matter of fact.”

I asked, “Which one of us should tell the story?”

Evan’s laughed and asked, “Were you guys together?”

I said, “We were on the Titanic together...” pause for laughter... “We were in high school and we went to a 4 or 5 acre puddle called Mud Lake?”

We were almost to shore when one of us screwed up and we both fell out of this wooden rowboat.

“Since then I guess I ragged on him too much about the Mud Lake incident. About ten years ago we went out in a canoe bass fishing on another lake when the canoe just flipped over. I looked at him and there was a great big grin on his face.

Evans said he has flipped canoes two times, one time he was with a canoing club going down the Shenandoah River in the winter time wearing wet suits. It was Bull Falls a class three or four rapids that got them; at the very end too. They swam to shore towing the boat. He didn’t talk about his other “wipe out”, which he later told me was on the Tazlina River in Alaska.

Larry took the conversation back to Alaska small plane flying. He said there weren’t many people who fly their own plane who haven’t had a crash or near crash or a close call.

On the river today, one of the things we couldn’t avoid noticing was the beetle kill of the Spruce trees. More trees were dead than alive, creating a tremendous potential for forest fires. It set in at Evans place toward the end of the first summer he owned the property. Since then he and Nancy have removed over 100 trees.

We started planning the next day’s activities and hoping for the next evening’s Salmon barbecue. Evans said, “There’s nothing better than fresh Salmon.”

Larry said, “The only thing better is Halibut that was just taken out of the water.”

Tuesday morning I rode to the Kenai river put-in spot with Larry. He was thinking about Wednesday, “Everything depends on the weather and the tide, which can range from -6 feet to +35 feet, though it isn’t usually that drastic. Halibut bite an hour each side of a slack tide. They bury themselves in the mud during a moving tide and come out to eat when the tide slows down. They go for anything that tumbles over them, but during a slack tide they are actively hunting for food.” A slack tide is either a high (flood) tide or a low (ebb) tide.

Larry just returned from a week studying acupuncture. He explained that he is good at anesthesiology, even though he didn’t directly say it, that is what he said. He also said he will eventually be too old to make the correct work decisions. He doesn’t want to make a mistake and cause someone’s death and it appears he also doesn’t want to retire, so he expects to change his career. He says a mistake in acupuncture would not be life threatening.

We arrived at the ‘put in’ place and launched the raft. After Larry and Evans returned from the 'take out place', we were about to get into the raft when Evans asked, “You have your rain gear?”

Then he laughed and told us a story, “These guys came up from Idaho. I coordinated it with my friend Clayton, who lives in Idaho. We went over everything with them. ‘Be sure to bring rain gear and warm clothes as it is often rainy and wet.' Everyone shows up and they are anxious to go fishing. We say, ‘Be sure to bring your rain gear’ even though it didn’t look too bad. They all said, ‘Oh yeah! We have everything.’ Half way through the trip the weather changes, a dribble then a steady rain. Well, half of them didn’t bring their rain gear. They had it in their pack, but their pack was in the van. They got soaked and frozen and miserable. So the next day they weren’t going to make that mistake again. They were wearing big waders and rain gear and it was overcast-cool-damp. The clouds broke and by midday they were in their own personal sweat lodges. The stuff started coming off and they got down to their underwear. The third day I said I would take them fishing, but they had to wear more than just underwear.”

Evans gave us lessons on how to bait the hooks with the salmon eggs then we started down the river, laughing and having a great time. Like the day before we started fishing for King Salmon with Evans back rowing to keep us moving downstream very slowly in fast moving not too shallow water. Evans said, “If you catch a King Salmon you have to quit fishing for the day as you are only allowed one fish.” I fantasized sleeping on the raft floor while everyone else tried to catch a King Salmon. Fishing the first hole, Larry caught a Rainbow. Evans said, “It looks good for fishing today.” We drifted the first hole again without another fish.

While we were on shore for our lunch break, Evans told us that not only do the Sockeye Salmon have two runs, but the King Salmon have two runs and we were in the beginning of the second run of each species.

Also talked about is that the state of Alaska is about to require all boats ten feet or over to be licensed. Along with this registration will be the payment of property tax on the boat. Alaska the last frontier. Well, it still doesn’t have an income tax or a sales tax.

Evans said the trees are called “Black spruce”

Barb asked, “Black spruce? Black tail deer? Is everything up here black?”

Larry asked, “Have you heard about the black helicopters?” He continued, “A large segment of Alaska residents, particularly north of Anchorage in the ultra conservative Matanuska valley talk of government conspiracies and that the government sends in these black helicopters. Nobody can see them.”

“They can’t hear them? Black helicopters with silencers?”

The Sockeye Salmon go up the river to their spanning grounds swimming a totally different route than the King Salmon. When we fished for Sockeye we grounded the raft and waded very fast moving shallow waters close to shore as the Sockeye stay near shore when they move upstream. Soon we came into a spot where Evans has caught Sockeye before. Evans and Larry and I fished for Sockeye. I had just snagged bottom when Larry hooked a 12 pound Sockeye. I tried to get the line loose to get out of Larry’s way, but Larry’s line got snagged on my line and it was a miracle he was able to land this fish. Of course I was accused of trying to sabotage the catching of this fish.

The second place where we stopped to fish for Sockeye, where Evans and I napped, Evans had a fish on for some time. I was accused of bunglin

We did a bit of motoring this day because the distance between fishing spots was sometimes miles. After motoring through the town of Soldotna and past the moose that was standing on a cabin porch, we arrived at a part of the river called Big Eddy. It didn’t look to me like an eddy, but it may have been. Lots of people were fishing from boats. Part of the time Evans back paddled while we fished with hooks full of salmon spawn and other times he anchored and fished with us. We saw lots of King Salmon rolling on the top of the water, “That was a King. See that? See the size of that fish?” We all saw it. Boat after boat motored by us, sometimes they stopped near us to fish and other times they just went by, It was crowded. One guy who I think was probably drunk, stopped near us and nearly drifted into us. Before he started the motor he said, “I don’t know what I’m doing.” We thanked him for warning us and then he said, “We’ve caught a lot of fish.” Something we doubted as they were fishing for King Salmon and they were only allowed to catch one each and all three of them were still fishing.

We were running out of bait. Evans was laughing and talking about catching the biggest King Salmon of his whole Cooper River trip the proceeding summer, “We were scrounging the bank for little tidbits and I found a piece of bait that had been in the sun for at least two days. It reeked, but sure enough, that was the one.

Larry said, “Frequently that will happen when fishing for Halibut. You have one piece of bait which looks useless and that’s the one that catches a fish.” We were hopelessly laughing and Larry said, “This is becoming more and more like the fishing trips I remember being on with Larry. They just gradually deteriorate.”

A Dolly Varden, is a sea run Brook Trout, though a separate species. I wanted to catch a Dolly Varden, because I wasn't 100% sure the Bull Trout I'd caught in Oregon was the same species. There is a slot limit, 13 inches and under plus 20 inches and over are keepers, while those in between are released. I caught a keeper under 13 inches and Larry caught a keeper over 20 inches. We were down to the last half hour of fishing. Little fish were stealing our bait as soon as it hit the bottom.

There was a comment about how many fishing boats were around us. Larry said, “When you catch a good size Halibut you have to shoot it before you bring it into the boat or else it will flop around and ruin the boat. People hear the shot and they come over to fish next to you.”

Larry said after we had just about fallen out of the boat laughing at just about nothing, “You’ll laugh when we start fishing for Halibut, the difference in the rods; The rod is like a broom handle with eyes on it.” Before this conversation stopped we had conversationalized the Halibut rods into small self reeling mechanical cranes with pulleys on the end.

We started seeing lots of King Salmon rolling out of the water. The fish were starting to run and we were almost out of bait. Barb brought a Dolly Varden right to the edge of the boat and lost it and then we packed up and headed the last couple hundred yards to the boat ramp. It was 10:00pm and still very light out when we arrived at the ramp so tired we couldn’t get the raft on the trailer. Another boater wanted to use the ramp and so two guys got out of their boat and helped us. It was going to be too late for cooking the Salmon so we went to a greasy spoon for dinner. We arrived at Evans’ place just before midnight and it was still light out.

In the morning, Evans made a fire to cook the Salmon in the fire pit. Magpies were screaming and Larry said, “That is the sound of a Magpie that’s all pissed off because we have a fire under its tree and that’s the sound of the fire which is burning so we can cook the Red Salmon I caught. Great memories! You did help to land the fish by tangling your line completely around it.” I was surprised he forgot to mention that we were also about to eat Dolly Varden and that his was bigger.

We were almost finished eating when Evans talked me into fishing for Red Salmon on our return trip from Homer. He said, “When they’re running you can hook a lot of them and it can be a lot of fun.”

Larry said, “Particularly if your friends try to help you by embedding their hook in your fish.”

I retorted, “Sibling rivalry is what it is. I’m not your friend. I’m your brother.”

Evans asked, “Do you guys go to family functions?”

I said, “My family doesn’t have functions.”

Larry remarked, “Yes they do. They just don’t invite you.”

I changed the subject, “What's the biggest fish you've ever caught?”

Larry answered, “In Uganda in ‘96 fishing in Lake Victoria I caught a 105 pound Nile Perch and that’s not a big one.“

Evans said “The biggest King Salmon I ever caught was 60 pounds, but someone in my boat once caught a 65 pounder.”

Larry said his record King Salmon was “35 pounds.”

I asked, “How big do they get?

“About a hundred pounds is the predicted size any time now. They are often close to that. The Kenai has the biggest Kings.”

“How far north is their range?”

“They run up the Yukon River 2200 miles.” Then he added, “Without eating.”

I thought maybe I should try the “Two thousand two hundred mile Yukon River diet.”

We headed down the road for Homer, which is located on the north side of Kachemak Bay in Cook inlet. When we arrived, Larry took us sight seeing. We went by a colorful van in front of a bakery. He said, “Two gals drove that van up from the continental U.S., baking bread and selling it along the way. They made enough money to get to Homer and start this bakery, which has become very popular.” Next he pointed out the micro brewery that makes very fine beer. This is the beginning of the spit, a naturally formed jetty that goes a mile or more out in the Bay. It’s a sand bar that's above the water line. Along with the boat harbor, the spit has knick-knack shops, coffee shops, restaurants, charter fishing businesses, a bait & tackle shop, an ice cream shop and a man made lagoon that the locals call The Hole, where Salmon are planted by the Alaska Fish and Game department; starting in pens with one type salmon on one side of the “Hole” and another type on the other side. They put a smell in the water, so the fish imprint on it. I asked, “So they spend two to three years in the ocean and then they come back here to die?”

“They come back to be caught. It’s hook and line up to a date, after that date it’s snagging and people come in to clean out the rest of the fish. They are still good to eat, but not as good as during the hook and line season. This was developed as a ‘something to do for tourists’ project.

“When I first started to come to Homer in 1968-1969 we used to be able to fish from the municipal dock. We also were able to put down crab rings and shrimp traps. I spent many a time drinking beer and hauling up Dungeness crabs during the day and shrimp at night. There hasn’t been an open season on them for the last three years, because they are another species that has been fished way too heavily in the past. It used to be that you could go out on a regular sports fishing license and have a half dozen crab traps.”

At the ice cream shop the woman looked at Larry and said, “One mocha shake! What else?” While she was making three mocha shakes, she talked about her medical issues with Doctor Larry. I told her he's my brother, Larry and she asked if I am his brother, Larry.

I asked Larry, “How did she figure that out? Did you tell her you have a brother named Larry?”

“No! I try to keep that a secret.”

She piped in, “This is Larry, Larry and Daryl.”

And Barb said, “No! It’s Barb.”

People were camped on the beach. Larry said, “When the cannery was here, the workers lived here in Visqueen shelters.”

We checked out the catches of the Halibut charter boat guests, which were hung on rakes. The people who fished had their pictures taken with the fish, then the fish were filleted and put in plastic bags for the individuals who caught them.

Next we walked over to the cleaning station in the boat harbor to see if any nice fish were caught. “Some”, was the answer.

We were near the Lands End restaurant at the end of the spit when Larry said, “When we first started coming to Homer, we would park the camper and start a fire on the beach and throw out a baited hook and a big snarl of mono filament line and the Dungeness Crabs would get tangled in this mess and we reeled them in, boiled them in sea water and ate them on the beach. You can’t camp at this spot anymore. You can’t have a fire on the beach. Also, you can’t go out on the municipal dock anymore. We used to go out there and put down shrimp pods.”

We went for a walk on the beach, where Larry pointed out pieces of coal. “It’s a fairly soft low grade coal. That’s why the town was started. They mined the coal and brought it out to the end of the spit for the coal burning steamers.”

We walked by some surf fishermen who were fishing for Salmon or Dolly Varden, but they weren’t catching anything.

Back in the car we looked at the tide table and decided it was time to go fishing. Then we went to the boat harbor and while the seagulls laughed we walked down the ramp and on to Larry’s boat. After several trips from the car to get the cooler, fishing poles and gas can etc, we motored out of the harbor and over to the first Halibut fishing spot.

When we returned, we met Mary at the door of the Homer house. “How many fish did you catch?”

“Six?”

But we only had four keepers.”

“Right!” Mary said, looking at the fish and thinking some of what we caught were not worth keeping.

Larry said, “I caught a Gray Cod.”

Mary asked me, “Did you catch an Irish Lord?”

I said I did.

Mary asked, “Is it the first one you’ve ever caught?”

“Yes”, I answered, “A new species for my list.”

“She said, “They are a nifty looking fish.”

Larry said “And we caught a rock fish, very colorful.”

Mary asked why we didn’t keep it and I answered, “It was the first fish we caught and it was right away, so we were very optimistic that we were going to catch a lot of fish. I caught a Ray. It took me some time to get it reeled up to the boat and when it was almost there the reel started humming and the fish went back to the bottom. When I eventually got it next to the boat, it looked like it was about sixty pounds, the biggest fish I’ve ever caught.”

We talked about when and where the fish were caught, “The fish were mostly caught in Neptune Bay over about a two hour period.”

“Did anyone get seasick?”

Larry said, “Both of them started to get a little queasy, so we went into the town of Seldovia and ate lunch, so that if they got really sick they would have something to throw up. It’s not much fun trying to throw up on an empty stomach.”

Larry continued, “They are the first people I have taken out this year who didn’t chum the waters.”

Mary shook her head and asked, “If boating is so much fun, why do we do it?”

Mary discovered Larry's Salmon fillet in the frig and said she would cook it for dinner asking, “Do you like onions and garlic?”

We told her we raise both in our garden, because we like them so much and then asked, “You going out with us tomorrow?”

“It depends on some things. I’ve had twenty years of power boating on Kachemak Bay. Not my favorite. It depends on where we are going and on the weather. I usually go. If nothing else, I crew well.”

At breakfast the next day Mary asked why we moved from Minnesota to Wisconsin. I just said, “We are transients.”

Larry said, “Just to piss his mother off.”

Barb said, “That wasn’t hard to do. Like the time in the seventies when we bought ten and a half acres and his folks bought 11 acres. We bought another 33 acres and his mother said, ‘You just had to have more land than us!’”

To make things clearer I said, “The land next to ours was for sale for a long time and it was such nice property it drove me crazy not having it.”

Larry said he understood, “Your dad wasn’t like that.”

“No. You couldn’t find a more pleasant person.”

Mary talked about how much she liked my dad.

“Everyone liked my dad..”

We took a ride to the end of the road near the end of Kachemak Bay. On the way we talked about the wildlife in the area. “Black Bears, Wolves, Caribou.”

Mary asked if I hunt. I told her I don’t. “Back in the seventies in Michigan when we owned the 43-1/2 acres, the land had an abundant amount of pheasants. One year, a dozen guys showed up asking if they could hunt. I told them they could. They asked me if I wanted to hunt with them. I didn’t want to go. They asked ‘Why’ and I just said, ‘I don’t have a gun.’ Since they had an extra gun, I found myself walking around the land carrying a gun. These guys carried their guns on their shoulders in a horizontal position, so I was looking down the barrel of someone's gun most of the time.

There were many pheasants on our land, but this day they were scarce. We had almost made the round when I caught a glimpse of something behind a clump of grass in front of an old apple tree. I started to stalk it and everyone else stopped walking and watched me. I hadn’t gone far when a pheasant flew straight up, 90 degrees from the ground, did a 90 degree turn above the apple tree and flew away as the hunters yelled, ‘Shoot.’ ‘Shoot!’

Someone asked, ‘Why didn’t you shoot it?’

‘I don’t know.’ I answered. ‘I just don’t know.’

These guys came back and hunted the property for several years, but they never asked me to go with them again.”

Mary asked, “Didn’t you guys have guns when you were growing up?”

Larry and I said, “Yes!” at the same time.

Larry said, “Bottles and cans.”

I noted, “I’ve gotten my lifetime limit of cans.” I failed to mention the small birds that I grew up to regret having shot.

Slugs came up in talk about gardening. Mary asked if the beer trick works and Larry said, “Yes. They drink the beer, get drunk and fight.”

I agreed, “Yes! They slug it out!”

Larry said he made a video of a Banana Slug when he lived in Oregon, “I’d show it to you if I knew where I put it”

“Did you use the film as a sleep aid?” I asked.

Saturday morning the four or us fished for Halibut during the low tide and trolled for Salmon after that, catching nothing.

The next day we drove separate vehicles back to Anchorage. On the way Barb and I stopped to see Evans in Cooper Landing. Evans and I went fishing again in the Kenai River. This time we waded near the shore of the river, stepping into lots of Red Salmon. At one point the fish were bumping into my legs. When I mentioned this to Evans, he told me I was in their runway and I should be closer to shore. After I moved I started catching fish. Evans caught several fish and I caught three. Evans can tell by the color of the fish just how good it will taste and we were able to keep five fish, two for Evans, one for Larry and Mary and the others for us to take back to Wisconsin along with some Halibut fillets.