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These are the Chronicles of Famous Surf Writer Ben Marcus and his trip into the Wilds of the Alaskan Frontier.
Latest Update:
September 12, 2000

20:14 ROYAL VICTORIAN MOTOR LODGE

Hello. Tired. Two long days, most of them dedicated to chasing fish.

I was going to write a long, detailed account of yesterday's adventure on the Sooes River, but now I don't feel like it, and we should all consider ourselves lucky.

I'll condense. Yesterday I fished the Sooes River, a really, really nice river that runs into the ocean just south of Cape Flattery. Some people pronounce it "Suez" others pronounce it like the start of "Sooey!" and the end of "Sheesh!" like "Sooesh" Whatever. I had become intrigued by the river the night before when I saw a bunch of fish moving, and one guy catch one after sundown.

After a long, cold night in the van at the Silver Salmon RV park, I went to Washburn's General Store for a license, gear and advice. I got the license there, a $10 Makah Indian Tribe license, good for one year.

I went to the Big Salmon Resort for gear. Bought some Blue Fox spinners of different colors and had a good chat with the guy who works there. We talked about England, Ireland, Belfast, Russia. I asked if the photo of the 1200 pound halibut on the wall, supposedly dragged by Alaskan fishermen in their nets, was for real. He didn't know. I asked about the behavior of salmon in the Sooes, telling him about the Klamath and the way fish behave there, getting active on the outgoing tide. He told me the Sooes was the opposite, and that the bit would be on the incoming tide.

It was foggy in Neah Bay, but clear on the river. No sign of English Steve, but as I was walking to the river's edge I saw an Oriental guy fighting a fish. He landed a nice salmon, but it was a female king. There are signs all along the river stating the law, that female Chinook (silver) and coho (king) salmon have to be released. This one got away with the yellow lure still in its mouth. I felt bad, but realized it would be at the hatchery within a day or two, or even an hour or two, if it hurried.

I flogged the river with a yellow Blue Fox for a little while, then began walking toward the van to get more split shot. I saw a salmon roll, so I threw out one more cast, and got the bugger. It put up a respectable fight. As always, I had no confidence in the knots I had tied, or the strength of the line, or anything else, but I did manage to land it, with some help from the same guy who helped the first guy. It was a nice fish. A 12-pound silver. I gave it to the guy who helped me land it-Dwight. Because I didn't have any use for it. ( I have a photo, but too many people can't handle JPEGS)

So, two fish in a half an hour. There were fish moving and the tide was flooding in.

I spent the rest of the day fishing that little patch of river with Brian, Dwight, Doc and Dwight's wife. They were from Seattle, and were settling in for a week of fishing for salmon, and drinking beer.

Dwight caught a fish about a half an hour later, and kept it. Doc caught one a little after that, a good-sized hen coho, but he had to let it go.

Four fish between 10 and 12, on the incoming tide. There it is.

After a while I got bored and wanted to do something stupid. I went to the car, got out my surfboard and wetsuit and snorkel gear, and waded into the river to look around and fish. I drifted on the surfboard for awhile, which was fun and a good way to cover the river, but possibly illegal. Had I caught a big-enough fish, I might have gone for a Nantucket Sleigh Ride, getting towed up and down the river by a 30-pound King? But, nothing happened. Just as I was pushing out on the board, a big silver came out of the water three times, just in front of me, close enough to shoot, even with Mr. Walther. But that last display seemed to be the curtain call. The river went dead after that, through high tide at one o'clock. It was a full moon, so the tide went out in a big hurry.

I took off upriver to check out the Makah National Fish Hatchery. This was the end of the line for all the salmon getting past us. There is an electric fence at the top of a small dam which diverts all the salmon into the hatchery, which is undergoing an extensive, $2.5 million upgrade.

I got a good tour from Al Jensen, a fisheries biologist who runs the place. He lives there with his wife and three daughters, and has a very fulfilling gig: keeping the river and the ocean full of salmon. I thought the hatchery was there to keep the Sooes full of fish and provide a living for the Makah Indians, but there's more to it than that. They put the hatchery on Makah land to get around state and federal red tape, and the fish from that hatchery spread out all up and down the Pacific coast and into the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

We watched kings and silvers flopping up the small dam and falling back, always a nice thing to see. Al Jensen knows his fish, obviously. Not by name, but he sure knows a king from a silver and a male from a female.

I asked a million questions and remembered some of the answers. He said it costs $500,000 to run the hatchery, which is being upgraded to ease a lot of the hard, physical labor the old facility demanded. He figures it supports a salmon fishery worth $2,500,000 a year, when everything is added up. Among the fun job hatchery personnel have to do is hand-tag 300,000 fish, cutting off the adipose fins and clipping nose rings. That's a lot of fish. They also spawn steelhead there. I'm going to be back in this neck of the woods for steelhead season.

Anyway, after a good tour, I gave Al a copy of Year of the Drag In, because he was familiar with Mavericks, and headed back for the mouth of the Sooes. The tide was super low, so I went into town for a little while, got my 10,000th mug of espresso and tried my "lost Polynesian" theory on the kid at the Espresso stand. He could walk down the streets of Waimanalo and not raise an eyebrow. He kind of got it. .

I got back to the river around 18:00, at low tide. Team Seattle were down there, and ready to kill some fish. While walking down to the river, we saw a pod of whales spouting off some rocks, about half a mile out. They were all staying in the same place, and through binoculars I saw some spouts and splashes and some flukes.

The tide was super low and starting to come up, and the sun was setting. I saw a bunch of fish moving in the shade of the trees upriver, and so moved up there for awhile.

The next hour was kind of like Aliens:

"There's movement all around us! Where? They're everywhere! I can't see them!"

They were everywhere. You could see big fish pushing bow-wakes in front of them like nuclear subs, rippling the river as the tide came in. Occasionally a fish would roll or splash, but mostly it was those awesome bow-wakes, with fish of certain size underneath.

Doc and Brian and Dwight gave up as the sun was setting, leaving one woman. Turns out she was the wife of the guy who caught the king the night before. It had taken him a half an hour to land it, and these people know what they are doing. Linda Colfax told me to stick around until it got really dark. That was when the fish started to bite again. We chatted as I waited to see if she was as akamai about salmon as Joe Whaley and the guy at Big Salmon.

And speaking of whales (bad segue) as we were talking I threw the "lost Polynesian" theory at her, but she fouled it off. But that got us onto the subject of whaling, and then I remembered who the Makah were. This is the northwest tribe who have renewed their tradition of going after whales. They're doing it traditional style, rowing out in canoes and going after the whales with hand-held harpoons.

I think that killing any whale these days is a waste, but if you're going to do it, doing it with a harpoon and under muscle power is almost a fair fight. Nantucket Sleigh Ride and all that.

"They got a skinny one last year," she said. "Only about four tons. But it tasted so good"

And then she caught a fish. It was dark, the moon was up and she had a fish on. I got out of her way as she brought it to the beach, then took a photo as she tried to find something to club it.

And that was the end of a long day, which you heard the short version of.

A long day in the sun on a nice river in a nice part of the world. Linda said her son was a surfer, so I gave her a copy of the Fourth Annual SURFER Magazine Surf Video Awards to give to her. She showed off some wild cranberries and wild plums, then lead me to her house in Neah Bay and gave me a big hunk of kippered salmon.

She now is second to Patrick at Creekside Smokehouse in the smoked salmon derby.

It was already late, and I had to get up the next morning to take my driver test. I drove the 60 miles back to Port Angeles and checked into the first motel I could find. The Royal Victorian, where I am now. I know, I know, another hotel. But I needed to be on my toes somewhat for the driver test, an sleeping in that van isn't the way to do it.

And besides, the van doesn't have The History Channel and ESPN and soft-core porn on the TV, like the Royal Victorian Motel.

SEPTEMBER 13, 2000 11:02 ROYAL VICTORIAN MOTEL

It's a scary thought, me walking into a low-budget motel room with a shotgun, but I did that this morning only to clean it in Room 37 of the Royal Victorian. I'm getting ready to cross into Canada, so I want to the van to be ship-shape and Bristol fashion, so they'll know I'm a nice young man and won't go rooting around for Mr. Walther.

Psyche. No, I'm going to leave Mr. Walther in the storage locker, although we hate to part. I don't need him (I hope) and I don't want to go to jail. It's expensive. Worse than motels. And they might not have the History Channel.

So the van is nearly packed and I'm writing this before taking a shower and getting out of here. It's a nice day today. Blue skies. The works.

Yesterday I took the driver test with a nice lady who laughed at my jokes and penalized me for not making hand-signals when I pulled out of the parallel park that I aced, believe it or not. I was docked only eight points, and passed.

I needed a haircut so I went and got one in Port Angeles, then went down to mom's to see if I had mail. I did. She's worried about me. But she always has been. Oh well.

Back in Port Angeles I got the license, glanced at the photo and then stuck it under my expired California license. Yuck.

While driving around Port Angeles I saw a fly-fishing shop, which I could hear calling to me, like the Sirens to Jason and the Argonauts. I ended up buying a new fly reel and a line system which allows you to use four different lines hooked to the end of a yellow floating line. It was better than buying four new spools. I bought a bunch of salmon flies and walked out of there $400 lighter. It's only money. I don't have any.

Back to the motel for an e-mail check, then down to the Elwha River, below the single-lane trestle. I'd passed over this stretch ad number of times and it looked like heaven. It was. The Elwha is about as nice as a river can be, as if God the Landscape Architect had smoked a big joint and decided to get it right. I through some flies into the riffles and saw some black king salmon go swimming past. They had been in fresh-water for awhile and were already falling apart. They looked about as bad as my driver license photo.

So I thrashed the Elwha for awhile, more interested in figuring out my fly lines and remembering how to tie a nail knot and basics like that.

The Elwha is a great river. If I survive Alaska, I'm going to come back in the winter and fish it or steelhead.

So that's it. Another night in the Royal Victorian, and now I'm leaving for Canada. First stop: Jordan River, a surf spot I've heard about.

In other news, I heard that BlueTorch, the supposed contender to swell.com, has laid off its entire staff. I don't know if that's good news or bad news. Doom for all, or good for us.

Hope the money holds out.

Please send more.

Bye bye.

 

 

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September 18, 2000
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September 14, 2000
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September 8, 2000

September 8, 2000
 

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