The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 753: A Life On The Sea

Episode Date: August 25, 2025

Steven Rinella talks with Mike Douville, Heather Douville, Janis Putelis, Seth Morris, and Jimmy Rinella in Alaska. Topics discussed: Fishing to support the family; building your own boat; herring fisheries; naming a boat after your daughter; forced into boarding schools; sea stars and salmon sharks; long lining for black cod; diminishing quota allowances; recreational catch yields troucing commercial yields; Heather's new show, "Our Way Of Life" launching on September 29th on MeatEater; and more.  Connect with Steve and The MeatEater Podcast Network Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTubeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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No shortcuts, just gear that works. Check it out at firstlight.com. That's F-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E.com. Welcome, everybody. If you're a regular listener to the show, you first met, at least from this podcast standpoint, You first met Heather Duvill sitting in this kitchen. Yeah. Or whatever you come up, this main area.

A year ago. Heather Duvill on social media, A.K. Moosey, she came out on the show. We talked a bunch about sea otter hunting, her life growing up, sewing for all kinds of things. And now, a year later, Heather's back. She came over in her, what she calls a skiff, which we would call a large vessel. and she's brought her father, Mike. Would you like to introduce your father? Sure.

This is my dad. His traditional name is Gitt Wayne. English name is Mike. Look up to him in so many ways. And I'm so grateful that he's here today. We came over in his skiff, which your kids love, by the way. Yep. They walk all around.

They're putting in their order for four one. It's got a little bit of a Navy Seal undercover. it's all black. So he paints it black. Why? It blends in, you know, with the beach and... Yeah. He just put a fresh coat of paint on it this year.

Not just any black. It's flat black. Got it. Not glossy black. Not shiny. Mike, the thing that surprised me to hear, and I tried to argue out of it when I heard you knew the guy that built this place.

that's correct and i thought to myself it he must mean that the success a frame because i hear about the people that built the a frame i never heard anything about we only know back to owners but our neighbor ron laden um who passed away a year ago is the one that introduced us to the area and ron laden would talk about he grew up and catch can Ron Layton would talk about the people that we bought from the people they bought from and then a guy

who was very tough and Ron pays no compliment to anybody might the very tough person be the person you know that raised children here yeah that's Rory Bifoss he

He grew up, I'm not sure where he grew up in Myers-Chuck, maybe, but I know he built a home here with this house when he got married. He married Marion and she was from Myers-Chuck. Okay. Yeah, he's a pretty stout boy, and he's still fishing. Huh. I actually have a picture of his boat in my phone. I took a couple weeks ago.

I had to ask him about, just to make sure I knew what I was talking about, but he did build this house, yeah. In the 80s? I think 70s. When I first met him, he had a boat called the Isis, it was a double-end wood boat, but now he's got a fiberglass boat that is also the ISIS. What's the word you're saying?

Isis. Oh, what does that mean? I mean, I know the meaning. It's spelled like, is, is. Yeah. I looked it up. There has a, I sent it to you. I think there's like a mythology tie to it, but.

Got it. Yeah, he had two daughters. See, I had it that he had, I had it, my recollection from Ron is that he had two sons. No, two girls. Did he, he lived here with those girls. Yeah. Isn't it? Well, for a while.

And then he eventually moved to Meyerstuck, and he built a nice log cabin there. I think he sold it. Anyway. So what was he doing when he lived here? He was probably fishing. Commercial fishing. Yeah, like trolling for salmon.

Yeah, trolling and long line for, I know he fished block cod for many years, Hallibut. Okay. And in the winter, troll for king salmon and long line for yellow eye got it oh long line for yellow eye yeah so ron that i keep talking about he had a he had a halibut long line license and did that for a while he had a troller as well then down the beach a little bit was mel um fairbanks yeah he trolled salmon

and ran shrimp pots right i business i know ron layton uh you know he was on a regional advisory council for the federal one and uh he was living in cassan for a while then he moved to the sultry co yep and then moved to craig thorne sorry thorn bay yeah yeah so you knew ron yeah did you ever um did did you ever have uh uh any kind of confrontations with Ron? No. No, we got a long fine. Us too, but all, but he, um, we got along good through confrontation. No, he was, he was easy to get along with, you know, we all get along with each other on the, the council. Okay.

And we meet twice a year. Yep. And they're generally three day meetings. So, no, he's fine. he was a um he was a dear dear friend of ours and like i said uh we got this we bought this from being friends of ron and he called us one day and told us this was for sale and when i had been to his place and stayed with him and joan i never i mean if i looked over in this direction i wasn't paying any particular attention and when he called and said it was for sale we just bought it

without looking at it um out of being buddies with him and he was the one that showed us all about anything right like how to do all the kind of stuff up here that you need to do was all taught was all taught by ron and then when his wife passed away he didn't want to be out here anymore um and and moved out and did what's kind of an odd practice here is Seth's place was like this, my place was like this, Ron's place was like this. The odd practice is when you sell it, it seems people don't move out. They just walk away and you buy their possessions. Like there's no moving out.

Ron didn't move out. What did you acquire when you bought it? What's the most memorable thing? No, I found this on the beach. When we bought the A-frame, there was like totes of clothes and just like personal items. Yeah, we burned. When you came here. We burned most of everything.

But everything, and we got rid of most of it. Most of it was just old, moldy, and tore up, you know. I believe Ron was a policeman in Catch-A-Cann for something. That's right. He was a detective. Yeah. You know, that's not true? No, I believe it is.

You know, I just didn't know them before. he was a door gunner he was a doorgunner in vietnam yeah he had been shot down two times of vietnam yeah didn't you say that he had a great time there he always that was the thing we used to laugh about ron and he was the only guy we knew that had just like seemed to have nothing but a good time a good time when he was to vietnam one of my friends that lives in And cake was a crew chief on the Huey in Vietnam as well. When I asked him, why weren't you a door gunner? He said, well, we had a guy that was better at it than me.

Oh, but see, no, because Ron, I feel like a crew chief is on the, at that time, the crew chief is on the left or right door. I can't remember. I thought it was something like that. Either way, he had a heck of a time. Later, I went to Vietnam. for a visit and growing up like my dad was a World War II guy but most of my buddy's dads were Vietnam guys um I went to Vietnam for a visit and it was funny that one of my

good friends dads didn't even want to look at me having couldn't believe really you would go to Vietnam. Ron was thrilled and wanted to know how everybody was. Was his attitude about it. He was eager for a report, you know, to share notes. But Mike, how did you spend most of your life commercial fishing, is that right?

Oh, yeah, all my life, actually. This is the first year in 65 years I had go trolling so and how did how did it come about actually i've been a fisherman for since i was 11 years old i've been out fishing and i didn't buy my own boat until 1970 so since 1970 this year is the first year i did not fish how did it come about when you were 11 how did it come about that you became a fisherman uh i had this burning desire to be a fisherman for some reason and I talked my stepfather into taking me out and then I became sort of like slave labor you know uh-huh yeah so you didn't get paid no and the second year I fished with them I got

I got paid uh my pay was a uh a Mossburg 22 magdum it cost $35 from Sears and a row book that was your pay for the season Yep. What was the understanding, if you weren't being, if you weren't being compensated at that age, was the understanding that you were learning a trade, that you were learning a discipline? Like what was, how did you understand the arrangement? You were helping to support the family. Okay.

There was no personal gain. It was just something you did. You're expected to. And then before you bought your boat, you built one, right? No, when I was like 16 years old or 15, I didn't have any money. And that was about the time the wild herring spawn on kelp was taking off. and one of the shipwrights there was building boats for that fishery and they built a pretty good little like a riverboat plywood's gift

and not having any money my partner and I'm a lifelong friend Art Kennedy had a rowboat with a five-horse motor on it we used to go everywhere with it before he had the motor we rode it but oarlocks and two guys could grow and we could go anywhere we wanted pretty fast. But anyway, we went to fish egg and used to be more lumber around in those days on the beach.

And we salvaged everything we could with more than one trip, two-by-fours and stuff like that. And gathered enough so I could build a framework for a boat. And I copied Henry Nelligan's. He was the one that originally built this boat. And made a frame and scraped the money for the plywood to put on the bottom. And one of my mentors, Bud Thomas, had this 28 horsepower outboard, which he loaned to me. And I put on that, and I used that for, well, that was my first boat. When you say that the herring fishery was taking off, what does that mean?

Does it mean that the market was developing or like the something with the fish kind of exploded in population? Yeah, I don't know how it developed originally, but you could see these guys picking wild herring on kelp. and we heard they were getting 10 or 15 cents a pound It wasn't that much The herring row Yeah Well, it's on Microsista Skelp And the herring legs on it

But they were harvesting it And they were selling it So the next year, ooh, you know It started to develop And It seemed like when I first picked picked uh did the wild harvest it was like 50 cents a pound or i can't remember 25 and then 50 and then it went to a dollar a pound and there was so much interest that the participation

grew just out of control got it uh people were flying from different places landing their plane and harvesting and putting it on the pontoons. I mean, all kinds. So the last harvest I did, the season was 20 minutes. And the quota for the Fish Ag Island area was 100 tons. What? So it took 20 minutes to harvest 100 tons. Jeez.

You're saying 100 tons of. eggs removed not from the fish but removed from the kelp with the kelp with oh on okay so not scrape from the leaf yeah i got you yeah and then that fisheries switched over eventually to where they they sane the herring for the row or is that a different thing that's a sick of fishery where i live around fish egg didn't ever to do that but there was a sane bait fishery oh so the fishery went away. Sitka was a 50-ton wild row on kelp harvest. Heideberg was 50-ton. I think they opened Sitka the second time. Craig was 100. And years later, I asked one of the biologists, John Valentine, I said, why did that fishery go away? He said it was decimating the herring.

And to this day, Heideberg doesn't have a spawn. It literally wiped it out. It wasn't that big to begin with. And Craig was decimated for, it still is, compared to what I remember when I was growing up. He would spawn for a couple weeks there, here, there, and they'd continue a spawning. Now it lasts about three days.

And if you don't get your brain, branches, which we put in the water for a herring to spawn on. If you don't get there the first day, you're not going to get good eggs. So it's that quick and I think it's just beat down and will not recover. Will not recover? No, because they, several years back, they developed this, what they call pounding. where they capture the herring and put the kelp in there. And then they add herring and for like,

they can hold them like for five days. And they come out with a real thick product. And a lot of times that is, a lot of times they harvest 100 tons or more. And the herring are considered dead by the department, but, you know, they do release them, but they're in pretty bad shape. So this pounding started in Prince William Sound.

And they came down and gave lessons to the boys down in the southeast here about how to do it. And they were selling it to the mostly Japanese and making pretty good money. But in Prince William Sound, the Herrick went away as well. And the biologist there had a chance at one of our reasonable visor council meetings to ask him What happened to the herring? Did the oil spill kill him? And he said no, he said the pounding did So I don't think it's recovered yet

But they actually used to send airplanes down here Harvest micro-sistant kelp because it didn't grow there or not good enough quality in any case and fly it up to to Cordova, wherever they're basing from, and use that in their pounds. Wow. Geez. It's extreme value to this stuff. Yeah. Someone to do that.

Do you guys still harvest it now and sell it commercially? No. I had a license and I got rid of it. I never could make any money at it. But there are a couple groups that probably do okay on it. But you guys, you said you are still harvesting it now for personal. Yeah, traditional harvest. So one of our episodes covers traditional harvest of herring eggs,

cutting down a young hemlock tree, and we submerged in the spawn, and the herring spawn on the boughs, and then we harvest it later. So we, that was... But we do personal harvest on the wild kelp, which does not get as thick as what the pounds, where they captured these herring and hold them

and force them to spawn on, you know, and it gets pretty thick. You know, we keep talking about, or I keep talking about Ron Layton. Ron Layton was always very upset about the herring fishery. Yeah, well. Yeah, he didn't, he was always thought

that it was ill-advised. It is. The herring. Because it is a forage fish. I mean, everything, well, cohoes, king salmon are dependent on herring. I think they've been massacred. It started off back in the early 1900s, if you will, I'm not sure of the date, but they had big herring reduction plants in Chatham Straits

where they'd catch all the herring and run them through a reduction plant. I don't know if they saved any of it for animal, feet or what, but they wanted the herring oil. And all those stocks has never recovered. So we just have a few small places. Sitka seems to be doing better than anywhere else. But every place they've had a pound fishery or a heavy gillnett fishery like kishakes,

the gillnet fishery, that's all gone. Urna Sound, Hunasound, Cordova, Seymour Canal. All those have gone away. They don't have a commercial fishery there anymore. What was the, what was when you were younger and starting out fishing? What was the first time that you were fishing for your own money, like that you were in charge catching fish, selling the fish and using it to support? yourself and not using it to support

like not doing it as an employee but doing it as your own as your own boss well I crewed on boats uh trolling and saining later in my later

teens and did halbit fishing but in 1970 I was able to save enough money to buy my own boat and then you did what like

What activities did you do out of your own boat? I trolled for salmon, primarily. And I had that boat for eight years. The last two of the eight years, I guess I did fish for a halbit, but I wasn't really good at it. And then I bought a bigger boat and started, uh, after a couple of years owning that,

I can, I changed it over so I could fish black, blackout and halibut. Tell them about the name your boat, dad. Well, I made this deal to buy this boat. This guy lived in Tacoma. Okay, we agreed 12,000. So I quit my job so I could go get the boat.

And then he decided, well, I'm not going to sell it. And I said, why not? Well, this guy offered me more money, and my wife's giving me a hard time. And so I won't pay him $14,000. And then I went to Tacoma and brought the boat home. I can't remember what else you asked me. The name. Oh, the name of it was Francho.

It just so happened that my younger sister was Joni and my older sister, I had two sisters, was Francho. And they thought, my sister, Joni, thought I named it after them, but I didn't. And I never did tell her any different. It came with that name. Are you serious? And they were all, oh, he named the butt after us. What a coincidence.

Wow. I love that story because when dad got his newest troller, I thought for sure, because I saw, oh, all the, The dads had named their boats after their daughters. So when he got this boat, I thought for sure he's going to name it after being right. So I'm telling everyone, well, he had a different name picked out. But then he heard that I was so excited. They named it after me. And I didn't find out to like 15 years later that he had a different name.

The year is second choice. I was like, oh my gosh. So I think about that. It reminds you of his first boat. in that name and I wonder where that came from because yeah Jennifer has an uncle and his boat is named after his daughter

oldest daughter it's tradition hey folks exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada you might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law but hear this on axe hunt

is now in Canada it is now at your fingertips you Canadians The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season. Now, the Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery, 24K top-o maps, waypoints, and tracking. You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service as a special offer. You can get a free three months to try out onX if you visit Onex. Maxmaps.com slash meat. Hunting demands preparation, persistence, and gear that will not quit on you.

That is why I wear First Light. This isn't about hype. It's about no compromise gear. Built to perform, built to last, whether it's their industry leading merino wool, keeping me comfortable through the cold and the hot, or their durable outerwear shrugging off the elements. First Light is built to help you go far. and stay longer designed by hunters, four hunters, with a deep commitment to conservation and

land access. No shortcuts, no excuses. Just gear you can count on. Head to firstlight.com. That's F-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E.com. Mike, can I see the tattoo on your hand? Heather explained the tattoos in her hands before. Can I see your left hand? You have the same right. or you have the same hook correct yeah you should so he's teaching the crew how to say nah it's in slingit it's nah that's a woodhook yeah well garret's calling it knocks so all last week mike can i see the knocks in my test like what are you talking about and so we had lessons but this is the only nuch we've ever retired sea monster

he carved it in like 1992 and so you share that one and then Mike what is your left hand that's a beaver raven tail that is my client Heather Heather was telling me that

I can't remember if we talked about this before but yeah we did talk about this a year ago and maybe you have recollections of it as well that I don't know what years this would have been that um and I don't even know how it came to be but like

tribal people were discouraged from any kind of um markings permanent regular yeah yeah where did that like who did like how like according to who and how is it in for and how is that expressed? I don't know all the answers to those questions,

but for about 100 years, it was illegal to practice, like, cultural tattooing. So it would normally take place during, like, a Kuik, which is, like, also known as a potlatch. So it was illegal to even have a potlatch, practice your culture ceremonies or you know there's different words used

in English or you know our traditional language and so a lot of this went away because it wasn't legal to do so so then you see a lot of like jewelry cuffs carved earrings and

that way people could wear their clan crest and remove it when required too but this is permanent regale Oh, yeah, this was traditionally, you know, during a Kuwik or potlatch, you'd get tattooed. And so Dad and I got our Clan Crest tattooed, you know, kind of as a way to reclaim what's ours. We're opposite, so you follow your mother's lineage, so I'm an eagle and he's raven. So we're opposite clans.

And I see a lot of this coming back. So there is like a revitalization of the cultural tattooing and even like the hand-pote tattoos. Yeah. So most of that was imposed by what's referred to as missionaries. They didn't want to speak your own native. language so even when I was growing up my mother did not teach us so I know some but she was very fluent you know your mother was yeah and my grandmother and my aunts

but they didn't teach kids because it really wasn't okay they were taught that it wasn't okay uh-huh a lot of the kids uh uh were forced to go to boarding schools in lower 48. My mother did not go there, but she did go to Rankle Institute. But they forbade them to speak their own language there and just basically destroyed a lot of culture. So you didn't see new totem poles for many, many years.

they did start during the 3C days and the Depression days they had the 3C program I can't You mean the civilian conservation Corps? Yeah so they did build some polls during that and they paid them under that program

so that's where the original totem poles came from in Clark Okay And they've been recarved since then, but that's where those poles came from. So there was 30 or 40 years where probably not many poles were carved at all. It just made a mess out of the culture, really, you know, so I think. And effort is made now to try to restore us. Some of it, but, you know, these are modern times. It's all different, you know.

But, you know, it is working a little bit. I can see some pride restoration in the people themselves. And I think that's important. When I was growing up, it really wasn't okay to be native. So I've seen a change in my lifetime. Sad as may be, but that's the attitude, even natives had that were better off, treated natives that weren't so well off, you know. I don't understand.

It's like lateral violence. Oh, I'm sorry. I do. Yeah, I got what you're saying. You mean that well off, like natives that were well off? Treated other natives. Looked down on the ones that weren't so well off, you know. You know, and I felt that when I was growing up.

So I'm glad to see that. Not so much anymore. You guys had shown me when we were boating around, there's a couple of interesting things you showed me over by your place. Maybe you could speak to them. One, I'll just go in the order in which we saw them. One was you showed me a location. where there had been a

smokehouse oh yeah and I believe that once they did the once they kind of parceled Alaska out being like Forest Service gets this tribe gets this whatever

BLM gets this however they divided it they went around and it would kind of destroy some relics what they regarded as relics but what we're actually like active smoke houses. Is my understanding of this, correct? That's correct, but that didn't happen until, geez.

Between the 30s and. Right after statehood, I guess that. Okay. The Forest Service, you know, owned X amount, most of the land. Uh-huh. For some reason, they decided to clean up all the old smoke houses and stuff like that. there were on federal land. Not village, well, they didn't care about village sites.

My great-grandfather was chief of Tuxacown. It was when I was a young kid, there was a lot of poles and houses that you could tell we're all there and everything. When we went by, I remember seeing it on our way to. Sarkar. But they logged shortly after that and logged right through the old village site, you know. In fact, today you can see cables still laying on the ground there, and you all see garden mounds, remnants of house posts, the corner posts.

There's a few of those left. But there was numerous totem poles when I was a kid. But, you know, they're floating logging camps and the loggers cut sections out of those and had them as ornaments on their floating camps. Really? Yeah. Yeah, but no one cared, you know. Today, if you did that, they'd put you in jail, I suppose.

But they're more protected now, but no one cared. They got rid of all this. One of the smoke houses was on the island. We used to go there and were kids. with that little out-rowboat with a five-horse, we'd go out there and we'd hang out there. And it was big enough to where you could actually stay in there. Everybody had pretty good-sized smoke houses than today,

like as big as just room. Were the smokehouses positioned to be close to a spawning run? Yeah. So you could stay there, fish and smokefish. Well, there was old village sites there, or at least summertime fish camps. And that's a real protected place where I showed you. And there was numerous fish drops there. That was the second thing that I was going to ask you about.

When we were out, we went, you pointed out some things that I would never, ever have noticed. but once you pointed them out that was so obvious what I was looking at and I meant to go investigate the creeks around here and look for the same clues you pointed out canoe landings

at creek miles where the rocks are cleared away and there's actually like a little concave groove going way up the beach never you would you could live there your whole life if someone didn't say like you see look line up and look that way you'd live there

your whole life and not realize what you were looking at you know there's a place to drag a canoe a boat up yeah and then the remnants of the fish traps that you could also live there your whole life and just think that that's the rocks how god laid them down and then you show me and like oh like once you see it you're like oh my god it's like they're arranged like weirs you know that was very surprising to me and i and i haven't looked here for that almost all the cricks have those and the ones that didn't have a good supply of rock uh they drove stakes in the ground uh to make the fish trap so you know if there's no rock supply to do that.

Then they used wooden stakes. Like up in Clawak Lake, there's wooden stakes up in the lake that are, they have even been carbon dated. I can't remember the dates, but my good friend, Steve Langdon, is a professor of anthropology. He did a lot of study and pulled some of those up and had them dated. but let's see oh there's a couple places where I could show you where there's actually what you call clam gardens where the rocks were laid out and it's filled with the proper substrate if you will for a clam garden and they're still visible and still clams of them today and the otter been digging at them oh really but they actually practiced

mariculture hundreds of years back and a lot of the villages were close to a good clam bed like the one John Darrow he referred to it as empty clamshell village

at Ignace where we found artifacts there and the only thing is left the stone, you know, because in the wintertime, dark, the days are short, but you could always go get clams, you know, bad weather or whatever. It was always something you could harvest. Do you remember from your relatives or maybe things you've heard, how people dealt with the risk of paralytic shellfish poisoning

when there was no government-funded testing? They'd put, I was told they'd put them in their mouth and see if it... Turned your mouth and lips them. That's what they'd spit them out, but that's what all the elders told me. Round, rub it on his lip. They'd rub it on their lips and then wait.

But on the other hand, we had colder weather, colder water than we do have today which is spotting a lot of these things but there are some places where there just seem to be hot all the time

it could be in the gravel they grow in I guess you mean hot with the algae yeah we call them hot clams you know like but you know do you know a sea otter won't eat hot clam they can tell they know they have like a mechanism where they can really that's why we

don't eat them out of the cove right or is that something else no we when we used to eat clams before i got too scared of shellfish poisoning when we used to eat clams we didn't eat clams in the cove because back then people would run these very not well-functioning sewage systems into the cove Jimmy, we want to go get one and we'll rub it on his lip and see. I think the tide's too high to find one, but we'll try it when it goes down. Would you now eat, like, not now, but let's say, like, are you comfortable eating clams in the winter or no? Yeah. What do you do?

Well, so the testing, they test. I mean, what do I do? Do you rub it on your lips? No, I eat part of one. You do? Yeah. And wait, how long? often doesn't make your lips tingle or anything they're fine you know but on the other hand we have

a clam fishery that goes on yeah a gooey duck fishery and they're right next door and they're harvesting those and they pass the test so i see no reason why normal butter clams when i could get them which are all gone now um would be fine to eat they're they're filtering the same water yeah so you're like if i took you over yonder right here and it was january february and we dug some clams you would eat a bar part of one yeah and if your lips didn't get numb you dig in yeah if it was a good clam you know i'm particular about where i dig them I don't dig them out of the mud. I like to dig them out of a mixture of clam shell or a clam shell

where they're nice and white and good color and healthy, you know, fat clams. That's the preferred places I would dig them. Do you ever use clams as halibate bait, do those work? Or do you? The gooey ducks do. But, you know, I had never used them, but a friend of mine did. He had a bunch that were, I don't know what was around with him,

but he used for albit bait, and they worked fine. But we're using that type of thing, or putting clams in your crab pot to catch a crab, we used to have a lot of these sunfish, you call them? Yeah. They all got killed by a bacteria. Not a virus of that bacteria killed them. But those things would run as fast as they could.

to get those clams. Oh, is that right? It wasn't the best bait. Yeah. A few years ago, there's still so many down, like, I mean, they're all over the place down off Washington, the oceanic sunfish. A few years ago, there was a giant right out here in the arm, and people got video of it.

They had no idea what they're looking at. The mola? Yeah, not around. Aren't there some species of those that are, like, targeted in different? No, what are you talking about, sunfish? I'm talking about these starfish that are... Oh, sea stars. Yeah.

Oh, I thought you meant that big, you know, that oceanic sunfish that, like, lays on the surface? I've seen those, too. I thought that's your time. Oh, so the sea, yeah, the sea stars. Yeah, they're all gone. I always heard it was a virus. It's a bacteria. Yeah, bacteria.

Yeah, they're gone. I mean, those things are gone, gone. They just discovered it was a bacteria. That's new news. Yeah, okay. I was confused because... So if you put clams in a crab pot, These sea stars, you get a crab pot full of those instead of crab.

Like they like it better than they like fish or whatever. Clams. That's one of the main days that they eat. Okay, okay. When you said that about, you know that fish I'm talking about, right? Yeah. Because they make it up here sometimes. I thought you meant that there was more before.

Like somehow there was more of those fish around that lay on their side. Get them the pot. Do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, I know exactly because I'll rub them with a brush. You can rub them with a scrub brush and they like it. It's a crazy fish, man. I'm not joking. I was fishing out Muzon once.

And one day the sunfish was on the kind of a sea is fin and stuff. And I thought it was a big shark. And before I saw it, it was coming right by my trolling lines. And I thought, oh, crap, I'm going to hit that shark, you know. But it went right by his hind end, nothing touched. and it was one of those big sunfish. Okay, all right. Gosh.

I thought it was, I thought I was going to run right into it, but actually it wasn't a shark. It was a sunfish. Swimming around is fin out of the water. They don't have no tail on me also. Do you target salmon sharks, or do you know people that do? No. He's very interesting salmon sharks.

I love salmon sharks. As am I. Yeah. I've seen them jump out of water down and head off or whatever. reason, just like, I don't know what they were doing, but a salmon shark. And we'd catch one once in a while trolling. I've heard they taste amazing. I don't know.

They might be, but I don't eat sharks. I've caught a lot of blue sharks and dogfish. And I just can't. They have a urea to them, you know. And I don't know how to deal with that. I've cut steaks and soaked it and salt water. No good. No.

But people do eat them, you know. When you were in the black cod, in the black cod fishing business, were you, were you long lining black cod or did you? Yeah. Okay. What was that, what was that like as a, you know, what was that like as a business? Was that like a profitable business to be in? It was very good for me.

I started in like 84, I think. And it turned into a derby. Everybody, well, what happened was the Megs and Stevens Act kind of opened the door for that. Before that, the foreign longliners would come. come across Japanese, Koreans, and fish black cod.

And the market was really poor. Two bits of pound or whatever. If you couldn't do anything else, you could go fish black cod, but the market wasn't that great. So when the 200 mile limit came in,

it allowed the American fishermen to participate more. And they claimed you're never going to catch all those cods. but Yankee ingenuity, we figured out how to catch them. I mean, way better than they did. So as we took more of the quota, they got less. And then pretty soon they were just moved completely out

because we could harvest it all. And it was actually a pretty good fishery, but because everybody wanted to jump in on the halibut and block cod fishery, turned into derbies and the fleet was increasing at 20% a year so then the IFQ program was finally put in place to save lives if you well because people were literally killing themselves to get out and get their share of the quota. I mean both that shouldn't have been out there in bad weather, you know, but they would do it, and, you know, it was costing.

Yeah. So then the IFQ program, but now we have, it did stabilize things, but I have less quota than I used to catch, you know, like I started off with 32,000 pounds of qualified for 32,000 pounds of halbit, and I think I'm just under 9,000 now. because of conservation cuts and so on. Yeah, that's a pretty bad hit too. What's that stand for, the IFQ? Individual fish quota.

So you actually own the quota. Got it. You can sell it. You can fish it. And you can catch it when you want and not have to participate in that opening day window. Yeah. You have from March till December or almost.

you know to catch your halbit or cod so it's a better fishery in that respect do you mostly fish alone i used to do all my fishing alone except for halber uh black cod i had a crew but halber uh raymond my boy and i used to do that ourselves but now i'm old and creaky so i go out with him and I can't say I didn't fish this year because I did. I just didn't fish salmon, but I did go get the halber. Do you like fishing with your boy? Yeah, it was fun. He was tough, you know.

He's a fisherman, which I never encouraged to be one, but he is. So he's pretty good at it. What was, if you were going to discourage someone from it, on what grounds would you discourage it? It's really an unstable way to make a living. We've taken a lot of cuts and, you know, everybody wants a piece of the pie, a bigger piece. Like the Sport Charter Group.

You can't have unlimited effort on a limited resource. And that's what we're seeing with that group. There's still no restriction. Anybody can get licensed up and start the charter business, you know. Got it. But it is a limited resource. So the last couple of years prior to this, they had virtually an unlimited season where there was no in-season management.

They, okay, you get 20%. but we're not going to manage you in season. So they caught more than their 20%. So they took it out of the commercial trolleers. So we didn't get a second opening. Got it. So this year, they've changed that to where there is in season management. So they got shut down on Kings and June sometime.

and then they decided that they had 4,000 fish more coming so they could keep one. The non-residents could keep one. It's an annual limit. Yep, we're well aware. But that's what happened this year. That's why the restriction for the last two years, two or three years prior to that,

there was no in-season management, which was really unfair to the commercial fleet. because they just took the fish away from them to make up the difference. Hey folks, exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada. You might not be able to join our raffles and sweepstakes and all that because of raffle and sweepstakes law, but hear this. On-X hunt is now in Canada. It is now at your fingertips, you Canadians.

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no shortcuts, no excuses, just gear you can count on. Head to firstlight.com. That's f-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E dot com. In resource management, you often find that different user groups always blame the user groups always blame other user groups. I don't blame those guys,

but my suggestion that our AC meetings is you guys should try to do a limited entry on yourselves so you have some stability in what you're doing. And your licenses would be worth of fortune. Oh. But you've got to curate. this growth somehow, just like the individual fish quota on the federal side and the limited entry on the state side for commercial saining and trolling. There's a limit of how many

boats. But right now, the sport commercial is totally unlimited. And it's a limited amount of fish. So everybody's scrapping for a bigger piece of the pie all the time. Or at least they are. They're always lobbying for more. The point I was going to make about that, the way different user groups, and this goes across the board, different user groups, look to other user groups as the problem. But I was shocked when I was reading some report that the state put out,

I would have thought, just by guessing, I would have thought in southeast Alaska, you would see that commercial harvest on like these key species, the commercial harvest, in my mind, I would have been like, it's got to be 90% compared to recreational harvest. But for a lot of the main target species, recreational harvest surpasses commercial harvest.

Yeah. I had no idea because we always blame, particularly on the commercial guys. caught them all i know one lodge that lands more fish uh than the commercial fleet and craig so hmm yeah they don't talk about it anymore but they made the brag they caught a million pounds or shipped out a million pounds of you know processed fish like you did that doesn't count the all the waste stuff that that's a million pounds of fillet yeah skin boneless.

Yeah. Really? That's a lot. And that's more than I thought. It's probably 4 million in actual fish bodies. Yeah. That's more than the troll fleet and Craig catches and lands and sells commercially. Huh.

So it's significant. But without that hatchery and claw, which is licensed for five, million eggs they'd probably all go broke there and it's funded by a fisherman for the most part 3% off the top goes into

a hatchery enhancement got it what fish are cowhers what fish are they hatching cohoes in that hat tree it's five million

five million eggs of coho eggs and it's been fairly successful this year is kind of we're seeing for a 53 million prediction I'm not seeing the fish I see a fiat here it doesn't look too bad there's a few scattered jumps

coming inside Cassan Bay but on the other side it's not very good also I don't this is just observational I don't know what this year appears this year appears to be very different on a salmon situation i don't know if

there's just a very poor hatch a few years ago i don't know you're saying humpies but some of the cohoes aren't showing like i think they should there's there's king salmon yeah yeah there's plenty of king salmon i mean you know it's it's pretty good we can't keep keep catch them, you know. I think on the second opening, my share is 17 fish for the second opening. As a commercial fisherman. Yeah. 17? 17. When I started fishing in 1970, I could fish on the, out on the ocean from April 15th till September 20th. And I could keep king salmon the whole time and now the king salmon season lasted what four or five days huh so i've seen some change what what's those 17 fish what's one of those fish worth well i don't even know i didn't land

the king salmon commercially this year yet i think there's six and a quarter pound so uh oh i think that's the first opening they were paying six and quarter of pound that's gutted and gild so a 20 pound fish is is uh you know it's okay what has it been like for you guys together as you've been working on the show you're working on um what's that been like i don't work on the show but um you participate i've been And just kind of enjoying life this year. I'm taking Heather out a lot. Fish King Salmon, Fish Halibut, Hana Otter,

get greens, just go after sock eyes and stuff like that. There's a common, like, recurring thing that I hear Dad saying, and he goes, I'm just the driver. So he's, anytime we give him a little responsibility, He's like, I'm just the driver. So this is the first time in my whole life, if you will, that I've just done what I wanted for the summer, not worry about fishing.

This is the first time I've had my dad been able to spend summer with my dad in my whole life. So this is a special time being able to do the show. We have an incredible group that has joined us to capture all of these moments from, you know, meat eater. But we couldn't have asked for a better group. Dad and Garrett totally hit it off and the girls are great. And this is my first summer with dad. So he's been gone, you know, from spring to fall fishing my whole life. So if we could catch king salmon together, you know, just like going

out and the skiff and catching king salmon we'd get them in like before the middle of June so in years past I would catch one or two king salmon total because he'd go commercial fishing for that so in June I'm like oh I got my king for the year and that's it you know so this has been great and yeah thank you dad because it is a lot it's a lot It's a lot, but being able to capture some of these moments that we just wouldn't have otherwise been able to. And with my niece joined us this last round with halibut and just being able to take up space for our culture and indigenous people. And we represent such a large group of people, but, you know, each tribe. and each individual within their own community deserves to be uplifted and celebrated in their own right.

And so this is just, this show is an opportunity to just get kind of like a peek in through that window of our view. And I'm thankful that we get to capture some of it. Can you name the episodes for people so they know what to look for? Yeah. So I believe we're going to kick off with the sea otter episode. And then we have the herring eggs. So we have the herring spawn, harvesting herring eggs, and then we have a seal hunt.

We process the seal and make seal oil in the cracklings, which you've tried. And then we're fishing with the nuk. So the woodhooks, and then the last two episodes will be, I think, two parts, which is going to be fish camp. So dried fish, making the cold-smoked, strips, jarring the fish, and fermenting co-ho eggs. So in September, when the co-hoes come in, we're going to do co-ho fish camp and ferment some skeins and. I'm worried about Samantha because she walks around my property like this. Plug in her nose. And I'm like, what's wrong?

And she's like, there's just a lot of smells in Alaska that I've become nose blind to. And I forget everything smells. Her compost piles is what it is. And Mike, were you making a peer? Are you in all of them? Or are you just driving? Like, do you talk in all of them? Oh, he's a highlight.

I don't think so. I don't know. I just do what I do. I told them, you know, my dad, the reason why I'm able to do all this stuff and know the things that I know is because my dad, you know, through all the stuff we mentioned earlier here, he was able to still learn about, you know, our culture and practice that even through all of those attempts to make us not anymore. And that's the greatest gift I could have ever received. And so I told, you know, the team that I really want to highlight and uplift my dad. And he deserves all of that recognition. So I do think you're going to see a lot of him.

And any time I post anything anyway on social media, they're like, we don't want this. We want your dad. More videos of your dad. So he deserves it. He's awesome. I mean, he's so funny, and just a little subtle, dry humor is, you know, there throughout. So I'm excited to see.

It's kind of nice. I didn't have a chance to. Heather wasn't a hunter and went out so much of this. Raymond did a lot of it. Then she moved away and came back. She goes out with me every opportunity. She's learned considerable. out. Much more than Raymond, actually, about different stuff.

Because he's paying attention to the cultural part of it. And I was going to say I was going to go king salmon fishing. It wasn't my intention just not to go. But I got COVID just days before the season open and just knocked me totally all the game. So once I missed that part of it, I don't care about Coho, is that too much work for the amount of pay you get. And now with 17 king salmon, this doesn't get my heart started.

So I'm just having a good time. Yeah. If you did go to get the 17, how long would you expect to fish to catch the 17? One day. Or not even a day. A one day season. Yeah. So the last time we had a one-day fishery, which was three years ago, I go,

over 100. Okay. Dad was out there. Two old guys. I think his crew is in his 70s, too. And they were, they did so good. I think they got the most or second most out of the fleet. Dad comes back.

I, you know, I helped dad with all his health care stuff, appointments and everything. So I've learned the older he gets, 76 now. but to always book an appointment because he comes back with like a broken back or needing back surgery. So he does all his maintenance in the winter, all his repairs. On himself. Yeah. Or steroid injections in his hands and everything to keep him going. Yeah.

Lots of repair work. The older you get, everything hurts. For many, many years. It's just like 24-hour openings on halbit and you spend it all at the roller of hauling in fish, you know. I got some good video of doing exactly that. But, yeah, you come home and for two or three days your hounds are, but yeah, you loaded the boat and did really well, you know.

I didn't learn how to hunt until I was like 28. I'd ever punted at all I never shot a rifle so that was last year I'm just kidding I'm 39 but I'm gonna be 29 forever but anyway when I started hunting with my dad

I'd take one of my best friends guy friends with me and we'd go with him and he packed two deer out at a time until he was 69 years old and we looked at each other I'm like we just have to be able to pack one deer out until we're that old. So he's a badass, and he's, yeah, tough and it's hard to believe.

Oh, my mess around, Bill. Well, man, I appreciate that you came to talk to us and tell people, tell everybody, like, when, when can they come watch? When would they be able to watch all the stuff? Yeah, so this fall, this, I believe, in September. I don't am I allowed to say yeah yeah just go and say it September I don't have a date actually but this September this next month and is it going to be called our way of life for real yeah yeah yeah so it's called our way of life

in our language it's Hakustai so yeah look for I'm excited it's uh September 29th good job perfect thank you and media your YouTube channel and Outdoor Channel. So there you go. 8 p.m. Okay. That is my first time learning this as well.

I know. There you go. Thank you, Seth. How fluent are you? We're not fluent. You're not. Yeah, so we know some words. Dad's, you know, my grandma was fluent, but then wasn't, yeah, a lot of that was lost for

a generation was skipped there. Boarding school. No, I'm too old. I forget everything I learned, so. Yeah, I teach my nephew, you know, what I know, and he picks up right away. So we try to use a lot of traditional place names and words and learn new words all the time. And that's something I really would like to do is learn our traditional language. Oh, that would great. Yeah, but, you know.

Is there anybody that kicks around in the village, like just speak in the tongue? Someone else? There's a few. Some of the older ladies are fluent yet. There's classes offered to through UAS, I think it's UAS, the University of Alaska, and then through the tribe, our regional tribe. Mike, do you call Garrett, or do you call them Dirt? He calls him fat ass because when we're on the boat, you know, Garrett's amazing, incredible.

You know, he's right there with the camera, but we all can't be on the same side of the boat at once. But when Garrett takes one step on the boat, the whole boat tips. He's dense. He is, and he's not a big dude. I mean, he's fit. But finally, after we were filming the first time we all met, we filmed for three. three weeks straight for 21 days it was a lot and it forced us to get very comfortable with each other fast so after a few days my dad just start calling him a fat ass because sure i understand

but he lost weight so when he came back this time we're like hey you're not as fat anymore but i notice he's he's got a little tin of dip there so i thought maybe him and dirt formed a little yeah i heard about the dip in africa a dip partnership yeah we called diplomacy it was like he gave us a detailed description and was telling my dad about how awesome it was you know diplomacy with dirtmiff we call him i call him garrett but we couldn't have asked for better people to work with they're they're a lot fun dad dad's uh got his own way of communicating so the last day goes i'm thinking about going fishing tomorrow and that's like his way of inviting you and dirt goes oh yeah i'll go and samath goes yeah i want to go too and dad just ignores her and she goes actually never mind i'm going to go to

the coffee shop it gets all cream puffs tomorrow morning instead because we could tell they just wanted to go out and hang out together no it was crappy and i think she changed her mind anyway yeah so we What were we doing? Oh, we were waiting for the last set of hooks. It took us a while to catch a fish. While we're waiting, I cruised over, and we're going to see if there's any cohoes here. So we did catch cohoes.

I'd ever seen anybody get so excited as Garrett. Uh-huh. Have you ever eaten dinner with them? Totally. I knew you were going to bring that up. You were talking about that last night. Everything's like a brand new experience. I go, wow, look at the sun, oh, the sunset, you know.

I go, look at the sky's so pretty night. Yeah. But I never seen anybody get so excited over catching a few cohoes, you know. Yes. So the girls were in the other boat, and they were fishing as well. Anyway. This is a good time. He's a good guy.

He is. Well, Mike, thank you so much for joining us today to talk about what you guys got coming up. and I appreciate you participating in it. Yeah. With Heather, I appreciate you coming to discuss it with us. And for you, one of the most fun things I do in my life is getting that boat and go cruising. And you have the right idea. Thank you.

There you go, Jimmy. Yeah. That is. I spend a lot of time in there. I've had it since 91, and that's number six outboard on it. Huh Yeah that dad I just found finally

I searched Craigslist for years Trying to find a boat like that And I found the same boat 91 Exact same boat It's the year I was born There's one for sale in my town right now I just gotta see if they got

Flat black paint Yeah Yeah you gotta have flat black But when dad when we try to mic them up Now they learn to give me the mic To give to him And I try to do it, and he said, I'll put this on when I'm ready.

So we're like, okay, we just set it at the dash now. We're not doing anything yet. You don't need this on for an hour before you're, you know. That's right. Yeah. Okay. Okay, we're done? We just, yeah.

He goes. You never know what I might say. Exactly. I understand. Are we going to skit a sea out or no? Yeah, we're going to do it as a separate thing. Yeah. I'm worried.

On the cruise over here, we saw a bunch moving in here on you. They're coming. I've seen more this year than... It's been amazing, man, to watch. Yeah, I've never seen, like, it's just so recently. It was just like they were just here. It was the first one maybe five years ago. Now it's the first time you ever see where you can look

and there was like a group of a dozen and there was a group of six. It used to be like, people would be like, I saw one. And everybody would be like, no, you did not. We saw 10. We'd argue about it. We could have thin those when we first came here, but they must have moved out in the middle of the bay or something. They lay out deep.

I don't understand it. It's different than on our side you go to the same spots and they're there, big pods of them. But here, you know, I marked on my onyx where they were in the depth and how many. I try to collect data as much as I can on the Siodder. But then we went back out, what, half hour later? And they're all gone. Yep.

Whereas on our side, they just all stay. And if you scare them away, they'll come right back to that same spot. These are nomads, man. As a general rule, when you spoke about, they try to get to open water. I think that's what those did. Got it. We're going to skin one on camera, just so people can see. It'll be released as a flop episode.

Flop! Okay. We're ready. Good. Thanks again for coming on. I can't wait to see it. I think people are going to love it, man. I hope so.

I think it's going to be such a, because I like, the time I've had to hang out with you guys, I thought it was great. Thank you. Yeah, I think it's going to be a little different. Very different. Very different. Same soft voice. I think I'm talking fast. You know, and I listen to myself, I'm like, what?

Is that how slow I talk? So it's going to be a little different pace, I think. Talk just fine. You're good. You'll get used to it. That'll be in good shape. Thank you again. Yeah.

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