Picturesque Copper River

Here's a picture of the copper river outside of chitna, when I went down there this year supposedly to fish. I never really did get a chance, since the water level was all wrong, and I had to go home soon after. But Chitna is a great place. The Chitnites are easy to get along with, there's a great little bar in 'town' (Uncle Tom's), and when things aren't so crowded, its easy to get to talking to people from all over the state. Soon after I took this, I was passed by a guy on a bike who was out sheep hunting south of there, and we got to talking about his trip - he also was unsuccessful in getting any meat that day. For all you transplants to AK, as soon as you're legal, you should go give dipnetting at Chitna a try. It's an experience and a half for most people, and even I find it a whole lot of fun.

I heard it called "Subsistence for College Students" once, and I had to laugh because that isn't so far from the truth!

Salmon and Avacado Sandwiches

I recently borrowed a book from a friend that has over 190 salmon recipes, which is a lot. Some of them I wouldn't eat. Some are quite good! Like this one. It takes salmon, boil it (poach I think is the term), and then you flake it.

Let that rest a bit. And then dice up some green onion. It should be small. Throw that, a healthy glob (1/2 cup) of mayo, some dill and some lime juice into a bowl, and then mix in the salmon. You're going to smear that on bread, or pilot bread for the authentic Alaskan experience. ;) Top with some lettuce and avacado!

By the way, I'm going to come off as a bit of a idiot, but apparently you aren't supposed to eat avacado skin. Well, I didn't know that...

Lawyers for Lamprey?

Switzerland as a country has officially jumped the shark. Well, they would have, if they hadn't have decided that Sharks deserve better. On March 7th, they're going to vote on whether animals deserve lawyers.

They're going to vote on whether animals deserve lawyers.

The debate took on a new dimension two weeks ago when prosecutors in the canton of Zurich accused an angler of having tortured a large pike, because the battle between man and beast took about 10 minutes.
Goetschel, in his capacity as the canton's animal lawyer, was in court to represent the dead fish. He regrets that the case, which isn't typical of his work, received so much attention.

Wh... what? Huh? Who? Seriously? Seriously?
I need a lawyer to represent me for all the pain and mental anguish this story has caused me trying to wrap my head around it.
On the other hand, dead fish have feelings too, I guess.

Switzerland:

Board of Fish makes a decision on Yukon Kings.

The Fish Board settles on something to try and salvage the Yukon King fishery. From the story from Daily News Miner:

FAIRBANKS - The Alaska Board of Fisheries on Sunday took what some fishermen say is a major and others say is a minor step toward rebuilding the declining Yukon River king salmon run.

In an attempt to get more older, bigger and more productive kings on the spawning grounds, the Fish Board voted to prohibit subsistence and commercial fishermen on the Yukon from using gillnets with mesh larger than 7.5 inches starting in 2011.

I'm not a fisheries expert, so I don't know if this will be effective - I'll ask some of the people across the hall. But I worry that for the lower Yukon, the gear change is going to hammer them. Like the news article said, people are already feeling times are tight... from Emo in the last two weeks alone, I've got two offers to sell me stuff they probably shouldn't be selling me.

We really need something other than commercial fishing down there. *sigh*

Lower Yukon Fishing season in summary

• King salmon harvested in 2009: 316
  

• Annual average of kings harvested in the 10 years before 2009: 35,027 

• Summer chum salmon harvested in 2009: 170,272 

• Annual average of chums harvested in the 10 years before 2009: 63,341 

• 2009 value of Yukon commercial fishing (summer chums and kings) for the fishermen: $556,256 

• Annual average fishery value to fishermen for the 10 years before 2009: $2.3 million 

The summary Stats from The Tundra Drums. Here's the original source. There's not much positive spin you can put on it. The monetary value is almost exclusively from chum salmon - 20k of the 2009 sum is from kings.