Fishing

(I welcome your comments and questions through the "comments" option below any entry. --Laura)

Most people who visit Alaska, whether by cruise or car or plane, will save some time for fishing and many will have their catches flash frozen and shipped back home for a future barbeque with a tale and a tail or two.


Fishing looms large in Alaskan history, whether commercial, subsistence, or pleasure, and it is a big issue today, too.  An entire section in the Anchorage Daily News (and other papers) is devoted to it.  Seattle business interests are often derided in the news for rapacious use of the state's natural resources.  Every sporting goods store posts pictures and comments about recent catches by shoppers. Anchorage businessmen pull on waders and take a lunch break at Ship's Creek downtown when the salmon run.  Even I, of all people,  subscribe to the fish and game automatic emails about updated fishing regulations for my part of Alaska, and have written both those administrators and the Alaska Daily News fishing editor with comments and questions (and they promptly wrote back.) 

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A rockfish caught in Prince William Sound

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Every Alaskan has lots of outdoor, seasonal "grown up toys" and the summer ones relate to fishing.   I've seen garages larger than houses.  In 2010 or 11, more than 100,000 (adult) fishing licenses were issued to Alaskans (out of a total population, kids included, of 700,000). Friends spend time and a lot of money on boats, shrimp pots, rods and reels and lures for every fish in the sea.  The real afficianados build separate kitchens for canning, smoking, wrapping, freezing, storing, packaging, and labeling the fish they catch.  Families preserve locations of fish wheels and fish camps for generations.  Many city-dwellers engage in what is called "combat fishing" on road accessible rivers on the first day of fishing season.  Every household has its own special recipes for the most delicious piscatory concoctions I have ever eaten.

Float and Ski Planes - No Roads, No Cars

A Cessna 185

(I welcome your comments and questions through the "comments" option below any entry. --Laura) 


Because Alaska is so vast, and because any arbitrary straight line intersects more mountain chains and bodies of water than people, it is sensible that Alaskans rely so much more heavily on air transportation than roads. A look at a map reveals very few highways, with numbers like Hwy 1 and Hwy 3!   Since the capital, Juneau, is squeezed in between mountains and the sea, it is accessible ONLY by air or water (and that is true for many communities).  Its grand total of 42 miles of road lead nowhere outside the municipality.  To drive elsewhere, Juneauans load their vehicles onto the Alaska Marine Highway ferries in order to depart at Haynes or Skagway for highway connections to the rest of the continent.  It is no surprise, therefore, that Alaska has the highest per capita ownership of private planes in the country, most of them small, old, beaten up, and beloved.  

With about 280,000 residents, the largest city in the state, Anchorage, contains about half of the state’s population. Logically, the city also hosts several airports for private planes.  The ones that visitors are likely to encounter for flight tours are Merrill Field, primarily for wheeled planes, and Lake Hood, the largest float/ski plane airport in the world, adjacent to Ted Stevens International Airport (ANC).  We fly in and out of Lake Hood on float planes and ski planes to get to our bush cabin, because we have no roads or grass strips for a runway. 

What is it like to commute by float plane?  What would your experience be?