It is summer in Yakutat. Besides the unending rain, this our feast or famine time of year. Everything happens all at once. I have been running out to the Akwe to commercial fish on the weekends, while Teen covered the shop. Nice that my first wife is willing to care for my second wife while I'm away... Anyway...

Renovating the hangar takes an obvious back seat, since we only have so many hours in the day. This week is probably the slowest week of the entire season in the shop, with the transition between sockeye to pinks. A little scary to have zero sales for the day, but it will pick up again in the coming weeks as the silver season approaches, even though most people are reporting really good sockeye fishing in the river still. Certainly a lot better than the "peak week" when the river blew out and was unfishable.

So, with things slowing down, we will be taking a couple days off to go out camping. We'll be leaving tomorrow afternoon (Thursday) and coming back Saturday night. So... Matt will come in after the night jet tomorrow to reopen because there are a couple groups coming in, so we'll be open Thursday till noon, then closed till 6pm and reopen from 6pm till 8pm. Then... we'll see you on Sunday for regular hours. This is the only break we can squeeze in before the silver slam, so my apologies if this ends up inconveniencing anyone.

The Situk is one of the truly great rivers in the world for a lot of reasons. But... this is the wilds of Alaska and there are a lot of great rivers here. Sometimes I'm asked about some other opportunities and sometimes I'm even willing to suggest some of my favorite spots. Sometimes...

So far this season, I have recommended a group hike into Situk Lake once. The river was very flooded and all the fish pushed up and out of the river. The sockeye and trout fishing up there should have been great, while the river was so flooded that it was unlikely one would be able to fair hook a sockeye. Said group managed to wander around the forelands all day and never reached the lake, dispite my best efforts to get them there.

I have also recommended to four groups that they give Pike Lakes a try. Yakutat is home to a unique ancient species of pike, in a remote series of lakes that were not glaciated during the last ice age. This sort of protected area is referred to as a "refugia". So... out of four groups, only one has managed to put my directions into an actual fishing trip. The other three groups managed to wander around the forelands all day and never reach the lake.

In other words, my directions suck. Or... trying to find remote lakes in a pristine and unspoiled wilderness defies directions. I'll let you decide. A friend sent Teen a link to an article this week while I was out fishing on the Akwe, which brought an embarrassing chuckle. I hope you enjoy it:

The Register-Guardhttp://www.registerguard.com/

A search for lake of lore ends up a wild fish chase

By Gary Lewis

For The Register-Guard

Posted to Web: Tuesday, Jul 20, 2010 10:11AM
Appeared in print: Tuesday, Jul 13, 2010, page D2

Josiah Darr, a 25-year-old steelheader from Seattle, by way of Scappoose, shaded his eyes toward the mountains and the treetops and a hill two miles away that kind of resembled the hump on the back of a grizzly. Then he swatted a mosquito. And another.

If you want to find a lake in the Alaskan tundra in brown bear country, where there are no trails except the ones made by moose and the critters that eat them, the best thing to do is: A. Fly the area in a helicopter; B. Fly the area in a Piper Cub; C. Fly the area on Google Earth; D. Bring the guy from the Situk River Fly Shop who told you about the lake.

We did none of those things.

I made a mental inventory. Two fly rods and a bottle of DEET-free Natrapel Plus. No gun. No bear spray. No DEET. Insect repellent was our self-defense. A cloud of girl mosquitoes found us.

The original plan was we were going to have a guide. But plans changed.

Over my fishing vest, I zipped my rain jacket and referred to the tiny instrument on the zipper pull. In the backcountry, without a guide, without a GPS, without my expensive compass, I employed a thimble-sized compass that served more as decoration than a tool on which to rely to get back to the only road within 20 square miles.

Note to self: Next time, bring all survival gear, even if it means a bigger suitcase and shipping a gun in checked baggage.

With our big Ford van parked 24 miles from Yakutat and our base at Glacier Bear Lodge, we paused to orient ourselves. The streams tilted south. There were trees to the east, meadows to the west and a notch in the mountains to the north.

We plunged in, into the willows and muskeg. In the tannin-stained creeks, we glimpsed little fish that streaked this way and that. Where there were little fish, big fish must be nearby.

We kept the trees on our right and watched for openings that might show the two-acre lake purported to contain an isolated prehistoric pike known to exist in this refugia spared by glaciers of the last Ice Age.

These pike, the man at the fly shop said, grew up to 40 inches, and ate anything you cast at them, every time you cast at them.

From Bob at the fly shop, I’d borrowed a fly reel, a nice Ross Gunnison loaded with a six-weight sink-tip, because I’d forgotten mine. “You’d think a guy, if he was playing a joke on traveling fishermen, wouldn’t loan out a reel like this one,” I said to Josiah.

At any moment, we could startle bears. I hoped the Natrapel would be a deterrent rather than an enhancer. Kind of like limburger when you were hoping for a mild cheddar.

Beneath our feet, the muskeg shuddered like a trampoline. We forded a hip-deep bog and clambered up the opposite bank. “Here’s a trail,” I told Josiah, to bolster his spirits. I didn’t tell him the trail had been made by a brown bear. He figured that out when he saw the scat.

We examined it for traces of foods you don’t want to find in piles of bear excrement: fleece, Spandex, Fruit of the Loom labels, Natrapel, little bells. Encouraged, we forged ahead.

An hour and 10 minutes after we had started, we turned around to slog, defeated, back to the Ford, straight through a 25-acre patch of willows riddled with bear tunnels. Josiah had a bad knee. I could probably outrun him.

Back in the Yak, we stopped at Fat Grandma’s, where they don’t have doughnuts, but you can buy a candy bar and a T-shirt and she won’t sell you a book, but you can take one. The advice was free too. Fat Grandma told us about the great fishing at Pike Lakes, but since we couldn’t find them, she gave us the skinny on her favorite spot.

Sawmill Bay was easy to find. First cast, halfway back, the rod began to wa-wa with the weight of a good fish. In the clear, slack water, it flashed. Slender, about 20 inches long, it sported lots of fins, large liver-colored spots and big eyes.

It took me a few minutes to sort through the dark recesses of my brain, where I keep my knowledge of saltwater fish, to identify this one as a cod.

Josiah made his first cast with a hammered spoon and nailed our second. By the middle of the afternoon, we landed and released about 30, except for one that we handed off to a grandma who came down to watch the water, and two we kept for dinner.

That night at the lodge, I figured out why the glaciers spared those prehistoric fish in Pike Lakes all those centuries ago. They couldn’t find them either.

Gary Lewis can be reached at www.GaryLewisOutdoors.com.

Just in case no one believes me now, Pike Lakes do exist and so does Situk Lake. I swear!!! Perhaps I just send people on wild goose chases so I can protect one of my favorite fishing spots... Hmmm... Or maybe guys need to stop and ask for directions. "Excuse me Mr. Bear, could you direct me to... aaahhhhh!"

Yes, I ran out to the Akwe for an attempt at commercial fishing again this week, in a nasty flood and storm. Besides trying to repair the cabin roof to stop the leaks, while staying up for nearly 60 hours straight on the water... Apparently Teen was hit by a storm of questions and problems to try and solve here in the fly shop. To all who helped her through it and put up with our typically sloppy service, but service with her Aussie smile, thank you. This has been a wet and sloppy week, but most of you guys have been making the best of it. The fish are here, but so are the torrential floods. Great for the health of the run, but tough on the fishermen. Thanks for pulling Teen (and Eden) through it all. More tomorrow. I need to go pass out.

OK, we have our initial logo for the WWII museum. Still have a long way to go before we have a museum to go with the logo, but we are making progress. I'd love to know what you think of it. Obviously, we were going for classic 1940's nose art. EVERYONE so far has thought it was great except ONE. I have been asked if that was Teen modeling for it... Um... maybe that explains why she was the one... No, it isn't her! Really...

Lockheed Hudsons were stationed here in Yakutat thoughout much of the war. They essentially spent the war looking for subs and escorting ships up and down the coast. Thus... the Hudson on the logo. They were operated by the 406th Bombardment Squadron.

So... we just finished reading Gods and Generals right before Tanis and I headed out to the Italio to fish. This week back in town, we started reading the next book in series The Killer Angels. So last night, I glanced down and realized it was actually June 30th... Great! Now, we are pressed to read the darned battle of Gettysburg in real-time over the next three days... It didn't dawn on me that this was the exact anniversary of the battle TODAY...

And since Tanis is never content to just watch... he has a new set of Civil War soldiers that he is setting up for battle. He stole my camera at some point and was taking pictures from the soldier's view... He does switch back and forth between Civil War and WWII as you can see:

I believe this is Fredricksberg with the stone wall and men in blue advancing up the hill. I don't think the 20th Maine had been deployed yet, or he'd probably have Chamberlain lying down with bodies stacked up as a shield. He can be pretty detailed... Fred tells a story of Tanis playing out in the big snow pile when we were still building the fly shop. He asked Tanis what he was doing and he replied that he was recreating Mt Suribachi. He was 7 and knew this stuff from his own reading...

Well, I have a lot to post, but I ran out of time today. I'll post Tanis' and my adventure out on the Italio and Akwe this past week tomorrow with photos, but tonight it will have to wait. Last night, we went home to a bay view filled with porpoise right out the window. Then suddenly an eagle picked up a salmon head off the dock and tried to escape with it. Another eagle attacked and the two plunged - locked together as they fought over the prize. They both slammed into the water and the head sank out of reach for either of them.

Fighting and bickering over their shared object of desire, both ending up going home with nothing. I think Ben Franklin may have been wrong. Bald Eagles do accurately represent the symbol of what America has become. Trying to take each other's things, rather than simply going out and getting their own... They both go hungry tonight. Welcome to socialism... No one creating their own bounty, just bickering to take someone else's away. It's a brave new world.

Here is how I'm looking at the coming season: Last year with the crappy economy, traffic during the salmon season was down by at least 50%. Good fishing, but no one came. The exception last year was the steelhead season. Steelheaders are after all compulsive psychos (and I'm sure most will take that as the complement it is intended as). Flyfishing for steelhead is THE thing they do, so a struggling economy isn't going to hold them back any more than eating and sleeping. This year... even the steelheaders didn't come! Other than the one week window in early May, the river was devoid of people. If the steelheaders stayed close to home, Yakutat needs to brace for a REAL collapse in the economy with no one to stay in our rooms, buy our food and fishing gear.

So... with that said, we are preparing for the worst and being careful in what we order here at the fly shop. We are pretty close to being fully stocked anyway, but we won't be adding a lot of the new lines of products we had hoped to. That will get pushed to next year. Lots of Simms and Sage on hand, lots of flies and tying stuff. We are running a little low on the logowear and souvenirs, but we should be doing well enough to have that in stock. Just not a lot of the new designs and goodies we wanted to bring in.

Also, since so many of you won't be able to get your Yakutat fix this year, I will do my best to keep you up to date on what is happening around here. If you can't come fishing, I'll at the very least babble about all the extra time I'm going to have to fish, since I won't be as tied to the shop with the slow business. And... in hope of generating a little extra cash flow, we are finally getting the web site put together properly. We still have a long way to go, but we have made a good dent in the Simms section. All the waders and boots are in and all the credit card stuff functions. Pardon an occasional typo of course, as we get more and more of our products online.

I head out to the Italio each weekend starting Sunday for my commercial fishing. I do still gill-net for sockeye in the Akwe River through the last week of June and first couple weeks of July. The run in the Situk is very strong, so hopefully we'll see a good batch of fish in the Akwe as well. I'll take pictures and show you what Tanis and I are up to out there...

Thanks for your continued support. It really is appreciated, especially in a tough season like this!

I had a great question today that I have heard a lot of comments on throughout the steelhead season. Why so many fuzzy infected fish in the river this year...

The total count this year is looking to fall somewhere between 5000 and 5500 steelhead kelts through the weir. Not a great run, but not terrible either. I had some concerned questions about such "low numbers" from many people and what a 5000-7000 fish run means for the future... Well, the ADF&G web site only goes back 12 years and a couple years that just dropped off the list were in the upper 4,000 range. Yes, the run has been better (a lot better), but it has also been a lot worse... Runs can drop off dramatically, but then they also rebound just as dramatically without any particular obvious reason.

This year, I received a lot of comments about the large percentage of moldy infected fish. According to the catch reports submitted to Fish and Game, the number of fish caught is usually double the number of total fish in the river. Obviously some fish don't get hooked, but some fish are repeatedly caught (and handled). The bacteria on our hands can infect the fish and really makes the fish susceptible to disease. A high number of these handled fish never recover from this, even if they make it back into the ocean. Saltwater enables fish to heal and recover from some amazing damage, but steelhead kelts can be so weakened by their months in fresh water (whether they have been caught and handled or not) that they will die even after making it back into the ocean. Also, diseased and weakened fish are easy targets for seals and sea lion at the river mouths.

So... we had a pretty weak run of just over 5,000 this year. The river water was unusually warm due to the gorgeous sunny weather. Warm water breeds bacteria and mold better, making the fish skin legions grow faster and do more damage to the fish. No matter how careful we may be, if we handle steelhead with our dry hands, we dramatically increase the likelihood that the fish won't survive the outward migration. There are some simple techniques to reduce the damage we do by handling the fish - use a catch glove, leave the fish in the water, even simply wetting our hands before we tough the fish can help a little bit.

Salmon are going to die anyway within weeks of coming into the river. Handling a sockeye to get a good picture doesn't impact the fish as much as it does when dealing with a steelhead, since steelhead are in the fresh water for months and they are planning to live beyond their one night stand. The less you handle ANY fish - all the better, but with steelhead, any harm caused by your handling technique is magnified.

Have you spoken with Chet Moore, the fisheries tech who has been doing research at the weir for the past 8 or 9 years? Incredible stuff they are finding out....will blow a lot of the long-held beliefs about the fish out the door. For example, the biggest fish are typically males on their first run up the river. Not the "3 salt " or "C" run fish we've all been told. Chet trapped one tagged hen that was bright and healthy and 30" this year that was 13 years old! Anyway, he told us that the fuzzy fish actually have a fungal infection that they believe is picked up in the lake. Doesn't seem to be related to handling. To wit, you don't seem to see the infection around the tail where fish are typically grabbed, nor in other high-handling locations. Fighting does seem to have some relationship to it, though, so really rough handling is definitely contraindicated. Now the killer...he said the fish that come through the weir with even a single spot of fungus have zero chance of re-adapting to salt water, and they invariably die in the estuary. Just can't cope with the salt-osmosis process with the disease.

Thank you Doug for the info there. I had heard that a lot of the really big fish are first spawners. That seems to contradict common sense, but then again... small dog breeds live longer than large dog breeds... bigger doesn't necessarily mean more successful. A steelhead genetically predisposed to growing really big probably has other issues that work against survival. Alaska Department of Fish and Game's web site says this:

"...steelhead commonly spawn more than once, and fish over 28 inches are almost always repeat spawners."

So many of our commonly held beliefs and understandings can be overturned as we study and learn more about these fish. I see Chet's point on the growth of fungus too, since so many fish come out of the lake and show infection, having never been caught or handled. I have seen fish with actual finger stripes of mold around the tail though... Maybe we can say that handling isn't the "cause" of infection, but I would still lean toward handling can make the fish more susceptible to infection. Maybe... We all have a lot yet to learn though...

It is more than a bit disturbing that all fish with even a tiny spot of fungus would absolutely die. In any given year, that could be THOUSANDS of kelts that are counted by the weir. I see a lot of returning salmon every year with terrible injuries they received out in the ocean (probably from a seal) healing back up entirely. I had one a couple years ago that had been sliced wide open with guts hanging out that had healed over and a fringe of organs still dangled on the outside of the fish. The wound had sealed and had regrown scales, while the poor hen seemed to be healthy and full of energy. Seal bites received in fresh water at the river mouth never heal and those fish are doomed. OK, all salmon are doomed... but injury received in the ocean can heal, where injury in fresh water won't. Steelhead are amazing in what they are able to do repeatedly. Moving between fresh and salt and back again is an astounding miracle of nature.

Some good advice from the Fish and Game web site to help increase survival rates on released fish:

Rubber nets are supposed to do a lot less harm to the fish than knotted nets. Using a fly fishing net (as opposed to the big old-style scoop nets) can go a long way to help land the fish quickly and reduce hand contact. My guess is they were referring to the big ugly green nets fishermen used to use, not the flat rubber fly landing nets we use today. Great info on steelhead and most other game species in Alaska:

I hold our veterans and active service military in VERY high regard. I usually have some long babbling posting for Memorial Day, but this year I spent the day with the kids instead of at the computer. I was just sent a link to someone else's blog posting titled "On Sheep, Wolves and Sheepdogs" that is VERY worth the read. It doesn't criticize the president, or any political party. It does talk about those among us who stand guard to protect the flock - and how we as the flock feel about them in times of peace and times when the wolf is at the door. Yes, this is long, but I urge you to read it, if you haven't seen it already. If you have seen it, read it again...

On Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs – Dave Grossman

Honor never grows old, and honor rejoices the heart of age. It does so because honor is, finally, about defending those noble and worthy things that deserve defending, even if it comes at a high cost. In our time, that may mean social disapproval, public scorn, hardship, persecution, or as always,even death itself. The question remains: What is worth defending? What is worth dying for? What is worth living for? – William J. Bennett – in a lecture to the United States Naval Academy November 24, 1997

“Most of the people in our society are sheep. They are kind, gentle, productive creatures who can only hurt one another by accident.” This is true. Remember, the murder rate is six per 100,000 per year, and the aggravated assault rate is four per 1,000 per year. What this means is that the vast majority of Americans are not inclined to hurt one another. Some estimates say that two million Americans are victims of violent crimes every year, a tragic, staggering number, perhaps an all-time record rate of violent crime. But there are almost 300 million Americans, which means that the odds of being a victim of violent crime is considerably less than one in a hundred on any given year. Furthermore, since many violent crimes are committed by repeat offenders, the actual number of violent citizens is considerably less than two million.

Thus there is a paradox, and we must grasp both ends of the situation: We may well be in the most violent times in history, but violence is still remarkably rare. This is because most citizens are kind, decent people who are not capable of hurting each other, except by accident or under extreme provocation. They are sheep.

I mean nothing negative by calling them sheep. To me it is like the pretty, blue robin’s egg. Inside it is soft and gooey but someday it will grow into something wonderful. But the egg cannot survive without its hard blue shell. Police officers, soldiers, and other warriors are like that shell, and someday the civilization they protect will grow into something wonderful.? For now, though, they need warriors to protect them from the predators.

“Then there are the wolves,” the old war veteran said, “and the wolves feed on the sheep without mercy.” Do you believe there are wolves out there who will feed on the flock without mercy? You better believe it. There are evil men in this world and they are capable of evil deeds. The moment you forget that or pretend it is not so, you become a sheep. There is no safety in denial.

“Then there are sheepdogs,” he went on, “and I’m a sheepdog. I live to protect the flock and confront the wolf.”

If you have no capacity for violence then you are a healthy productive citizen, a sheep. If you have a capacity for violence and no empathy for your fellow citizens, then you have defined an aggressive sociopath, a wolf. But what if you have a capacity for violence, and a deep love for your fellow citizens? What do you have then? A sheepdog, a warrior, someone who is walking the hero’s path. Someone who can walk into the heart of darkness, into the universal human phobia, and walk out unscathed

Let me expand on this old soldier’s excellent model of the sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs. We know that the sheep live in denial, that is what makes them sheep. They do not want to believe that there is evil in the world. They can accept the fact that fires can happen, which is why they want fire extinguishers, fire sprinklers, fire alarms and fire exits throughout their kids’ schools.

But many of them are outraged at the idea of putting an armed police officer in their kid’s school. Our children are thousands of times more likely to be killed or seriously injured by school violence than fire, but the sheep’s only response to the possibility of violence is denial. The idea of someone coming to kill or harm their child is just too hard, and so they chose the path of denial.

The sheep generally do not like the sheepdog. He looks a lot like the wolf. He has fangs and the capacity for violence. The difference, though, is that the sheepdog must not, can not and will not ever harm the sheep. Any sheep dog who intentionally harms the lowliest little lamb will be punished and removed. The world cannot work any other way, at least not in a representative democracy or a republic such as ours.

Still, the sheepdog disturbs the sheep. He is a constant reminder that there are wolves in the land. They would prefer that he didn’t tell them where to go, or give them traffic tickets, or stand at the ready in our airports in camouflage fatigues holding an M-16. The sheep would much rather have the sheepdog cash in his fangs, spray paint himself white, and go, “Baa.”

Until the wolf shows up. Then the entire flock tries desperately to hide behind one lonely sheepdog.

The students, the victims, at Columbine High School were big, tough high school students, and under ordinary circumstances they would not have had the time of day for a police officer. They were not bad kids; they just had nothing to say to a cop. When the school was under attack, however, and SWAT teams were clearing the rooms and hallways, the officers had to physically peel those clinging, sobbing kids off of them. This is how the little lambs feel about their sheepdog when the wolf is at the door.

Look at what happened after September 11, 2001 when the wolf pounded hard on the door. Remember how America, more than ever before, felt differently about their law enforcement officers and military personnel? Remember how many times you heard the word hero?

Understand that there is nothing morally superior about being a sheepdog; it is just what you choose to be. Also understand that a sheepdog is a funny critter: He is always sniffing around out on the perimeter, checking the breeze, barking at things that go bump in the night, and yearning for a righteous battle. That is, the young sheepdogs yearn for a righteous battle. The old sheepdogs are a little older and wiser, but they move to the sound of the guns when needed right along with the young ones.

Here is how the sheep and the sheepdog think differently. The sheep pretend the wolf will never come, but the sheepdog lives for that day. After the attacks on September 11, 2001, most of the sheep, that is, most citizens in America said, “Thank God I wasn’t on one of those planes.” The sheepdogs, the warriors, said, “Dear God, I wish I could have been on one of those planes. Maybe I could have made a difference.” When you are truly transformed into a warrior and have truly invested yourself into warriorhood, you want to be there. You want to be able to make a difference.

There is nothing morally superior about the sheepdog, the warrior, but he does have one real advantage. Only one. And that is that he is able to survive and thrive in an environment that destroys 98 percent of the population. There was research conducted a few years ago with individuals convicted of violent crimes. These cons were in prison for serious, predatory crimes of violence: assaults, murders and killing law enforcement officers. The vast majority said that they specifically targeted victims by body language: slumped walk, passive behavior and lack of awareness. They chose their victims like big cats do in Africa, when they select one out of the herd that is least able to protect itself.

Some people may be destined to be sheep and others might be genetically primed to be wolves or sheepdogs. But I believe that most people can choose which one they want to be, and I’m proud to say that more and more Americans are choosing to become sheepdogs.

Seven months after the attack on September 11, 2001, Todd Beamer was honored in his hometown of Cranbury, New Jersey. Todd, as you recall, was the man on Flight 93 over Pennsylvania who called on his cell phone to alert an operator from United Airlines about the hijacking. When he learned of the other three passenger planes that had been used as weapons, Todd dropped his phone and uttered the words, “Let’s roll,” which authorities believe was a signal to the other passengers to confront the terrorist hijackers. In one hour, a transformation occurred among the passengers – athletes, business people and parents. — from sheep to sheepdogs and together they fought the wolves, ultimately saving an unknown number of lives on the ground.

There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men. – Edmund Burke

Here is the point I like to emphasize, especially to the thousands of police officers and soldiers I speak to each year. In nature the sheep, real sheep, are born as sheep. Sheepdogs are born that way, and so are wolves. They didn’t have a choice. But you are not a critter. As a human being, you can be whatever you want to be. It is a conscious, moral decision.

If you want to be a sheep, then you can be a sheep and that is okay, but you must understand the price you pay. When the wolf comes, you and your loved ones are going to die if there is not a sheepdog there to protect you. If you want to be a wolf, you can be one, but the sheepdogs are going to hunt you down and you will never have rest, safety, trust or love. But if you want to be a sheepdog and walk the warrior’s path, then you must make a conscious and moral decision every day to dedicate, equip and prepare yourself to thrive in that toxic, corrosive moment when the wolf comes knocking at the door.

For example, many officers carry their weapons in church.? They are well concealed in ankle holsters, shoulder holsters or inside-the-belt holsters tucked into the small of their backs.? Anytime you go to some form of religious service, there is a very good chance that a police officer in your congregation is carrying. You will never know if there is such an individual in your place of worship, until the wolf appears to massacre you and your loved ones.

I was training a group of police officers in Texas, and during the break, one officer asked his friend if he carried his weapon in church. The other cop replied, “I will never be caught without my gun in church.” I asked why he felt so strongly about this, and he told me about a cop he knew who was at a church massacre in Ft. Worth, Texas in 1999. In that incident, a mentally deranged individual came into the church and opened fire, gunning down fourteen people. He said that officer believed he could have saved every life that day if he had been carrying his gun. His own son was shot, and all he could do was throw himself on the boy’s body and wait to die. That cop looked me in the eye and said, “Do you have any idea how hard it would be to live with yourself after that?”

Some individuals would be horrified if they knew this police officer was carrying a weapon in church. They might call him paranoid and would probably scorn him. Yet these same individuals would be enraged and would call for “heads to roll” if they found out that the airbags in their cars were defective, or that the fire extinguisher and fire sprinklers in their kids’ school did not work. They can accept the fact that fires and traffic accidents can happen and that there must be safeguards against them.

Their only response to the wolf, though, is denial, and all too often their response to the sheepdog is scorn and disdain. But the sheepdog quietly asks himself, “Do you have and idea how hard it would be to live with yourself if your loved ones attacked and killed, and you had to stand there helplessly because you were unprepared for that day?”

It is denial that turns people into sheep. Sheep are psychologically destroyed by combat because their only defense is denial, which is counterproductive and destructive, resulting in fear, helplessness and horror when the wolf shows up.

Denial kills you twice. It kills you once, at your moment of truth when you are not physically prepared: you didn’t bring your gun, you didn’t train. Your only defense was wishful thinking. Hope is not a strategy. Denial kills you a second time because even if you do physically survive, you are psychologically shattered by your fear helplessness and horror at your moment of truth.

Gavin de Becker puts it like this in Fear Less, his superb post-9/11 book, which should be required reading for anyone trying to come to terms with our current world situation: “…denial can be seductive, but it has an insidious side effect. For all the peace of mind deniers think they get by saying it isn’t so, the fall they take when faced with new violence is all the more unsettling.”

Denial is a save-now-pay-later scheme, a contract written entirely in small print, for in the long run, the denying person knows the truth on some level.

And so the warrior must strive to confront denial in all aspects of his life, and prepare himself for the day when evil comes. If you are warrior who is legally authorized to carry a weapon and you step outside without that weapon, then you become a sheep, pretending that the bad man will not come today. No one can be “on” 24/7, for a lifetime. Everyone needs down time. But if you are authorized to carry a weapon, and you walk outside without it, just take a deep breath, and say this to yourself…

This business of being a sheep or a sheep dog is not a yes-no dichotomy. It is not an all-or-nothing, either-or choice. It is a matter of degrees, a continuum. On one end is an abject, head-in-the-sand-sheep and on the other end is the ultimate warrior. Few people exist completely on one end or the other. Most of us live somewhere in between. Since 9-11 almost everyone in America took a step up that continuum, away from denial. The sheep took a few steps toward accepting and appreciating their warriors, and the warriors started taking their job more seriously. The degree to which you move up that continuum, away from sheephood and denial, is the degree to which you and your loved ones will survive, physically and psychologically at your moment of truth.

Teen sent me this quote and it is well worth sharing. We have so much going on around here and so much excitement for the future. We have our share of obstacles and occasional resistance, but ultimately none of the invented conflicts from those small minds that hate change have mattered in the long run.

Have a wonderful D-Day today. We had a little rain last night, but are back to bright sunny weather. Yakutat is amazingly gorgeous with the bright clean white snow on the mountains, deep blue sky, scattered fluffy clouds and green of the lush spring growth. The purple lupine are in full bloom, dotting the landscape with vivid spots of color. Sockeye are starting in and soon we will have tens of thousands of salmon in the river again. Look around you and appreciate the beauty you have outside your window too. Thousands of young Americans died 66 years ago today storming the beaches of France to bring freedom back to that continent. Modern France may have zero appreciation for what those men sacrificed, but I hope you take a moment to see and appreciate for our soldiers - the ones who we have lost and the ones currently serving - what they are missing in this amazingly beautiful country. Dare I say it - EXCEPTIONAL country.

And don't let the little men of this world cast long shadows across your path. They day is coming to an end and setting on the near horizon.

Well, the fly shop may be deathly slow right now between runs, but we are keeping ourselves busy none the less. Had a great phone call from someone suggesting a book for us to read on the Civil War, which just happened to be the next book we were scheduled to read already. We LOVE history, so as we work through Jeff and Michael Shaara's series in the next couple weeks, we'll be learning a lot about our country and its struggles over the first 2 centuries. We are just finishing up Gods and Generals (which happens to be my favorite novel), with The Killer Angels up next and The Last Full Measure to close out the Civil War.

In case you aren't aware... Michael Shaara won the Pulitzer for The Killer Angels in 1974 about the 4 days of Gettysburg, essentially inventing his writing style of historical fiction. All the facts, dates and events are historically accurate, but he invented the dialog of the characters based on their journals and letters. When the movie version of the book was made into "Gettysburg", Michael's son Jeff was inspired to carry on his dad's spectacular work and so wrote about the war leading up to the Gettysburg battle in Gods and Generals - following Lee, Jackson, Hancock and Chamberlain through the early rumblings of the coming conflict and the early battles. The problem of course is that they made an awful movie of my favorite book! I read them in chronological order originally, so G&G is my favorite and I think Jeff has grown into being an even better author than his dad was. The Last Full Measure is OK, but not as compelling as the earlier two works. Probably why they didn't make it into a movie...

Jeff Shaara went on to write Gone for Soldiers about the Mexican war and is a wonderful study of that often ignored conflict in our history. Yes, reading Gone for Soldiers before starting Gods and Generals is a must! Seeing these famous generals as a bunch of young punks in Mexico really fills in a lot of their character and gives you a much richer understanding of their difficult choice to take up arms against each other a couple decades later. Then he did a two book set on the Revolution - the first of which Rise to Rebellion is stunning - again showing a side of the Revolution we rarely get to see. What lead to the War of Independence and people involved is a must read for EVERYONE. The Glorious Cause is again a bit less compelling, since it mostly covers battles - one loss after another until we accidentally win our independence. Still a great read, especially as a set.

Well... that was a boring blog entry... Just in case you needed some summer reading without pictures...

Read them in that order and don't watch the movies. Although Jeff Daniels makes a great Chamberlain... I need to figure out how to get a commission out of this...

Sometimes, you just wish someone would watch these %$#@ kids for 8 hours a day, sometimes HomeSchooling is a wonderful pleasure. Teen is on the couch looking over Tanis' math and she said how fun it is adding mixed and improper fractions. She said she NEVER understood this through school or her adult life and now is just thrilled to discover how to do some of these basic concepts. When we started down this road, Teen and I figured we could handle the early years, but once we hit the tough stuff (probably around 2nd grade...), we may have to throw in the towel. In practice, it has been a lot of fun to be able to revisit what our own crappy public education didn't cover well. Learning should be a lifetime process and HomeSchooling sure exposes us to a lot of things we didn't know. And amazing to watch the light bulb go on when working with one of the kids on something.

The best part is really delving deeply into subjects that we now feel are more important than that the textbook publishers think. With the current political situation in our country, we spent a LOT of time reading about the founding of our nation. We spent a month covering the war with Mexico - something that may not even receive mention in regular school curriculum, but is actually a hot topic with illegal immigration arguments ripped from today's headlines about how we "stole" California and Arizona from the Mexicans. Um... not quite. We bought the southwest from Mexico and gave the rest of Mexico back to Mexico even though the Mexican Legislature begged General Scott to become Mexico's new Dictator and replace Santa Anna...

Now we are on to "state's rights" and the Civil War... One common public school textbook has one single paragraph on President Lincoln, then skips right on to the "Robber Barons"... Ya, we are getting a little more indepth on OUR 5th grade studies... I think Teen and I are the ones being HomeSchooled sometimes. Tanis and Eden are just getting dragged along for the ride.

I have been getting questions about the Situk's king run this week, so I was going back through the weir count numbers. Here are some interesting thoughts...

Kings generally are on a 7 year life cycle. They can come back after only 4 years, so there is a lot of variant in their life expectancy and therefore their size... Fish and Game manages the run as best they can based on the large and mediun sized kings, so we should expect to see returns based on what the 7 year parent year shows. Here are some stats:

Just wanted to give you a little statistical food for thought... It will be interesting to see how this season shapes up for the king run. I remember 2003 was a fantastic king season. 2,000+ kings in the little ol' Situk is a LOT of fish. Most years, we have been missing our escapement goals and the retention gets shut down pretty early in the season. I haven't talked to Brian about what they expect or are planning, but certainly this would look like a good indicator if the 7 year cycle holds true.

Also had a report today of a big sockeye buck getting caught already up above the bridge. He hit an egg sucking leech - not your typical sockeye fare, especially a chrome-bright sea liced fresh one. Sockeye are a 4 year fish and the parent year in 2006 had over 90,000 fish counted - one of the biggest runs in the past decade! Last year, we had a big count as well, but last year was an odd situation. The total return was just average, but warm water along the shore of the Ahrnklin Inlet where the commercial nets are drove the sockeye to swim up through the colder deeper center bypassing the nets. We had days with 6000+ fish through the weir WITH the nets in the water and none of the commerciual guys catching anything... 2006 had a big weir count AND a good commercial catch!

Let's see how this season shakes out... If both strong parent years for sockeye AND kings spells for a great summer, we may just have one heck of a season on our hands. Only time will tell though. My expectation is that we'll have very few fishermen on the river this summer due to the economy. Certainly traffic through town during the steelhead season has been way down this year. Last year, steelhead traffic was OK, while the salmon season left Yakutat a Ghost Town. With this year's steelheaders staying home, the salmon guys will really be scarce. Hmmm... great run potential and no people... I may have to spend a lot of time on the river this year... Let me just thank Teen now for covering the shop...

Teen does have a tough time understanding my want for a rainy day. She sure loves a warm sunny day on the ordinarily rare occasion that we see one... After yesterday's very brief rain shower, the sun returned. After we closed, we decided to go for a walk along the road in town. It is a short stroll from our house along the waterfront to the city's unused small dock. The kids threw rocks in the water and bickered as only siblings can, while Teen and I enjoyed the setting sun and peaceful surroundings.

Then... a big pod of porpoise came in rather close to the dock. They circled and corralled a ball of feed as we watched from shore. It is amazing to listen to their breathing as they come up to the surface. They didn't hang around long. When we brought them to Eden's attention, she started screeching and screaming, which sent the pod off to more tranquil locales. Ah... nothing like kids to send wildlife packing.

Boy, April has been a slow month in the shop and around town. Traffic through Yakutat is way down due undoubtedly to the economy, but also possibly because a lot of people had planned to come later into May after the past two really late steelhead runs. Of course I had planned to be productive during this slow time, but something always seems to get in the way... A lot of clean-up to get done around the hangar, after a winter of build-up.

And of course we are close to going live with the e-commerce site. Boy, that's a lot of data entry and I'm only half way through the Simms section. Flies and fly tying is going to be a nightmare to photograph and post everything. Must be 20,000 products. And in the midst of it all, I decided this week would be the perfect time to learn what passing a kidney stone feels like. Teen can no longer hold childbirth over me... I've done it! Oh, except she was quick to point out that she did that twice... Let's just hope she will always have that to hold over me and I never have to go through a week like this again.

So... if you were wondering why I failed to post river updates through this past week, now you know why. It was tough enough to try and hold myself together as well as I did. If you came through the shop and thought I was a little anxious and/or rude, my sincere apologies. Holy cow! That was a tough week to get through. And if I do have another week like this, maybe Rhonda can make me a set of earrings from my precious stones. Or... maybe not...

After two years of not making any progress toward getting our online act together, I finally broke down and hired our local web designer Fred to give me a hand. We had initially bought a pretty detailed e-commerce package that would supposedly communicate with our in-store Point of Sale computer and reconcile inventories between the two. Apparently… that was a big waste of my time… So now we are using a more user friendly package that comes with our domain hosting. Fred was ready last night to go live with all the Simms data entered. But… none of his changes and formatting would appear. Just the old first attempt…

After a long and winding road, he figured out that the site is still linked to the old original site. Without the passwords, it will be a little longer to get that turned off and the new site turned on. Apparently, these people don’t work 24/7 like I do. Fred also decided to look up a few other things while he had idle time. Seeing how many web sites link back to my river reports and to the as yet non-existent e-commerce site. WOW! There are a lot of web sites linking to my incoherent babblings.

And we aren’t alone with the situk domains. I had bought situk.com for the e-commerce site, situk.net for the fishing reports and various local businesses and then situk.org for an eventual fishing and conservation club. Fred found that we have a “sister” site at www.situk.org.uk that isn’t quite about fishing. Well, maybe it is about fishing, but of a different sort.

“Situk is the newest, most exciting granny dating website in the UK sex dating industry today.”

What the... Um… thanks Fred! That’s what I needed… I imagine if I entered the site, I’d learn a lot more about ol' Chief Situk than I would ever want to know… I’ll leave that to you. You think you have all your bases covered for domains, only to find out you haven’t even made it to first base yet. So to speak.

By popular demand... we'll be staying open till 8pm every night now. OK, maybe not by popular demand so much as no one wants to come in off the river with great fishing going on just to make it to a store before it closes... Most people are back in town by 8pm, so we'll be holding the doors open till then.

And a quick hello to my grade school friend Robbie... Angela told me to tell you hi, since apparently you read this occasionally. I find it hard to believe anyone reads this most of the time...

My mom flew up this weekend with the kids' cousin Doug, so this morning, mom too them to the beach to grab some herring. The spawn is happening right now, so in addition to the bay being a swirl of white and green, the entire shoreline and anything in the water is thickly coated with cream colored herring eggs. They managed to collect about 3 gallons of herring in the buckets before getting so wet and cold that they threw in the towel.

And for yet another experience in eating bait... The kids want me to cook these things for them... The smelt fries turned out to be really good, so with any luck, we can fry up some herring too and see how it is. These are really big herring. Tanis also collected some eel grass and popweed coated with eggs and was snacking on them here at the shop for lunch. Sometimes it is hard to keep my own gag-reflex in check when the kids want to try some local traditional foods. He loves the eggs - they are basically crunchy, salty nothing... Not exactly something I go out of my way for, but if we ever have to survive without Spam® and Butterfingers®, I guess I won't starve. I love Spam® by the way! Real fisherman food! I can't believe Butterfingers have their own web site too. "Follow them on Twitter..." Or not...

This morning, the bay out in front of our house was white! I have mentioned before that living in Yakutat is like living in a National Geographic special (at least the old ones about wildlife, but the dumb end-of-the-world ones they seem to be making now...). All around the dock, there were incredible swirls of color. The herring have been thick in the bay, but it has taken them quite a while to ripen up and be ready to spawn. Today was the big day. The white swirls were from the herring milt. That's a lot of excited little boy fish to make that big a mess in the bay and ocean water! Sorry for the lack of photos... the camera was still in my fly vest at the shop.

Traffic through the shop is starting to pick up a little bit, but of course the season is still early. As is usual for me, I managed to talk two guys out of buying new waders so far this week. Boy, do I need to work on my sales skills... I did get some great product tips and ideas, so I'll be researching some new stuff to try and get it in for later this season. Your suggestions are so appreciated. Living in Yakutat, I can be pretty ignorant on a lot of the really cool new products on the market.

Don't forget... if you are coming up to camp in the next month or so, I do have my usual boxes of wood scraps from the hangar renovation available for campfire starter. While supplies last... Makes it easier to have you take it away for free instead of me having to lug it off to the dump... Just ask for a box as you head out to the river.

I hope you are enjoying this wonderful tax day. The weather changed a couple days ago to light rain, which brought the river flow rate up to just about perfect. Overcast with a 40% chance of rain is expected throughout the weekend. Just about perfect... There are nice numbers of fish in the river, although still not a whole lot of winter fish. We seem to be seeing a lot of Alaskans this week, coming up from Juneau, or down from Anchorage just for a quick couple days on the water. A LOT of people coming and going off the jet, but not all that many people on the river. The short trip makes it seem like there should be a ton of people, but they seem to be rotating out as fast as they come in. Lots of fish, not many people and ideal river conditions. Gee... this sure is shaping up to be a miserable weekend... I hope you can tell sarcasm when you read it...

Tanis sold two flies today and Eden sold one. Their tins are getting pretty low, so I need to spend some time with them to get a few more tied up. As HomeSchoolers, we get to call this "art class", or maybe "biology" since it is creating artificial food sources for animals... Then we can take PE on the river... You gotta love HomeSchooling! Today was math, as we figured out their 80:20 commission and then divided up that for tithing and savings. Everything in life around here ends up being some sort of lesson. My poor kids... And since they have to declare it on their taxes, they might as well learn at a VERY early age just how much of their earnings will be taken from them by the government. I know Tanis doesn't mind having some of his earnings go to support the military, but Eden probably would only support buying tiaras for homeless princesses. Come to think of it, I think we may be paying for that already...

With responses to my political postings running about 50:1 in support, I can live with those odds... Of course the people looking at this are probably outdoorsmen and therefore tend to be a little more conservative than the rest of America. Perhaps that is why we tend to preach to the choir. I did get my second "alternative" opinion via e-mail this week, but this time, it produced an interesting and polite discussion without any name calling. I can live with that. In spite of finishing my taxes today, I'm still in a good mood.

My uncle just sent me a link to a web site that featured a few old photos of and around Yakutat. This one caught my eye for rather obvious reasons:

I think this was taken sometime in the mid-1950's. How can you not have a good day when you come across something this cool! If only there was a photo of it in front of the hangar. Or better yet - having it still sitting in front of the hangar... We should be having our first WWII warbird donated to the foundation mid-summer sometime. More news about the WWII museum when I actually have some...

Obviously... the fly shop... the web site... even my blog are intended to be commercial enterprises. The fishing reports enable me to share information about the run - both good news and bad news - to help you make better decisions about when to come, what to bring, etc. It translates into advertising for the fly shop and (hopefully) makes you more inclined to make a purchase here. Duh! I haven't always made some local lodge owners happy by telling you the run sucks when it does, but to my thinking, giving you honest info is far more beneficial than misleading you in order to get you to come fishing... I don't get why anyone would want to keep the bad news from their customers... If the run is late, have people delay their trip (if they can), so they can have a better experience and want to rebook. Again... DUH!

Unfortunately, giving accurate info (although it isn't always perfectly accurate... it is what I'm told by fishermen and fishermen have been known to lie... on occasion...) can become a political issue if it means someone may cancel their trip due to poor fishing conditions. As a commercial enterprise, it is probably wise to avoid "politics" in general. Taking a political position (whether that relates to something "fishing" or not) can be risky because if you turn off your audience with a political view, you can potentially turn away business.

Going back through my blog, there are 4 political posts - clearly political posts - that I have made over the past 2+ years. This is a fishing shop, so I usually post things about fishing, or personal stuff about my family, home schooling the kids, the hangar renovation, etc. I have received ONE phone call in all that time where someone said he appreciated my thoughts, even though he didn't always agree with me politically. There is nothing greater that I could ever hope for. No one has to agree with me all the time - heck, I don't agree with me ALL the time. I do appreciate a good discussion though and it helps me to rethink my own positions and beliefs. "Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear" - Thomas Jefferson

Recently in a blog post, I questioned the reasoning behind adding a trillion dollar entitlement program created by our federal government. Over the couple weeks since that post, I have received dozens and dozens of encouraging and supportive responses. I did however receive one negative response:

1) My dad didn't die from insurance or lack thereof. He died of cancer.
2) My dad had full health insurance and he managed to die anyway.
3) He had cancer before and still managed to get health insurance with this pre-existing condition.
4) How presumptuous of anyone to assume they know anything about a particular situation, or to judge anyone based on these blind assumptions.

My dad was a wonderful man who gave his family everything important we could ever had wanted. He did however smoke for most of his life and therefore got cancer doing something he knew would cause cancer - kind of a self-inflicted death sentence, if you ask me. But the e-mail writer didn't care about asking me anything. Instead, they called me rude names and stated they would punish me by withholding their money for one reason and one reason only - I dared to disagree with their opinion. There is no debating the issue. I'm not allowed to have a differing opinion.

Did you notice the lack of debate in congress over the Heath Care debacle? "Here is our plan, agree with us, or we will either crush you, or ignore you." When that didn't work, they called anyone who disagreed with them nasty names - you are racist if you don't want your healthcare from the government... Really? Then, anyone who continued to disagree was attacked - the Tea Partiers, Fox News, Republicans - apparently even 40+ % of Democrats, considering that's what the polls are showing after passage. The Dems have super majorities, yet they could only pass the bill by bribing their own party members into voting for it and even then, it still barely passed. But I'm a "wingnut" who killed my own father when I was 17. Ya, no wonder most of America is fed up with Washington, congress and the president - and the far left.

If you have been following anything other than the mainstream media, you know that "Rules for Radicals" calls for you to vilify and shut down any opposition. Discussion is not allowed. The problem is that after being called a "racist" because I wanted to vote FOR a candidate a year and a half ago, I got over being called names by the media and political opposition. The e-mailer seems to be trying to argue against being responsible. That's what my blog post was about - being responsible for your own actions and your own life. Why in hell would anyone try to justify NOT being responsible???

The last thing they wrote in their message was that if I get sick, I would go bankrupt. How can I do that to my family? The reality is that as a small business owner, I am far more likely to go bankrupt BECAUSE of the increased taxes and demands of this new law than I am if I get sick. Hospitals by existing law can not deny you medical care - as demonstrated by every sad story the president and congress tried to drum up to justify the bill. EVERY example of someone who died turned out to be faked, or so grossly exaggerated that it was a blatant lie. THAT'S how you have to try and pass this bill? Say some little kid's mommy died because she was denied health insurance, when in fact she was treated for free by the hospital which has a fund for helping those who need financial assistance? Besides, if I was seriously ill, I bet the hospital would accept a payment plan that wouldn't break me in the process. Pretty darned sure they would "allow" me to be responsible for my own care if I asked. At least that used to be the way it worked. Besides, there are MANY reasons I could fail in business. As a small business owner, I face that every day. Health is a very unlikely what-if... but thanks for your "concern".

In a wingnutshell... This web site is about fishing. Once in a while, I have shared intimate details about what it has been like to start a fly shop. Most of you have appreciated the peek behind the curtain. Some of you have skipped those entries because you really just want to read about fishing. Either scenario is fine with me. ONE person out of literally thousands has been so disgusted with my opinion that they bothered to call me a wingnut and refused to use my services. Great. My guess is that if they did come out to the Italio for a week, I would deliberately drive them wingnuts just for the fun of it. A real American would give me crap back and we could still agree to disagree. There are those few who have always been able to get their way by not allowing discussion. For that few, I hope you have enjoyed the ride so far. 'Cause the free ride is over. The rest of us aren't going to be silenced anymore when it means the utter destruction of our country.

PS. Did you know that "American" was a slur the British used to insult "Continentals"? EVENTUALLY, George, John, Ben, Thomas and Co. got over the slur and took it as their own badge of honor. "Teabaggers" and "Wingnuts" should probably do the same. If I'm racist for wanting to be responsible for myself, so be it. Get over it. I did.

WOW! I seem to have hit a nerve on my last blog entry. GOOD! Thanks for the comments back. Maybe I should convert this page over to a real blog, where people can leave public comments. Another thing I have been meaning to get done and haven't. We are finally getting the e-commerce site populated, so you'll have that as a purchasing option shortly on the www.situk.com page. Should be functional in the next couple weeks. Ya, it has only taken me two years...

On another note... Since we have fish in the river and a few people are trickling though town, I figured we may as well "officially" open a few days early. We've been here every day anyway, so... WE ARE OPEN! April hours will be 9am to 7pm, unless there appears to be a need to stay up later. As always, I'm here working on the hangar until the wee hours of the night, so basically, I'm here later anyway and just honk if the 'burb is parked out front.

Here is a little bit of "Bob History" for you. Most of you probably won't care in the least, but after this weekend, I thought I should spell out a few of my thoughts.

My dad was laid off from Boeing back during the great recession of the early 70's in Seattle, when the famous billboard saying "Will the last person leaving Seattle - turn out the lights" went up. Boeing of course used to make airplanes. They took a risk, trying to manufacture big passenger jets when no one was really

doing that at the time. Some dunce at the company thought a really really big jet would be something the airline industry wanted to buy. The gamble nearly bankrupted the company and sent Seattle into a recession that makes "the Great Recession of 2009" look like a bull market.

Ironically, those crazy airlines ended up buying lots of these big big jets and Boeing became a tremendous capitalism success story. Seattle diversified its economic base over the following couple decades, developed more industry than just Boeing (Microsoft, Costco, Home Despot, Amazon.com, Starbucks, bla, bla, bla...) and also increased its tax rates, increased regulations and in general - made it more difficult for industries to actually manufacture THINGS. You know, Seattle barely noticed when Boeing decided to move its corporate headquarters out of Washington State, along with the assembly of the newest incarnation of their passenger jet. You may also notice that the quick list of big-name Washington companies that I came up with are all service companies. There is a reason that we as a nation no longer produce THINGS. Many reasons, actually.

Oh ya, I was talking about my dad... So... my dad was laid off from Boeing and decided the way to feed his family was to build a small plywood troller and start commercial fishing in a tiny Alaskan fishing village. I think I have already babbled about why Yakutat - grandpa Len fixed the cannery radios back in the 1950's and kept coming back to fix people's radios and brought his sons hunting and bla, bla, bla... Anyway... My dad took a risk by jumping into the pool head first to do what it takes to feed his young family and here we are today... still following that example of making educated decisions, taking risks, starting businesses so we can be responsible for our own lives.

Sometimes those risks prove to be greater than the rewards that come from them. Sometimes those risks prove to be far less than the rewards. The Boeing Co. took huge risks that paid off greater than William Boeing could have ever imagined they would. Boeing took a sleepy logging town and turned it into the "World's Most Livable City", with all the professional sports teams one could ever want. Oh, gee... Seattle isn't a great place to have a basketball team anymore. The football and baseball teams constantly threaten to leave as well, even after having brand-new stadiums built for them... I read this morning that Seattle is the #1 city in the US for cybercrime and the most risky place to be online. It used to be a wonderful place to live, but I chose to move away from the Seattle area a decade ago. Seattle no longer makes the top 10 livable list.

Yes, a decade ago, I worked three jobs and Teen worked two. We had quadruple health benefits between those jobs. My last year there before selling our house in Kent was by far my highest grossing year, showing about $75,000 in net earnings on my taxes. Boy, working at Crest Airpark by day, Horizon Airlines by night and the Port of Seattle at Sea-tac airport by graveyard shift enabled me to pay off my debts, finish renovating the house I lived in since I was born and buy my Italio cabin back. Boy did I feel rich for a year. I soon got over it...

As soon as I could afford it, I sold my house, bought the family cabin and commercial fishing permit back and got the hell out of Washington. Nothing personal against Seattle... Having my car stolen twice, dealing with bumper-to-bumper traffic every day, sleeping 2 hours a night while working three jobs, having virtually no control over my life... This was simply not the life I wanted to live. The money was not worth it. It wasn't worth it for my dad, it wasn't worth it for my grandfather... I had a long history of making my own way in the world as an example to emulate. Even great grandpa Armon became a farmer in Montana - self employed and taking responsibility for the risks his decision of personal responsibility presented. Grandpa Armon lost the farm during the Great Depression and he moved his family to Kent, Washington. Sometimes the risks outweigh the benefits. Grandpa Len started his own marine radio repair business that allowed him to support his family and live the lifestyle he wanted. Dad became a commercial fisherman, which allowed us to live all summer on the Italio River as a family, working together, playing together, living together as a family. Granted it wasn't enough to support the family year 'round, but dad was able to do fill-in work in the winter to make ends meet and still spend the summer on the river.

I sold the house, walked away from the security of a paycheck and health insurance as I started my own young family. I believed it was more important for me to raise my children myself and see them 24/7 than to put them in daycare and have them spend 8 hours a day with some stranger in public school while I worked my secure job every day. Health insurance was not something that would tie me to a job (or three) that I didn't enjoy. Living in a big city with access to concerts, movies and malls was not enough to tie me to traffic and smog and a daily grind I didn't enjoy. But... commercial fishing was not financially rewarding enough to feed us year 'round either. Just as with my three jobs, I needed to diversify my income to afford to live here in sunny Yakutat.

I started my guide business Italio River Adventures. My first year of duel Alaskan income netted me a whopping $3,000 for the YEAR. Woo, hoo! I was shocked to discover that my IRS tax refund that year was nearly twice my income. Big red flag there... the federal government was paying me not to work... Interesting, don't ya think? I filled out my own taxes as I always did, calculated a tiny refund check based on what I legitimately was entitled to and then a month later, the IRS sent me a check that THEY thought I deserved - thousands more than what my 1040 showed. I didn't even ask for the handout, they just gave it to me. Thank you to all you hard working Americans that actually worked for a living in 1998 for handing me a wad of cash to blow that I didn't earn. It sickened me then and it still sickens me today. Yes, I worked my ass off that year investing in my future - spending all my life savings, sinking the equity from the sale of my house and all the credit I could muster into a new business venture to supplement my existing self-employment venture.

The risk of starting a guide business paid off OK. We were in the black in our second season, just as I was in my second season of commercial fishing. Not bad, since most businesses fail in their first 5 years. Both my business ventures succeeded in their second year. That didn't stop people from calling me stupid for going into either of these businesses at the time. That's OK... I was also called stupid for buying my lovely little house when I did. It was just weeks away from literally falling down. We propped it up on new beams, put in new floors, windows, a new kitchen and

bathroom... A year later, I was told how I ripped off the seller for buying the house for the price I did... I have also been told I screwed mystery people when I started IRA... I stepped back into commercial fishing at the right time... (three years after buying the commercial fishing permit back, the price for wild Alaskan sockeye salmon dropped to only $.40/lb at the peak of the farmed fish craze. Subtract $.25/lb to fly the fish to town to sell, the cost of my cabin fees tripling, fuel costs going up over $5/gal... ya, I got in at the perfect time. Hard work had nothing to do with any of it. Dumping more money into my house than the cost to buy it didn't have anything to do with making it livable... Hard work has an odd way of paying off in America. At least it used to...

Boy, I haven't had one of these extremely long tirades in quite a while... See what idleness breeds? A discontented rabble... I just started inserting photos at this point in my typing. Have you noticed the smiles on the faces in every shot? It wouldn't be going out on a limb to assume that I'm proud of the decisions I have made. The risks put my family into some mighty difficult times and Bob-created struggles. There have been many times when we did not know where our next meal was coming from. Two businesses was still not enough to really give us some financial security. So what would the solution for a capitalist be? Yep! Start yet another risky business. Good job! You guessed right!

Once again, I was told I was stupid for starting a fly shop in Yakutat. "If it could be successful, then someone else would have already done it." EVERY SINGLE TACKLE SHOP had gone out of business in just a few years. "You really think people are going to buy $300 coats?" After two seasons, I now have people locally saying I'm rolling in dough and people scheming on how to get a piece of it. Ya... great. Yes, the fly shop is what I consider a wild success. I'm hoping that in season 3, I may see a little bit of income from it. We are on track now to possibly make my initial investment back by the end of our 5th year. WOW! 5 years to cover my initial investment. Woo, hoo! For those slow at math, that means I reach zero after 5 years of working continuously 7 days a week for 365 days a year - 12 hours a day on a short day, 18 hours a day on a typical one. My only days off have been to do construction on the hangar, commercial fish two days a week in July and guide for a month in the fall. Yes, my "days off" are to work other jobs.

Thank you all for enabling me to make this shop successful. Each and every purchase helps to get us a little closer to the zero line. I don't have an expectation for you to buy a $300 jacket. I don't expect you to bail me out for my risky decisions. I do hope that I can offer you a service that you actually want to buy and support. I want you to want to support us and come away with a feeling that you received a worthy value for your dollar. My risks were my decisions. Eventually, the reward will also be mine. That's how the free enterprise system works. My risk, my reward. But... receiving a reward for my own efforts and my own success enables me to also reward someone for doing the same. My hope has been to inspire others in our community to also aspire to create something worthy of your support.

As I have said in this blog before, Yakutat is a community dependent on government hand-outs. Yakutat's economy stays afloat by getting grants and hand-outs. The economic base is not large enough at this time to support the community. The largest employer is government. Other than this hangar renovation, there is no other private commercial construction project of consequence. We have a new dock. We have a new police station. This summer, the FAA is putting in some new communication towers. We may get the road repaved this summer. Maybe... Yakutat's economy was struggling when the country's economy was thriving. What do you think will happen when the government runs out of money? Anyone who thinks the government won't run out of money, you are truly clueless. What will happen to Yakutat when the availability of grants comes to a halt?

Last night, congress voted to pass a massive 2,700+ page bill to create a massive government hand-out for the nation. It is a new trillion dollar expense, when we are already spending $4 trillion more PER YEAR than the government takes in. Do you really think we can continue to spend money like this as a nation and not have a consequence in the near future? Get ready. When no one is willing to loan the US more money, who will be the first to lose the hand-outs? Do you think Yakutat will receive a penny when they are eating each other in New York to stay alive?

OK, did I cross a line there? Come on... people eating each other? Alaska Airlines gets over $2 million a year to fly to Yakutat under the Essential Air Service contract. Without that government subsidy, Alaska Airlines wouldn't make any money flying into most of Alaska's po-dunk towns. Do you think the worst of our economic downturn is behind us? Don't hold your breath. I sure hope it is, but I have my obvious doubts. Congress in one vote added another trillion to our debts last night. Deficit-neutral? Give me a break. Over a trillion in NEW SPENDING doesn't come out of thin air no matter now much the president tells you that. If that was true, we could have saved that trillion last year without this bill. This will be new ADDITIONAL spending. And if they do shave this spending from somewhere else to pay for it, where will it come from? Will the government have enough cash laying about to continue to pay Alaska Airlines $2 million/year just to fly to Yakutat? Without Yakutat's twice-daily jet service, how will we get our food? Will tourists come here to fish? Will we be able to ship out our commercial salmon? Will we be able to burn shipped-in diesel to generate our electric power? What happens to Yakutat when the government can no longer spend twice as much as it takes in in taxes? What happens to my fly shop? Can we make it to year 5? How will Yakutat survive our possible future?

I do believe that we can survive. I do not believe we can survive by continuing down the path we are currently on. My dad didn't go looking for his hand-out when Boeing laid him off. He went looking for his own path to prosperity. It was a bumpy path. I thought growing up that my mom must sure love Campbell's tomato soup. Oh, the 30 cent can of soup was all we could afford. With the struggles I have put my family through, I haven't looked for my hand-out either. Thank you for the free health care - yes, with my income, I will easily qualify for free health care under the current standards of yesterday's magical new right congress bestowed upon me. No thank you. I'd rather earn what I receive. I don't want to be dependent on the hand-outs of others. Starvation is one hell of a motivator, therefore I work very hard to make sure my family survives. It is a bumpy path with many peaks and valleys. As with any roller-coaster, the bumps and drops are a thrill. Keep your safety net. I'll walk the wire without it, thankyouverymuch.

A year and a half ago, I started business #4. I took over the lease on the hangar and have gone all-in to renovate a building most were content to see demolished. Yes, I have the records from both the city and the state desiring the building to be removed, so when my local "friend" prints up this blog entry and posts it around town with excerpts highlighted in an attempt to cast me in a negative light, we both know the truth... For the past two years, every penny we have taken in for hangar storage (and then some...) has gone into renovation materials. I haven't paid myself a penny for the thousand+ hours of work. Eventually, that investment will pay off and the building receipts will be larger than the building's expenses. It will take years for us to get to that point though. This is a long-term investment with a LOT of risk. So much risk that when the state offered to sell the hangar to the City of Yakutat for one dollar, the city refused.

I have again been called stupid for taking on the hangar project. More recently, now that the building is starting to take shape and we have some tenants in the building, I have heard that 1) I'm sure putting that grant money to good use and 2) I'm stupid for not getting grant money to renovate the hangar. MAKE UP YOUR FRIGGIN' MINDS! No, I haven't made anyone pay for this project beyond the people actually using the services offered here. No, tax payers in Texas have not footed the bill for anything here. Nor should they! Could you justify making people pay for other people's risks? Yet congress and the president are demanding exactly that. I don't have health insurance by choice. I pay my own way. I'm renovating a state-owned federally-built WWII hangar for private commercial purposes. I pay my lease, therefore what happens to this building is my business. My risk. My benefit. My decisions are a hardship and a thrill. Working for the Port of Seattle was neither. I made the right decision.

Honestly, I have no idea what the future holds for me. None of us do. And... if I did, I probably wouldn't bother to get out of bed tomorrow. Would you? Do you want everything done for you? Everything covered for you? Everything planned out for you by the government? Woo, hoo! I bet that's a fun ride. If steelhead required no skill or effort to catch, would any of you bother? You wouldn't. Not even if they were right outside your door like they are for me. Instead, you spend thousands and thousands of dollars every year to come up here and potentially not catch a single fish. Which scenario do you prefer? Predictable or unpredictable? Do you want to be cared for from cradle to grave? I don't. That is why my family consists of 4 of the 32,000,000 without health insurance.

I remember many years back hearing the saying, "If by 30 you aren't a Democrat, you have no heart. If by 40 you aren't a Republican, you have no brain." Over the years, I find myself getting more and more conservative. Big shock there. I registered as a Republican 10 years ago, but over the past year, I have swung into the Libertarian category, disgusted by the actions of the past 4 presidents, since being of voting age. I have not gone out of my way to test the boundaries of my liberty, yet I now feel the government is actively threatening my ability to feed my family. To educate my family. To protect my family. To operate my businesses. In other words, the government now acts aggressively to restrict my life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

2010 will be an interesting year. As liberals celebrate their great victory to create a socialist nanny-state, they have awakened the sleeping giant of conservativism within me. I have great hope that they have awakened said giant in others throughout the United States. I have sat back and watched as Seattle erupted into violent chaos during the WTO event. I have watched news reports showing the extreme violence of "peace protests". I have watched the far left beat up regular Americans who showed up to vote, to participate in town-hall meetings, to stand up for the first time in their lives. The left is used to violent protests. They have done it for decades. The rest of us have gone to work every day to provide for our families. We haven't participated in anything beyond the narrow confines of our daily lives. Ours will not be a violent revolution, but it will be a revolution none the less.

This year, I watched "honest" news reports of tea party marches with reporters zooming in on the "white racists extremists" in the audience, only to see later that the gun MSNBC zoomed in on was on the belt of a black man who also thinks the government has overstepped the bounds of the constitution. Did you see the contrast photos between the Tea Party march on Washington DC last September compared to the left-wing protests at the G20 summit the same month? Or after the inauguration? This is what the "racist extremists" of the Tea Party leave in their wake... Quite a difference from the usual results on the left...

What will be left of our country at the end of these two possible paths? My guess is similar results. We have a choice of paths before us. One leads to an awful mess. One leads to a future unencumbered by the mess of others. Your choice... The Tea Party participants cleaned up after themselves. The inauguration cost you the taxpayer millions to clean up. One is a path of personal responsibility and one is a path of dependence on others.

In January, I had a bit of a health issue to take care of. Other than birthing my two children, it was the most expensive health issue I have had in my adult life. After flying to Seattle, I had the magical experience of getting a colonoscopy. My dad died of cancer at 41 and I'm now 41. I don't smoke, I don't drink (very often). I'm very physically active. I'm actively responsible for my health and therefore my health care is very inexpensive. I work to eliminate risk when it comes to my health. Gee... personal responsibility for my health and health care... What a novel idea. I paid cash for my procedure, therefore the hospital gave me a 30% discount. Since the doctor didn't find anything

wrong, he suggested I get an unnecessary $6,000 MRI. Instead, I paid an additional $300 for physical therapy that actually detected the problem and cured it in one visit. Hmmm... If I had insurance, not only would the colonoscopy have cost $1000 more than it needed to, I would have endured an unnecessary procedure that would more than triple the total expense. Including airfare and food, the trip cost me around $3000 total instead of $10,000 if I had health insurance. Yes, that gives me a personal grand total health care cost (excluding dental) of around $4000 (including all my FAA pilot physicals) over the past 23 years, compared to at least $6000 each and every year health insurance would cost me. Gee... I think I'll pay as I go, thanks!

Taking responsibility for our own lives... I won't demand a hand-out from you. Don't expect one from me. You have the right to live your life as you see fit, providing you don't encumber the rights of others to do the same. When did we decide to leave THAT path? Time to return to it. November is coming.

The weather forecast was for a mix of rain and snow last night... we had only rain. The snow is gone from the parking lot and the state is busy scooping away the gigantic snow pile behind me as I type. That means the road to the Situk should be clear and open once again very soon! Honestly, even if the state doesn't clear the road, a good 4-wheel drive and off-road tires will make it to the river no problem. So close to steelhead season, I can taste it... not that I would ever think of tasting a steelhead... They taste a lot like spotted owl. Um... Did I say that aloud?

Spring is definitely here and I just can't imagine a deep snow that can change that at this point. Our HomeSchooled kids don't participate in much at the local elementary school, but the one thing we do is pee wee soccer every winter. The season just ended and since it is usually so $#@% cold and snowy, they play in the very confined space of the elementary gym. Little kids running all about, falling over each other and hitting the parents in the stands in the face with a ball when we aren't paying attention. Just before Eden's last game started last week, she was running around the gym to warm up. As she passed by us, she shouted out, "Dad, I'm running laptops!" Thank goodness winter is ending and we can get outside - away from these darned computers!

We have gorgeous clear skies here in Yakutat that match the gorgeous clear skies in Nome. Lance Mackey will be crossing through the burled arch in Nome in just a few minutes for his 4th consecutive Iditarod win. They are interviewing his dad as I type at the finish line, someone who helped organize the very first race back in 1973. Yes, we are watching live, as we always do through the internet. This is the ONLY professional sporting event we follow, one that commemorates something important in our history, not just some game that looks the same as any other game but with a different color helmet.

The winner will be crowned in a few minutes, but the race will continue for another week. Every team that crossed through the arch will be celebrated as a victor until the Red Lantern light is extinguished and no teams remain on the trail. When I say "every team is a victor", that is not in the modern tradition of "a trophy for every player" we see in American schools today. Each team that completes the 1000+ mile race has endured and overcome virtually insurmountable obstacles to reach Nome. And each has carried on the spirit of the race, to honor the original serum run, to save the lives of the residents of Nome during the diphtheria epidemic. Follow along at www.iditarod.com and support the race if you can. They are definitely struggling financially to put this on, with the economic downturn. Buy a DVD, or a t-shirt if you can.

In the "Iditaread", Tanis read through his 1112 pages in three days. Ya, he kind of beat his selected musher, Ray Redington Jr. Eden is still on the trail in Unalakleet, with her musher rookie Jane Faulkner.

If you happen to see the March issue of Salmon-Trout-Steelheader magazine, page 72 begins an article on fishing "Off-the-grid Alaska" - in other words... fishing on the Tsiu and Italio Rivers for silvers in the fall. The author Robert Campbell is a face we recognized here at the fly shop having spent some time here last year. He and his gang bought a few of Tanis and Eden's flies, which was a very nice thing to do. Reading the article, lo and behold, there is a great close-up photo of a coho hen with one of Eden's flies stuck into her jaw and a very cute mention of my talkative children. Thank you Robert for the mention and for making a couple of kids smile and start pestering me again about tying up some more flies.

After a virtually snowless winter, we are getting hammered and battered by winter storms these past two weeks. The roads to the Situk were wide open and bare. Now, they are under about 3 feet of very dense wet snow. We were all itching to get out on the water and start our season early, but it looks like we'll be held back till April 1st by the late arrival of winter. As much as we have enjoyed 50-60 degree days on the beach, we definitely needed this dumping of snow and hopefully it will continue for a little longer. Having little or no snow pack would have spelled disaster for our salmon runs - something we experienced a few years ago and are finally climbing back out of that hole.

Both the sockeye and silver runs had been struggling due to a lack of water and excessively warm temperatures. If you have been following this site, then you know the warm water when the juvenile sockeye hit the ocean in 2005 killed much of the run off. When those juvenile smolt returned in 2008, the run was disastrously weak. 2009 rebounded beautifully, with a far above average number of sockeye returning through the weir last summer. For silvers, we had a couple back-to-back dry winters that didn't give us enough snow melt to keep some of the smaller creeks flowing through the spring. The Old Italio stopped flowing entirely, drying up and killing off much of the smolt population before they had a chance to migrate out to the ocean. It has taken us a few years of mediocre returns for the run to rebuild and we seem to again be back to near normal silver runs out in the smaller streams. Another low snow winter is not a good thing, even if it does mean easy access for the steelheaders coming in another couple weeks. Let it snow... at least for a couple more weeks. The difference this winter is that we haven't been dry. It has been raining and raining, so the mountains should still have a hefty snowpack to keep flows up through most of the summer.

If you are planning a trip up here this spring for steelhead, my guess is still that the run will either be early, or at least on time. The past two seasons have seen a very late run and most people I have talked to were planning to come in mid to late May instead of April. You know, April may be a safe bet this year with our warmer temperatures. Last year, the April contingent missed the run entirely with an ice dam at the lake outlet keeping the winter fish trapped for an extra full month. The lake was already starting to thaw as of a month ago. This snow we have been seeing has still been a very warm snow, just verging on rain. Heavy snow at 36 degrees piles up fast with 4 inch snowflakes, but we are still warm. We'll see if the steelhead know it soon enough.

And if you are planning a trip later this summer and need something to help you tolerate the wait, Robert's article is a wonderful escapism for you. It is a photo story with full bleed photos and inserts, with just a little copy to describe what is going on. Good old fashioned fish porn, lots of skin - bright and silver! It makes me itch for a fishing trip and I live here!

A good friend of Teen's has been educating us on some of the more traditional native activities - things that were far too alien and... well... icky for my family to ever do when I was a kid. Last week, the first hint of the arriving Eulachon (Candlefish) run started to show on the shores around Yakutat. Eulachon are a small smelt that are so high in oil that folks used to burn them as candles - hence the nickname "Candlefish". The majority of them come in to spawn in the freshwater streams like Akwe and Italio in the coming months. They arrive in massive balls of writhing silver and get absolutely attacked by eagles and seagulls till each ball is entirely eliminated. At some point, all the birds are so bloated and full that they can't even move, let alone fly. Then, the successful spawners make it past the comatose eagles and do their business just barely out of tidewater. Living here is like living in the middle of an endless National Geographic special.

Last week, we were blessed to witness the arrival of a slightly oddball batch of Candlefish. Instead of arriving into the freshwater streams, these fish come into Sandy Beach - the brilliantly named patch of sand next to the big fish plant. These fish apparently surf the waves into shore and release their eggs right there on the sand. Not sure how successful this is, but that's where we found the fish thick enough in the waves to scoop up in buckets. I shouldn't really say "we", since the night they came in, I had just pitched myself off the ladder here at the hangar and was loaded up with Ibuprofen in bed, while Teen and the kids were splashing around in the winter ice-water with flashlights. They had a blast and managed to accumulate a full bucket of fish.

Our friend kept the bulk of them, while Teen and kids returned with a zip-lok full of thin 4-5 inch fish. The next day, we had ourselves some fish sticks! It has been hard enough to get Teen to eat ANY seafood over the years. Essentially, the only thing she is willing to eat is my beer-battered halibut and nothing else. Eulachon are "best" (so I have been told) rolled in flour, salt, garlic and Italian spice, then pan fried in hot oil. Munching down a fish fresh out of the water eating the skin, bones, guts and all is high on my personal ick-factor, but Teen couldn't even be inside the same house while we endeavored to devour. OK, the kids were excited, so I had to be willing to eat one and muscle it through my gag reflex.

I'm sure the tail fin is just as crunchity-crispity as a fish-flavored potato chip, but holding the fish by the eyeballs and munching my way from tail to gill was a bit much. I had to break the tail off first and at least start with a trace of meat between my teeth. One bite in... two bites in... you know, as creepy as these things look, they taste pretty darned good. Tastes like chicken!

The kids and I literally devoured about two dozen of them, leaving only a tiny pile of heads and tails for Emma to eat. They were really good! Not so good that I want to fill the freezer with them, but something we can all look forward to once a year when they come in in mid-February. Sort of like our spring fiddlehead binge when the young fern shoots pop through the ground on the shadowy hillside. One more thing we are adding to our Alaskan cultural rituals - eating fried garbage fish you can light with a match... Who'd have thunk! OK, Tanis, Eden, Emma and I can look forward to it. Teen will run from the house with the dry heaves.

On a not-so-happy note... Two weeks ago, it would appear that Emma was hit by a car (and the charming person didn't bother to tell us). One evening, we put her outside to potty just before bed and she didn't come back in. Teen found her at the bottom of the porch steps unable to stand. Initially we thought she may have had a stroke, since there didn't appear to be any noticeable trauma, but she had no coordination and couldn't make her legs move. For three days, she never peed or pooped and I thought we were going to have to put her down. Then she gradually was able to stand again, ate a little, pottied a little, we noticed the bulging contusion on her side... It was definitely trauma-related. Over the past two weeks, she has steadily improved and although she is an old dog with some major issues, she is healing back up and returning to mostly her old self.

I had anticipated this was going to be her last year with us as it was, so we consider it a blessing for every day we have our first child still with us. She is back to being comfortable and out of pain (other than her arthritic joints and mouth tumor). I obviously miss my little puppy that appeared on the cover of the Weimaraner Club of America calendar wading across Hooligan Creek out on the Italio - oh, so many years ago. Many of you may remember her more active days following day-fishermen upstream and eagerly chasing bears away for you. Her bear chasing days are over, but we'll try to make her as comfortable as we can on her bed in the corner of the fly shop. They just don't live long enough, yet give us so much while they are here. She was my only companion back in my days of commercial fishing, when Teen was still down in Seattle dealing with a newborn Tanis and I sure appreciated her companionship and having someone to talk to. Especially a female that didn't have to have the last word every time... Um... did I just say that aloud? This will most likely be her last season with us, so we'll appreciate every moment we have left with her.

Please forgive a little grey hair on the jackets hanging on the lower rungs... A little extra Weim-coating we don't even charge extra for.

Yes, it has been a month and a half since my last blog entry. Sorry, but winter can be a little slow on entertaining things to write about around here... The snow pile looks just about the same as in the photo below. Just a bit dirtier. We have been seeing VERY warm weather this winter, with a few periodic episodes of slush, followed by rain. Nasty rain storm blowing outside right now, so pretty amazing that I even have a connection to the internet! With all this warm weather, we have maintained an open road all the way out to 9 Mile virtually all winter. If we don't get a big dumping of snow through March, or a really long cold snap out of the blue, I would expect to see an early steelhead run! I will keep the reports updated as I have info (which I don't right now), but my guess is that we'll see the peak in later April, rather than the late May we have seen the past couple years. I know that doesn't really help pin things down for those of you who have been missing the peak year after year, but I will try to give you as much of a heads up as I can in the coming month and a half.

Yes, things are very slow around the shop these days. I have been mudding and taping the offices upstairs while the shop is officially closed. Managed to topple off my ladder yesterday. That was fun. Nothing broken other than my pride. I had a helper working out in the hallway, so he could come in and recommend I tie my shoes while working... Um... thanks. It has been hard to get motivated this past month, especially since mudding and taping is such a wonderfully fun winter sport.

That said, we did get a call from David, who mail-ordered some waders, plus a rod and reel. Thanks David for making this our best February ever. Of course we are "officially" closed January, February and March, but the occasional surprise order sure helps to keep the lights paid for. I'm still here every day, so if you have any questions about the coming season, or if you need a full outfit... :-) Don't hesitate to call or e-mail. Starting to get a lot of steelhead questions the past couple weeks, so maybe the economy is starting to recover and people are again thinking about trips. Or maybe they just need to call and talk fishing to keep their hopes alive... Either way, I'm still kicking around the empty shop.

As the sun sets on another year, I wanted to extend a hearty thank you to all of you who have been supportive and encouraging to us. Merry Christmas to you and yours. I hope you have a wonderful holiday and a bright new year. This has been a VERY challenging year to endure, but I think we have grown through it, learned from it and hopefully we'll build on that strong foundation for a great 2010.

I'm about to close the shop and head home, to bake cookies with the kids, sing carols around the candle light and then close out the evening by watching "It's a Wonderful Life". We have so much to be thankful for. Take care and until next time...

My apologies once again for not blogging lately. This has been a VERY slow fall with sales understandably down along with the number of people here to fish. Haven't had a legitimate fishing report since before Thanksgiving, so no news to report there. I wouldn't expect to see any fishermen in town until March, but if I make it out there, or if someone does make it to the river, I'll let you know the results.

Otherwise, we have had no shortage of things to do. I have the IRS non-profit paperwork all filed for the museum foundation, so that is a relief to have out of the way. We should be able to make some progress on the WWII museum by spring. We have had some pretty amazing support and offerings from people, who had a family member serve in the war. Donations of photos, journals and even some cash have been wonderfully encouraging and has helped us get started.

We have been very busy renovating the hangar, with a team of electricians here for the first half of December. I have been pouring concrete counter tops for the bathrooms and kitchens, so nice to have that out of the way. Still a lot of polishing to do on them though. I can't seem to do anything the easy way, what with pre-fab Formica that would work just fine... Oh well. Should be fun when it is all said and done...

I'll try to do better over the next few winter months. Hang in there! We'll make it through the snowy season and the river will be chock-full of steelhead soon enough.

Just received a surprise call from Brad at the Juneau shop... He was a bit concerned that I had put him out of business with my blog entry from the 18th... I accidentally said the Juneau fly shop was going out of business instead of the Sitka shop... OOPS!!! Sales have been slow in Juneau just as they have been everywhere, but Brad will still be in business! I changed the blog entry to show Sitka, but please help support both these shops if you can. Having a local shop is a vital life-blood for supporting our fly fishing passion.

Each and every one of these small Alaskan communities needs to have the local resource available for supplies, but even more importantly - for educating our local populace on the virtues of protecting our fishing resources. Here in Yakutat, our community has always based its economy on the consumption of our fish. Catch-and-release has never been something to promote. Even the meat fishermen catch-and-release most of the fish they catch (with a daily bag limit of two silvers, or three sockeye), but need to learn better handling and release techniques to increase the survival rates of the fish they don't take home. The local fly shop is the ideal venue for disseminating quality information to the public about how to use the resource in a manner that will protect it for future generations, even while filling the freezer.

Save the local fly shop and you help save the local fishery from abuse. As I said in my previous blog entry, check in with the Sitka shop to see if you can fulfill your Christmas shopping needs - or the Juneau shop, or Ketchikan, or Anchorage, or the shop down the street from your house.

I just heard some unfortunate news today. The fly shop in Sitka is closing down. With the downturn in tourism in this economy, they have been hit exceptionally hard and it looks like next year was shaping up to be even worse. If you have a way to support them and help reduce the hardship of closing their doors, I would really encourage you to do so. I don't know how they plan to dispose of their inventory, so if you need Christmas ideas, give them a call and see what you can do. Not just to try and get some really good deal, let's see if we can get a good deal while helping their Christmas to be a little brighter too.

Starting a new fly shop right as the economy tanked probably wasn't the brightest idea in the world. This has been a wonderful experience, as well as a risky and scary adventure to put my family through. Fly shops all across the country are dropping like... well... flies. The combination of warehouse stores popping up everywhere and the crushing economic downturn has put a lot of really great shops out of business. Please, whenever possible, try to check with the little guy first. One wader sale can make a big difference on his bottom line for a small mom and pop business.

The shop in Sitka is just one more victim. If you want to have an option when you head to a destination, you may want to think about supporting them before it is too late and there are no destination fly shops left.

Many of you have passed through the old Yakutat WWII Hangar over the past couple years by way of the Situk River Fly Shop. Teen and I started renovating our little corner of this massive building for the shop back in 2006 never having any idea where that would lead us. In August of 2008, we assumed the lease on the entire structure and took over the renovation of all 38,300 square feet of derelict building.

When I was in my early teens, my dad freelanced as Yakutat’s primary aircraft mechanic. On weekends between our commercial fishing openers on the Italio, he and I would fly to town to perform 100 hour and annual inspections on Yakutat’s motley fleet of planes. He would put me to work cleaning and organizing some of the side rooms of the hangar mostly as a way of keeping me out of his hair, so he could get his work done. I have such “fond memories” of organizing several 5 gallon buckets of assorted rivets. As a father, I now understand just how wonderful some pointless and menial project is for keeping the kids occupied for a few hours… Setting Tanis and Eden to similar tasks in the very same rooms I spent so much time in 25 years later…

As a child of the 1970’s and the

Vietnam

era, military sacrifice was not considered a noble way to spend your life. I remember feeling pretty indignant that I even had to register for the Selective Service when I graduated from High School. As I have grown older and raised my own children, my priorities and perspectives have changed. The notion that “freedom isn’t free” was not something that we learned in school. The sacrifices that Americans have made to give me the security and freedom I took for granted are now something I do think about and I make sure my children understand. The great regret that I have is that I did not serve my country when I should have. The 1980’s were a time of relative peace, but that peace was kept by men and women who stood and served when I was unwilling. I owe them my deep gratitude and respect.

My dad joined the Air Force and served most of his time in Germany . He never talked about his service. It was just something he did in his youth and came home to raise a family and build a life. In fact, the only time we ever thought about his military service was once when the DC-3 that flew fish out of Dry Bay happened to be a plane dad worked on when in

Germany

. The other time was when my mom was handed a folded flag at my dad’s funeral service. He didn’t think of himself as a veteran. Serving your country was simply something one did. Talking with Teen’s dad this summer, he always felt the same way. It was just something everyone did. We have moved so very far away from serving our country and our fellow man in the half century that has passed between our parents’ generation and that of their grandchildren.

My grandfather was colorblind. Although this is not an obstacle for service now, it was back in the 1940’s. Instead of military service, he supported the war effort in the Merchant Marine as a radio operator and repairman – delivering goods and supplies to our solders fighting the Japanese in the South Pacific. The thing that fascinates me the most about the WWII era is that EVERYONE served our nation in some way to stop the Axis Powers. No part of America was insulated from the sacrifice to keep the world free.

To quote the movie The Incredibles, “and when everyone is super, no one will be”. It is easy to honor the valiant men and women who serve the cause of freedom now a days because so few rise to the occasion. Three generations ago, everyone served – everyone was special – everyone was literally a Super Hero – and therefore no one was special. They served, sacrifices, died, lost fathers, children, built B-17’s, planted their backyard “Victory Gardens”, pulled the tires off their cars. They rationed sugar and gas, they did without to make sure resources were available to fight the Germans and Japanese. Today, we sacrifice nothing and take for granted all the freedoms we enjoy. We sure have come a long way… It took 60 years before the veterans of the greatest world conflict ever to have a memorial built in our nation’s capital to honor their thankless sacrifices.

I have an old building that was constructed as part of the war effort to stop the Japanese from expanding their hold over the entire Pacific. As we renovate the hangar, we do so with an eye toward honoring the men (and women) who sacrificed so much to give us a world of liberty and freedom. In the intervening decades, so much of the world has rejected freedom, or lost it to communism, fascism, socialism, extremisms of all sorts. So much of our nation has lost the understanding that freedom is not free and it must be fought for and protected with every fiber of our being. Americans have forgotten, or have not been taught anything about our history and the sacrifices that have been made to give us this cushy life we take for granted.

I am proud to announce the beginning of the Yakutat History Foundation. Our mission will be to “document the role Alaska played during WWII by honoring those who served, educating those who are here and inspiring those who have yet to come”. We will be creating a full-fledged WWII museum over the next few years here in the hangar. We have so appreciated the support and encouragement we have received already and I hope we’ll be able to create something truly special here in this once remote and isolated wilderness. We will also work to honor those who have served, are serving and will someday volunteer to serve the cause of freedom – our freedom.

Stay tuned to this web site for more information about the foundation, the museum and (if you are interested) how you can help support our efforts. We have a tremendous amount of work ahead of us, but that work pales in comparison to what the men and women of “the Greatest Generation” sacrificed on our behalf. Let me know if you have any questions, suggestions, comments, or concerns.

Thank you for serving our country and for protecting freedom throughout the world. As we cope with our modern world and changing values, the greatest hope I have is to be able to share with our future generations, the sacrifices and challenges that these proud men and women faced so that we all can now live and raise our children in a free world. Do not lose sight of that. Freedom is not free and it must be protected - violently if need be. And we can never forget those who have given us that freedom. Not just on Veterans Day, but every day we live and breath.

PS. The two photos above were taken by an American hero named Derral J. Allen in 1943 while he was stationed here in Yakutat. The P-38 Lightning parked in front of the hangar ended its service just 3 months after the photo was taken when it crashed on Attu Island on February 1st, 1944. The aircraft had at least two Japanese "kills" in the Aleutian campaign before meeting its demise. The second photo shows two SBD Dauntless dive bombers parked on the ramp directly in front of where Alsek Air's building is now. The original control tower is in the background. A relative of Mr. Allen has been coming to fish the Situk for years and took the time to make copies of these and other photos in the family collection for us to use. A very special thank you to the Gould and Allen families for being willing to share a part of their history, to help us tell a part of Yakutat's history through the foundation's work. We'll be putting together a separate web site for the museum as we move through this coming winter and more time allows. Stay tuned.

We awoke yesterday morning to a light dusting of snow on the ground. It was gone from anywhere the sunlight touched in short order, but it did signal the coming of winter. This morning, we woke to about 5 inches of heavy snow covering everything and Yakutat once again looks like a gorgeous Rockwell painting of Christmas. The state guys are hard at work scraping the ramp into the early lump that will grow into our annual airport snow mountain.

The forecast is calling for intermittent snow showers, turning to rain by 1pm. Looks like we'll have at least a week of snow at night, followed by rain in the afternoon. Not much in the way of accumulations are expected, so access to the Situk should remain open. Things have been slow around here, so not too much to report lately (obviously by my lack of updates). November is upon us, so expect our winter steelhead to be arriving over the next few weeks. More on that in the river reports page...

New Hours:
Being that November is our slowest month, I am reducing the shop hours to just Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I AM HERE EVERY DAY working on the hangar, so if you are coming up to fish steelhead, give me a heads up and I'll unlock the door for you. No, it isn't an inconvenience... we need the sales... I just need to make some progress mudding and taping before the hallways get too cold to work, so please let me know when you'll be here and if you need anything!

Once before, I included a link to a newspaper article here on the blog because of how important the cause was for our modern veterans. Today, I am posting the complete text from a news report effecting just a tiny handful of veterans, but the effects are absolutely appalling. No big secret... I'm not too impressed by the performance of our current national government administration. I didn't vote for our president, however he won and therefore is MY president (a concept that was alien to so many over the previous 8 years, but is expected by those same individuals of me. Not to worry, those are already my beliefs).

65+ years ago, thousands of mostly native Alaskans volunteered for service to a country that did not consider them Americans. They stood in defense of freedom at a time when they lacked such freedom themselves. Now, more than half a century later, our government is choosing to deny them recognition for their service and sacrifice. This wasn't state service, Alaska wasn't a state. They were taking a stand to prevent the possible invasion of North America by the Japanese through the territory of Alaska - to "protect and defend" the United States. Something President Obama needs to start doing. Our president wants to deny this handful of Alaska natives benefits for their WWII military service because they weren't "Americans" yet, while doing all he can to extend benefits to modern illegal aliens. (According to the Congressional Budget Office, Joe Wilson was correct) This makes me sick.

More than 6,600 Alaskans volunteered to serve in the Alaska Territorial Guard, a component of the U.S. Army organized in response to Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor Dec. 7, 1941. According to the Tundra Drums, the male and female volunteers ranged in age from 11 to 80 years old, and they guarded their assigned territory with no pay and little equipment until the Alaska Territorial Guard was disbanded in 1947.

Because Alaska was still a territory and not an official U.S. state, the volunteers' enlistments were not counted as federal military service until 2004.

In January, Alaska's then-Gov. Sarah Palin learned the retirement payments to Alaska's Territorial Guard would be cut off, so she wrote a letter to President Obama.

"This unfortunate decision was made without any notice to those affected and will cost a group of elderly Alaska veterans a significant portion of their retirement income at a time when the cost of living, particularly in rural Alaska, is substantially higher than in the rest of the United States," she wrote.

"Prior to World War II, Alaska's territorial Governor was authorized by Congress to organize a two-branch military response organization – the organized National Guard, and the ATG, which would mobilize to help defend Alaskans in the event of an invasion. An estimated 6,600 men and women, mostly Alaska Indians, Eskimos, and Aleuts, responded to that call. Instead of hunting, trapping and fishing, they patrolled rural Alaska and served as the eyes and ears of the Army for more than five years without pay and benefits."

Palin said it took nearly 60 years before those men and women would be honored for their service to the country – and most died waiting for that recognition. She said the service of those soldiers is to Alaska what the service of the militia at Lexington and Concord was to New England.

"Now they are being told, again, that their ATG service is not worthy of federal recognition, and that is not right," she wrote. "These people are our heroes."

Last year - our first year of being open, I was in my usual position of playing on the Italio throughout September. While running my guide business out there, I certainly get to meet plenty of people who fly out to the Middle and Old Italio Rivers. This year, with bookings down and most of my September schedule free, I have been able to stay back in town and enjoy working the shop with Teen.

One of the big surprises about being a guide had been how much I would enjoy meeting people and sharing my home on the Italio with those who "get it". Growing up out there since I was 4 years old, in the same little shack on the beach I still call home, my parents had trained me and my sisters to be rude and/or not to speak to these "invaders"... Sure, a few of the people who pass through are twits, but the vast majority of people we have had the pleasure of meeting have just been great men and women who are careful about not leaving a mess and not damaging the resources that my family has depended on for survival for four decades.

Even though I have spent most of this fall here in town, we continue to meet some pretty interesting people and it is fun to expand our circle of friendship to include such a wide-range of outdoorsmen and women. This past week, we had two people pass through the shop that I wanted to mention. The first was "CohoBob", from the new message boards. There have been many total strangers who have been helping to make the message boards into a fledgling community - asking and answering questions, posting stories and photos - pitching in to help make the forums into a worthy endeavor. About a quarter of the people on the forums are people that I know, or have met. The rest - I have no idea who they are... Having a chance to meet another person who has a passion for this river and area (like CohoBob) is fun. Thanks Bob for helping us make the forums a success.

The other guy who passed through the shop this week, I met a decade ago at the very beginning of my fly fishing journey. Charlie Banta came through and talked to me when I was loitering in my sport show booth in Denver exactly 10 years ago. Although Charlie didn't book a trip with Italio River Adventures, he has checked in periodically over the years to ask a question, or badger me about something. Once I ran into him on the Italio during a day fly-out, but this week, we had a chance to catch up and visit here in the fly shop. Charlie brought Charlie Jr. up for the first time this year, so now he is infecting another generation with the Situk fishing bug. Now, we just need to keep harassing Charlie till he breaks down and stops chucking the spin gear...

OK, that's funny... I was typing Charlie's name when he just walked in through the door to say goodbye. I thought he had already left town... Anyway... Bob and Charlie are bookends to my life as a fly fishing guide - having met Charlie the winter before we finished building our Italio camp and now Bob, who joined one of my latest projects - the message boards/forums.

With the slow economy, traffic through Yakutat has been down by at least half. Even so, we have done OK in the shop and this year looks to be another successful season. We'll still keep the doors open through the end of December, for the winter steelhead run and Christmas holidays. I'm most looking forward to meeting a few more people as this season winds down to its conclusion. Especially those die-hard psychos that we'll see in November and December as the snow flies and the steelhead start in again. Thank you to all the Bobs and Charlies that have helped make this shop work and for making our lives richer by becoming our friends.

There are definitely drawbacks in being homeschooled. For starters, we homeschool the kids year 'round, but that does allow us to take any time off we feel like - whether for our trip to Disneyland and the Palm Springs Air Museum last February for a month, or a camping trip in the midst of the spring steelhead run. One ritual we have is to play hooky on the first day of public school and take the kids out to breakfast. Eden doesn't seem to have the concept down, since she insisted on bringing her penmanship workbook along to draw letters and color. Oh well. Tanis understood the concept pretty well of skipping school... well... sort of. He spent the afternoon curled up on the couch reading his reader anyway... So much for trying not to learn anything.

We have a visitor here through the month. TransNorthern has their "Super" DC-3 here again this season. They made a brief appearance here last fall before being replaced by Bush Air Cargo for the Tsiu commercial salmon hauling contract. Any time an old DC-3 comes through is a worthy time to celebrate. Essentially, Douglas after the war took some of the returning C-47's and modified them to make them "better" than the best airplane ever made... The program was a pretty big failure, since so many C-47's were returning from the war effort and flooding the transport market. The added cost of the "Super" didn't really make it worth the improvements. Regardless of what may have happened in the late 40's and early 50's, both variants of the Dakota are pretty darned "super" to have taking off and landing, let alone parking every night next to the hangar.

Our biggest problem of course as a new shop is visibility. Few people have known that we exist and a lot of people have called, or e-mailed after they left Yakutat - surprised that there was a fly shop and they didn't know it when they were here. So... in an effort to increase our visibility, we had some new signs made to direct people to the hangar.

Hopefully we won't be missed by those who want to find us. Thanks to the folks who strongly recommended we put up better signage. With travel down precipitously though Yakutat this year, every little bit will help us survive.

As you can see, the building still looks like a dump on the outside, but we have made tremendous strides of progress toward renovating the inside. Unfortunately the siding will have to wait till we get farther along on the interior rooms. I have high hopes for being far enough along to start displaying some of my WWII historical collection by next season. This is a VERY big project and like eating an elephant, you can only tackle it one bite at a time. Thanks for your support and encouragement through Teen's and my little fixer-upper project.

WOW! I guess it has been a month since I put anything here. Things have been hectic, even if traffic through Yakutat has been on the slow side. I just returned from a week of guiding on the Italio and we had a wonderful time catching more silvers than we ever expected.

With the economy in the tank, traffic through Yakutat has been VERY slow. A lot of cancellations, but also a struggle for the big groups that do still make it, to fill their usual slots. Ya, it is a bummer for local businesses trying to survive, but there is an up-side too from my demented perspective. I'm getting to meet some really excited and enthusiastic new guys, who have always longed to be "in the group", but haven't been able to get their foot in the door... With the regulars cancelling, there has been some new blood coming along for the first time.

This morning, I had the great pleasure of chatting with an older guy who had some really great and pointed questions about the hangar. His memories and stories from the past were wonderful. He was a child then and remembered having nightmares of "Japs" in the closet. In addition to talking about racism and the vocabulary of the time... It was fascinating to hear his perspective on growing up in that time of hardship and fear. No "Monsters Inc" style monsters in his closet, it was a "real" irrational childhood fear, where his dad would open the door and show that there weren't any people with guns threatening to kill him. What a different world we live in now.

OK, so things did get political too, in that the current crop of Americans have seen such a long time of affluence that we are probably incapable of rising to tackle challenges that we may potentially face. That "greatest generation" universally risked all to save the planet. Set aside their personal desires to fight for freedom throughout the world, then returned to a home that would have seemed so alien from the struggles they had just survived. A thankless sacrifice that took 60+ years to be given a memorial in our nation's capital. So few sacrifice anything now, let alone go without the latest IPod model...

On another note... living in Yakutat, we can be pretty isolated from the real world in many ways. It is so appreciated when people come and share a little piece of their own world - something that may be common to them, but is pretty exotic to a family trapped in Yakutat's small world. The genuine Wisconsin cheese we had a couple weeks ago tasted AMAZING, so a big thank you to our generous visitor from WI. As I have mentioned before, Tanis is amassing a pretty neat collection of WWII artifacts for the museum. Another "donation" came in this month in the form of a "Carlisle Bandage" tin. EVERY soldier carried one of these throughout the war, so it isn't exactly a rare item, but we aren't looking for just rarities for the museum. This item resulted in yet another exercise in HomeSchooling research - yielding a treasure trove of info. The brass cases like this one were replaced with plastic in 1943, since metal was fast becoming a scarce resource.

Let me just thank all of you who have taken the time to enrich our lives with your stories and occasional treasures. I know my kids are blessed knowing and experiencing the wider world through the sharing of the wonderful people that have passed through the shop, or have visited with us out on the Italio on a day fly-out. Thank you.

Not much in the way of exciting news around here lately... Just holding down the fort and renovating the hangar as time permits. Bored out of his skull, Tanis went on a little fishing expedition yesterday to what the kids call "Frog Pond", a deeper spot in the drainage ditch around the back side of the hangar. To everyone's surprise except his, Tanis managed to hook three fish and land two. One was an 11 inch cutthroat and the other appears to be a small 6 inch salmon. I can't really confirm the species identity, because it found its way into one of the rainwater totes along the backside of the building. The little bugger doesn't want to be caught a second time, so we'll have to wait for some of the water to get used up before we can rescue him and return him to the cesspool that is "Frog Pond".

Yesterday, Eden was not to be left out of exciting finds... She managed to discover a 1929 quarter in amongst the teetering pillars of rust we call the "hangar doors". There has been very little to find laying around the hangar of any interest or value, after decades of neglect, pilfering and a total disregard for historic value by past tenants. OK, so it is just a quarter worth maybe five bucks in the condition it is in, but still a fun find for a 6 year old.

I'm back from my last week of commercial fishing on the Akwe. That season is over and we are on to another focus. Sockeye still stream into the rivers right now and they have even opened the Situk to retention of king salmon again. We have a bit of a lull in town right now, usually between runs this time of the summer, even though with our big runs this year there doesn't seem to be any lull in the fishing. Just in the number of people fishing...

Well, I thought things were crazy around here last month... I can't seem to catch my breath enough to make many entries. I even managed to type up two long and thoughtful responses to one question on the message boards, only to both times have the entry disappear... I didn't type it up a third time...

We are frantically trying to make renovation progress on the hangar, while juggling the fly shop and commercial fishing out on the Akwe. Unfortunately, the blog and fishing reports have suffered a bit under the short time availability. I hope you will forgive me. It will all be worth it in the end though. Once we get this side of the hangar renovated, we'll have the time to start displaying our WWII historic artifacts. With the economy the way it is, there are some spectacular opportunities around and we're trying to take advantage of those as time and finances permit. With a little luck and assistance, I think some of you will be truly excited to come and see what we've done with the hangar and what we have been able to add to the collection.

Anyone interested in lending a hand with the birth of our little museum, send me an e-mail. This is such an exciting time.

On that note, we had another Army plane come through Yakutat last month. I didn't get photos posted then, so here they are now... This is a Cub with a fun paint job. Apparently it served in Italy post- war for a while...

Oh, what a nightmare... We worked so hard to get the forums up and running and it was so great to see so many people register so quickly and participate. Then a couple days ago, the site went blank. Literally, there was NOTHING. The site crashed with no back-up and all registrations and postings were lost. The site is back up and running, but we'll need everyone to reregister from scratch. Please go ahead and let's restart the forums. It will be backed up nightly now though, so if this happens again, we won't lose everything.

I spent yesterday making up a new feature for the web site... Down on the left, you'll see a link for "Other Fishing Spots". I will gradually be profiling a variety of other spectacular places in and around Yakutat to fish, besides just the Situk River. Looking for a great out-of-the-way location to get away from the crowds? Well, here will be the list of interesting alternatives. Of course if I publish these secret locations, they won't stay fishermen-free. Then again, if we spread the wealth and people disperse throughout all the great areas, we won't have shoulder-to-shoulder fishing issues anywhere... Maybe...

First up is Tawah Creek. Barely a stone's throw away from the airport, Tawah has a lot of stream to fish far from anyone else's footprints. You just have to walk across the meadows that it wanders through. 4 access points along about 10 miles of river. Get the heck away from the bridge and you can have an incredible experience well away from anyone else... At least 6 different species scattered through an incredibly long 9 month season.

And I wanted to extend a big thanks to the people that joined the message boards in the first couple days. A couple great questions were asked and several great answers were given by the people who fish this river. I did change the link on the left to read "Situk Forums" instead of "Message Boards". Not sure how much of a difference that will make, but it was a recommendation to make it easier to understand what it is...

We have a "work in progress" to introduce to you... Announcing the Official Situk River Message Boards and Forums!!! Go to http://www.situkriverboards.com and log into the new message board. It is still evolving, but for the moment, we have a basic board that functions. Gradually we'll add things like categories, photos and anything else you suggest that makes sense.

OK, for those of you have been harassing me about getting the oil skin/waxed cotton fly shop hats... They finally arrived today. If you want one, give me a call and we'll mail it out to you. As always, free shipping/no tax on phone and internet sales.

Teen (and Eden) will be here "staffing" the shop, while the guys go camping for a cub scouts trip to Ankau. She would be thrilled to help you with anything you need, provided it isn't a really hard question... Gotta go get the kayak in the water and all our camping gear ready...

We have a WWII hangar, so of course we have to commemorate every major WWII event somehow. Today of course is D-Day's turn. BBQ at noon if you are interested... At left is my June 6th, 1944 Dayton Journal newspaper announcing the D-Day invasion of continental Europe to America. As we renovate the hangar, we'll have all sorts of historic artifacts scattered throughout the building, in addition to the actual "museum" space on the second floor between the theater and cafe'.

Unrelated to D-Day, Tanis completed his SBD Dauntless in record time. Too bad out of the thousands of these planes made, only 4 remain in flyable condition. Tanis' is NOT one of the 4... yet.

Yesterday was a dark day, as the state finished dismembering the snow pile. Everyone has been commenting about the huge pile throughout the spring and taking pictures. It would have been quite the tourist attraction if they had left the sloppy pile of dirty snow to melt on its own. Even with this hotter than normal spring, I'll bet it would have remained on the ramp through August. Oh well. Too late now.

At first, they walked a big excavator up onto the to and proceeded to knock the top off the pile.

With the top knocked off, they then hauled it off once loader bucket at a time.

And finally the last scoop. Winter is officially over as of June 5th, 2009.

On to global warming... with the kids swimming in the airport "pool" (aka fish tote). They had a ball, until Tanis noticed the mosquito larvae swimming around with them and then they came screaming back into the fly shop.

As we continue to renovate the hangar building, I am constantly surrounded by reminders of WWII and the sacrifices that generation made for the world and for each and every one of us. With our cynical modern America, it is sometimes hard to imagine a time when our entire nation could rally around a cause greater than our own selfish problems, to put their dreams on hold, their families out of their minds and risk their lives to save and protect parts of the world they had most likely never before seen or heard of.

We do not necessarily live in a safer world now - 70 years after the start of WWII. Instead of Adolf Hitler promoting an idea of exterminating millions of Jews, we have Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denying the Holocaust ever happened and promoting the extermination of all Jews... and his nation trying to obtain nukes. A handful of years ago, we had Saddam Hussein paying rewards to the families of suicide bombers as a "thank you" gift for killing people at random in Israel. Not that every threat revolves around the Jewish state, it wasn't long ago that we had an "event" here in the US that to my estimation only took America about 3 months to put behind us and forget... Now what was the date of that "event" again?!?! We seem to only remember that day when bitching about having to take our shoes off at airports.

Once upon a time, our grandparents (or parents if you are an older fart than I am, or possibly even you if you are a really really old fart...) lined up to serve their country. Over 400,000 of these Americans did not return to see their children grow up, did not see the invention of the internet and instant information at everyone's fingertips. They did not see air travel become as commonplace as riding the bus, or the notion of traveling 2-3000 miles just for a week-long fishing trip. Heck, half of them had they survived the war would have returned to a home without indoor plumbing... Our world is so different from theirs... Well, actually much of my life is still spent without indoor plumbing and reading to the family in the evenings by oil lamp, but I digress...

These men (and a few women) also didn't return to witness returning soldiers getting spat on two decades later, or military officers allowing heroin to be smuggled back to the US in the coffins of dead servicemen. Two of the lowest points in our country's moral history, but fortunately we have also come a long way since the 1960's and 70's in some positive ways as well. In spite of what the media and politicians told us a few months ago, America largely looked at the new President not as a man of a different race, but simply a man with a better tan than the majority of the country. I can disagree with his policies and the direction my country is heading, but the racism that was ingrained in our society (and segregated military) 70 years ago has all but vanished in the minds of most of America (unless we are being reminded of past injustice by certain special interest groups to keep their entitlement programs, but I'm digressing again...).

Memorial Day is a time when we are reminded to honor the men and women who have served selflessly in the cause of protecting our freedom - freedom we take for granted and do not remember their sacrifices the remaining 364 days a year. Freedom is a difficult concept for most of us to wrap our brains around, since most of us have never lived without it and have never before in our lifetimes known a time when that concept was threatened in a meaningful way. We forget that the majority of the world does not share in our ability to criticize government, select who leads our government - criticize who we select to lead our government... We criticize our military involvement and accuse our military of needlessly killing innocent civilians that have been used by "the enemy" as a human shield. An enemy that wants as their stated goal to eliminate all freedom in the world. How does one propose to negotiate and open a dialog with individuals who actively pursue the end of Western Civilization?

In these times of instant communication, every single gruesome death on a battlefield is transmitted to anyone's phone, not just the 6 o'clock evening news. Crashing fully fueled commercial airliners into populated high-rise buildings is a truly awful concept that anyone can recognize as the true face of evil. Verbally preaching the total destruction of entire races and nations to generations of school children isn't less evil, but it is harder to package in a soundbite. The men and women who have been and will take on a far more difficult fight to protect the freedom of the world - a world that probably has no clue their freedom is even threatened - should be honored just as reverently as those who defended us against Hitler's Nazism.

We live in a nation that abhors war, yet finds itself in the unenviable position of being the only nation willing to do anything about world problems. We were hesitant to involve ourselves in Europe's problems 70 years ago, just as we were hesitant to involve ourselves in Europe's problems 95 years ago (a war for which this holiday was invented to honor). There is absolutely no question as to whether Hitler, or Tojo should have been stopped - and when it came down to it, stopped at virtually all costs. 50 million dead across the entire globe at the hands of madmen... We continue to be hesitant to involve ourselves in world conflicts, therefore Pol Pot was able to exterminate 2 million Cambodians in the mid 70's and 2 million Rwandans lost their lives because of America's hesitation to act.

The men and women in our military may occasionally hesitate in the face of danger as any free human should, however they do not fail to act when the need comes. They act - putting themselves in harm's way to protect our rights and freedoms, as well as the rights and freedoms of people all across the globe they will never know or meet. Few fight in Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Kosovo, or Somalia because they want to. They do it because they know they must in order to raise their children in a free world.

Today we honor those who have fallen as the ultimate sacrifice for our collective freedom. We don't just lay flowers at cemeteries in Arlington, Normandy, or Gettysburg. We also celebrate and honor those who did return to enjoy the freedoms they fought to preserve, sometimes with debilitating emotional and physical scars and sometimes with horrors buried deep in their conscience that they never spoke of. Today is a day "the rest of us" are reminded of those losses, those scars and those horrors witnessed by generations of soldiers and veterans who gave us all the best years of their lives - gave us the selfish freedoms we all take for granted.

This photo was sent to me this weekend in one of those long chain-messages that I'm supposed to forward to 20 people or else... One photo that reminded me just how disconnected I am in my semi-comfortable life. I fish for a living, while there are Americans who protect me for their living and can only dream about fishing. Today, I'm remembering what they have done and are doing for me.

Well, there was a little excitement around the hangar today... The kids were goofing off for the camera with Tanis giving Eden moose antlers this morning...

Then the real thing appeared... It spent about 10 minutes wandering around the ramp in front of the hangar and Alsek Air's building before the state DOT truck came and shoo'd it off...

Another trip to the water, for an afternoon of fishing... Tanis and I joined Matt Crossett for a couple hours of sea-run cutthroat fishing on Tawah Creek. A school of 50+ cuts had been loitering under the bridge to Cannon Beach for a couple weeks, but by the time we joined them, they had been fished over pretty hard by everyone and their brother. Matt hooked up a couple immediately and somehow I managed to snag one in the belly within the first few minutes. Then Tanis and I managed to duplicate the "let's scare off all the fish" act we did when we went steelheading together...

Matt wandered downstream away from the bridge - primarily to get away from the constant bickering that is parenting a juvenile... In short order, he hooked another, so Tanis decided to abandon dear old dad for Matt's higher success rate. I told Tanis to be sure and ask if it would be OK for him to come and fish near Matt... "Matt, I'm going to fish here!" Um... not quite the good river etiquette I'd like him to develop, but like I said a couple weeks ago, fishing with a 10 year old is a lot like fishing with a 9 year old.

Boy, these are some jaded cutthroat! In the crystal-clear water, you could see every single fish. You could watch them come up to the fly, look from one side, switch to the other, charge at it, even whack it with their head. Then occasionally, they would back off, come down below it and suddenly shoot straight up in ambush to grab the fly. It was a pretty spectacular show, even if we didn't hook a whole lot of them.

Matt managed to land 4 all on a pretty large black krystal-bugger. I used a variety of Tanis tied flies and had about a dozen strikes, but I think my hook was just too large for their mouths. I ended up resorting to a tiny commercially tied Alevin for the one fish I landed. Boy, when he first came up to the surface, he vomited three half digested salmon fingerlings, so he was pretty engorged already. Tanis briefly hooked several fish, but they all came off before he was able to land them. I think the oversized salmon hooks were his problem too. He ended up having a ball down below the hole in the shallows, getting 5 inch salmon fry to jump 6 inches out of the water to take a bite on his dangling fly... I had a flashback to my dad yelling at me to stop goofing off and fish properly... I resisted the urge to spoil Tanis' fun.

When we first arrived at the bridge, a cow moose ambled over to the edge of the lake to lap water. Even with Tanis' squeals and an occasional passing car, the moose didn't seem to be in any hurry to leave. We had a bit of cloud cover, the water was gorgeous, it was fascinating to watch the cuts and balls of salmon fry, we had moose, mountains and spectacular scenery. It was a great way to spend a couple hours, only 5 minutes away from the airport.

Nice to see your back at it even though I have been waiting for the tirade. When I first read your post this morning, I was going to write and ask you to get your testicles out of your wife's purse and post it. But then I thought how often my own wife is correct in those kinds of matters and decided you did the right thing by not venting publicly. So how is the snow pile? When is the book going to get written and published? When I showed my family the Situk photos and told the stories (lies) of each catch, they were impressed and very excited for me. As I explained how one fish was caught on one of Eden's flies, the girls (wife and two daughters) in unison, said "awe that's so sweet".

Ouch! Thanks Matt, but in my defense, I think she keeps them in her fly vest... Every day, I count the blessings I have that Teen "allows" me to have a fly shop, guide business, commercial fishing permit and WWII hangar to play in. Teen hates seafood and REALLY hates to touch fish. With that said, you wouldn't have believed the grin on her face the first time she hooked a huge silver on a fly rod. All the guys were gathered around her cheering her on! It is an amazing experience to have her guide with me side by side. Essentially, people pay me for them to help her catch a fish... I think they have more fun helping her than catching the fish themselves though.

And thanks for hooking one on Eden's fly. She was absolutely glowing when she heard her "interesting" design caught a fish. Now we have to keep her from following people around the store with her little cup of flies to sell, looking up at them with those eyes and guilting them into buying her flies. She looks like "The Little Match Girl" - barefoot and starving child labor... Another great blessing in my life. Eden LOVES fishing and the outdoors - so long as she can be in a pink princess dress. I need some pink waders.. For her! Not for me!!!

I typed up a really long tirade as a follow-up to my fishing report entry about rude fly shop owners... Why I better understand and feel their pain... Well, Teen wouldn't let me post it, so I haven't been blogging anything since then... Sorry. So, to jumpstart the blog after a whole 12 days off, here is the new web page for the ADF&G weir counts:

You have to select the river you want and it has some really cool graphs that show the averages for the past three seasons. It really shows a late progression, as well as a decline on the total numbers each of the last three years. We'll see how this one shapes up and if we see another decline... They did count 50 fish passing through yesterday, so we may yet see our spring run...

Last night, one of the guys camping at the bridge came in for a fresh batch of flies to try. They have been spending the day around the campfire and going fishing in the evenings when the fishing is a little better. Boy, those guys can start to stink after a week by the fire. Usually from BO, but yesterday like a barbeque. I was hungry already after being here for 14 hours, but that smell really was driving me nuts! The ol' Pavlov's Dog, with me drooling over the stench of a fisherman. Why do chicks use floral perfume to supposedly attract guys? I need Teen to stink herself up with campfire smell! Now THAT would be a big seller if you want to attract guys. Only chicks would be attracted to other chicks smelling like a flower arrangement. I want my chick to smell like smoldering moose steak!

Living in Yakutat and loving old planes, we do get more than our fair share of cool eye candy. Tonight, a 1946 Consolidated/Vultee L-13A landed and is spending the night, on its way to a new home in Anchorage. This is a post-war reconnaissance plane, and a mighty neat one at that. The huge cockpit is enough to fit 8 seats, yet just has two up front. Tanis saw it taxiing in and went a bit nuts! He couldn't wait for me to get the hangar doors open, so he could get a closer look. Here is a closer look for you...

Well, to sum up Tanis and my fishing trip to 9 Mile on the 29th... Fishing with a 10 year old is a lot like fishing with a 9 year old... We went out and set up camp, wadered up, wandered down below the bridge, found fish almost immediately, started casting and... It was far more important for Tanis to get his fly back than to have fish in front of us. "Dad, go get my fly". This was his day, so we did what he wanted. The fish didn't seem eager to have me standing next to them, so away they went. We wandered our way back up to the bridge and made a few fruitless casts into the pool, but then Tanis wanted to go play in the fire... That pretty much sums up our fishing adventure.

We roasted Spamdogs as dusk turned to dark. A couple groups wandered by on their way to their cars, with one group stopping in to visit around the campfire. This is the first time I have ever camped up there at the bridge... Come to think of it, this is the first time I have camped near other humans that weren't with me... It was a great experience. That is what makes this steelhead season such a wonderful time of year around here. We are all essentially in the same boat. It is a catch-and-release fishery, so you don't have the compulsive numbers guys as much. They treat the river with respect, they pick up after others... Just a great time of year with great people who appreciate this place for what it is - warts and all.

There were a total of 4 cars and 4 tents including ours. Two singles and two doubles. We had one group of 5 also fishing, plus a group of 2 and another with 3. 16 people TOTAL in the entire upper river. Everyone treated Tanis like one of their own. If I haven't said this already, it was a great experience with some great people around.

The next morning, we wandered down below the bridge again, but no fish in the spots where we had seen them the night before. By 9am, only 6 boats had launched, so it was looking like a pretty slow day on the river - pressure-wise. We headed out after having a brief amount of time on the river, but it also left Tanis in the mood for wanting more in another week. We didn't hook him a steelie, but the season is young and I'll have to try and get another hall pass from the fly shop monitor (Teen) so we can try again next week.

I had left something out there near the bridge, so after the shop closed, I drove back out that night. I found 17 cars around the area with 6 tents in the parking lot alone and who knows how many scattered through the trees. Holy Cow! What a circus! I'm so glad we hit it when we did and had the wonderful experience the night before. The ferry had come in and I think a big wad of fishermen had come down from Anchorage for the weekend. The outbound flights are booked heavy today and tomorrow, so looks like that is exactly what happened. Pretty incredible weather for it, even if fishing was on the "challenging" side. I'll post today's fishing report on the other page now...

This is Tanis' third year of participating in the Pinewood Derby. He has never made a fast car, in fact he hasn't ever won a race. He wanted to make a tank, not exactly a streamlined design, so he didn't have very high expectations going into this. He had his sights set on the ribbon for "best design", knowing "fastest" was going to be out of his reach. To everyone's (and especially his) surprise, Tanis managed to go undefeated throughout the evening to take both ribbons for best design AND 1st place for speed. He was trying as best he could to be humble, but the boy was beaming. He was beaming before the races started, with how proud he was of his car. I think he had a pretty darned cool birthday. Now tonight, we are heading to 9 Mile to camp and to see if we can hook him his first steelhead. I'll let you know tomorrow how that goes. In the meantime, here are a couple non-fishing photos... A big congrats to everyone who participated and those parents who helped out. Second was a very close battle between Joshua and Quinn. Good job guys. We had 8 participants, which is a pretty good showing for Yakutat.

Well, besides it being Tanis' 10th birthday today, we have the Cub Scout's Pinewood Derby tonight. The shop is now closed for the day (5:30pm). Eden made her own little pink hotrod as well. Here is how his "car" turned out:

With 2-3 river reports a day, I haven't really had anything coherent to say on the blog page of late. So... Just to fill some space, we'll talk about snow. One of the first comments all newcomers seem to make is, "I've never seen a snow pile that big before!". Well, it has shrunk a couple dozen feet off it's top height this year already and now the state has started carving it up and hauling it away. Bummer, since it is quite the tourist attraction and would be cool to have still sitting on the ramp through the summer...

Here is what the poor little thing looked like in November when we experienced the first good snow of the season.

You don't really get the scale of it without something standing in the foreground (Eden in her fairy wings cleaning up the hangar isn't exactly the foreground object you need and I can't find the shot I took with the hangar in the foreground). At its peak, the pile was about 50% taller than the hangar building. Oh well. The state is hauling it off already. It is melting fast as it is, but would probably last till July if they left it alone. Notice the blue-bird skies? Ya, fishing sucks today with the bright sun and long shadows. Lots of fresh fish in the river, but they have very tight lips.

This what the snow is looking like along the river. The trails are getting packed down by the foot traffic, but there is still about 18 inches around. The camping area is melting out well, so the pup-tenters aren't having the tough time now that the first groups were having with 5 feet of slop everywhere three weeks ago.

It was cool and foggy most of the morning, so the sunny high temp only reached 46. The water temperature just shot up over 44 degrees - warmest so far this year! A VERY slow morning and afternoon should be a pretty good evening, with the fish starting to wake from their cold-water comas.

OK, that's about all I have. Traffic through the shop is pretty slow today in the nice weather, so I'm heading back upstairs to work on sheetrock.

Joe had his fishing buddies cancel on him this week, so he is looking for a fishing partner or two for drifting the river this coming Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. He already has the boat lines up, but would prefer not to handle the boat and fish alone. If anyone is interested in sharing a drift boat this coming week, contact him (or me...). He is staying John Latham at the Blue Heron and the number there is (907)784-3287.

This has been a VERY quiet day around here. Not a single e-mail came in all morning. Apparently the EarthLink server was down and all messages to my inbox were lost. If you had a question and sent an e-mail, send it again. I didn't get anything...

Last night, Teen promised me she'd bring me out some dinner. Two hours late, I was wondering just what awful things that kids had done to delay her. I was getting a little hungry after all. Turns out there was a rather large whale in the bay, right next to the dock and swimming around the boats that are tied up. Our little shack-of-a-house does have an incredible view of the bay and watching out our windows can seem like a National Geographic special sometimes. Usually, it is just the pods of porpoise circling around the herring and baitfish schools before taking turns crashing through the dense biomass to feed. About once every 4 years or so, a whale will wander into the inner bay and last night was our visit for the next few years. They let my dinner get cold, so they could sit in the sunset watching a whale from the porch. Did she bother to take a picture for me to see? Of course not. Women! Where's my dinner?

Just in case you didn't notice the change in our hours... Yesterday we officially changed to an 8pm closing time. A few of you expressed concern about being out on the water between the hours of 8am and 6pm... Well, I would expect more than a few of you will be out on the water after darkness sets in - especially since we have had the last evening high tides at 10 and 11pm... I'd be out there at the mouth working those incoming schools in my headlamp...

Also, I am usually working on the hangar upstairs till 10pm every night anyway, so don't hesitate to come out late if you need something. I'll need the break from mudding and taping anyway. If the lights are on, just honk and I'll come down. Last night, we had a leaky wader emergency at 9pm and the guys seemed concerned that they were inconveniencing me... Um... if all you want is one single Glo Bug, that's $1.35 closer to paying my power bill, so don't hesitate to "inconvenience" me all you want.

Had a visit from a family from Juneau today. I didn't catch his name unfortunately, but the younger guy is a WWII buff. He wanted a tour of the hangar (unfortunately there isn't too much to see yet, but I'm limping closer and closer) and I carted out some of my old newspapers and things to show off. They were talking about grandpa's time stationed in the Aleutians and his time in the ball turret of a bomber. We are losing that generation so fast now and another generation capable of sacrificing it all as they did to save the world will never come again. We all owe them so much.

One of my goals with the hangar will be to tell the story of Alaska's experience during the war. If you or anyone you may have known served in Alaska during, before or after WWII, please contact me. I'd like to have stories and photos of their experiences shown on the walls throughout the building, along with artifacts and documents that I have collected over the years. It doesn't have to be just Yakutat, but anywhere in Alaska.

Imagine being plucked off the farm as an 18 year old, shipped off to some "nowhere" with a funny name in a territory that wouldn't be a state for another 20 years... Get off the boat, ride the train out to somewhere half-way between barely a town and the end of the tracks. Then carve an airfield out of the muskeg when you probably haven't ever even been on a plane! This of course all happened a year before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor... Yakutat's advanced long-range strategic bomber base had it's grand opening in August of 1941 - three months before we entered the war... Kind of makes you wonder what we knew and when we knew it... Help me keep this history alive!!!

I never expected to have a role in preserving this ol' building and the history it represents. Photos and personal stories are the two things I need help with the most. Over the past decade of guiding and the last year working in the shop, Teen and I have met so many really incredible people. You can't begin to understand what your support and encouragement has meant to us. Thanks!

Eden has been pestering us for two weeks now for one of the little stuffed moose toys we have here at the shop. Well, she has to buy it with her own money, so we have been telling her she needs to save for the whopping $7 to buy it. Well, yesterday a kind fisherman bought three of her flies, putting her half-way to what she needs. Apparently she knows a little about suggestive selling. Today, she badgered these poor guys into buying one a piece. Looking up at them with her sympathetic eyes, holding out her little tin of flies... She bought her moose, plus a candy bar for herself and a bag of cashews for her brother. Not a bad day for munchkin sales today. I asked her if tomorrow she would try that sales approach with fly rods instead...

So there are the bear questions and the bug questions... What to bring, fish counts, etc... One of the most common questions of late has been "Who is this 'Teen'?" OK, since it is a very odd name for an adult, here is the answer...

"Teen" is short for Christine. My 40 year old wife is eternally a "Teen" because in Australia, that is actually a somewhat common short version of Christine. Sometimes, you get a little baggage when you have a mail order bride and I definitely imported mine. She actually moved to Montana when she was 13 when her mum married a "Yank". She doesn't have any accent, unless she is on the phone with her mom. Teen is still an Australian citizen, so can't vote and according to my sister, doesn't have an opinion because she doesn't vote.

Teen: Wife of 15 years, mother of my children, fly fishing babe and fly shop model.

And after reading this to her, a very blushing bride... Always important to embarrass and humiliate your loved ones publicly whenever possible.

I'm down in Seattle right now, buying supplies and loading my container for shipment back to Yakutat. I thankfully fly home tomorrow morning after 4 hectic days down here in the real world. As odd as life in Yakutat can be, there really is no place like home. While at Home Despot, the guy behind the Special Services counter suddenly burst out, "Fly shop?!?!" after reading my invoice. We had a conversation about fishing, which seems to follow me around where ever I go. His coworker said she always wanted to learn how to fly fish... It is a common reaction when people young and old realize that I make my living (or at least I try to) on the river fishing. When I'm not fishing, I get to talk fishing. What makes the fly shop great is that when the conditions really suck out on the river, we still get to be "about fishing". We tie flies, we talk about what went wrong, what went right, what we caught, what we didn't... "About fishing" is almost as good as "fishing" sometimes. Especially when the sleet is sideways, or the fish are "between runs".

Trips down to "America" are nice for the chance to see family and visit with friends again. I went to my uncle's house to look through some of the artifacts they have been discovering in my grandmother's basement. Uncle Ron wanted me to come over and take a look at a few things they had found, like an old WWII signal light box that had my dad's name painted on it. No idea what he could have used it for - probably his grade school lunchbox, for all we know. Ron had found some great photos of grandpa Len, like his high school graduation picture and some of the things he had stuffed away in that moldy and damp basement.

Grandpa was a marine radio repairman, who flew his Cessna 206 up the Gulf of Alaska every summer to fix radios all along the coast - from Ketchikan to Bristol Bay. Back in the mid-1950's, Len was sent to a tiny village to fix the cannery's radios. He fell in love with Yakutat and came back year after year with grandma Mable for the next 4 decades to "work", repairing the radios on fishing boats and planes. Along the way, he brought his sons up from time to time and when my dad was laid off from Boeing during the "will the last person leaving Seattle please turn off the lights" recession, my unemployed dad built a little plywood troller and headed straight to Yakutat. My dad loved to fish and to fix airplanes. He spent nearly two decades in Yakutat doing both.

Uncle Ron was talking about just how much grandpa Len loved what he did. When people had a problem, they called him. They were desperate to have him help them, therefore everyone always loved to see grandpa arrive. He would solve their problem and so they were always thrilled with him when he left. How could you not appreciate living a life, where your work was to bring relief and joy to all that called upon you. Grandpa was very good at what he did. A year after he died, a fisherman told me he was saving an old tube side-band radio for Len to fix because "Len is the only guy who can fix these things". Unfortunately I had to tell him it was time to throw that radio away. I remember being with grandpa on a job in Naknek (this was actually Teen's first trip to Alaska - long before I bought the cabin back). He paused with a bundle of brightly colored wires in his hand... then he snipped the brown wire and went on with his work. How a colorblind guy could tell the difference between all those virtually identical wires, I'll never know. Grandpa loved Alaska, loved tinkering with radios, loved planes and loved to help people. These things were his "job".

Believe it or not, I hated fishing when I was a kid. When I was 14, my dad essentially asked me what I wanted to be when I great up. Commercial fisherman was not my answer. You never understand the value of what you have until after you lose it. I bought my dad's cabin and commercial fishing permit back from the guy dad had sold it to shortly before he died. It took me about 10 years to grow up, get my act together and realize getting the ol' cabin back into the family was more than just a need. My dad started out hand-trolling, but decided to sell the boat and fish the Italio River instead, where he could raise his family together on the beach. The Kracker-Lass was way too small for a family. Heck, I think dad thought it was too small for just him and me when I was 5 years old! He would put me in the gill-net skiff and let out about 50 feet of line, so my constant chatter wouldn't drive him nuts while trolling all day on the tiny boat. If any of you have experienced Eden's constant chatter here at the shop, well now you know where she gets it...

Dad LOVED to fish. He loved fly fishing for steelhead, but oddly never touched a fly rod after coming to Alaska. He loved fishing regardless of how he did it. Trolling, or gill-netting - it didn't matter. He was scratching a meager life out for his family doing something he absolutely loved. When fishing was slow, he would go to town and work on Yakutat's fleet of small planes. He loved tinkering with planes just as much as he loved to fish. The first paid job I ever had was sorting buckets of rivets, sweeping rooms and opening access panels on planes in the hangar we now have our fly shop in. Both grandpa Len and my dad lived a blessed life doing what they loved to do - day in and day out. You would call it "work", but the jobs they chose were a love. If we could all be so fortunate...

During what I refer to as my "lost weekend" (college years when I was not in Yakutat), I learned to fly, met Teen and experienced the wider world outside of Yakutat. I gave up my desire to become an airline pilot when I realized most of the commercial pilots I knew didn't love flying anymore. It had become just a job to them. I remember something profound I saw while working at Crest Airpark in Kent, Washington during my lost weekend. The Red Baron Pizza flight team came to take people on rides as a promotion. The second the clock ticked 5pm, all the pilots had an open beer in hand - even if they didn't drink any of it. They had their practiced excuse as to why they couldn't take another flight. They fly historic open cockpit biplanes for a living and in the end it is just a job. What was different about how my dad looked at his "jobs"? And grandpa Len?

Well, here I am fishing for a living. Fishing was something I was "forced to do" when I was a kid and it took me a while to realize just how blessed I was. That started to dawn on me during my lost weekend, when grown men would get all teary-eyed when I would explain the life I had (and walked away from) growing up. It wasn't till I had lost all this that I came to understand just what a bozo I was for not appreciating the blessed life I had. 11 years ago, I was first exposed to fly fishing and suddenly, "fishing" was a completely different world from chucking spinners out and reeling them back in over and over. It was like something I had never known. Fishing now is something I love. I don't think fishing changed. The way I look at the world certainly has though.

Grandpa solved people's problems and loved doing it. Here at the fly shop, I get to do the same thing. Most people swing though the shop just looking for a souvenir, or some little item of not much consequence. Some come in hoping for that little piece of information that will turn their so so trip into something special. I certainly don't have all the answers and so many of you know far more than I do about "my" business. Often I come away from a discussion with a lot more gain than anyone else in the room. Sometimes, I am able to help solve someone's problem. Worst case, I get to talk "about fishing". Better case, I get to go fishing. Best case, I get to go fishing with my young son who also loves fishing. Something I didn't ever force upon him for obvious reasons. I truly have a blessed life, with a "job" that brings joy to me as well as to those who come through the shop. The best part is in having my family with me for the entire journey.

And now with the hangar, I also get to play with planes too. What could be better? I can't begin to imagine...

PS. My apologies if some of these posts this week are a bit on the long and "reflective" side. I turned 41 last week - the age my dad was when he died. He was such an old fart then, but now I understand just how young he really was. How much he had to look forward to... Ken Fanning had asked him if he wanted to start a guide camp out on the Italio back in the early 1980's - something he didn't get to do. I started my guide camp on the Italio 10 years ago, not having a clue dad wanted to do that until after. He also wanted to have a fishing shop at one point, but again never did it. My dad gave up many of his dreams along the way (like floating the Italio) and unfortunately passed away before fulfilling many of them. He still had a very full life for having it cut in half by cancer. I have learned not to let those dreams get stopped without one hell of a fight. You only get one of these lives, so you have to make the most of it.

After getting my pilot's license, I went without flying for 13 full years. I just didn't have the time, or money to continue flying. Then one day out on the Italio, an old WWII warbird landed near the cabin and I was back in the air and behind the controls - and in my all-time favorite plane. Teen shakes her head when it comes to the opportunities that seem to drop in my lap all the time. What are the odds of a WWII plane landing and taking me for a flight... Not just any plane, but one that came from an era I am fascinated by. She has a better understanding now that everyone has these opportunities before them. Most of the time, we don't recognize them for what they are and let them sweep on by us. I just don't let things pass me by. Keep your eyes open. There is an amazing opportunity just around your next corner. Don't walk by it without noticing...

Thank you for all your encouragement and support over Teen's mom. Her heart has checked out to be in great shape, so now they are grasping at straws to guess what caused the "heart attack-like" symptoms. Sue is a sweet and wonderful lady, a dream of a mother-in-law. Glad she is strong and healthy and not going anywhere anytime soon. Ready to come up and tangle with a bear. I wouldn't bet on the bear...

Teen had a great solo day at the shop with a few visitors and questions she could handle. Big thank you to Matt for stopping in after the morning jet just in case she needed some advice or assistance. The guys have been great with her in sharing their own tips with the shop maiden. I hate being out and away from the action especially right now with the leading run starting in. I ended up with two great and detailed river reports late on the 10th - one of which in the terminal in Juneau... I'll go post that info on the river reports page now...

As always, my biggest problem on my first day in the real world is a cramped hand and feeling like an idiot when I try to wave at every %$#@ car I pass on the crowded roads down here in Seattle. It takes me a day to stop compulsively waving at passing cars, who's drivers look at me like I'm some sort of freak. Well, I guess I am a freak. I live in Yakutat... by choice...

Just to let those of you know who had a chance to meet Teen's mom last year here at the shop (Teen's parents came up for most of September to help with the kids, while Teen covered the shop and I guided on the Italio), Sue was med-evacced from their home in Dillon, Montana to Missoula for what appeared to be a heart attack. She has been released after spending the night and undergoing extensive tests. Tests are all inconclusive and her heart appears to be healthy. We are still waiting to hear more and for her to undergo more testing at her home hospital with her own doctor.

Also, I'll be flying out for a couple days this weekend to check on my own mom. Teen will be here at the shop every day, but with limited hours on Easter Sunday. She will have the shop closed Sunday morning, but open up at 2pm for anything you need. Otherwise, hours are the same as normal. I'll be gone Saturday through Tuesday, but I can still answer questions via e-mail. Be nice to Teen and share any advice you are willing to part with, so she'll have some good secrets over me... Thanks!

Well, no day is complete without someone throwing a baseless accusation at me... There were some people who wanted to get control of the hangar last year, after we invested a big gob of money into renovating it. Funny, no one wanted it before we fixed it up... So in that spirit of whiny boobs, here is my thought of the day, sent to me by someone this morning:

Have a great day. I am. No one can take that away from me, but they can sure take it away from themselves.

April 4th (and 5th since it became so %$#@ long!), 2009 - The Prestige of Being the Owner

Not much to report on today, with business being so slow and the road now being open. The 3-5 inches that were expected didn't materialize, so the trace we received wasn't even enough to cover the yellow spots in front of the house... So without much else to do, might as well make obnoxious political statements when there isn't anything "fishing" to talk about...

So... this morning Teen and I were talking on the drive to "work" about the economy, which evolved into corporate bail-outs and criticism of CEO's, etc. America has gradually evolved into a strange place lately. GM and banks and AIG now have a government funded safety net, so they aren't at risk of failure. We certainly don't want businesses to fail, regardless of how crappy their products may be, or how poorly they are run. But they should. Capitalism now appears to allow for all the benefits when things are going well, but we have now removed any of the risks associated with bad decisions. At least that seems to be the way it works for the huge companies with lots of voters - I mean "employees". More on that later... So many of you have become such good friends, I might as well give you a little insight into what it has been like running this shop for the first year...

Life in Yakutat can be a struggle under the best of circumstances. Our economy was struggling when the rest of the country was thriving. There are a lot of reasons for that. Putting all our economic eggs in one basket (fishing), opposition to diversification (anything "new" is bad) and poor decisions by our government (with limited real-world experience in our hiring and elected position choices, you tend to get more "Yakutat-as-usual" decisions) that harm business development, we have a lot of strikes against us for trying to make a business work.

We have had wonderful support and encouragement from most of the community out here with the fly shop and the hangar project. But... we have also had some odd opposition from places and people that only stand to gain by having new businesses start and succeed. I'm sure one would have these issues regardless of where they try to start a new business venture, but in the small world of Yakutat, some of those issues do seem to stand out more, or are felt more pronounced. Having a larger economic pie to draw from would help cushion the blow during an economic downturn, at least one would think so. Ask any fly shop owner down in the real world and they would say keeping their doors open is just as much of a struggle as it is here in Yakutat. I have the blessed opportunity to sell products that no one else in Yakutat has ever sold, so I do lack the local competition in the spey line and fluorocarbon "industry", as well as selling the level of quality that only a specialty shop like this could do. Simms, Sage, Under Armour and the like are tough contracts to establish, so I don't have to worry about "local" competition.

What does hit all specialty fly shops hard - just as it hits the electronics, clothing, food and just about any other industry - the gigantic box stores and the internet. Costco, Cabelas, Amazon.com... The ease of sitting in your underwear ordering online from a big faceless e-commerce site, or dropping into the mega-one-stop-shop (hopefully with more on than just your underwear) may be easier than supporting that little shop down the street, or the shop near your favorite destination stream, but ironically it is rarely a money saver. Some manufacturers mandate that all retailers must offer products for the same price - regardless of how much volume they sell. Simms requires that Cabelas sell G3 Guide Stockingfoot waders for $399.95 regardless - the same price that we sell them for, or your local home-water fly shop sells them for.

I did have a couple pricing surprises last year. On a brief trip through Juneau just before we opened, I went into an outdoor clothing store and saw that the "sale" price for Under Armour items were still 15% over the suggested retail price. My own business partner suggested we mark things up higher because "people are used to paying more in Alaska"... My reaction was a firm "hell no". You shouldn't expect to be ripped off just because you don't have a choice. My goal instead has been to build goodwill with our customers, so they know we aren't going to milk them dry just because they don't have a choice when their waders rip mid-trip. Your reaction has been wonderfully encouraging for us, when many of you have ordered through us for some of those big ticket items. They usually get drop-shipped direct from the company anyway, so I'm more than happy to eat the drop-ship fee and shipping to make those sales. Another surprising price story came when two guys came in during the season to buy a Rio Versitip line. The "buddy" told the customer to buy it here NOW, because he had paid an extra $10 at their store down in (I think it was) Virginia. Why the heck would anyone in the real world mark up their prices above the SRP? OK, in Juneau I can maybe understand it, but down in the lower 48?!?! No wonder so many fly shops are losing their customers to the box stores.

For Teen and I, we don't need a lot of volume to make this fly shop work. One pair of good waders can make a poor day into a really good day - in part because we don't have any employees. It is just us, so we don't have some of the expenses that a lot of stores and shops do. Yes the lights cost money to turn on. Heat, coffee that may or may not get drunk, phone and internet... Our biggest obstacle for opening and running this shop has been in acquiring inventory. We have a pretty good pile of stuff this year. Of course many of you remember last year when we ran out of just about everything we opened with and struggled to get the shelves filled back up again. On our first season, each sale we made was rolled back into trying to grow the inventory. My learning curve was a VERY steep one and I'm still learning a lot every single day we have the doors unlocked. I can't thank you all enough for the suggestions, comments and criticisms you have shared with me over the past year.

Ahh... but the economy... What are we doing to prepare for the road ahead? Well, to start with, season 1 was so much more of a success than we expected, that we are pretty thrilled with where we are today. Success brings a lot of challenges too. We ordered one of each sized jacket last year because that was all we could afford for inventory. We had a couple dozen hats, but I still hadn't finished our final logo (you may possess the "limited edition" work-in-progress hat!). Heck! We opened a fly shop and I didn't have ANY fly tying materials except for a box of thread! What the hell kind of fly shop opens without a single feather?!?! Well, one that is just doing the best it can, I guess. Of course we now have 41 different colors of Glo Bug yarn...

We had the noble goal this year of adding so many of the suggested products and services that you turned us on to last year, but that has been where the economy has hit us the hardest. Steelhead traffic looks to be OK based on the bookings, calls and e-mail I'm seeing, but the salmon season is shaping up to be a potential disaster. The meat/spin guys are just simply not coming this year. I have high hopes that the fly guys won't be as effected as those others (it will be a great year to have the river all to yourself!). Fly fishermen tend to be more experienced, more focused on this passion they have and more willing to take this once-a-year special trip to do what they love. The groups looking to just fill a freezer, or go on a drinking binge away from their wives aren't here for the experience on the water, waiting to feel the sensation of the take. Even so, we have had to reevaluate what we'd have on the shelves and focus on doing what we have really well before we put our limited resources into trying to expand into new territory.

Our #1 priority is to make sure people are warm and dry. Right now, the snow is deep, the water is running very cold and the worst thing for a trip is to be miserable the whole time on the water. Who cares how many fish you hook if you are in pain from the cold, or soaked to the bone when the light snow flurry turned to miserable rain and back again. Next up is to have the specialty supplies needed for a productive day on the water. Lots of hooks, lots of feathers and yarn. Tubing, weight, bucktail, thread and flash. Lines, leader and every imaginable fly for THESE fish. Ya, lots of the fluff too... shirts, hats, Alaska souvenir crap and some really cool locally made jewelry for bribing the wives into letting you come back again... Teen may live in Alaska and like to fish, but ultimately she is still a chick... This entry is long enough that she probably has already stopped reading, so I think I'm safe...

Although I still don't have the web site functioning, I did get an e-mail this morning (thanks Nik!) asking about the cost for a pair of Simms G4Z waders. Part of our conservative "scaling back" has been to just stock the whole sizes on waders, even though I wanted to get all the medium-king/extra-large-short sizes this year. Not to worry, if you want a specific size, it is just a phone call, or e-mail away and I can have it drop-shipped right to you (free shipping, no tax). Just as quick and convenient as ordering online, but we can make sure it is the right fit (according to the charts) and exact model you want. Or make sure you want the "light peach" marabou instead of "coral" (looking at them side by side there is virtually no difference, but I love to terrorize Teen and tell her how important the "subtle" difference is to the fish...).

Cabelas is building new super stores all over the place and yes, I do buy a lot of stuff from them for myself. The question you need to answer for yourself is, "Do you want to have access to gear when you really need it?" Before last April, it wasn't possible to get a sink tip in Yakutat at all, let alone a ring-neck pheasant skin, or ANYTHING made of Gore-tex. You have to support the smaller shops if you want them to survive. Teen and I have done really well in our first season and are really excited about the future, but so many fly shops are dropping like flies (no pun intended) all over the country. Make sure you support your local shop when ever possible, or it isn't going to be there when you need it. Sure, support your destination shop too (like Situk River Fly Shop), but especially your local home-water shop. Break a rod while on a trip and all the super stores in the world won't get you back on the water when they are hundreds of miles away from the hole you are standing in.

Funny how the gigantic corporations are getting billions of dollars in bail-out money to keep them afloat. Guys who ran companies into the ground still get their multi-million dollar bonuses. Who the hell ever decided anyone deserved a bail-out at all? As a small business owner, this shop lives and dies based solely on my decisions. I live and die solely on my decisions. If I make poor decisions, I lose all I have invested into the business and I can't afford to feed my family. A pretty strong incentive to make good decisions. For instance... we chose not to mark things up extra for the "Yakutat-as-usual" pricing. Yes, it does cost more to ship SOME items to Alaska, but for the most part, USPS is the same regardless of where it gets mailed. Our milk is over $9/gallon, our gas is $4.99/gallon right now even though it has dropped down to $1.60 in the real world...

You can sell fewer, but make more on each item. Or, you can sell more items and do just as well at a lower price. The latter is the choice we made here and it has worked out well (so far). Last year, people were buying jackets and rods and reels that they could have bought at home, but they chose to buy it here. They chose to buy these things often as they were about to board the jet for home! You can't understand how appreciated you are for doing that and helping us make this shop a success. By earning your trust and goodwill, Teen and I hope to never need any bail-out. Of course we'll never become "too big to fail" that one would ever be offered. I'd rather run this shop as a place where you feel you have a home. A place where you want to invest in keeping it open and successful.

So far, I think we have "accidentally" been successful. I spend a LOT of time here in these rooms and ultimately, I want it to be a place I love coming to every day. If I have to take a day off to stand up to my nipples in ice water, well... OK. If I have to. If I start making moronic decisions that make you not want to share this with Teen and I, at that point we will deserve to fail. I hope you will keep us on our toes and help us along the way as you have been during our first year. The risk of failure is a strong motivator for success, something the bail-outs and safety nets have taken away from those "important" industries.

I'm pretty darned proud of what we have created entirely from scratch with no prior experience to guide our way. From renovating this derelict building to figuring out and tracking down what items we wanted to sell to putting the whole package together to meeting all the new friends and family that have taken the time and care to support and help us through season 1 - what a wonderful motivator to continue to try and make this even better.

It cracks me up how we get so many campers out at 9 Mile during the snowy steelhead season, but virtually no one camps during the warmer salmon season. Probably because of everyone's terror of bears... I completely forgot about saving all my cut ends of wood for people to use as campfire starter when I took a load to the dump a couple weeks ago. Sorry. With that said, I do have a bit available on a first come, first served. I'll have a few boxes in the hangar waiting if you ask. Only while supplies last... Did I mention the road will be open as of 6pm tonight?

We are officially open again and just beating back the crowds... Well, with the roads still snowbound, I wouldn't expect much fly fishing traffic... It is a gorgeous, crystal-clear sunny day today, after just a trace of new fluff last night. No need to them to plow the runway in this weather, so my guess is they will make some really good progress on access to the river. Lots of snow and ice in the parking lot, so if you come out, be careful and watch your step. I'll be here... waiting... did I mention I have a fresh pot of coffee on... waiting... waiting... Maybe I should go fishing instead... I wonder what Teen is bringing me for lunch...

Well, I went to the Forest Service "Outfitter/Guide Meeting" today. I was only able to sit through the first two hours of it before I had to leave... Sorry if there was any important info there that I missed. One thing that does effect us... Last year they had said we could have a shuttle van service to the river from the shop. Well, this year they say we can't. Sorry. No rides.

I did hear that Bob Fraker missed the meeting because he was out on the Situk cutting boat passages through the logjams and deadfalls. They said he was about 4 miles upstream from the bottom and hadn't reached the middle section where the worst areas are. If you see Bob on the river this year, give him and his guys a nice wide birth, or at the very least thank him and Frank for the work they do every year making it possible for everyone to drift the river. It'll take them a few more days to make it through the entire river, but that should match the few more days it takes the state to open up the roads again.

Most of today ended up sunny and warm, with an occasional snow flurry that blotted out any sign of a world beyond 10 feet in front of you. The snow is falling once again as I type this and get ready to head home. Just received my big Simms order, so tomorrow will be a busy one stocking the shelves and racks. Lots of new fly patterns arrived today too for me to play with on the river. That is the #1 reason I buy things... So I get to play with them. Why else would one open a shop? Expect your trip to be a cold one this year, with a lot of deep snow to slog through. It definitely looks like "one of those years"...

Taking on this gigantic building has been a challenge for obvious reasons. We have most of the second floor sheetrocked now, but have the arduous task of mudding and taping ahead. Bathrooms will be in probably around May, hopefully before June. There is just so much to do and so little time, especially once the fish are in the river... I may just have more "important" places to be...

I get asked constantly if we are discovering any really cool artifacts when we work our way through the rooms of this 38,000 square foot WWII building. Unfortunately, the answer is usually "no". The building has definitely been robbed of anything of value, but also anything that would be considered "character". The very few exceptions have been the old pool table up near the movie theater. It has been subjected to extensive leaks from the old roof and that side of the building is in far worse shape than the side we are currently working on. We did however "find" an old radio in one of the rooms recently cleaned out. "Radio" may be an understatement, since the thing weighs about 700lbs!

This is definitely an object that we want to hang onto and somehow put to use. Not in the traditional sense of getting the radios to work, but it does show just how far technology has advanced in the past 60+ years. Most of the tubes have been replaced with more "modern" equipment, but "modern" still means 40+ years old at least.

Well, back to sheetrocking... and a few loads of garbage to the dump, now that the roads are plowed for the day...

Received an e-mail a few days ago saying a group was coming in early and would be stopping by the shop. Well, that was finally the catalyst to get me off my butt and clean up the shop. After 3 months of closed doors while I worked on renovating the rest of the building, Teen and I had our work cut out for us. New boxes of goodies needed to be stocked, but not till after everything was wiped down and ready to take it. Still waiting for my spring order deliveries, but they should be coming throughout the next couple weeks.

The morning started off nasty, with howling winds and a thick layer of fresh slop over the ground. About 3-4 inches of wet white glop. The sun came out a couple times, followed by either silver dollar sized flakes, or good ol' fashioned rain. The state has their loader back up and running, so they should be back to work on the upper road tomorrow. They expect to have the project completed including the parking and turn around areas by April 1st, but with unpredictable weather and equipment, there is always the chance that it could be an extra day or two.

Sold one of Tanis' flies today to the guys. Tanis went immediately to work on another to replace it in his bin. You know how it will go... his one-of-a-kind creation will end up being "the" hot fly with no way to duplicate it after it swims away in the mouth of that huge monster...

The shop reopens officially on April 1st, along with the official "target" day for reopening the road to the Situk. I'm trying to update the "Latest River Conditions" page with road updates, since there hasn't been anyone out fishing since last November. That will very soon change though and we'll be back to real river reports. The shop is all clean and nearly restocked. We are being a little conservative about what we are ordering this season, with the dire economic news and large numbers of trip cancellations. Looks like the steelhead season is still going to have a strong showing of people, but the salmon seasons are going to look pretty scarce out on the river. Boy, the way things are looking, if you want a river to yourself, this will be the year to come.

Most of my time this past winter has been consumed by the hangar renovation. We have most of the sheetrock up now, but a lot of mudding and taping yet to do. The next shop to open will be offering more outdoor gear like the camping gear, specialty stove fuels, kayak and boat rentals, etc. A lot of the things people have been asking us to sell in the fly shop, but will be more appropriate in the next store. Stay tuned for more updates as the season progresses and I have more time in the shop (and on the river) to blog about...

We don't follow sports much. Super Bowls and the World Series and March Madness don't really carry much weight when you are this detached from the real world. March for us does carry one sporting event that we follow with a near religious zeal - the Iditarod. Yesterday morning, Lance Mackey crossed under the burled arch in Nome for the third consecutive year, with 15 of the 16 dogs he started off with 1161 miles earlier. He decided to drop the dog and have it flown back to Anchorage because the dog just "wasn't having fun"... He had an incredible team that tackled the long journey and some mighty hellacious winds to beat the competition by over seven hours. Coming in second was Sebastian Schnuelle hailing from Whitehorse, just over the Canadian border from here. He's just about as close to being a "local" as we'll get here in Yakutat. DeeDee came in 13th after clawing her way up the standings. She is always my favorite.

Tanis of course participates in the "Iditaread" every year, where he selects a musher and has to try and read a page for every mile his musher travels. He picked Lance again, but the problem for a 9 year old picking the top musher is he has to read FAST. Tanis was still in Kaltag when Lance made it into Nome, so he has another day or two to complete his race. There will still be plenty of mushers behind Tanis before the Red Lantern is extinguished.

Then late last night, we received the news from Anchorage that the Yakutat Eagles girls basketball team won the 2A state championship for the third straight year. Congratulations to them for having all that hard work and effort pay off. We are proud of you! Quite a day of sports for us. I couldn't even tell you who played in the Super Bowl...

The state had been making some great progress on clearing the lower road, but we have now had about 4 days of snow. Temperatures have not been blow freezing, but the "snow" (and I use the term loosely) keeps falling. About 4-6 inches of slop each day. With snow on the runways and roads around town, the state guys have to do their day job and only when they have spare time can they dedicate it to restoring access to the river. Their target date is always April 1st, but sometimes (like last year), they are able to open the road up earlier. Even April 1st depends on how much time they have to work to keep the runway and airport open.

Therefore... the pile continues to grow and is now nearly twice the height of the hangar...

The plan this week is to thoroughly clean up the fly shop after a winter of construction and dust. We should be ready to reopen mid-week, although the actual opening date isn't till April 1st. We have been doing a little business when someone calls, or drops by and pounds hard enough on the door for me to hear upstairs. We are busily continuing the renovation of the hangar - trying to get the bathrooms and kitchen in before the spring rush of fishermen hits.

This morning, we had another 6 inches of really wet and sloppy snow fall before it turned to rain. Now we have bright sun shining to melt much of the mush away. The gigantic snow pile in the middle of the airport ramp grew a few inches taller, but I think the new layer of snow on the ground will melt away instead of adding to the over-all depth. I mentioned yesterday on the River Conditions page that the state has already started work on the lower road to clear the snow. They will do the lower road before starting on the upper road. They are only doing it as idle time permits, so each day they have to plow snow off the runway and main streets around town, the they won't be able to work on restoring river access. It is supposed to remain sunny through the weekend, so hopefully we'll see some more snow melt.

My sincere apologies for not blogging all winter. I lost access to the server the web site was stored on and it has taken us this long to get things switched over to new servers, etc. This is just a quick hello today, while I'm trying to catch back up on a few things. The shop has been closed "officially" since December 30th, but we reopen April 1st. I'm here every day working on the hangar, so if you need anything, just e-mail me, or call the shop number. I'll have a status report for you tomorrow, plus catch you up on all that has been happening over the last 3 months. I had so much to blog about, but I'll get that news out over the next couple weeks. More tomorrow...

I flew out over the forelands all the way to Dry Bay yesterday and there was not much snow - if any down the coast. Heaviest close to town, just a couple inches of wet slush on the Ahrnklin flats, then nothing out beyond the Dangerous. We landed for a few minutes at the Akwe and I was surprised to see a fish break the surface about 1/4 mile upstream from the ocean on the Akwe. The Akwe does have a small number of spring steelhead, but I doubt this fish was a steelhead. Probably a very late silver, since we are still seeing a handful of chrome bright silvers in Tawah Creek and a few other places. A couple days before, we flew over the Situk mouth and there was definitely a small number of fish moving in on the tide. The winter steelhead are there, if you can get out to them.

Then last night, we were hit by a good batch of wet sloppy snow. They were forecasting up to 18 inches overnight and through the morning, but that certainly didn't happen. Just about 6-8 inches of slop before it turned to rain. Don't expect the road to be very passable for a while. Tomorrow it is supposed to be 40 degrees with more rain, which should wash some more snow away. Flow on the Situk is running at about 375 CFS right now, so not too bad - if you can get out there. Water temp is a boiling 36 degrees. Layer up!

Sorry about the server being down for the last couple days. I even had a fishing report to post and couldn't... so here it is...

No reports from off the Situk, but there are fresh bright silvers still coming into Tawah Creek. Lots of old dark fish in the pool around the bridge, but there are a few fresh ones mixed in coming off every tide. The bright ones even have a little fight left in them in this icy cold water.

I flew out over the forelands today, after our heavy batch of snow night before last. We had about 10 inches fall, before it turned to rain and squished it down to about 6 inches of wet slop. After raining all day yesterday and most of last night, we are down to about 3 inches in the open forelands and still about 6 inches in the big timber. From the air, it looks like the lower road is closed for the season. There were some very deep 4-wheeler tracks through the slush, but it didn't look like an easy time of it for the driver. There are a couple fishermen here in town, so I would assume there are enough tracks out to 9 Mile to make it a fairly easy trip. I didn't fly out that way though, so no idea what the road is looking like for sure. All the lakes and ponds are frozen over, but the river is flowing nicely (and a little flooded) with no ice forming along the bank at all. All the trails are still very hikable.

Well, Teen just arrived, so my ride is here. I'm planning to fly all the way out to Dry Bay tomorrow, so I'll report back on what things look like farther down the coast. Have a great evening and stay warm! It is a slushy mid 30's up here in Yakutat.

Hello all, I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving, where you ate until you exploded, followed by a nap on the couch, then more eating. Well, that is what we did... Anyway... here is a little river report, followed by a Hangar update...

There aren't very many people in town right now. Pretty slow and quiet. We had a dumping of snow early in the week, which was followed by a warming trend and some pretty torrential rains. The water gage on the Situk was broken for about a week, but it is back online again. The water level at the moment is up to near 68 feet, for 900 CFS of flow. Yes, the river is cooking right now. The water temp came up nicely though. The road was a real mess for several days, but is essentially snow free again, since it all washed away in the rains.

Oddly, we had a wave warning of 30 feet yesterday and this morning. There is a group of internationally famous surfers here filming in the big waves. Woo, hoo! Don't bother asking me who they are though...

Life around the fly shop is a bit on the slow side this time of year. As I mentioned before, we'll keep the doors open through the end of December, just in case there are any Christmas stockings/stockingfoot that need to be filled. Being that this is our first season and have no idea what demand there is, we'll be open to see if there is a need for us to be open. So far, it isn't really justifying keeping the lights on, but you never know.

My main goal this winter is continuing the renovation on the hangar anyway. We are working on the bathrooms right now and waiting for the barge and our big Home Despot order to arrive. The barge set sail from Seattle already, so now we wait and wait for it to get here... Really looking forward to having bathrooms! We are here anyway renovating, so if anyone needs anything, we have the doors open.

Meanwhile, we are planning to have a fly tying event on Monday night with the cub scouts. Stop in if you are in the neighborhood...

We woke this morning to about 3 inches of fresh white snow on the ground. The forecast is calling for another 2-4 inches to fall before it turns to rain and rains all week. 6 to 8 iches id wet slop will make it tough to drive out to the river for a couple days, but the windy warming trend that is on the way will undoubtedly wash away the white and by Monday, we should have no problem at all getting to and from the river.

I did hear second hand from one of our better guides that fishing has been poor on the Situk. I didn't talk to him directly, so this is my guess... He would have been fishing the bottom half, where we had been told by everyone so far that fishing was slow. The steelhead weren't gathering together until after they reached the cabins, especially from the confluence of the Old Situk and above. Fish had only been coming in at about a half dozen on a tide and zipping up pretty quickly. That would mean the lower river would be pretty slow - slower than what the guides would normally see this time of year.

So... expect the drive to the river to be tough for a couple days, until this snow washes away. Then by Monday, we should be able to get around without much challenge. Fishing has been better in the upper part of the river, but steelhead are still pretty scattered. Water is still flowing well, although the lakes around town are already freezing over. It is very quiet out on the water, with very few people out and about right now. The Forest Service cabins are vacant for most of the coming two months, but can still be accessed by plane.

Tawah Creek is famous (at least around here) for having a VERY LATE run if silvers. It is not uncommon to see chrome-bright silvers still coming in as late as January. There does seem to be a pronounced gap between the usual fall season and when the late run starts to rear it's head. We seem to be seeing that late shot starting in now.

Reports are coming in that there are fresh batches of chrome silvers hitting Tawah Creek and Lost River right now. A few days ago, we were only seeing the dark red fall fish in and around the Cannon Beach Bridge. Looks like there are more fish right now than just the early winter steelhead on the Situk. Silvers on Tawah and a ton of dollies on Old Situk Creek, with some straggler red silvers, dollies and some resident rainbows in the Situk proper.

Just about an inch of snow on the ground with a bit of a warming trend happening. We still have full road access everywhere.

Life around the fly shop has been VERY slow the past four weeks. Not a lot of reports coming in and my own two expeditions on the river were "dry" at best. Well, this week, things seem to be changing. We are getting multiple conformations that there are good groups of fresh winter steelhead gathering into good schools in the upper 1/3rd of the river (below the bridge). Fish have been coming in slowly with only about a half dozen per tide. The bottom half of the river has steelhead scattered here and there with no congregations. If you come across a batch of dark silvers, they have been able to pull steelhead out of these silver schools pretty regularly.

Then starting at the confluence of Old Situk, there are good schools forming. The guys from Reno renting the Forest Service cabins this week have been having a really good time in cold clear weather, low and very cold water (1.5 degrees C). On Saturday, there were about 100 rotting silvers under the bridge by the north piling, but on the opposite side, there was a nice big batch of bright steelhead in the pool as well. a LOT of dollies still throughout the upper half and a few resident rainbows scattered about as well.

Centerpin fishing has been a killer, but traditional fly fishing subsurface has been working for everyone who has been in the fish. Those hideous Garcia Glo Bugs are working as usual, along with more typical steelhead fare like leeches and buggers. Some sculpin patterns have been very hot for those who have been fishing them.

In other words, we have fresh winter steelhead moving in and they are hungry. And... there are very few people on the river.

Light snow falling right now, but just a trace so far that is sticking. They are expecting just an inch tonight, but it changes to mixed rain and snow for the rest of the week and no accumulations. The roads both upper and lower are wide open. No idea how long that will last, but some really great opportunities right now if you have the ability to get away.

Other News:
Glacier Bear's restaurant is still open on the weekends for full menu. Yakutat Lodge is only serving cold sandwiches, but are open all week for that. Most of the B & B's are still open and of course the Forest Service cabins are available. You can get those by going to www.reserveamerica.com and doing a search for Yakutat in the city and "Raven" or "Eagle" for the campground name.

Hangar News:
Here is what we look like this afternoon... The airport snow pile looks pretty sad, but it is growing a little right now. A nice light dusting of snow to make the ramp and parking lot look clean.

We will have the fly shop open through December 30th, but plan to close for a couple months at the start of the year. We will be here doing renovations on the hangar, so even though the shop is officially closed, we will be around. Call or e-mail with a heads up and we can make sure the doors are unlocked. Through till New Years, we will be open Monday through Saturday 8am to 6pm, closed on Sundays.

The next barge departs Seattle on November 26th, so we'll have a load of construction supplies coming then. Very much looking forward to getting the bathrooms in. Our goals this year are to get all 6 bathrooms and the kitchen installed, plus offices and aviation crew rooms upstairs finished. Then with time permitting, we will start working on the next retail shop space here on the bottom floor. The outside of the hangar still looks just as awful as it did a year ago. We didn't get to painting the old siding like we had hoped. Don't let that turn you away though. The inside is improving every day.

I have actually had some fishing news to report for the past three weeks, but none of it was very good. As of today, I have some real info to share, so you get a long blog update...

Three weeks ago, I heard third hand that there was a nice batch of fresh winter steelhead upstream at the West Fork of the Situk. This week, I was able to send a few people up to look for them and all came back empty handed. In fact, the past two groups reported not seeing ANY steelhead in their travels along the river. These were people on foot, so they were somewhat limited in their range and river access.

Today, we had a lengthy visit from a couple Anchorage fishermen with extensive winter Situk experience. There has been a good grouping of steelhead at the Old Situk confluence throughout the week. They have been having some really good days (and a few "just OK" days) Center Pin fishing on the upper part of the float. Fewer fish than what they normally see this time of year and the fish seem a little smaller as well. Their hunch is that it is just too early this season and they plan to be back in another week or two. Still quite a few silvers, along with some massive balls of dollies. Find a good group of silvers and you can pull steelhead out of the same school. They had the most success drifting beads. The water started off pretty high, but dropped down to only 250 CFS this week. We had some heavy rains in the past couple days, so the flow has come up a lot (the flow gage seems to be broken right now, giving some pretty random readings). Low water meant pretty small profile beads, last couple days were much larger beads. Makes sense... They also said there are only about a half dozen steelhead coming in on a tide, so the lower river is few and far between. They seem to be grouping better in that upper third from the confluence to the bridge.

So... two weeks ago, I was finally able to hike into Pike Lakes for the first time. To my surprise, they are a lot easier to get to than I expected, with meadows bordering much of the lake for an unobstructed back-cast. Unfortunately, they were already frozen over... Breaking ice to get out to what looked like a little open water turned out to be breaking ice to get to more solid ice. Boy, those big fuzzy mouse patterns sure cast easily across polished ice... We spent some time trying anyway, holding out hope that some big hungry Pike would break through the thin ice layer to grab an unsuspecting frog, or mouse like a Trident Submarine crashing through the polar ice cap. Nope!

On our way back to town - in the waning light - we stopped in at Old Situk Creek and had a wonderful evening hooking the last remaining few silvers (although they were far from "silver") and pulling out gorgeous dollies. There were two huge balls of dollies around and just below the culverts, plus a few scattered around under structure.

And finally, I drove out to 9 Mile today and there were both silvers and steelhead holding under the bridge. More silvers obviously, but the steelies are definitely in the river right now in small numbers. Expect them to increase over the coming weeks.

If you have been following my blog for a while, then you may remember from my August 26th entry that someone here in town likes to try and invent conflict. Well, my biggest fan has struck again, printing copies of my blog, highlighting sentences that they hope could be offensive to someone and posting these pages on all the bulletin boards around town. Well, not all the bulletin boards, since the person is too chicken-shit to post it to mine, or to do anything that isn't anonymous. Granted some of my opinions could be offensive I suppose, but at least I put my name to them and welcome anyone to discuss things with me. That's OK, I took the liberty to post one of these on my board here in the shop anyway. I also highlighted the same sentences in my "Election" post below, so everyone can see what they find so shocking. I hope you enjoy it.

They did take the time to add their own opinion with a full page print-out of someone else's quote, "It is better to be quite and thought a fool. Than to speak and remove all doubt."

Yes, the punctuation above is exactly what they typed. Apparently they thought it was two separate sentences... And they typed "quite" instead of "quiet"... I'm not sure if they were meaning to point out their own foolishness for their inability to form a sentence, or my foolishness for having an opinion. The actual quote should read as follows:

"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."

This has been attributed to both Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain. Good advice. I'm quite (as opposed to "quiet") sure there are people who would attach the label of "fool" to me, or my opinions. Judging from the foolishness of printing pretty innocuous blog entries and posting them around town, there would seem to be no shortage of fools here.

I actually do have a blog to post about fishing, but I will wait till tomorrow to type that.

Well, I think you all know who I voted for and that this is a disappointing morning. I'll catch you up a little on the happenings here, when go into "opinion-mode"...

T'was the night before the election and our cub scout den met at the city offices to help set up the polling booths. We have 4 boys now in WEBELOS, so all were able to participate in setting up tables and curtains, etc. Candy Hills (who owns Monti Bay Foods) is our election official and walked the boys through the process. She gave them some wonderful information and helped make this important American responsibility come alive. Tanis, as part of his homeschooling, we spent a sizable part of the day learning about the constitution, the electoral college, the candidates and their positions, etc. Then that evening with the other boys, we printed sample ballots and let the boys all vote.

The cub scout vote ended up 2 to 2. A perfectly even split. Eden would have been the tie breaking vote, but she was squirming too much and ended up being forcibly removed from the polling station before we made it that far. Then again, she probably would have ended up randomly voting for Bob Barr, or that strange guy running in the Alaska Independence party... So with a tie, it goes to the House for a decision and that decision (parents in an informal poll) went in favor of McCain/Palin.

Then yesterday morning, I happened to be the first vote cast in the Yakutat district. Woo, hoo! I left - armed with my little blue "I Voted" sticker just above my right boob. It is hard to say how Yakutat would go. This town is VERY dependent on hand-outs for its survival and "we" (as a community) tend to support very pro-hand out candidates. Someone like Palin isn't too popular around here for that reason. As our governor, she dramatically cut spending and eliminated a lot of the hand-outs. Big shock, she took the state from being just as in the red as any other state to being in the black. She made a lot of enemies even within her own party, who love to say they are fiscally responsible, while plotting their own padded agendas.

And of course we all know the outcome of the election. We knew it before the polls opened yesterday, but it was refreshing to see the "landslide of the century" was a pretty mediocre event in the end. Obama's 52% is not a mandate to move the country to an extreme left, nor should it embolden anyone to formulate a radical criticism of John McCain. Here is what this particular election says to me:

George W. is a president with the lowest approval rating since Hoover. The economy is the worst it has been since... well... Hoover. The Democrats should have walked away with this election and yet after out-spending the other side 3:1, they just barely squeaked by. Regardless of how the electoral college ended up, this election by popular vote was very close when it really should have been a legitimate landslide. Had the Democratic Party put forth a middle-of-the-road candidate, they probably would have walked away with the presidency. Instead, they put forth an extremely left candidate and nearly threw the election.

On the Republican side... instead of shoring up the conservative base, they nominated an honest and decent man - a true hero - a man of conscience who has had a the "unfortunate" trait of voting his conscience instead of what his far-right party wants. He is essentially a boy scout. How can a boy scout succeed in a world craving and rewarding politicians who make unrealistic promises and are willing to say anything to get elected? Well, McCain actually did amazingly well... After a presidency that is perceived to be one of the worst in a century, McCain nearly was able to overcome the pit that George W. dug him into. In the end, McCain lost a second presidential election to George W. Bush. He really didn't lose to Barack Obama, he lost this election to the ghost of George W.

I have always considered myself an Independent. Since my first presidential election vote in 1988, I have perpetually voted against someone, rather than having someone to actually vote "for". Sometimes I have voted for the Democrat, sometimes the Republican. Once I even proudly voted for Ross, when both the main party candidates were bone-heads and I wanted a legitimate protest. In 1999, I officially joined the Republican Party because for the first time, there was a candidate to really vote "FOR". Surprisingly, he was also the most popular candidate at the time. Then my new party selected the third most popular candidate and essentially did all they could to throw the election. Of course George W. lost the popular election, but pulled off the electoral win.

I have been so excited this year about the prospects of having a president that would be someone who is honest, decent and has integrity. Funny how a solid majority of voters associate those three words with John McCain (even though they didn't vote for him), yet virtually no one associated those three words with Barack Obama. As a nation, we do not apparently want honest, decent men of integrity to lead us. This is going to be an interesting 4 years.

I plan to wear my Palin/McCain shirt proudly over the next 4 years. To my surprise, we sold two more of the shirts yesterday after the results were known. I'm not alone. I certainly do not harbor ill-will toward my new president-elect and I hope he makes better decisions than the campaign promises he has made. Reading the news, I have been told I'm a racist because I didn't vote for one guy... Really? No matter what Barack Obama is/represents/promises... he isn't John McCain. He isn't a man who has sacrificed and served my country for over 40 years. He isn't a man of experience. He isn't a man of independence from his party. He isn't a man with a record. He "isn't" a lot of things. But... for the first time in my life, I didn't vote "against" anyone. I didn't vote against Barack Obama. I voted "FOR" someone. I proudly voted for a true leader with a track record - with past mistakes he learned from - with decisions he has made for our nation. There is nothing overly wrong with president-elect Obama that isn't wrong with most politicians. His inability to make a decision (voting present), his unwillingness to take responsibility for his choices and associations... he doesn't stand out as a guy to inspire me to vote for. John McCain does.

Well, nothing to do about it now. John McCain will not be our national leader and I think Americans will suffer for it. But it was our choice and "we" chose not to be lead by integrity. We get the government we deserve. On November 5th - the day after we elected our new president, I am still proud to support both McCain and Palin. Two bright stars in a dark sky. President Obama has a tough job to do and I hope he can overcome his shortcomings. And I hope we Americans can do the same.

Well, tonight you missed out on carving pumpkins around the fly tying table. Sean (who has guided with us out on the Italio a couple seasons) and his family came out for a pizza party and LONG evening of carving pumpkins. All the kids had a ball creating orange piles of slimy crap all over the table and floor. Sean has some weird childhood scaring about pumpkins and the smell, so he spent most of the time trying not to hurl. Otherwise, a fun time was had by all.

Jini (Sean's better half), my bald spot and a bunch of obnoxious kids around the table... Madison and Payton digging into their pumpkin guts.

Eden still eating her pizza, while everyone else was on to more fun things... "Finish your dinner, or no pumpkin!"... Tanis, Eden and Payton.

A truly terrifying Jack-O'-Lantern, Eden and Payton, with Tanis in deep concentration.

I have been getting a lot of questions about the "fall" steelhead run... Essentially, our "winter" steelhead run comes in throughout the entire winter, but fishing it comes down to access more than anything. The past 4 winters, we haven't seen any significant amount of snow stick until after the New Year. I have had a feeling all summer that this year would not be following that trend. It was been a wet and cool year, as we experienced throughout the spring run, throughout the entire summer and all fall.

Yesterday morning, we woke to about two inches of snow, after a very windy and blustery night. My neighbor lost the roofing metal on his porch that fortunately flew up and over my car. This morning, we woke to an additional 4 inches of snow, but this time it is very wet and sloppy. It has now turned to rain and we are expecting another "warmer" storm tonight that will blow 60 knots. I doubt there will be any snow by tomorrow.

This isn't looking all that great for our road access to the river. The state does not plow the road past the dump, so once the snow starts to pile up, you won't be able to drive out to the river. Also, no one rents snow machines. That may be a business opportunity in the future for someone, but as of now, it leaves anyone thinking of a mid-winter steelhead experience SOL.

I will keep the blog updated throughout the winter on what is happening. I haven't been out to the Situk lately and haven't heard of anyone in town going out to fish. There are still silvers scattered around some of the smaller streams, like Tawah Creek and Seal Creek, even in the lagoon out by the boat harbor. Kings are being caught out in the bay. That is about all I have to report at the moment.

We are getting hammered by a storm right now. The satellite dish is rocking 5 inches in either direction and yet we still have internet here at the shop. Normally, we get knocked out from a light rain... We awoke to a fresh layer of snow, but it has warmed to over 40 degrees with this wind and we were barely able to open the car door to run inside. I think we'll go ahead and close the shop today, under the circumstances. See you tomorrow.

Although I do have a lot of news to report, I haven't been updating the blog lately. My apologies. There has been just so darned much to catch up on, after playing out on the Italio for a month and a half. We are getting the winter storage under control in the hangar, figuring out where we are on the shop inventory and getting our pre-season orders submitted. We still have a lot of inventory in stock, so if you need Christmas ideas, don't forget to check in with us...! Mark is still working on the web site and integrating it with the shop computer's inventory control, so that continues to be delayed. In the meantime, we have the fly shop logo hats in at last, so give us a call. Just not today... This is good napping weather.

Greg closed the shop (for the first time since May!!!) to fly out here for his week of fishing. Unfortunately, I see online that all the boxes finally arrived at the Post Office with the "Palin for Vice President" shirts and our fly shop logo hats. So... for those of you waiting patiently for this stuff to arrive, we close the IRA camp on the 11th and head back to town. So... if you still want them, I'll send them out priority as soon as we get back to town.

This was an odd day to say the least. We don't get thunder storms very often, but yesterday and today, they have been rolling through over and over. The temperature plunged and this was just about the most miserable day of "guiding" I have had in years. Fortunately, I did very little actual "guiding" today and spent most of my time fishing my butt off. Our last group of the season arrived around noon, so after lunch we hit the river. In a span of about two hours, I landed about 30 fish. This late into the season, two were red, two were blushed and the rest were nice and bright. Not too bad. Then I carried the coffee thermos around and acted like a guide for the rest of the evening. My fly of choice was the grey chinchilla bunny leech. I LOVE this fly!

It has been hard keeping up on the blog this past month, with long days at the IRA camp and guiding. So... here is a long update with lots of photos:

Yesterday, I had the chance to bring Tanis along for an afternoon on the river. Teen and I were working together in the kitchen most of this week with our friends and clients, so Tanis helped us around the camp in the morning. Eden stayed behind at the cabin with her Grammy and they did chick things together. Tanis on the other hand had a spectacular day! It started with a beachcomb ride after breakfast where he found a Japanese Glass Ball with some great markings and a flat spot on the bottom. Then a few feet beyond, he actually found $15 in cash along the tideline!!! At lunch, our client Richard did something pretty astounding. He gave the little fart a Redington fly rod and reel! After lunch, it was time to break the rod in on some fish.

This was our first nice day in at least a week, so the river was VERY high. Too high for Tanis to wade to where the fish were holding. Richard again stepped in to make Tanis' day by handing off his rod to land a lunker of a fish. A few fish later and Tanis was exhausted. He and his mom stepped out of the water to rest and warm up a bit before fighting some more fish.

A guide in training - complete with scowl! Ready to end the day and head back for dinner - halibut cheeks!

Our group departed this morning, so after getting the camp prepped for the next group, we loaded the family up for our annual lure scavenge trip. We cleaned up the lures, flies and broken fishing line off all the tree branches we could reach. Tanis and Eden have their tackle box filled again. Then, we spent some time with the kids casting from the skiff as we drifted our way downstream.

Eden managed to hook into a beautiful bright silver hen and Tanis was gracious enough to land it for her...

We headed back to the cabin and put all my commercial fishing crap away for the season. As many of you saw, I had nets and totes strewn all over the yard. At least it gave some visitors out here a place to sit while waiting for the plane to pick you up... We had a little bon fire on this downright balmy October day.

Eden assisted me with filletting her fish, which we promptly ate for dinner tonight. Just look at that wonderfully deep - dark red meat. No dye here!

Eden hearing me say, "Wet feet gets you beat!"... What an amazing day. Other than a couple airplanes flying over during the day, you would have thought we were the last humans left on earth. I LOVE this time of year!

"A family that fishes together..." This has been a VERY busy year, but I am so thankful we have our opportunities to slow down and enjoy the amazing life we have here in Yakutat and on the Italio. Thank you for sharing it with us and for helping make our little fly shop project a success this first season.

-Bob, Teen, Tanis, Eden and Emma (who was not too thrilled about being picked up...)

We had to say good bye to our Goony Bird yesterday. When the Tsiu hit hard in late August, TransNorthern Air brought in one of their Super DC-3's, but they didn't last more than that first week. Throughout most of the season, we have been blessed with N777YA flown by Bush Air Cargo out of Palmer, Alaska. This beautiful bird was delivered on August 28th, 1944 as 43-48373 to the USAAF for transfer that same month to the Navy as 17259. She served her country till 1946, when she retired to civilian life with Wein Alaska Airlines. That is where she spent her working life till the early 1970's. She was transferred through many different owners until she was acquired by Bush Air Cargo a couple years ago.

Bart and Don were a true pleasure to have around the shop throughout this silver season. I sure hope they bring their incredible WWII plane back next season. We have even been talking about possibly taking their other DC-3/C-47 and painting it in classic "Invasion" colors for a static display here at The Hangar. In case you didn't notice... these are my absolute favorite planes. Duh! I only have one hour logged behind the stick, but it was truly an hour of absolute ecstasy! Sorry Teen...

An another note... Teen and I head back out to the Italio tomorrow to finish our guide season with Italio River Adventures. One of my business partners (Greg) will be covering the shop this coming week, then the shop will close for 6 days while Greg comes out to play on the river with us. If you are coming up between October 6th and October 12th, sorry but the shop will be closed. We'll be back in town on the evening of the 12th, so back in the shop October 13th. See you then!

Well, I'm back in town for a few days before Teen and I both head back to the Italio for the last two weeks of our season. In the meantime, we'll have our good friend and business partner Greg in town to cover the shop through October 5th. We will be closed (for the first time since April) for a few days while Greg comes out to play on the Italio with us. We'll be back to town on October 12th, so we'll reopen the shop on the 13th. In other words... we'll be closed from October 6th to October 12th.

Traffic through Yakutat this year has been much slower than normal. The downturn in the economy has hit the small Alaska communities in a very big way this summer and Yakutat is no exception. We felt it out at Italio River Adventures too, but not as badly as some of the outfitters and lodges. Flight loads with Alaska Air didn't pick up till the second week of September and the loads dropped significantly a few days ago.

With all the doom and gloom, we can't be more thrilled with how the fly shop has done this first season. It has been such a pleasure to get to know so many of you. Most people managed to pass through Yakutat and spend their week fishing without ever knowing there even was a fly shop... Hopefully we'll be a little more visible next year though.

Teen and I have been learning a lot and we are still trying to work out the bugs of how to run a shop like this. We have a long list of items we still need to track down for next season (thanks to the great recommendations from our visitors) and we have plenty of merchandise just itching to fill your stockings for Christmas... :-) Our fly shop logo'd hats are finally arriving now that the season is over, so keep an eye out here for when we have the e-commerce site up and running.

I haven't had time to make blog updates lately, but i did try to keep the fishing reports as frequent as possible. Now that the fishing reports are petering out, I'll be back to the blog updates. I have a couple long tirades waiting to be expressed, so expect some hot debate here in the near future... I do want to thank everyone who has supported and encouraged us over the last several months. We stumbled a bit throughout the season, but we appreciate all those who helped pick us back up off the floor and pointed us back down the trail. Thanks!

It has been wonderful to have Tanis out with me on the river this week. Although I spent most days in the kitchen cooking for the camp, we slipped out occasionally to make some casts. Today, we were on the Akwe, fishing the estuary. It was a good day with a lot of fish moving in on the higher water. The New Italio was bordering on being blown out, but the Akwe was a pretty good - fishable level. It was however a little too deep for Tanis to navigate. His 9 year old legs aren't long enough to let him wade out very much.

The group was well out in the main current. The river this year has a waist deep trench along the Italio side, with a shallow ridge, then it drops off again into the Akwe's water. Most people seem compelled to wade out to their nipples when the fish should be right at their feet. Tanis tried to hang with the big boys, but ended up breaking down a bit. He will be flying back to town tomorrow and was so disappointed he wouldn't be able to catch a fish to bring back for his Nana and Grandpa (who are up visiting for the month).

The guys were all lined up way out in the main channel and catching good fish, but there were just as many fish passing in the trench right behind them. This trench has very little current, but was on occasion boiling with fish. I made a couple casts nearly touching the backside of the guys and hooked a big silver. Tanis played it, but lost the fight... So I hooked him another right behind the guys. He landed this one, so we kept it for Nana. We hooked and fought three more before Tanis hooked one entirely on his own. By this time, all the guys had either come back out of the river and fished from the shore, or had turned around and were casting back toward shore. We had the school surrounded and there was no escape!

Tanis has his fillet to take back with him, so he is happy even thought he doesn't get to stay out for another week. He needs to get back and do more school. He certainly wasn't getting any work done with me this week. Unless you count tying flies as art, fishing as PE and helping to cook and serve meals as Home Ec. Hey Teen, can he get credit for that? Science discussion of the week was:

Yes, you too can show your bent and demented Alaska-ness with your very own Palin/McCain t-shirt. Who are we kidding anyway? Up here, it is clearly our Governor that is on top of the ticket and like I said in the blog a week ago, "Yes, we are proud!" Now, you too can look like an Alaskan, so long as you wear this short sleeve 100% cotton t-shirt outside in sub-freezing weather just because the sun came out briefly... Along with your shorts and Xtra-Tuf's.

It'll take a couple weeks for these shirts to arrive, but if you want one, send me an e-mail with the size of your choice and I'll get one in the mail to you as soon as they come in! They will cost $20 due to the small number I ordered and the rush to get them here...

In other news... It was a gorgeous day today, after some light drizzle in the morning. I'm in the kitchen at the camp most of this week, with Tanis out here to be my little slave laborer. Pat does breakfast, I do lunch, then we split the dinners. I have the first three of those. Today's lunch was pasta salad... so with an easy meal, Tanis and I headed out to the river for a little recreation. You know, to get us in the mood for boiling noodles. Tanis brought out a little baggy of flies he tied, with the limited selection of colors in his tying box. Mostly kelly green and orange - his two current favorite colors.

I bummed a fly off him, a pretty sharp looking combination of green marabou tail, orange chenille with yellow hackle body and a yellow hackle head. Tanis tied on a beauty of a fly with dumbbell eyes, black wing and a bright blue hackle head. Let me just say... two casts, two fish. This boy is obviously onto something with his creative patterns and color choice. We traded rods off a couple times, but still managed to land both fish right about the same time. How can you beat having a double with your son on two flies he tied? A couple follow-up casts with no interest and we headed back to camp to whip up a mega-batch of chocolate chip cookie dough and the pasta salad. Neither of us were hungry for the pasta salad for some reason... Sorry Teen, what happens at the cabin, stays at the cabin...

Tanis helped me start a nice bon fire in the fire ring at the IRA camp and while I was busy making dinner, Tanis was busy making deals. He had sold his entire baggy of flies and had $22.00 burning a hole in his pocket. I think he'll be ordering some fly tying materials from his mommy next time we call in on the VHF radio. You can probably pre-order some "Tanis Specials" too, but he doesn't check his e-mail very often. At least not while the fish are running!

My apologies for the lack of updates this past week or so. I started my Italio season and ran into a tech problem with my Starband satellite internet at the cabin. I came back to town to sort out the issue and they promise the account should be working again. So, we should have more regular updates. I head back out first thing this morning to the river and will have some fresh updates.

In shop news, Teen has been doing a great job running the show and keeping the doors open. Mark, my computer tech nerd business partner arrived yesterday to help out and give her some relief. His learning curve is even more steep than Teen's, so I am thoroughly enjoying hearing their updates and reading their e-mail questions each evening. I try to get online each evening, so don't hesitate to ask me questions too. Mark plans to have our web site functional within the week, so watch for that. He'll at least have the logowear part working, in case you were here when we ran out of the fly shop logo hats, etc. We also have a new shirt design that is being printed as I type. I'll post a picture tonight of our "Palin for Vice President" shirts... :-) It will take a couple weeks for them to come in, but we are accepting "pre-orders".

August 31st, 2008 - Politics... Yes, we are proud!

Boy, this weekend I started getting a LOT of messages from people throughout the country asking my opinion about a certain female Governor. Yes, we are proud, excited, thrilled... and at least a little disappointed that we now may be searching for another public servant with this level of ethics, drive and conviction. I have been listening a little this weekend to my XM news channels (audio tracks of cable news channels) and I have to laugh every time one of these idiot talking heads refers to Alaska as a "little state". Um... just to let the news anchors and reporters in on a secret - the pictures on the atlas are NOT TO SCALE! You can cut Alaska in half and make Texas the third largest state. They probably think we are really an island in the Caribbean, or isolated in northern Mexico right next to Hawaii...

Our population may be the third lowest of any state (not the lowest by the way...), but the state itself is massive. The logistics of running a vast area like Alaska, with its huge reserves of oil, minerals, wildlife, sea life, environmental disasters, weather, the largest national park, the largest national forest - makes most other Governor positions look like leading a local city council. Governor Palin has been willing to take on her own party and route out corruption and nepotism, slash budgets and unnecessary spending - all while remaining an accessible and approachable human being that anyone can relate to.

Accusations of her lack of experience seems a bit ridiculous coming from people who support a candidate who is just a junior senator that spent the majority of his first term in congress running for higher office. Yes, I would feel comfortable having her "one heartbeat away from the Presidency" based on her experience. I do not agree with a lot of her positions and beliefs, but the person is one of exceptional character.

You don't vote for Vice Presidents. You vote for Presidents. Regardless of which candidate you decide to vote for, Governor Palin is a truly unique person in politics. Honesty, integrity... and she is a lot nicer to look at than ANY of the other office seekers! OK, not a reason to choose a candidate, but if you were riding the fence, I'd rather fall into her yard... Except she'd probably have no problem shooting me if I looked like an intruder... or a bear...

-Bob (this message was not approved by any candidate)

August 30th, 2008 - It's Official!

After a lot of paperwork and some hassles that came from a few places we never expected... the hangar lease is now in Teen's and my name. This is a tremendous relief to have behind us as we move into the fall fishing season. In other words, the entire 38,000 square foot hangar building is ours. This massive responsibility wasn't necessarily our goal, but after investing so much money and time to renovate the fly shop portion, we couldn't risk having the building change hands and put all that investment at risk. The last thing we (or Yakutat) needs is for the hangar to revert to the kind of management it had in the past.

So... this fall when I get back to town, our first priority will be to get bathrooms back in. I have five bathrooms to put in, then we'll move on to renovating office space that can start generating a little income to offset our costs. The third phase will be to start renovating another shop space. We have been asked repeatedly for services that don't really fit into the "fly shop" keyhole. Things like:

* Rafts and foldable boats that can fit in the air taxi planes for remote trips - this is especially cool with the float plane that Yakutat Coastal has brought to Yakutat for trips into Situk Lake, Akwe Lake and other remote float trips that haven't been possible before.
* Specialty campstove fuel cartridges that you can't find at all in Yakutat.
* Camping equipment for sale and rent
* Drift boats
* Aviation charts and support services
* More clothing, souvenir, jewelry and gift options.

Please keep feeding us suggestions for the kinds of things you want to see out here. You have been so instrumental in helping us create this fly shop and helping us make it a success. We are still learning every day and enjoying the process. Boy, you don't have a clue just how little you know until you start something like this. Our "project" just grew exponentially, but we are so excited for what the hangar has to offer our community and to our visitors. Thank you so much for your continued support. With some of the "obstacles" we have encountered lately, you can't begin to know what your calls and e-mail have meant to Teen and I. Thank you.

Bob

This isn't the message I wanted to type today, but I do want to share a little bit with you about what it is like to try and do something nice in Yakutat. I can't communicate to all of you enough how much your support and encouragement over the past few months has meant to Teen and I. For all of you down in "the United States" and for a few of you right here in Yakutat, this fly shop adventure had been a roller coaster of sorts, but we appreciate everything YOU have done to build this shop. This is yours as much as it is mine.

We expected to be a little scary to some of the "Yakutat as usual" people around here, but so many have seen what we are doing and been inspired by it. Then... there are those "others". It was brought to my attention yesterday that someone had printed out a page of my blog, highlighted anything that could possibly be considered offensive (to someone looking to be offended) and posted this on bulletin boards around town. Surprisingly, I don't think I gave them a whole lot of fuel and they had to highlight things like "So... Gordy has been expecting a weak run..." and "...Fairweather Day, our annual community event/sometimes drunken brawl". Usually, my opinions are a little more obnoxious...

Well, Gordy has been predicting an off coho run. All indications were that it was a struggle 5 years ago that matched the other poor returns we have seen recently. He was in here a couple days ago and shared the "why he was wrong" explanation and he educated me on a lot of fascinating things about how these fish behave. If you have a chance to stop by the Fish and Game office and talk to Gordy about the salmon around here and our ever changing landscape, you will be in for a treat. This is such a complicated biological puzzle, no super-computer, let alone a human could have a glacier's chance in Arizona to master it all. Gordy does a pretty amazing job at trying - but he still missed it on this year's run... maybe... we will have to see how it all works out. But at the moment, it is shaping up to be a pretty good showing.

I will admit in hindsight that calling Fairweather Day a "drunken brawl" is unfair to the modern organizers. They have worked very hard to make it more of a family event and make the entire community feel welcome and involved. We were still called in that next day to jail guard, so in spite of the effort of many to make it a wonderful community event, it is still a "sometimes drunken brawl". As the person who gave me this sheet said, "we all say it, but you put it in writing"...

My hope is that this fly shop and this web site can be a positive influence for Yakutat, as well as a positive place for people throughout the country to come, learn, share and sometimes buy. Our philosophy of not jacking up prices so far has translated into building trust with our customers and I hope that I continue to earn your trust. Really, you have been my inspiration and I have so enjoyed learning from all of you that have called, e-mailed and stopped in here at the hangar. My life has been out on the Italio, not the Situk, so I thank you all for sharing with me and helping me to learn and grow.

In spite of the efforts of a small few (with emphasis on "small") to take my blog words and create controversy when none exists, I do plan to continue to share our experiences here, share opinions, laughs and photos. On occasion, I may air some of Yakutat's dirty laundry and point out some problematic issues around here that we can solve through the interesting dialog I have had with many of you. I hope you don't mind and will continue to give us your friendship and support, even though not everyone appreciates what we are doing here.

Change is scary and this fly shop - and our philosophy - is definitely a change for Yakutat. I don't intend to change our philosophy to calm the fears of people who have essentially been ripping people off for decades. In fact... Boo!

Well, it has been two weeks since my last blog, so here is a rundown of what has been happening around here... Doug and Lisa arrived on the 9th and we headed out for our kayak trip to Hubbard the next morning. I had our gear and boats shuttled up to Haenke Island at the head of Disenchantment Bay, only to find out that the ice flows were so thick, my shuttle boat was unable to get all the way up there. Instead, or left the gear piled on the beach at the first wash around Point LaTouche. We had Mark with the Yakutat Charter Boat Company deliver us to the gear and we began the adventure there...

As Mark departed, we checked the gear - a bear had paid us a visit, popping both water jugs, chewed up both my Therm-a-rests and apparently sucked on the Coleman propane bottles (not punctured, but really slimy). We started a fire and thoroughly burned the damaged gear so we wouldn't have to take it along, then loaded up the boats and paddled toward cooler waters.

Paddling off toward Haenke Island, the big rock blob on the left, with Hubbard Glacier and Gilbert Point just beyond.

Our first full day was a gorgeously sunny one. We made good use of it, paddling along Hubbard's face, watching huge calvings and getting sunburns.

This shows Gilbert Point - the point that Hubbard will press up against and seal off Russell Fiord. You can see how far the glacier wraps around the point now. When Doug and Lisa went with me on a similar trip in 2005, we could easily see through the gap unobstructed. Not anymore...

These photos show the far left edge of Turner Glacier. Turner is also advancing and spreading wide across both flanks.

Sunset from our campsite, over Turner... the dark areas are where the previous photos were taken at close up.

Paddling around in Beluga Bay on our last full day by the glaciers. So sign of whales, which were out feeding along Esker Creek - farther out in Yakutat Bay.
Our last glimpse of Hubbard and Turner, just before we rounded Point LaTouche and open ocean.
The storm hit pretty hard on the last couple days of our trip. We were fine at the Haenke campsite, but once we had to pack away wet tents and gear, everything was soaked. We decided to paddle all the way back to Yakutat in two days (one wet night) instead of three (two wet nights). We had a couple hours of hard work paddling through up to 12 foot swell.
Our last day was calm and gorgeous once again. The fog rolled in, making the paddle through the islands a dreamy experience.

Heading through Hatchet Pass, just about a half hour before reaching the harbor and the end of our trip.

Where is our summer going? My big kayak trip to Hubbard Glacier is already upon us and we head out in the morning. Sorry if I haven't responded to the photos for the contest that I have received and other messages. I'll be back next Saturday to try and catch up before I head out to the Italio for my own silver fishing. I will post some photos from the trip when I get back. In the mean time, Teen will be holding down the fort at the shop. Be nice to her!

By the way, the Forest Service did organize a river clean-up last week. Assisted by the Saltwater Inc crew (the company contracted to do a marine mammal study), they pulled a ton of junk off the Situk. They did a really great job, so hopefully it will inspire some of the fishermen to pack out all they bring in. Maybe a little more...

With our jail guarding shifts this weekend, I was in a hurry to get the kids to bed, so I could get a couple hours of sleep before relieving Teen and the Cop Shop. You would think some things would be easier than they are. I yelled "Last one in bed is a rotten egg" and Eden beat her brother to bed... The she had a melt down because she wanted to be the rotten egg... At 5, I don't think she quite understood the concept. "OK, you can be the rotten egg too, just go to sleep!" Kids...

I did a little editing on the last blog entry after talking with the folks at the Forest Service. The massive amount of of flagging tape garbage we packed out was not theirs, so my apologies to the guys at the Forest Service for implicating them. Fluorescent plastic flagging tape isn't a whole lot better than a trail of beer cans when hiking through a remote and picturesque place like Italio Falls. They have been packing out a lot of this junk as well, so... if you happen to be out and about on a bear trail with a roll of flagging tape, please keep it in your pocket, so it doesn't end up filling mine...

After posting about the new shirt designs night before last, we received a couple orders already. Boy, this internet-thing is pretty cool. Sales aside, it is important to get out of the shop and do a little hands-on research. I don't get to play my get-out-of-jail-free card very often, but I do try to make the most of it when I can. Yesterday was definitely one of those days!

Tim is a young guy from Oklahoma here for the summer with Cross Timbers Forestry. He has been building a rod here in the shop for much of the past few weeks and it turned out spectacularly. The rod is a gift for his grandpa (Tim Sr.) and grandpa is coming up on Tuesday. The rod finished drying Thursday night, so of course we had to go out and test it Friday!

Here Tim is, wrapping the all-titanium guides on his Sage Xi2 8wt 4 piece blank. I ordered a couple blanks in my initial rod order because I needed to buy 24 rods for the shop and two blanks were cheaper than complete rods. I had no idea we'd actually be building rods like we are. Looks like we'll have 4 rods under the shop's belt by fall.

So... where better to test out a new rod than the most spectacular and most dear place in my heart - Italio Falls. After a rather late start, we headed out to the end of the road to Harlequin Lake. With skiff at hand, we motored across through the icebergs to the trail head. From there, a three mile hike into the West Fork of the Italio, a short ford and on to Italio Falls...

It has been 4 years since I last did any trail maintenance. Boy, does it ever show. The Devil's Club was your basic nightmare to crawl through.

Armed only with a brand new fly rod, a 9 year old and a Weimaraner, we headed into the depths of the Alaskan wilds. Italio Falls is a beautiful obstacle that the sockeye have to climb to get into Italio Lake. The drop is about 8 feet, with a series of steps. The sockeye can only get over the falls if we have a flood This year, it flooded, so there were no fish holding below the falls. They made it up and over during last week's big flood. That is a very good thing for the health of the run, but made it tough to break in Tim's new rod.

As spectacular a setting as Italio Falls is, we were on the hunt for a fish. So... we wandered downstream about a half mile to the fork, where west meets east. There is a massively deep hole there cut into the bedrock from when the Yakutat Glacier filled all of Harlequin Lake and part of the melt flowed out through the West Fork. It was too deep to see into the bottom, but I had a few subtle strikes. I had Tim slide into my spot and in short order, he had a fish on. He landed this nice little Dolly Varden Char on grandpa's gift.

We all had a few strikes, but that was the only fish landed for the day. Good enough. Sometimes it isn't about numbers. It is about being in a heavenly place with your son, your dog and a good friend like Tim.

By now, it was getting late and we had a long hike back out, a jet-boat trip to the bridge and an hour drive back to the shop. It was a great day out in the water and in the forest that I love so much.

Well, our third month of operating comes to a close today and we still haven't figured out the shopping cart software for the web site. Sorry all who wanted to buy stuff online, especially since we sold out of the small inventory of shirts and hats in April. We do have more in stock for those original embroidered designs, plus some new screen printed designs. In addition to the "Proverbs 21:19" shirts, here are two more that we just finished...

This is in two colors for adult sizes and two colors for kids. The photo above came from the printer and the shirt colors don't quite match perfectly. But it gives you an OK idea of what they look like. These shirts are $13.00 for the kid sizes, $16 for adult small-Xlarge and $18 for XXlarge..

The "Kid" design:

So... we have regular camo and pink camo, plus heather grey and navy for the kid sizes. The "I Play with my Food" image is full-sized on the front of the kid shirts.

On the adult sized shirts, the "I Play with my Food" logo is on the back, with the dead fish and fly shop writing on the left breast. This was a fun one to design.

Although we don't have the web site working yet, we have sent several orders out in the mail. If you missed getting a souvenir when you came, or need anything Simms and Sage makes, or if you need an unusual color of Glo Bug yarn, send me an e-mail to info@situk.com, or call between 8am and 8pm Alaska time (907)784-3087.

With the exceedingly slow fishing this season, we have been keeping ourselves busy here in the shop. I thought you might enjoy a few photos of the family busily learning to tie flies around the table:

You have to appreciate the humble feeling when you have to have your 9 year old show you what you are doing wrong. Tanis and Eden both have a little bucket of flies they have tied on the counter. When we sell one, they get 80% (the shop gets a 20% commission on consignment sales, therefore...). Tanis has to figure out what his commission is to get it and then divide up his earnings between savings, tithe and what he gets to blow. Well, Eden doesn't have to do that work, but still gets her earnings from the forced child labor... And we get to count fly tying as art for HomeSchool credit! Woo, hoo! He also gets a little science and math in there too.

On Friday, a couple Forest Service temps stopped in at the shop to ask for a donation for "Family Fishing Day", an annual event no one seems to bother planning more than a day ahead. Had I known, we would have been more involved with the event. Oh well. As it is, we closed the shop for a couple hours yesterday and took the kids fishing for Northern Pike on Post Office Lake - creatively named after the building it sits next to. Not necessarily the most picturesque setting for a fishing adventure, but it is plugged full of pike!

There were a mess of local kids running amok in canoes, armed with little spin rods and spoons. As Tanis and I walked across the church parking lot with fly rod in hand, we were asked by several people, "Are you going to fly fish?" Not too sure why this would be such a shock, but as many of you know, Yakutat hasn't really supported its fly fishing visitors very well in the past.

We stepped to the shore just as a gaggle of hooligans came ashore carrying a 5 gallon bucket of writhing pike to get measured for the derby. Tanis and I paddled out into the middle of the lake and he demonstrated a pretty good casting technique, not so patient an actual fishing technique though and demanded to use the spin rod. OK Tanis, this is your day, not mine.

In short order, I was handing the fly rod off to him to fight our first hook-up. Shouts came echoing across the lake at a regular pace from kids in other canoes, "I got one", followed shortly by "he broke off". I had just ordered in a batch of Rio's knottable steel leader, which worked great to keep our flies from being sawn off by those razor-sharp pike teeth. Tanis wasn't able to land either of the two fish I hooked on the fly (a purple dumbbell bunny leech with pink hackle collar), but he did land one with the spin set-up. We had multiple other strikes including a couple that hit right on the surface as we were pulling out to cast again. These are a voracious fish species and the lake is plugged with them. Many of the dark lakes around Yakutat have pike populations, not just the infamous "Pike Lakes" that reside about half way between 9 Mile and the end of the road.

For a drizzly day in Yakutat while the rivers are all a raging torrent of mud, it was a lot of fun to hook a few fish in a matter of 10 minutes total on the water. Teen was calling us back to shore, so that Eden could have a turn. There was also a long line-up of other would-be fishers along the shore, so I didn't want to dominate the boat usage. Tanis wasn't too thrilled after I made him release his pike and everyone else got to keep theirs.

Eden was more interested in paddling the canoe than fishing, so we made a brief "spin" around the launch area before heading in for burgers and dogs. I had to leave early to get back to the shop, but Teen stayed on so Tanis could participate in the casting contest. I heard a couple remarks from the temporary Forest Service river rangers that they were amazed the event wasn't cancelled because of the rain. It was explained to them that if we cancelled kids events because of rain, we wouldn't ever do anything - this is Yakutat! And we had a great turn out for the event. Next year, we'll have a few fly rods geared up, so people won't be so shocked to see people catching fish with flies. I know we could have had a few hits on a mouse pattern skipped between the lily pads. Now THAT would have turned some heads...

A big thank you to the folks at the Forest Service who braved the sprinkles to leave the office. The kids had a great time and even a few parents did too. And who can turn down free food? If you happen to be coming up next year when this event happens, think about helping out for a day of something different. I know you probably have your own kid events at home, but it was a nice way to hook a couple pike and make some kids smile.

As you know, I'm usually on the Italio from May through November, so it has been interesting to watch how things unfold here in town and on the Situk. There is a very heavy camping contingent for the steelhead run, but virtually no pup-tenters throughout the salmon season. We see campers on the Italio, so I was finding it odd with the additional fishing pressure in town that there weren't more people floating the river and camping along the way at the good holes, or using the "official" campground at 9 Mile. Is it the fear of bears that keep people in the lodges in town, or just the need to be closer to the bar?

In April and May, there is literally no room up at 9 Mile - in the snow - for anyone else to pitch a tent. I myself am a fan of extremely remote camping and fishing, so I don't necessarily see the appeal of having dozens of tents clustered together along a road, but at least they are on the river and fishing long before anyone else can get there. I had several groups come and beg for pallets and boxes from the hangar, so I have been saving all my scrap wood for the next batch of campers to use as firewood. Since early May, I don't know of anyone who has camped out under the drizzle, so now I have a pile of wood no one seems to want to use. Just in case anyone wants to brave the bears and bugs out there, I have scrap wood you are welcome to take off my hands. Just stop on at the shop.

My next camping trip isn't till August 10th. I'll be paddling to Hubbard with the Levins again, a couple that asked me to guide them on their honeymoon 4 years ago for a really special and remote 9 day trip. Doug and Lisa are coming back for another Hubbard trip, so it will be just Teen and the kids in the shop from August 10th to August 17th. I did two Hubbard trips last year and I seem to be focusing my adventure trips there instead of Harlequin Lake to the Yakutat Glacier. As much as I love floating the Italio and fly fishing up at Italio Falls as part of those trips, there just isn't very much ice in Harlequin anymore. It is certainly a lot easier to paddle to the Yakutat Glacier instead of all the way to Hubbard. Both are amazingly dynamic with Hubbard advancing as much as 150 feet in a day and Yakutat gradually retreating as it slowly dies. Yakutat eventually will recede out of Harlequin Lake entirely and once up onto the bedrock, the silt will eventually disappear making the Dangerous into a clear stream. This is what has happened to the Akwe, now that it has been decades since the glacier has been down into Akwe Lake.

This is such a dynamic area, ever changing and evolving. I'll save my views on Hubbard and Russell "Lake" for another time.

I have really appreciated the comments and suggestions I have been receiving from you guys. As time permits, I will be implementing a lot of them. My sincere apologies to a few of you that I haven't responded to directly. When heading out to the Italio each week, I have fallen behind a bit and managed to miss a few that migrated up in my inbox. When I come back to town, there are enough fires to put out that I haven't been able to catch back up on those things. So... this will be my last week of commercial fishing for sockeye and I'll hopefully get to all those things I haven't been able to do thus far.

Suggestions range from specific products we need to sell in the shop, fishing reports for halibut, water temperatures and flows on the web site, bear reports, additional services like drift boat rentals, etc. With the exception of my week-long kayak trip to Hubbard the second week of August, I should have plenty of time to start working on a lot of these things before I spend the fall out on the Italio guiding. Please keep the suggestions and comments coming. The more you help, the better we can make this shop and better fill the needs of the fly fishing community.

Drawing on an envelope that arrived today in the mail from Gary Hansen with a bunch of great input for the shop. Thanks Gary! Drawings are appreciated, but certainly not necessary when making suggestions... :-)

My apologies to anyone who may be confused by the sign on the porch of my house advertising the "new fly shop"... My house is the one along the waterfront right above the main dock in town. A few people have come up onto the porch looking for the shop to find a messy residence instead. I am putting up the big sign that includes a map to the hangar today, hoping it ends some confusion. Two fly shop signs on the other hand may double the confusion though. The fly shop is in fact at the Yakutat Airport, in the old derelict WWII hangar. The hangar still looks like it should be condemned, but we are here!

It appears that yesterday the bite was on. A combination of a good shot of fish moving in, light and weather conditions, etc. It didn't really matter which Hot flies people used, so long as the presentation was good enough. We had a run on flies here at the shop, with the last of my rainbows getting sold. The greens were also a hit yesterday, along with the standard red. As much as I appreciated selling Eden's first flies, they looked like they were tied by a 5 year old! The kids are busy tying up a batch of bi-color flies with red and green for a particular group.

This was a really good day. I'm so glad I made it back from the river in time to experience it. Gorgeous sunny day out, slow in the shop until all of a sudden it was a zoo. The fishing was VERY good in the lower river in spite of the crowds and it was the magic "Hot" series of flies that were working. Good to get some positive feedback including a report that within an hour of being guided, the guide was begging for some of our flies off his "dudes".

Then it happened. In the feeding frenzy over the fly drawers, they grabbed the "display" flies as well. Some Hot's tied with some unusual color combinations - in other words, we have ANOTHER PROFESSIONAL FLY TIER in the family! Yes, Eden, my 5 year old daughter has sold her first flies. Two more of Tanis' flies sold too. Thanks guys for making my day, let alone making their day. They got over it within moments of getting paid their "commission". I'm still enjoying it all though.

Good news! Greg at Yakutat Seafoods does have and is willing to sell fish direct. Price for FRESH sockeye in boxes of 50lb with three gel-packs is $3.00/lb. Also, he can sell 50lb boxes of local halibut for $11.50. I'm going to work on getting king crab legs, but I won't have an answer on that for a week.

Here is the catch... Sockeye are fresh Sunday PM till Wednesday AM. All local fish is shipped out by Wednesday. So... IF there is interest (and it looks like there will be), I will see about getting some chest freezers here in the hangar and we can stockpile some fish for throughout the week. Funny thing of course will be that frozen fish will be a bit more expensive than fresh due to the high cost of electricity here in Yakutat. Plus, it will be good for the fish to be pre-frozen before you fly home. They will stay frozen in the box for days in transit, where you may have spoilage issues with the fresh boxes depending on how far away you live.

Please e-mail me if you have an interest in getting pre-boxes fresh or frozen sockeye, halibut, or king crab.

Well, I suggested people buy already boxed and frozen sockeye to take home and release the ones they catch... Of course I didn't bother to look into where to buy and who was selling... Now that we are getting asked this here at the shop, I'm looking into who you can buy from. I wasn't really planning to become a supplier through the shop, but the fish plant apparently doesn't sell directly to the public. They will however sell to me and I can resell it to the public if there is demand. I'm looking into it and will see what kind of price they will charge.

Right now, they are buying sockeye in the round (with guts and head) from the fishermen for about $1.50/lb. By the time you clean a salmon, you lose about 1/3rd of the weight, then tack on the money they will want to make on the processing and I would expect the price to be around $3-4.00/lb. I'll also look into halibut and see if we can get any other specialty items like king crab. Let me know if this is something you'd want to get and I'll get it.

Tanis taught Eden how to tie a fly. Granted Hots are just about the simplest fly there is, but it turned out pretty good. And me without my camera today... It is on display in the shop.

Early this morning, a group of nice people from Utah were waiting at the door of the shop for me to unlock. They needed to tie up some flies, so we sat around the vises for a half hour before they headed out fishing. Teen agreed to let me out this afternoon to play... I mean do some research. After our morning crew departed, Tanis took over at the vise and produced a handful of really good looking sockeye flies. Armed with my stock of "unique" Hot combinations, Matt, Garrett and I headed out along with a novice named Nick.

We arrived at 9 Mile a little after noon. There was a group of Germans already there fishing on and under the bridge. While I geared up and threaded nick's rod, a lady yelled "bear" (with a cute accent), then hid inside their rental car. Moments later, another in their group yelled that there were three bears and he climbed into the car too. Matt piped in with some comments back about Goldilocks, but I don't think anyone got it... The three scary bears wandered harmlessly off into the trees with no sign of the little fair haired girl.

Garrett - fresh from his rod building adventure stepped into the river first, but under the bridge. Matt told me to go ahead and hook one, so I positioned myself up above the bridge about 100 feet where there were a handful of fish scattered across the river. Doing the textbook sockeye process... roll-casting the line across the seam, mending upstream, letting the Hot fly sink while I let a little line out... I hooked a small fish on the 4th cast, fought him a little while, then he shook it.

I hollered at Garrett to get his butt out from under the bridge and come up where there were fewer fish, but we had some current he could use to drift through. He came up, but insisted on casting upstream over and over. After telling him a dozen times to cast at a 45 downstream, he said he had been trained to cast upstream... "OK, but how many sockeye are there in Utah? If you want to catch a sockeye, don't cast upstream like that."

Well, Garrett is Garrett and he isn't about to start learning anything at this point in his life... :-) So I went up and helped Nick on his technique. He seemed eager to try something new. Then I made a few more casts down below everyone and had two good genuine strikes, before Matt and I wandered upstream. We ran into the morning Utah crew in the parking lot and recommended they head upstream with us as well.

Matt landed two fish in Anne's hole including a gorgeous resident rainbow! I walked pretty far up, but saw the Utah group up around the next curve and decided to head back down and leave the river to them. There was not a lot of fish up there. A pod of about 30 sockeye in one difficult spot and I wasn't willing to change my set-up to try and reach them. I was determined to fish only with Tanis' flies from this morning, so just the unweighted Hots and my sink tip.

Back down to the bridge, Garrett and Nick had moved out of the good spot and were thrashing the water to a froth just below in the deep pool. Garrett had given up on using actual sockeye flies and had some awful splitshot-yarn ball thing happening. Not what I wanted to watch, so Matt and I continued downstream. Not many fish down there either, but spotted 5 guys down on a curve with the deep pool Matt and I worked two weeks ago. Unfortunately, they weren't actually fly fishing... just throwing their "fly" and cluster of split shot out, waiting three seconds and yanking. We sat down to observe for a bit and they became nervous.

Mr. Red Hat brought in a small sockeye hooked in the ass, but tried to lead it around the corner out of sight. I hopped up and crossed the river to exchange a few words. By the time I arrived, he had his fingers through the gill, but then bent down and released his illegally caught dead fish. We have only 14,000 sockeye in the system and we need a minimum of 30,000 to keep the run alive. They had a lovely pile of dead snagged fish at their feet on a stringer, so they didn't exactly get my "nice" side.

Back across the river, Matt and I sat observing their wonderful river ethics. Even received a nice hand gesture from Mr. Red Hat not very well concealed. Gee, that sure hurt my feelings. Anyway... they didn't look like they were having a whole lot of fun snagging fish. In fact, long before I said anything, they looked like they knew they were jerks and were miserable about their choice of actions. Matt made the comment that people would never ever think of doing this in their home water. Why on earth would they come here and do it in ours? I did cross back over and say to the one guy who acted like he cared that I would be happy to teach them to actually catch sockeye in the mouth. It is a lot more fun getting them to take a fly in the mouth than in the ass.

We wandered back to the bridge to find Garrett unsuccessfully trying to "line" sockeye in the pool. He insisted it was a great technique that would work. He had released two fish already - that he had snagged in the tail, but it was only a matter of time before he would accidentally snag one in the other end too... Um... is that any more fun than what Mr. Red Hat was doing? OK Garrett. At least you released them.

Another two vanloads of people arrived and I was done. I called down to Garrett I was ready to go, but Nick had hooked into a sockeye and was fighting it. Garrett stepped in to help land it - by grabbing the line and dragging it to shore. OOPS! It broke off. Another problem - Nick borrowed my rod, so it has 10lb tippet on, not 40lb cable... Hey, did Nick just hook a sockeye in the mouth, doing what you are supposed to do to catch a sockeye - with an actual sockeye fly?!?! With a fly my 9 year old son tied this morning??!!??!!

Did I mention sockeye do bite, if you use something that looks like what they might eat in the ocean and present it like their food would look like in the ocean? Amazing. I do get really tired of hearing how they don't bite and the only way to catch a sockeye is to snag them (or line them which is snagging in the mouth by the way). Like I said, I would be happy to give some pointers to anyone interested in getting sockeye to bite. The morning Utah group hooked several upstream and several more just above the bridge where I hooked mine earlier - using red Gamakatsu #4 hooks and a little tuft of red Krystal Flash, or about 4 strands of the rainbow flashabou. Those are the two patterns they have been using this week with great success.

The biggest problem with sockeye here is that Fish and Game has the most liberal bag limit for the most difficult salmonid to catch. If we had a two fish limit (like we do for silvers - the easiest salmonid to catch), most people would feel they had a successful day. As mentioned before, some people have been catching as many as 8 an hour on hot flies presented well.

Or, you can keep glancing over your back in constant fear that Goldilocks will see you dragging them to their death by the ass. I think I'd take the mouth hook every time over that. But then again, this is my home water and I treat it with the respect it deserves.

Thank you Jim for pointing out my boo boo. So... those great new bible quote shirts have a typo. Sure glad they sold so well... it is Proverbs 21:19, not 20:19. OOPS! So if you bought one, let me know and I'll send you the corrected ones when they arrive in a couple weeks. Or, there are the typo ones for a discount... maybe I should call them the "special limited edition" and charge double... :-)

But... on a better note, two of Tanis' flies just sold!!!! Both he and his mom are "commercial tiers"! After a pretty disappointing day (learning I wasted a thousand dollars on misprinted shirts), this really made it all OK and put things into perspective. A good reminder of what is important.

Proverbs 20:19-- "He that goeth about as a talebearer revealeth secrets: therefore meddle not with him that flatterith with his lips" Um... great advice, but for our fly shop shirts? Maybe a lesson there in blabbing about where the good fishing spots are...?!?!

Fishing on the Akwe was very slow this week, but life on the Italio is always a joy. As told below, there wasn't "enough room on the plane" for Tanis, so the poor guy had to fly out in the Cross Timbers helicopter:

Tim and John took Tanis on an aerial tour of Tanis Lake and Tanis River, where they say a half dozen brown bear and even three wolves out on a gravel bar. It was one of those incredible opportunities that come along once in a VERY long while and I'm so glad they were willing to make this little guy have such a special day. Then it was back to his WWII obsession filling sandbags for his foxhole:

My next bit of news is that we had more merchandise delivered today. My "bible quote" shirts arrived and have been a big hit already...

Commercial fishing opens tomorrow on the Akwe again, so I am flying out in a few minutes to do my "rape the land" thing. I'll be back to town on Tuesday for a fresh fish report. Tanis wasn't able to come out with me last week and was pretty upset, so this week we were making sure he would be on the river with me. Yesterday, Tim with Cross Timbers Forestry offered to fly him out in the helicopter and to give him a aerial tour of Tanis Lake... This morning, I broke the news to him that there wouldn't be enough room in the plane for him... he was trying to be strong, but still on the verge of crying... then I added, "so you'll have to fly out with Tim in the helicopter!" Don't you just love being a parent and torturing small children? :-)

Commercial fishing opened on the Akwe River this past Sunday, so I flew out to the cabin Saturday morning to get everything ready. I had very low expectations for our opening week, with the extremely late runs. Well, I wasn't surprised by the dismal outcome. It was the second worst opening week for a commercial opener I have ever had. We had some amazingly gorgeous weather throughout the weekend, which helped make for an amazing time on the water, regardless of how the fishing was. This is a very special time of year out on the Italio, with animals everywhere, the wildflowers in full bloom and the promise of returning salmon by the tens of thousands. I did at least get my lawn mowed, between taking naps and checking the net.

Young bears are running around everywhere. Thus begins another "training" season. I will be working with the young bruins to teach them that people are to be avoided in hopes that by fall, they will leave the sport fishermen alone and stay away from people. It doesn't always work perfectly, like last year when we had a couple aggressive ones that learned to associate people with food. Let's all plan to be more careful this fall with our catch, our lunches and our garbage to keep the bears wild and not habituated to people. I didn't see any moose, but there were fresh cow and tiny calf tracks everywhere each morning. The massive exodus of silver salmon smolt continues, so we had a pretty good survival rate this winter from last fall's spawn. I also had a visit from two guys staying in the Forest Service cabin, who remarked about being beaten at chess in 7 moves by some 9 year old the night before...

While waiting for my flight "home" to the cabin, we had some rod building lessons from our resident fly tying, rod building and all-around fly guru Matt. Garrett finally started wrapping his Sage VT2 with advice from Matt and sarcasm from me.

Before I left for "paradise", I did get our new road signs up. Keep a look-out for this sign directing you to the fly shop...

The Hangar only has two tenants at this stage, but we will be making more progress on the renovation throughout the summer - taking a break in the fall - then resuming renovations through the winter. I hope to have an additional shop open by next spring in time for the 2009 steelhead run. Tentative name would be "The Yakutat Adventure Company" with tents, camping gear, boat rentals (including drift boats) and anything else to support the needs of visitors to Yakutat. I have received a LOT of requests for additional services and products - many of which are needed, but don't quite fit into the "fly shop" category. Camping gear was a big area neglected locally that we will try to fill with the new shop.

Please don't hesitate to give me suggestions for the kinds of things you need for your trip and we will do all we can to bring those products and services to Yakutat. Most of you haven't been shy about making suggestions, so please keep them coming. These are your shops, so please help me make them the best they can be for your needs.

With the late run, the bump in traffic hasn't arrived like we expected. Slow sockeye fishing has made for another slow week in the shop, so we're catching up on some work around here. We did get a visit from a couple guys from Spain this morning, who will be flying out to the Raven cabin at Middle Situk tomorrow. After having visitors from all over the world already this spring, it was time I mounted the pin maps. Too late for Paolo and his group from Italy to leave their mark, at least from here on out we'll be able to see where all our fellow fly fishermen hail from.

Teen had the honor of course to poke the first pin in her home town of Melbourne, Australia, followed by Tanis and Eden putting the pin in for the Middle Italio River, Alaska. Two lonely pins down and hundreds to go. Make sure you leave your mark when you come into the shop! They will be in the hallway down toward the bathrooms.

I promised "Big" Garrett that I wouldn't "say" a word, so instead I'm typing it... I finally beat him at chess here in the shop. OK, probably not the "big news" I think it is. Oh well. Make sure if you meet him, you give him a healthy ration of crap about it. He sulked out of the building and hasn't been back.

Thank you to those of you who have sent in photos. I'll be working on getting some added here and I obviously need to get the contest rules written... Make sure if you send me a photo, you are the one who took it. If not, have that person send me a message saying it is OK for me to use it. Thanks!

While Matt was covering the shop recently, he had a chance to visit with a guy from New Jersey. When he returned home, he sent in a couple of his salt water flies for us to see. Matt and I have been discussing around the vise some good saltwater fly fishing options around here. Something that is totally neglected in Yakutat! Matt is looking forward to trying these 7" babies for silvers out in the bay come August.

Besides the Ankau Salt-chucks (home to the ultra-creepy mega-clam worms) and all the silvers that call that home in the fall, there are a multitude of small streams that enter Yakutat Bay. Access is limited to boats, unless Hans at Yakutat Coastal leaves his floats on the 185 into the fall. On my many kayak trips in the bay, these streams are teeming with salmon throughout August and September, while being too far out of the way for most of Yakutat's visitors. I love getting into the salmon in the salt - just off these creeks and streams, as well as hiking upstream for a more traditional day of fly fishing.

There was a "fad" recently where people wanted to catch a halibut on a fly rod just to say they did. OK, well what ever floats your boat. Fighting a halibut regardless of what kind of rod reminds me of trying to bring up a sheet of plywood from the bottom. Maybe an old tire on a good day... There are several species of rock fish that don't live at extreme depths that would be a kick to get into. Depths of 20 feet to the surface in fact. No one is doing THAT, so it may be worth taking a day to plunk around the rocky outcroppings and reefs to see what happens.

There are a lot of untapped species in and around Yakutat that would be a lot of fun on a fly rod. Sand Sharks are thought of as a garbage fish (especially when you are trying to target halibut in the midst of a dogfish school), but they'd be a blast with a 10wt. The way they follow a fellow fish all the way to the surface, you could have your own little feeding frenzy with a few of these flies and a steel leader.

Well, why not? On those really crowded days on the river, why the heck not go out and do something unusual - far away from the elbows of everyone else? There is a lot of great fishing to do around here that doesn't include the Situk and Italio.

I had the opportunity to head out to the Italio yesterday, so I left Teen to watch the shop. As you'd expect, there were all sorts of fun things for her to deal with... Nothing like hopping into the fire. The power went out and when it came back on, we had lost our phones and internet access. She struggled through trying to get credit cards to work, while the state arrived to ask questions about the hangar doors that she couldn't answer. Teen left the shop in Matt's hands while she ran to the post office. While she and Eden were gone, a moose cow appeared over by the terminal and in the excitement of cars and tourists, she trampled one of her two calves and really went nuts, charging cars and the people around the airport. Matt kept Tanis locked inside, but they were able to see her from the shop windows. Fun, fun, fun. There was also a bear involved at one point trying to get at the calves. Quite the fun little afternoon.

I on the other hand thoroughly enjoyed a day of peace and quiet. I flew out with the helicopter crew and they dumped me off on their way to Dry Bay. I opened the cabin up and cleaned up the mess left by Satan's minions (squirrels). I had a long list of things to do, but made sure the first thing was go down to the Akwe and see what things looked like. WOW! The mouth has moved even closer to the IRA camp! I suspect we only have about 10 more years of existence before the Akwe consumes our business completely out there. Yikes! The river was really flooded from this small shot of rain we just had and from the snow melt. There wasn't the slightest sign of fish and not a single seal in the mouth. Not a good sign.

The Middle Italio was plugged full of silver smolt. We haven't been seeing smolt flipping everywhere like we used to, so it is wonderfully refreshing to see so many in the river again. Let's hope the wet and warm winter we had helped the survival rate and our struggling run will recover. Time will tell... we have to wait another 4 years to see what happens. I did find one glass ball with markings, so the trip was a success.

Then I decided to lay down and take a SHORT nap. OOPS! I woke to the sound of the helicopter landing in the yard 4 hours later. Garrett hopped out and spent the afternoon helping me get my skiff out and ready - just in case I commercial fish later this month. I'm not holding my breath with the late and weak runs. I'm hoping the fly shop produces enough that I won't have to, but that is up to you... :-)

We had a great evening roasting chicken over a beach fire, perfecting Garrett's double-haul and exploring some of my "secret" fishing holes. We were casing over empty water this time of year, except for the millions of smolt flipping and flopping everywhere. They didn't bite...

The helicopter arrived the next morning to whisk Garrett off to another day of battling Devil's Club, then returned to bring me back to town. It was my first trip in a helicopter and it was GREAT, although I have to admit flying the DC-3 was still my favorite aviation experience. It is hard to ever top that!

With the "post steelhead" lull in full swing, I finally took a day off and closed the shop. With the sun shining and the winds calm, we packed up the family and hit the bay in our kayaks. Leaving Sandy Beach by the big dock, we paddled out into the bay toward the Ankau Inlet.

We paddled down the long narrow channel with the tide coming in to give us a little help. Under the Ankau Bridge and into the salt chucks... We landed at the far end, hiked through the trees to the outside beach of Ocean Cape and had a great bon fire and hotdog roast. Unfortunately, I forgot the camera in the kayak, so no photos from the beach.

At the top of the tide, we headed back to the boats for the paddle home. On the way back out, we encountered some wildlife in the Ankau... "Clam Worms" swimming along the surface of the still water by the HUNDREDS. The name "Clam Worm" seems harmless enough, but these are no ordinary worms! These are EXTREMELY high on the creep-factor scale.

Clam Worms usually live burrowed into the mud and eat algae and small invertebrates. They are also usually pretty small from a few inches to a foot or two in length. Well, isn't Yakutat fun? Our Ankau Clam Worms grow to more than 4-6 feet in length! And are predators that will go after much larger prey. Covered with little undulating "fins", these creepy critters look like a gigantic swimming millipede and have a proboscis clamp that they extend out their mouths to grab hold of prey and drag inside to digest.

They are also solitary creatures that live in the mud. Well, yesterday they were neither! They were all swimming enmass on the surface. Not scared of anything, they came right up to the boats and would pick and peck along the side, swimming along side us for quite a ways. It seems yesterday they were up to the surface "socializing" because - like so many critters this time of year - they are mating. Nothing like being surrounded by a few hundred 4-foot long horny worms to really give you the willies! I have a couple movies of them, but those are way too creepy to show here!

It was an amazingly beautiful day to be on the water, especially witnessing our little creepy worm sex show. A little hazy, but you can still make out St. Elias on the horizon as we paddled back home. The whole trip was just under 10 miles of paddling, but the kids (and Teen) held up great. Eden hasn't been up for the challenge of kayaking yet, so this was a great test trip and wonderful family day. Tanis is actually capable of being helpful on occasion, so is making a good paddle partner for his mom's boat. Paddling one way between Sandy Beach and the end of Ankau only takes about 1 1/2 hours, so three hours total on the water and about two hours of beach time. It was a very good "day off" from the shop. Well, "day off" is relative, since Tanis and I held court till 11am before heading home.

Next day off? Probably in November... Our parents keep harping on us that we need to get away from the shop and not think about "work". Um... I get to sit in a living room more comfortable than my house and talk about fishing! What am I supposed to do on my day off? OK, maybe I could actually GO FISHING, but they probably wouldn't count that as not working anyway. I don't think I can win with their way of thinking... Sounds good to me.

Teen's brief adventure in fly tying turned suddenly into a "career" when we noticed two of her flies were missing! Someone bought them! She only tied 4 black krystal buggers last week with Matt's help. Little did we know someone would scoop a couple of them up with the rest of their flies and buy them... Had I realized what happened, I would have made a big embarrassing deal out of it. Oh well. She and Tanis will just have to tie more up. I wonder how they fished?!?! No way to find out, since we didn't realize they were buying "those flies" when they plopped them on the counter. :-)

The last time the fly shop rooms were occupied, it was the early '70s by the Weather Service and the FAA. I remember as a kid that every day at noon, they would set off the old WWII air raid siren. So... I managed to find my own WWII original air raid siren (don't you just love the internet!) and as of yesterday, we have been irritating all our airport neighbors at noon with it. It is one of the smaller "neighborhood" hand crank sirens, so it isn't really really loud. Loud enough to be fun though. If you happen to be loitering around the hangar around noon, you are welcome to be the one to irritate all the airport tenants... :-)

Well, this was the perfect day to forget the camera at home. Matt has been teaching fly tying classes - to Teen!!! She is how on her 4th Black Krystal Bugger of the evening and the first one entirely on her own. She has now mastered the art of the whip finish! Expect to see these "masterpieces" on Ebay, or at a fly shop near you. I am so enjoying how she is participating in this whole "fly shop" thing. We have been somewhat uncertain of what will happen come September when I need to be on the river guiding. Perhaps, you will be able to call upon "Expert Fly Tier - Teen Miller" for advice...

We closed the shop early the past two nights - for Mother's Day (so I can continue to have a fly shop) and last night for the Cub Scout Pinewood Derby. Eden was invited to participate and as it would happen, her jewel encrusted hot pink race car beat the snot out of Tanis' battleship grey sportster. I can't find the camera, so no photos. Sorry.

Mat, our resident tying expert was kind enough to give Tanis a few pointers this evening. We'll have Tanis' "Green Lion" fly on display here at the shop. I'm sure you can even purchase one of them from him. Every 9 year old has a price...

My big Simms order arrived today, so we have plenty of fleece and good Gore-Tex jackets for what ever weather comes in the next few weeks. I sold out of virtually everything I initially ordered last weekend. My new toy also arrived... My chess table as seen in the photo!

My goal for the shop was to create a place where people would feel comfortable coming and spending time, not just spending money (although that has been nice too...). Please feel free to come and have a cup of coffee, use the internet, tie some flies, or just relax and visit. This is your shop, so please enjoy it.

This has been a slow start for our first season, but at least the fish have started to show at long last. Our first two weeks in the shop were "deathly slow" and I was beginning to wonder if this little fly shop adventure was a really poor decision. (We sold three hats and one t-shirt in two weeks!). These last two weeks have confirmed my initial hunch - that Yakutat has room for some quality services. Thank you to everyone who has come by to visit, drink coffee and share some river tales.

I have to admit my learning curve has been a steep one. The slow start made me hesitant to over-buy merchandise (even had I been able to afford to), but at the moment, we officially have three XXL t-shirts and four total Glo Bugs... Orders are enroute, so we should be fully stocked within a day or two on many of those things. It will take me a bit longer to figure out how to manage inventories properly, so again, thank you for all your patience and support.

I didn't want to get into the rental business, however the airlines had a bit of a "challenge" connecting baggage with passengers last week. Yes, I sold a couple rods as a result, but that isn't how I want to make my sales. So... we will be acquiring a fleet of Sage rods and reels for rent. It is going to be too late for this year's steelhead run, but we'll have them in place before the salmon hit in earnest in another month.

Teen and the kids have been able to spend most of their days here with me helping to stock the shelves and build pegboards, which is yet another reason I started this business - to spend time with the family. Just make sure you don't hesitate to kick Tanis off the Internet Cafe computer if you need to check e-mail. He can watch his WWII "Dogfights" shows any time! I hope to have the fly tying table cleared off shortly too, as we get the remaining boxes of goodies out into the fresh air.

Building Updates:
No, we still don't have a working bathroom in this whole 38,000 square foot building, but with any luck, we will before sockeye arrive. For those of you interested, we will be doing off-season storage starting this year. Rather than hauling your Yakutat gear back and forth every year, consider loading it into a container for us to stack and store till the next time you arrive for another trip. It is one of the most often asked questions, so I think we have it figured out. We'll buy a bunch of fish totes and you can essentially rent the box. We'll stack them in the hanger there they will stay dry and secure. If you are interested, just ask.

I had more I wanted to update you on, but my brain is mush today. Last night as we were heading to bed, the phone rang... Someone had been arrested and since I am the local jailer... I haven't been to bed after jail guarding all night. Do me a favor, don't get arrested this summer! I have too much to do here, instead of babysitting adults... :-)

Fishing may be slow, but it has been a pleasure to meet so many new faces here in the shop. The jet has been either late or cancelled every day this week, so if you have idle time waiting, feel free to come loiter here. Hot coffee and free internet access either wireless, or through two computers at the far end of the shop. I don't have the fly vises set up yet, but once I do there will be a few of those around the big table by the heater.

Speaking of internet... Paul installed our HughesNet satellite dish this week, so we finally have high-speed internet. Still building more displays (I need a couple more pegboards and another large shelving unit) and more merchandise arrives almost daily. Working on getting signs up on the road, so people can find us. Pleasantly surprised this week with the number of people that have stopped by. Still trying to grow our merchandise selection for the fly gear as well as adding some nice jewelry for you guys to take home to bribe more fishing trips out of your wives... :-)

Don't hesitate to give me some pointers and advice on what you want to see from this shop. I'm looking into quite a few other manufacturers for tying materials, reels, fish porn (fishing books, DVD's, etc) and hopefully by summer, we'll have some brand new and totally accurate maps and aerial images. I know this isn't exactly news, but nothing exists off the shelf for Yakutat, so we are going to create our own maps from new satellite imagery.

Besides the shock when people come on at how good the place looks, the best reaction has been to the prices. We sold our first pair of waders yesterday and two rods last week. We are NOT doing the "Yakutat Pricing", so we have been able to match the real world. The web site isn't up yet obviously, but once it is, we'll be having free shipping and no tax. Off-season sales are what will either make, or break this shop.

Again, thank you all for all your support and encouragement. This has been a lot of fun creating the shop and to meet so many of you already.

My apologies for not updating this like I intended to. The shop opened April 1st at 9am and life has been a zoo since then. So... before I delve into the shop babblings, let me give you a river report:

The snow is pretty deep in the trees and along the river. With the heavy rains we have been having, that has made for some very high water the past few days. Quite a few fish in the upper river, but not a whole lot of fresh spring fish coming in the mouth yet. The water is still really cold, so pretty lethargic fish over all. But... with the rain and high water, there were some good numbers starting in today. Reports have been that the fishing is slower than average, but still better than this time last year. With this fresh shot of fish and the high water levels right now, I would expect to see them increasing in the bottom end throughout the week.

It is nice to have everyone popping into the shop to report on what is happening. I'm certainly not getting out to fish myself, so thanks for the info everyone.

My good friend, computer nerd and business partner Mark arrived a couple days before we were to open and having the extra hands was a lifesaver for hitting the April 1st deadline. Here is a photo run-down of the past couple weeks...

Starting at the top - merchandise being delivered, followed by building the display tables and drying some coffee cup coasters from alder limbs we swiped from along the road.

Eden was so excited about helping, so as soon as the "waterfall arms" were done, she just had to try them out by stripping off her clothes to hang them up... The arms were finished with stainless hex bolts to keep the hangers from sliding off. One shot in there of the fly display drawers. We don't have a whole lot of room, so the flies can't take up the usual huge swath of space through the middle of the shop.

More of the same, but from Mark's camera. Me opening the Sage box, the Simms display rack, Eden "helping", Tanis "helping"...

March 31st... Opening the Alaska Airlines igloo to find the crate carrying all our sales counter glass exploded. The glass was spread all over the floor of the igloo, but miraculously, nothing was broken! The FREE Internet Cafe computers getting set up, my brand new 1/2" drive drill and its sheared off head after only three holes drilled! The sales counter with glass, the rod case rack, Teen doing the final clean-up, learning the day before you open that the only fly shop display you actually bought (the Sage 24 rod rack) is back ordered three months and building something to get by when you have a lot better things to do. 4am on the 1st and ready to throw in the towel for the "night", 5 hours later after a very short nap, inventorying the flies, Teen and Eden entering data into the Point of Sale computer. Emma frantically suckling her bear after not seeing much of us these past couple weeks and Rusty - the recent addition to the family who appeared on our porch last month and wouldn't leave.

Mark left and although we were open, we were far from finished. Here is the rod display, sales counter in daylight (with a handful of Sage reels), the "lounge" where eventually we'll have fly vises around the table for everyone to tie flies and tell lies after a hard day's fishing. Drilling the "pegboard", inventorying the tying supplies, drying the pegboards after a coat of polyurethane and a look at some displays with stuff hanging.

A week into being a fly shop and the pegboards are finally going up. I didn't think the usual pegboards would look good in the shop, so we built these from scratch. Local full dimensional 2x8's (I ran out of the 2x12's already) for the end shelves and 3/4" maple plywood as the boards. lots of drilling, a coat of poly and then the task of driving a lot of 20D galvanized nails through the holes. They look really cool, but I wouldn't stand between them during an earthquake! At 9 years old, Tanis is actually pretty helpful when he wants to be. Since he is 9, that isn't very often. He's taking a break from HomeSchooling to give me a hand hanging the Gamakatsu hooks.

OK, that is about all I can deal with tonight. The shop is open daily from 8am to 8pm right now, so time to get a little sleep before heading back. After 2 weeks, we nearly have all the fly tying materials entered into the computer. More merchandise is arriving almost daily and we have a lot more yet to order. I figure we have about 1/3rd of what we need to stock at this point, but we also need to sell a few things before we can afford to order more. As of today, we have a great supply of tying materials and hooks. We have a modest selection of Simms waders, fleece, jackets, vests and gloves. If Alaska Airlines loses your rod, we have a great selection of Sage rods and a handful of reels. Lots of flies, the Under Armour arrived yesterday, so you have no excuse for getting cold out there on the water. A LOT of Rio lines, leader and tippet material. We still don't have bear spray and bug dope, but there haven't been any sightings of either on the river yet.

Sadly, the state has removed the snow pile. It is always fun to listen to the strange stories that the tourists tell regarding the pile. Last spring when we were flying home from a trip to Seattle, the guys on the plane were talking all about how each year there is a bottle of whiskey buried in it and the person who picks the date it emerges wins... Um... not quite. The snow gets piled in the middle of the ramp because the plows can't push it all the way to the far end. They run in circles all winter making the pile in the center. Then when it looks like the snows have ended, the scoop it up and dump it behind the hanger. They finished hauling it off today, so winter is over and spring is here. Forget about any groundhog, we look at a big mound of dirty snow to see if the state DOT thinks we have 6 more weeks of winter.

Otherwise, the shop continues to progress toward our opening date - now just 4 days away. The barge finally arrived with my doors and plywood, so hopefully we'll get those in and the last merchandise displays built. Simms, Sage, Rio and our big fly order have arrived, so we will have merchandise. Far from all our merchandise, but enough to make us feel like a fly shop on Tuesday. I'll put up a couple pictures tomorrow night on how the shop looks. I'm WAY too tired tonight. Blew half the day today because we took the cub scouts to the beach for a massive bon fire and weenie roast. Well, look at the sky above that snow pile! How could we not waste a few hours at the beach?

Last night, the Yakutat Eagles High School girl's basketball team brought home the 2A state trophy for the second straight year. Congratulations!

First of all, Tanis did beat his musher to Nome, by about 4 hours. He now unfortunately has to go back to regular school and prepping for his first attempt at standardized testing. We'll see how he does, since our HomeSchooling probably doesn't conform to the usual public school testing. Oh well. It is only 3rd grade.

In other news, we have made some great strides in the battle to finish the shop. I'm almost out of wood for building displays and things are looking great. Just learned yesterday that the AML barge will be delayed out of Juneau for another week. All my plywood and doors are onboard, so it will be a scramble at the last minute to get things ready. Or, we'll just be looking a little sloppy as we finish dealing with the doors after we open. Oh well. Could always be worse. Hey, it was a lot worse back in January...

Here are some photos of the latest progress:

Me: Sanding and sanding and sanding... I'm down to just a couple boards left of my massive woodpile. And a gorgeous break in the winter weather.

Teen and Eden behind the new sales counter. Just waiting on the glass now... And the barge!!!

The shop from two directions... Still need to fix the water damaged sheetrock and repaint as you can see, but coming along nicely. These are a week old, so more display shelves are built now.

The kids "helping"... I think Tanis was sucking the shop-vac to his face and making his lips flutter. Eden is just stuffing junk food in her mouth. So, both are playing vacuum in a way...

Progress on the shop moves along each day, but tonight, we are staying up late for Lance. Rooting for him and his team to cross under the arch in Nome sometime in the early hours of this morning. As I type, he is just one mile shy of the Safety checkpoint with King trailing by only seven miles. This has been a VERY exciting race this year and we have been glued to our Iditarod Insider streaming media. You gotta love technology in the bush when it actually works!

Tanis is up to 941 pages in his Iditaread race. He picked Ray Redington Jr. as his musher this year and is running 48 miles behind him at the moment. In the Iditaread (if you don't already know), you pick a musher and you have to try to beat them to Nome, reading a page for every mile the musher travels. Tanis is 171 miles shy of Nome, but has also been reading 6th grade level books. Not bad for an eight year old!

This is Tanis' third Iditaread. The first time around, Tanis HATED reading and it was such a struggle to get him to even try. Then Iditaread happened. He picked Tom Knolmayer because he was the first musher at the top of the page. He didn't realize it was page four... It was Tom's second running and his wife maintained a wonderful web site with daily updates and thoughts. We e-mailed during the race and to our big surprise, she mailed Tanis Tom's musher trading card and three dog booties actually worn during the previous Iditarod race. Well, to make this long story short... Tanis read 'round trip from Anchorage to Nome and back - over 2000 pages before the race was over. He has developed a love of reading, especially WWI and WWII related books. His current reader for the race is a biography of Sgt. York.

Our Grand Opening is in just three weeks. Boy, do we have a long way to go in such a short time. Planing the wood has been a very slow process with my little Ridgid cheapy planer, so I broke down and ordered a real one. It finally arrived today, so things will be picking up speed. The wood pile is getting smaller by the day as we trim the windows, followed by building display racks and shelves. We have about half of our orders placed, so we will definitely have the necessities when we open April 1st, but most of the inventory will gradually build over the course of this first year. No pictures this time, but we'll get some taken in the next couple days.

This is how the shop is looking at the moment. The tile floor is on and the rough cut spruce is stacked in front of the heater to dry out "again". This time last month, things were looking a bit different and I was wondering if we'd be able to meet our April 1st deadline - or even a summer opening for that matter. The weather warmed up and we experienced our first thaw of the season. The result was a massive flood of water in the hanger from all directions.

The hanger was renovated in 1959 to extend the original 3 story high roofline out to the outside edge of the two story office buildings that run along both sides of the bay. Now, we have an odd "third floor" that is the old ro