Alaska Homestead: Living in a Cabin up North
(Page 2 of 3)
May/June 1978
By Steve Chamberlain
That ole river takes care of us in other ways too. The Kuskokwim is our only thoroughfare (there are no roads in our neck of the woods) . . . and we use it as our highway when we gather firewood, go berry picking or hunting, or just visit friends. But more than that, the stream provides our primary source of food since we're mainly fish farmers.
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In the spring and summer we go after chee-fish (a sort of Alaskan tarpon, pronounced "she-fish"), red salmon, king salmon, silver salmon, and chum. During the fall we take grayling, eel, whitefish, and lush (a ling cod). All in all, we find we can fish from spring breakup until well after the river freezes over. Sometimes we locate an eddy and set a gill net . . , or put a "fish wheel" (a device that works like any other waterwheel, except that the paddles alternate with wire scoops which dip up the catch in swift water. Then again—on a long afternoon—we may just travel up one of the Kuskokwim's tributaries to hook grayling or rainbows or arctic char (as much for sport as for the food we catch).
When the ice comes, we occasionally go to elaborate measures to set fish traps or nets under the river's frozen surface. We'll run a net, for instance, by pushing it from one hole in the ice to another (then another) with a rope attached to a long, curved stick. (This is not an easy job, especially when it's twenty below outside and the ice on the river is two feet thick!) Setting a fish trap is a good bit more involved and not really worth the effort unless you've got a team of dogs to feed.
After the river freezes over and the water rises, the eels start running. To catch 'em, you go out at night and cut a trough (about three or four feet long "crosswise" on the river) out of the ice. Then you hang a lantern over the hole so you can see the eels swimming 'n' wiggling by, and—using a pole that has nails driven through one end—scoop the eels out, much as if you're "shovelin' snakes". Some folks just cook the critters whole, but I (remembering the feisty lamprey eels of my Michigan youth) prefer to pinch their heads off first.
I guess my favorite way of consuming fish is just to eat 'em dried (with—perhaps—some cheese) in any one of three forms: strips, flatfish, or blankets.
Strips are made by cutting fish (usually king salmon) into long, narrow pieces . . . dipping the slices in a sugar-salt brine and hanging 'em up to dry. "Flatfish" are prepared by skinning any of the smaller fish (such as red salmon or whitefish), opening each fish's body out flat, and drying them without brining them. Blankets—my favorite kind of cut—are made by [1] flaying a nice, big king salmon and laying him open like a blanket, [2] slashing the meat crosswise so it'll dry more completely, [3] soaking the carcass in brine, and [4] hanging it up to dry. (We dry all our fish by smoking 'em over a slow cottonwood or driftwood fire.)
