Spotlight: Lindsey Bloom

You can tell some people to be at a place a year in advance and they will still show up late. I’m one of them. Every January I get ready to go to Bristol Bay in late May or early June. I plow through my to-do list item by item: renew boat license- check; register commercial fishing permit –check; purchase six weeks worth of non-perishable meals for four people – check; raingear, Xtra Tuffs, rubber gloves, toothpaste, tunes –check!

It doesn’t matter how early I start, how packed I am the week before, how many times I’ve gone over the list and checked everything off – I’m always the last one on the flight to the fishing grounds . I wonder if the salmon experience the same thing. Do they have to-do lists for getting themselves back to Bristol Bay from waters as far away as Japan? Somehow I doubt it. They’re much smarter than that!

Despite all the chaos of pre-season planning, smooth is the word that comes to mind in describing the 2009 commercial fishing season. The sun shone daily and the seas were calm. The fish came early and hit hard. The 1500 or so drift boats spread themselves out evenly among the Ugashik, Egegik, Naknek / Kvichak, Nushagak, and Togiak fishing districts. And the number of salmon that state fish regulators wanted to escape nets and make it back to spawning grounds was met for all of the major rivers feeding Bristol Bay.

In the end over 40 million sockeye salmon returned to Bristol Bay, the biggest run in 15 years! Every time I see these numbers I am reminded of the significance of the Bristol Bay watershed and marvel at the amazing quantity of healthy wild salmon it brings to our state and to our industry year after year. I ask myself how the state of Alaska could entertain the idea of developing the proposed Pebble Mine and damaging one of our planet’s last great wild salmon run.

My season started off in the salmon-rich waters of Ugashik, 365 miles southwest of Anchorage, on my friend Rob Jones’s boat, the Mountaineer. For the first two weeks of June Rob and I chased seals off our gillnets in the Ugashik estuary where the river meets Bristol Bay. We managed to get a few king salmon into the boat before the seals got to them, taking huge chunks out of the silvery skin and translucent orange flesh.

We’d set the net and wait until a king came along, dragging the corkline down under water. We’d then race down the net herding off seals with the boat and pulling in the net as fast as possible, hoping to get the fish before the seals devoured them. Usually the seals won but somehow we managed to get 15 to 20 of these thrashing silver monsters over the stern every day. At between 18 and 30 pounds, the fish sell for around $200 each each (at $10 a pound.) Once on board we cleaned, pressure bled, and iced the fish. We flew our fish to the town of King Salmon every other day in Rob’s plane. From there Alaska Airlines took it to Anchorage and beyond. Rob is a bush pilot, hunting guide, lodge owner, and commercial fisherman. His small Bush plane made our direct marketing efforts possible given the lack of fish buyers in Ugashik that time of year.

Most of the kings and some early sockeyes ended up on the plates of friends. Others wound up at restaurants and grocers. I enjoy doing direct marketing of the fish I catch. It’s pretty cool to be that connected to the people who consume the fish, and it’s super cool that so many vendors featuring Bristol Bay salmon as a way to help raise awareness about the fight to protect our watershed and livelihoods.

The regular sockeye season began next and it pretty much flew by. The fish arrived early and hit hard. (Perhaps they knew they needed to get up river before water temps rose to over 60 degrees?) My crew was solid and rocked at picking fish. My boat, the Rainy Dawn, was sturdy and reliable. I only got in one yelling match in which I didn’t yell louder but my remarks were much wittier than the other guy and my middle finger, not his, got the last word. I never rammed or got rammed by any other boats. My hands were only numb a couple of times when I woke up (tendons swell from all the fish picking making it hard to feel one’s sausage-like fingers) and I worked on my tan almost every day. My only complaint is that we had to stop fishing on several occasions because the fish processors got plugged and couldn’t handle any more fish. For years now we go on limits (meaning we can only catch a certain amount of fish per tide) because the runs are too damn big. What a privileged problem we have in Bristol Bay. What would California salmon fishermen say to that?

In terms of the anti-Pebble campaign, fishermen are riled up now more than ever! I get the same questions all the time: what can we do? How can I pitch in? Where do I send my money? Can you send me to Juneau and D.C. to talk to whoever gets to decide? What’s the plan to prevent mining in our watershed? I get these questions over and over from fishermen, tender captains, greenhorns, old salts – the whole gamut. I tell them there’s a bill in the Alaska Legislature to protect the bay. It’s called HB 242. There’s also a resolution before the Alaska Board of Fisheries to create a fish refuge in Bristol Bay. And in October, Trout Unlimited will hold a week-long event in Washington, D.C., called Wild Salmon Week where people from Bristol Bay will speak to House and Senate representatives about the threats to the bay from proposed mining.

I tell fellow fishermen and anyone else who will listen that we can all pitch in by calling lawmakers, writing letters to editors, testifying on every possible action to protect Bristol Bay, and educating everyone we know about the importance of America’s last great salmon run. I urge them to speak out and do whatever they can to stop the irreversible threats that Pebble poses to the entire ecological and social fabric of Bristol Bay. And of course I tell them to insist on buying Bristol Bay wild salmon and to sign up for membership with Trout Unlimited.