(Sixth of 15 parts)
I have fished on commercial gillnetters a few times as a totally green deckhand, on the boats of pals who let me come along when I begged. God, I love it. Mostly just the being there. Whenever I rhapsodize about it, and people seem puzzled, my wife explains, "For him it is mostly about eating." That is true. The high life for me is frying up a fresh sea-run dolly or whatever gift comes aboard: garlic, butter, onions, the smell of it, a bottle of white wine pulled from a cool spot in the hold, the breezes streaming through open windows, the boat rolling, the volcanoes rolling too, into view, out of view, changing places with the flashing blue water.
And it is a fine thing to sleep at anchor, in a narrow bunk, rocked by the sea. To roll into unconsciousness with one idée fixe: breakfast. Fish and coffee, grits and butter. The captain's stories. A snowy volcano practically pulled up to the table.
I know, the net of my memory does not catch the work.
'Up the country'
My grandpa had a shack near Fetters in Sonoma County, and we'd go "up the country" every summer. My brother and I were quite small when my father started taking us to a little creek near Boyes Springs, to a pool where he swam as a child. The smell of the willows, oaks and bays, and the smell of the mud and of that part of the creek that floats in the air, all have embedded themselves in my memory. I can smell too the wetted bread he taught us to wad up to bait the tiny hooks to catch fingerling trout. Part of what I love about fishing is how amazingly much there is in common between that childhood tableau and every other kind of fishing I've ever done, no matter the scale.
The summer I was nine -- I date it by the songs on the radio -- we started fishing for juvenile striped bass on the Napa River, or a slough of it. My father would wake me very early, and in the dark before dawn we'd make the drive down through the Valley of the Moon, then east over the hills into Napa County. "I get the radio going, you get it coming," he'd say. Somehow, my city-born old man had latched on to country music, so, going, it was KSAY's Big Country Corral and songs of busted love or of some guy's momma. Coming home, I'd flip between the teenager stations. The owner of a bait shop said we could fish from a derelict whaleboat tied up to the bank. It had high gunwales that made it a safe spot for me and later my little brother. My father would cut some bait and stab his jet and mother-of-pearl-handled knife into the plank seat. "Nickel to the first fish," he'd say.
I think my strong attachment to nature and the outdoors formed while fishing, and, crazily enough, mostly within the city limits of San Francisco. I can hear my father's voice rasp from the dark in the R-dropping San Francisco accent you used to hear: "Put on two undershirts and two pairs of pants." While I hunted up my clothes, he'd push the car out of the garage. Not to wake the others, he'd start it in the driveway. I'd get the long surf rods from off the wall in the garage and thread them through the rear window of the Ford. The fog would roll by the streetlight on the corner, and the cold would rob the last trace of heat I carried from my bed.
We didn't have any good warm clothes. No long johns, no knit caps, no boots, no gloves of any kind. Though -- or maybe because -- not so many years earlier, he'd spent the bitter winter of 1944-45 in the Ardennes and marching into the Rhineland, my father didn't feel we needed to buy any special gear. "You could stuff some newspaper under your jacket," he might say.
Fosters cafeteria on 21st and Geary was open early, and we'd have scrambled eggs and bacon, a raisin snail and coffee. He'd buy a Chronicle and pull out the Sporting Green for me. I'd see how the Giants were doing.
We liked to go down to the end of Baker's Beach, the end near the bridge. We were surf casters. Bait fishermen. We'd trudge all the way down there with poles and sand spikes, him with the rucksack, me with a box of frozen sardines or anchovies covered with rock salt, wrapped in newspaper, tied up with twine.
I'd wait for a big wave, chase it out until it gathered and sprang, then cast, turn, and run quick with the pole over my shoulder. It was good to hold the rod a while, listening with my hands, filtering out the throbs and jerks that were nothing but waves and undertow. After a while, I'd plant the pole and put my hands in my pockets. Stand and wait for fish. Wait for the sun to clear the Oakland hills, climb down the orange bridge, and finally warm me. Down the line a ways, my father faced the ocean with his hands on his hips. He looked like a tough man squared up to something imponderable.
Stripers were what we prized the most, but I was happy with a shark, or a big flounder. Just so it fought hard and was work to land. Sometimes we caught the slim-bodied horse smelt, or some fat little perch, or sand dabs. But shark or bass or sand dab, we took whatever we caught to my grandmother out in the Mission District. Many years later, I would see the place where she grew up: the ruins of a stone cottage with a dirt floor. The gable ends with their chimneys, standing in a shaggy, wind-tossed field, yards from Galway Bay. My grandmother was happy with any kind of fish we brought. She made soup with the heads.
Not just the possessing
I am now the age she was then. And I think fish mean to me now more of what they meant to her then, when she took out her knives and, probably, thought of home.
But for me, not just the possessing but the catching of fish feeds something too. For almost 30 years I fished for king salmon in a certain river in central Alaska with a pal I'd known from San Francisco days. He'd found the spot. The way in was a long, swampy, bug-ridden, deadfall-strewn, bushwhacking, game trail proposition that took the better part of two hours to walk. On top of that, we had to cross land possessed by parties hostile to our entry: an absentee Indian tribe and resident grizzly bears.
Jonnie showed me how to tie yarn flies and to rig for bouncing them along the bottom. He also imparted his ethics. We didn't use high-test line or landing nets or chest waders. We ran with those big fish wherever they went, gaining what we could, when we could, for maybe three-quarters of an hour, until, both man and fish exhausted, the noble beast might let go without a lot of indignity.
Jonnie had other, quasi-religious proscriptions I did not observe. He grew up in the foothills of the Sierras in California where his father taught him to fish the trout streams. One time, the teenaged Jonnie managed to hook and land a very large and beautiful trout. The big daddy of the stream. When his father saw it, he said, "Are you going to keep it?" Jon hadn't for an instant considered releasing the fish. Probably, he was already imagining showing it to his mother and siblings. The idea made him think for a moment, though. But only for a moment. He killed the fish. Still, this strange question from his father was a seed. And when it had rooted sufficiently -- some time after his father's premature death -- it became a tenet. During all the years I fished with him, no matter the circumstance, he threw the first king back. A propitiation of the fish gods, I'd say, glibly. But I knew it was an act of expiation.
My father died way too young too. Jonnie died at 57. I took a scoop of his ashes to that place we'd go. Now, our river's kings are dying too. All the kings in Alaska are in trouble now. Fireweed and roses grow up in the abandoned camps. Soon smokehouse poles will poke through as ruins. For now, my nieces and nephews bring me a few stunted kings from their family's waning fish camp. I'm happy to get them. I make soup with the heads.
Dan O'Neill was born and raised in San Francisco and moved to Alaska in 1975. He is the author of three books: "The Firecracker Boys," "The Last Giant of Beringia," and "A Land Gone Lonesome." He has written in a more journalistic vein on king salmon a couple of times, including here.
The Salmon Voices Series is supported by The Salmon Project, an experiment in telling and hearing the stories of Alaskans and our salmon. The project hopes to highlight and deepen Alaskans' strong personal relationships with salmon as food, a source of income, and a way of life. Support for the project is provided by the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation.
The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, e-mail commentary(at)alaskadispatch.com.