Net Fishing, Alaska

Fishing has never been a deeply held passion. In fact I cannot think of any deeply held passion I have ever had. I have fished some, especially when I was a kid living in Fairmount. My buddies and I use to have a whale of a time catching bluegills, sun perch and crawdads. One summer while in Alaska I got to go net fishing with the patriarch of one of the two teaching families that lived in the village year round and that was interesting.

We loaded the necessary nets and poles into the trailer attached to the four wheeler and headed down toward the Bering Sea. We turned left at the shore line and went another five miles or so and came around the northern edge of the bay.

When we reached a spot that he thought appropriate he took the net and poles and waded out into the bay to set his net and then returned to the four wheeler where we just sat and talked about guy stuff. This net fishing seemed pretty easy from my view.

My fishing companion said that it took several years for he and his wife to reach the level of acceptability they had in the community. He said that when he first started fishing he would give most of his catch away and for that fact he still does.

No fish would be given away that day because after about an hour he waded back out and, started bringing in the net. We had caught (we?) a very small flounder, a hooligan fish and several jelly fish.

There were others out that same day and as we started our trip back and my friend would stop and talk to each fisherman and ask about their luck that day. No one admitted to catching anything but a few said that there was a couple that were pretty big but somehow got away.

As we were about to make our right turn toward the village I noticed a lump of something on the beech. I asked to go by and have a look. It was a headless walrus, a dead one of course. It had washed up on the beach and was so rank looking and smelly that even the gulls were not interested.

I asked if he had any idea how it got there and he said it could have been any number of ways. One could have been that it was just sick and died and it was found to late to be of any use accept for the ivory tusks and some one just took them off. Or, he continued, it could have been shot but sank before the hunters could retrieve it and then again found later by another, thus the ivory saved. The last thing that he said could have happened was that some poacher just shot the animal, cut off its head and left the rest.

It was probably one of the first two reasons because I have never met an Eskimo who would ever waste a good hunk of walrus meat on purpose.