Ep 104: The Wilds of Alaska, with Jeff Lund
Jeff Lund is the host of the Mediocre Alaskan Podcast and author of A Miserable Paradise: Life in Southeast Alaska. He also has an upcoming book, Beyond the Hunt, which will be released this May. In this episode, we talk about fishing in Alaska, how subsistence regulations work, and some of Jeff’s hunting and fishing adventures around the state.
Website: https://www.themediocrealaskan.com/
Instagram: @alaskalund
Instagram: @themediocrealaskan
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Katie
You're listening to the Fish Untamed podcast, your home for fly fishing the backcountry. This is episode 104 with Jeff Lund on the wilds of Alaska. All right, well I just love to get a background on all my guests, in particular how they got into the outdoors and fishing. So tell me how you got your start in fishing and specifically in fly fishing, if you've done much fly fishing.
Jeff
My parents moved to Alaska when I was five. So part of the program is just self-sufficiency. And so we'd ride our bikes to the river whenever we could. Parents took us down to the river to fish and whatnot. So my earliest childhood memories are fishing at the river. Dad bought a boat, and so we fished out in the ocean a little bit too. So it was just all outdoors all the time. Klawock, Alaska has about 700 people, which is about the same amount it had when I grew up there. so it wasn't, certainly not a sprawling metropolis. But yes, we played outside a lot, had a lot of fun. And then I didn't fly fish until I was post-college teaching in California. That just seemed like the best way that I could adhere to all the regulations. I was a little bit scared and intimidated because this section of the river was single-hook barbless. This one you could use bait. And so it was just, what can I do that's going to ensure that I'm going to be safe and adhering to the regulations. So fly fishing seemed to be that way. And then I reread "The River Runs Through It" and of course watched the movie and I thought, okay, yeah, let's just do that. So that was fun. That was a couple of years into my teaching career. So I've been fly fishing for 15 or so years. Really, really enjoy that quite a bit. Every summer I'd come back to Alaska and I would fly fish instead of spin cast fishing. So that's a lot of fun. As far as riding goes, I started riding an outdoor column when I was living in California and I brought it back to Alaska when I moved back in 2013. I think that kind of covered everything, but not a very surgical approach there. I've been outdoors since I was a little kid. Fishing, I started hunting when I moved back in 2013 too. Got to do it if you live in Alaska.
Katie
Were those regulations in California like a statewide issue where there's all kinds of regulations that are kind of leaning toward single barbless hook and things like that Or was it your local area that just happened to have a couple rivers that had pretty strict regulations?
Jeff
It was mostly on rivers that had a small remnant of Chinook run. So the lower Sacramento River, which is anything below Lake Shasta, fantastic trout water fish. Just so awesome. Big trout, but they also had some Chinooks that would come up. So there were times they would close that river because you'd have a couple of kings that were in there spawning. And then some of the other rivers that had, I'm not sure why they did regulations 'cause there weren't any Chinook runs, but there'd be sections of the water where you could use single barbless and others. And I'm not really sure why, I think it was just maybe for the population or something like that. But yeah, you definitely see some, and then closures too for not even emergency closures, just the trout season, that's not gonna be open because this is what's going on. And again, a lot of the closures had to do with the remnants of the Chinooks. The sad reality of that was PG&E, which is the electric company, they had their dams on the rivers and so they would raise and lower the level of water based on the demand for electricity. And so there were a few times when the river was closed to allow the Chinook to spawn, but then they would drop the water level. And so the reds of the Chinooks would then be out of the water. And it was just it was ridiculous. But that's just-- you have the people who need the power, and then you have the people who want to preserve the fish, and they're not really talking. And they're not saying, hey, OK, well, now because the fish are spawning, we need to make sure that we keep some consistent water flows so we don't wipe them out.
Katie
Right. What was the fishing like in California? What did you fish for mostly? Did you ever get up into the mountains and do any of the golden trout or any of those cool species they've got up in the Sierras and stuff?
Jeff
Yeah, a buddy of mine, we definitely went in as many trips to the Sierra as we could. It was so much fun. And there was a trout slam where you get a brown trout, rainbow, brookie, and a golden all in one day. And so we did that. And I'm not really big for slams and things like that, but it was kind of a cool little challenge. And the golden was the most difficult, but I mean, absolute sworn to secrecy, but it was fun. It was one of those small little creeks and you're laying on a piece of granite and you have to have 10 feet of your cast land outside of the water and just a little bit of tip it with the fly into the water. So it was just super cool. Then you got to kind of jump up and set the hook. Yeah, it was a pretty cool experience to look at these fish. If you did splash your cast, then the thing was going to just go and hide. So it had to be really technical and it was pretty fun, but just for a six inch fish. But that was super cool. So we did a lot of that. And then got into some-- on the eastern Sierra, there were some pretty nice rivers with some nice trout in there. So I did as much as we could, because that's what you got to do.
Katie
Yeah. Yeah, those golden trout up in the mountains are definitely high on my bucket list. Like, I really want to get out there and do that at some point. I think just the scenery and I like fish that feel like a little hidden gem. Like, there's not a lot of them. There's like some little pocket of them. that kind of situation really appeals to me. So I'm really jealous of you there. But tell me how Alaska then compares to that. I mean, obviously, these are two very different lifestyles and landscapes. So you're in Alaska now. Tell me more about that.
Jeff
My wife and I were actually talking about how we missed trout fishing. She got her PhD at University of Wyoming. And so while she was doing her research during the summers, I was down there. And we fished the Platte River. And we'd go into the Big Horns and whatnot and had a lot of fun fishing for trout. Up here, Southeast Alaska is 1700 islands and it stretches a very long area, but you can't get to other areas because it's islands. You have a boat so you can access some of these rivers, but it really is... You don't have large swaths of land that's being drained by these rivers. If you think of iconic rainbow trout, you think of the 30-inchers in the Bristol Bay area or Kenai River, whatnot. Those are massive rivers that a lot of nutrients, so you get really big fish. These coastal creeks that are on islands don't have, it's just not as big. If you have a nice lake system with a lot of nutrients, you can get some trout. They're going to be bigger, but a good looking trout is 16 to 18 inches. Of course, you don't have variety. You have some rainbows, you have some coastal cutthroats, but you're not going to get those bus looking or submarine looking 30 inches that you get up north. And then you don't have it, it's not year round. It's open year round, but the fish aren't really around year round. They kind of go and they sink down in the lakes and whatnot and kind of winter over. You get some good steelhead runs, which is a lot of fun, but again, that can be a little bit picky too based on the weather. Right now it's really, really cold. The water's low. So they're not really moving up, pushing up there in the lakes or out in the ocean. So way different. You can't just pick a river, drive to it, and see what's going on there. You don't have the variety and the choices. When we were in Laramie, it was, "Hey, do we want to go down into Colorado? Do we want to go north? Should we go in the Wind River Range? Should we go to Big Horns?" We did a trip out to Idaho and did a big loop down into Colorado. It was super fun to be able to do that. You really don't have those options. It's just whatever the weather allows you to get to in your boat or skiff. And then you hope that no one else is at the dock or is anchored there or mooring buoy. Which is crazy because one other boat just kind of ruins your day. Some of these rivers have three or four good little spots to fish and they can hold maybe one or two people. And your steelhead run is, in some of these small creeks, your steelhead run is dozens of fish, maybe a hundred fish. So if you have a whole bunch of people on there, it just doesn't have the same feel, which is weird to have anybody else on this river. It's almost offensive, but that's the attitude, I guess.
Katie
That kind of surprises me to hear, because I feel like when I picture Alaska, I picture just kind of like endless opportunity. And I guess that doesn't necessarily they're not mutually exclusive, but I picture showing up to a river and there just being such a vast area to go to that I wouldn't expect that seeing one or two other people would really matter that much. But at the same time, I can imagine that you don't expect to see people because it is so vast. So when you do, you're like, I'll just go somewhere else. Am I on the right track with thinking that? Or why does one or two people really ruin your day?
Jeff
I'm territorial, I guess. I'm selfish, greedy, all those things. I think it has to do more with when you take the boat out somewhere, because you put so much more effort into getting to this area. And because you put forth so much effort, you want to be rewarded a little bit more. If you go further north into the interior, when you can drive it similar to down south where you can drive and get to these different rivers and you know, you're crossing a river every 10, 15, 20 miles, I might have some fish in it. Um, down here, most of the trout, um, either come up out of the lakes with the salmon and when the salmon start to run. And so your, your trout fishing happens to correspond a lot more when the salmon are around. Um, so right now, if you went down to the river and there's a river that's, there's a couple of rivers that are right here in town and there might be a couple of trout, But, you know, you kind of want to leave them alone because the water is pretty low, it's pretty cold. And so a lot of people just kind of, it's just, it's just wait until the salmon are running. Then you have the dollies push up. You have the rainbows are really getting after it too. So there are some, some opportunities, but you don't have that resident trout population that you have down South, at least here in Southeast. So you have some, some sections or some swaths of time in which there's not a whole lot to fish for, except for steelhead in the winter, which is a great alternative. Um, and some of those areas that are, that you can drive to, everybody knows that it's, it's steelhead time. So you can get 15, 20 people at this one spot where the river dumps into a lake. And it's just, it's that, that combat fishing, cause you can't really go anywhere else. They're all just kind of nosing up into the river a little bit. They haven't gone fully into the river waiting for the next big rain. So the water level comes up so they can push up. Um, So you're just kind of hanging out at this one spot and you have spin casters there and you have fly anglers there and you have people with different ethics and morals and attitudes about what the fishing should be. And so I, I steer clear of that. It's just not the experience that I want. I sound like a total snob, but…
Katie
No, I get it.
Jeff
My most ideal fly fishing is just to have that, to be able to fish things on my own terms, um, and be able to have that solitude and not just, you know, is that There's fish there, and I could get one. But you're just going to be tense. And it's just competition where it's kind of like the experience. And so if you do take your boat out somewhere and you see someone else, it doesn't ruin your day. But you're like, all right, well, hopefully this guy's at spot two, and I'll go to spot three, and hopefully things work out. And maybe I know the person.
Katie
What's the overall access like in Alaska? Because I picture-- well, I think I've heard that there's a ton of public land up there. I also assume that a lot of it is kind of roadless and trailless and just kind of wild. So do you, you know, is there a lot of water that you can access via road? Do you really need a boat to get to the good spots? Do you ever do like fly in? Like how do you access the vast public lands you've got up there?
Jeff
Most of Prince of Wales Island where I grew up has, there's a nice road system. And so the access is pretty substantial, especially compared to Ketchikan where I live now, where intersect. One, two, there's a river in kind of downtown, it's more of a more of a creek that still has a couple trout in it and gets a very small run of steelhead still which is crazy considering the economic past of mining and logging and everything like that. The fact that any fish are still in there is pretty crazy. There's another lake that they get some so those can be hit by road but everything else in Ketchikan you're you're taking a boat to you're doing fly outs too. Um, so it's pretty, pretty tough to get around, um, different communities, uh, further North Juneau on the road system is a couple of spots where you can get, uh, you can get some fish and yeah, for the most part, just kind of a fly out type of program where just people kind of wait for, for the fishing to, to be good, um, you know, fishing season, you have hunting season and you kind of have the winter season, if there's some steelhead in the local Creek, um, but all the communities are near at least a river too, that was just kind of one of the main reasons they were founded in that area. So, um, variety is lacking for the most part, except for Prince of Wales Island. Um, but each community has, has one or two quality options. So, uh, that's another reason why, why some of these, sometimes Alaskans are very, very helpful and very welcoming of, of people. Um, but with some of these smaller rivers, you know, they're, you know, they can't hold a lot of people. So the people who want to take on an op and them, an economic opportunity or an entrepreneurial opportunity and, and guide, um, you know, this, these are smaller systems. And so they don't want to have the big, big guided program or have a suburban showing up to their spot and whatnot. So there's a different level of ownership, which isn't all that different, I guess, than your typical local versus Don local, um, issues. But, uh, um, yeah, when you only have a couple of rivers that you can go to effectively, if you can't afford flyouts, then you're going to be protected by those rivers. But further north in the interior, you have a lot more access to that.
Katie
Is there a big culture of locals doing fly out trips? Or is that more of a, I'm coming in with a bunch of money as a tourist, and I'm going to pay to go on this epic fishing adventure?
Jeff
There are some people who have their own planes. Aviation is a big thing here in Southeast Alaska. It seems like every year I have four or five students who are graduating seniors who want to be pilots. And not all of them end up being pilots, but a good number of them do. And so it's, that's part of the culture. You have a family who grew up in aviation and they fly. And so because they have their pilot sizes, they're year round pilots here and they'll fly friends out to some of the lakes. And there's some really fantastic trout fishing in some of the lakes. And so off the cruise ships, people do some fly outs and then some of the locals do too. But yeah, it's pretty, you're still pitching for gas. I've never done that. I've never been invited on one of those trips 'cause that's not everybody, But there definitely is some families who do that for fun. But the locals aren't really paying for that very often. If the fishing was that much better, I think people might do that. But I think people are more saving for fly out hunts and whatnot than trout fishing.
Katie
Is there a big subsistence culture in the communities that pop up along these waterways?
Jeff
Yeah, there's-- growing up in Klawock, This was in the 80s, you know, being a little kid, there were two blonde kids in the school, and that was my brother and I until my buddy Lars moved there. So it was, you know, 60 to 70% native. And so you just got a different perspective on just kind of the lifestyle, you know, and saw the, there was a, we had a native carving class, and so I took native carving when I was in middle school. There was some language that we learned in elementary school. And, um, you know, so you have at the school, kids are carving totems and you have a lot of the native dancing and whatnot, so that culture is much more prevalent and you get, you got to see a lot more of that subsistence lifestyle, but it's not, wasn't just exclusive to the native population. Um, you had people who. They don't eat chicken, pork, whatnot. That's just, it's way too expensive to buy it at the store. Cause everything has to be barged up from Seattle. Uh, when we first moved here, there was like, you get your produce and bananas were, if they were yellow, you were excited. Um, so, and your lettuce wasn't good. So your produce wasn't of good quality. And so it was what what's around here that we can get. That's going to be, um, good and, and nutritional for us. And, um, hunting was a, was a big part for a lot of people. We didn't really hunt. We moved up from Colorado and, um, mom and dad did a little bit of hunting, uh, for whitetail, but, uh, we didn't get into blacktail deer hunting, uh, when I, when I was a kid, but a lot of fishing. And so a lot of people would subsist off fish, um, and then hunting. And that's kind of what my wife and I do. Now we try not to eat, um, you know, beef or anything like that. Just whatever we can kill. It'd be great. So I get a couple of deer caribou, um, got a mountain goat last year and just try not to just, did you save money that way? Um, so, um, it's, it's kind of subsistence in, in, in sort of a different way. I think there's the down South subsistence is that you have a sustainable where you grow everything and you, you get everything yourself. Up here subsistence kind of has the context of the native community. Um, and so it's, well, just kind of the rural living is, is, it's more subsistence, but it's never a hundred percent, you know, no one is a hundred percent subsistence because you're using modern technologies at the very least, you know, so these, these modern advantages, um, make it much more efficient, much more easy for us to take. So it becomes kind of sketchy there when you start to talk about what is sustainable. Because if we do want to live a subsistence life, but we take all these modern technologies, we're going to be a lot more efficient and have much more of an impact on the not only the habitat, but also the species.
Katie
Is there a legal divide between subsistence and non-subsistence or native and non-native? or both? Like, it sounds like subsistence is not inherently tied to Native communities. Although, of course, I'm sure they are somewhat correlated in ways. But like, legally, how do those things work?
Jeff
It's a really good question. And Alaska was able to select ways to manage not only populations of fish and game, but also indigenous populations based on what happened down the lower 48. Alaska was rather do reservations for native populations. They set up native corporations. Southeast Alaska, you have the Sealaska Native Corporation. You have the people who lived on this land are able to get into fishing and logging and invest the money. They have this regional corporation. They're able to sustain their lifestyle. You get shareholder if you're a native and then based on how much the investments improve, you can make a good amount of money. So it's a lot better than the reservation system down in the lower 48. In that part of this, the rural subsistence allows people who live in rural to have different seasons, different regular, well not really different seasons. Take for instance, Prince of Wales, man, I'm really jacking up this answer here. I'm using my hands a lot to try to explain this and try to get things going. The coffee was a little too hot, so I wasn't able to get all of it. What enough of it in, um, so Prince of Wales Island, the, if you are a non-resident, so you either live in big city, Alaska. Um, or you live out of town, you are not considered federally qualified. So if you are not federally qualified for subsistence, you can only get four deer rather than five. So I live in Ketchikan, which is not considered rural 'cause we have 12,000 people in the city and the borough. So I can go to Prince of Wales and I can shoot four deer 'cause I'm a resident, but I'm not federally qualified. So I can only shoot four. If you live in Prince of Wales and you're federally qualified and that's not specific to native, you can get five deer and you get an extra month of the season. So it's a way of acknowledging rural populations and how much more difficult it could be. And so giving them kind of a first shot at these sorts of things, which I think is a great, great thing to do. What's happening in some areas is the disdain for outsiders is making local groups want to close down hunting to non-federally qualified users. So this is more of a hunting question, I guess, than fishing. So there's a place up near Kotzebue where they closed it down, um, to non, uh, federally qualified hunters. And so even though I live in Ketchikan, I I'm, I'm a resident. Um, I can't go there and hunt because I'm not considered rural. Um, and so a part of the testimony was because you had people who were flying in from wherever to go caribou hunting, and then they would try to offload the meat to people cause they didn't want to pay for the meat to go back with them. Um, it was too expensive. And so that idea that people are flying in to Kotzebue and then getting flown out somewhere, killing caribou, and only taking the antlers home. It didn't sit well with a lot of locals. Um, and the, the herd is, you know, obviously in, in, in fluctuation, but, um, the, the non-resident take was less than 10% per year. And so the evidence showed that, well, they're not really having a huge impact on that, but. Um, the, the federal government, the, um, uh, rural subsistence, um, they make their decisions on behalf of these, these rural areas, they, uh, they close it down to non-residents. Um, so there's, there's definitely, um, there's a lot, a lot to it. And there are certain areas where people get first fishing rights. Um, and you can, uh, beach sands, you can set out a net or you can net set. So there's different ways that you can get fish if you're rural, uh, versus non-rural. Um, same thing with sockeye, there are certain areas. So based on where you go, there are certain things that you are allowed to do if you are a rural subsistence versus just random person from somewhere else or a big city, Alaska. I'm not sure if that made any sense.
Katie
Yeah, no, it did. This is super interesting. So it's based on rural versus not rural, but is there any sort of component where you kind of show that you are living as a subsistence lifestyle? I mean, I guess by nature, if you're in a rural area, you probably live a more subsistence type lifestyle than someone who lives in the city, for example. But it's just based on where you live. It's not based on you showing that, hey, we don't have access to this meat, so we need to get more meat this way. I don't know. I just pictured there needing to be some sort of evidence of a subsistence lifestyle, not just where you live. But it sounds like it's just straight up where you are a resident of.
Jeff
Yeah. And you have to register and get your permit and all that just to make sure. And you have to have your residence. ask you where you've been living and where your primary residence is. And then because, especially in Southeast, it's fairly obvious. You can't drive from it's not like I actually live in Fort Collins and I'm going to drive up to Walden and claim that I'm from Walden and I'm going to get some subsistence type stuff. So it really is the geography helps to make these divides a lot more obvious.
Katie
Huh, that's so interesting. I feel like this has got to be kind of unique to Alaska in that down here we've got residents and non-residents. And it sounds like there's almost three levels in Alaska where there's subsistence, then there's Alaska residents, but non-subsistence, and then there would be non-residents from other states. So are there kind of three different tiers? And it sounds like even there's a divide between the two Alaska residents, that the subsistence people are trying to limit the opportunities of the non-subsistence people, Whereas down here, that would be the equivalent of residents wanting the tag numbers of non-residents to be lowered. But I never thought about it happening within state like that.
Jeff
Yeah, we Alaskans like to say that we're really friendly and helpful. And as Alaskans, we get through everything together. And there is a sense of togetherness that I didn't really see when I was in California, because it was probably California. But yeah, these are the types of things when you start talking about resources, you talk about, you know, I'm, I'm rural, so I should be entitled to more. And as a non-rural person, I think, yeah, you should definitely have, have first, uh, first crack because everything is way more expensive there. So, you know, these good faith sort of the decisions that say, all right, well, in certain areas, if you're not federally qualified, you can get two deer rather than four that, all right, at least you can still get deer. Um, But the areas that want to close them down to all outsiders, it's a little bit different. When I go back home to, to clock, everyone says, you know, welcome home. What not the elders say, welcome home. And you start talking about deer and someone's going to inevitably say, oh, you know, the wolves are reducing the deer population. It's all those people from Ketchikan too. And then you can kind of see in their head like, oh, he lives in Ketchikan now. And so there's kind of like a smile. And you know, it's because it's the, the perception is the deer population on Prince of Wales is, is lacking or is starting to go down because of Ketchikan hunters, non-resident hunters, and then wolves. When the reality is it's a little bit of everything. It's obviously habitat. It's also wolves. It's also, you know, it only takes a couple of bad winters in a row and you're going to have winter kill plus hunting pressure. So it's a little bit of a whole bunch of different things, but the most convenient thing, the thing that you can really kind of tangibly do and look at is say, Hey, there's going more deer, fewer people from out of, from out of state come here or fewer people from Ketchikan come here. And so let's try to limit that. So there's some, some antagonistic attitudes between like Prince of Wales versus here. And then same thing if you're on the Kenai Peninsula and you, if you live in Soldotna versus live in Anchorage and then drive down. So you have those rivalries, you have those, you know, just, it's consistent no matter where you're at. But when decisions can be made that prevent people, that's kind of unfortunate. Good faith decisions seem like they make a lot of sense. Like, "Hey, let's work out. Let's make sure that we protect this resource." Okay, that makes sense. You live here, so things are more difficult, so you should have first shot. No problem with that. And then people are also trying to take that as, "Let's remove all outsiders, and so we can have our own private hunting preserve." that's where things get a little bit more contentious.
Katie
Yeah, I suppose little like intra-rivalries like this exist everywhere. I'm picturing here, you know, the western slope I'm sure looks down on Denver, but then we all unite together against the Californians moving in and suddenly we're all Coloradans. So it's like, you know, you'll find people in any group that will find someone else to hate in that group, but as soon as someone from outside the overall group comes in, you all join together against them. So I guess this is just more of a slightly... there's more legality surrounding this one than some of these more like just socially, the ones that socially exist in bars and stuff down here. Tell me more about some of these hunts you've done recently. I'm interested to hear about your mountain goat and your caribou hunts. Just tell me more about those.
Jeff
So it's kind of funny, kind of sad that Alaska being so big, I think it's pretty expensive to travel different areas and it'd be nice if we could just drive up and do a caribou hunt. Um, but it, it takes a lot of money and planning. So, um, spring break two or three years ago, I have a buddy that lives in Fairbanks and they have, um, the, the 40 mile herd is one of the largest caribou herds and the population was, uh, had recovered a lot from the seventies. I think the seventies it was down to like 7,000 animals, But thanks to predator management, thanks to management in general, it was up near 80,000, I think, something like that. And so the concern was because the natural migration had kind of changed over the years. And the worry was that there are now too many animals for this area and it was going to degrade the habitat. There wasn't gonna be enough food for them. And so they allowed two seasons. One season was at the end of August, early September, and there was 3,000 tags, I think it was 3,000, maybe 5,000 tags, and then a second winter season, which is for locals or residents, because no one's gonna wanna go out on a snow machine when it's negative 20 degrees to go shoot caribou, but that sounded kinda fun, so I flew up there to Fairbanks. Buddy Harrison picked me up. It was negative 30. We drove out the road, and it was pretty crazy because it won't be above freezing for months at a time up there, So the road, you can't put de-icer down on the road and there's not enough warm sun, it doesn't melt off. And so you just have, the road will be encased with snow and ice for a couple months. But it's like a different, I don't know, it's so cold or the composition of the snow is so different that it's not a wet slick snow. As long as you have enough weight, then you can drive pretty safely. And so I was bare knuckle the entire drive out the road we were hauling these two snow machines, but we're going up and down these hills and I thought, "Oh gosh, at any moment, at any moment, at any moment we're going to just slip or slide or something." But that's just kind of, you don't know what to expect and so things become a little bit different. But we'd go to a little pull out and we'd get off the snow machines and we'd drive around for five to 10 miles and look for them. It wasn't really a get up to a knob in glass because, and you don't want to get too far from the road too. it's this cold outside you don't want to get too isolated and you didn't have a whole lot of daylight. So five to ten little mile circuit looking for just a small pocket and go to the next one, go to the next one. So we were actually, had called it quits for the day. We were headed back to Fairbanks and on our way back to Fairbanks we saw a couple people that would pull off to the side and they had their snow machines and on the back you're pulling this little sled and they had them and so we had to slow down you can't just hit the brakes otherwise you're gonna slide so said hey and see you got some some caribou and it was kind of our way of asking “hey man where they at” and he said do you have a do you have a pot for coffee and we're like well you know we got or no he said do you have a coffee percolator and we said no but we do have a pot he said that'll work so we gave him the pot and that was his way of saying hey if you you give me a pot for coffee then I'll tell you where the caribou are. So we said, "Ah, sounds good." The caribou about four miles that way. So we offloaded real quick because there was only about an hour and a half or so of daylight left. Went back there and on the way back there, only about a mile and a half off the road, we saw a little pocket. And so stopped the snow machines and there was over this little draw and slid down and took a shot. Harrison got one, I got one, and then we had to cut one in half to fit it on the sled, I got them up the little draw and then back to the truck right before sunset. So it was pretty cool. But when you're working on an animal, you start to kind of sweat. And so I knew that I was sweating on my baseline. I'm like, "Oh, gosh, this is horrible because it's negative 30 degrees." And the whole time I was worried about when I take my glove off if my hand was sweaty because there's hand warmers on the snow machine, like is my finger going to freeze to the trigger? reasonable expectation here because I never hunted in this cold before and Harrison knew he's fine just you know you'll be alright just don't sweat like well I'm sweating I'm sweating so it was like this I got to keep moving because because I've started sweating if I lose this heat I'm in trouble I had base layer I had fleece pants I had puffy pants And then I had these bibs refriger wear, way cheaper than like your Sitka, Kuiu, whatever. And they are so stinking warm. They're what the people use when they're doing the ice road trucking and whatnot. And then, you know, people who work outdoor in the interior, like that's the brand that they kind of go with. And so it was, it was awesome that I bought snow boots. And so I'm totally bundled up, but I just start to feel that sweat and think, oh gosh, this is horrible. anything bad happens, like we're a snow machine breakdown away from being in some trouble. But I made a trip back and then came back for the other half of the caribou and we got back and so it was an amazing experience, totally fun and it reflected that different sort of attitude toward the hunt, knowing that this was a local only hunt so the guy didn't even care where I was, he knew that I had to be, or that we had to be residents so there wasn't a, "No, you got to figure it out for yourself." It was yeah, the caribou that way. We're all here for the same goal. We're going there. We're just trying to get some caribou, trying to get some meat for the freezer. This is not a trophy hunt, not a sort through hunt. It's just we're getting some caribou before the quota is reached and we're done. It was really cool to just have that level of hunt. Fellow respect. There was kind of a rush against the weather and against the cold. But yeah, that was a pretty fun hunt. Then I went back in August of this year for the archery hunt on the Hall Road. Have you heard about the Hall Road archery hunt?
Katie
I have heard about the Hall Road, but I don't actually know anything about it. Like I hear it and I have like a reference that when people reference the Hall Road, I'm like, "Oh yeah, the Hall Road." But I couldn't actually tell you anything about it. So please fill me in.
Jeff
So it's, I'd never been up there before. We flew up to Fairbanks. couldn't go on the trip so my buddy Ryan and I went up and we rented a truck for like $4,000. The hip trendy thing to do is to rent a U-Haul and drive up the hall road. It's like a nine-hour drive. So like anytime that we saw a U-Haul, like oh you're from Wyoming or Colorado or something like that and you were listening to some podcast where someone else talked about renting a a U-Haul. But we rented a truck just because we wanted just that sturdy, we wanted a real vehicle. We didn't want to slum it, especially if there had been some snow the week before, so we didn't want to be in a compromise situation. So you go up and over the Brooks Range and you drop down onto the North Slope and so it's nothing until the Arctic Ocean and it's just an absolutely stunning landscape and you're following the pipeline and some parts are paved but for the most part it's gravel and then you just you see some of these truckers that are coming down from from Prudhoe Bay and you think man this is a this is a this is a pretty beautiful but long stretch of really nothingness the last gas you have is is on the south side of the Brooks Range and then there's There's just no services up there until you get to Deadhorse, which is the furthest point north. It's above the Arctic Circle at the Arctic Ocean once you hit water. So you go up there and you're just kind of driving along the side of the road. There's a corridor where you can't hunt within five miles of the road because you'd figure that... Or you can't rifle hunt. You can archery hunt. So if you're just driving around and you got your bow and you see something that's close to the road, you try to get out and make a stalk. If you do want to get up on a knob and glass and look beyond the five miles and if you see something worth going at, then you can hike in five miles with your rifle and then you can get it with a rifle. That's what we wanted to do. We wanted to get further back than other people were willing to go. We hiked five miles in, but we didn't see anything. The landscape is so stinking flat, it's hard to decipher if there's a little mound or if it's texture or if it's nothing. That was the first thing that fooled us. We saw a couple cows and calves and figured let's just keep going this way. Then we glassed and we saw this patch and we figured it was like a nice mound where we could hang out. It was going to be dry because the tussocks and the tundra is just, it was wet and sloppy from the snow the week before. There's about three, four inches of rain of water that accumulated. just like hopping on these tussocks trying to keep your feet dry for five miles. We got to that what we thought was going to be a cool glass knob, but it ended up being like the size of a pitching mound. I thought, "Man, how in the world were we off by so much?" We thought this was going to be a nice dry knob with some texture where we were going to be up higher and we could glass, but it was like standing on a pitching mound. We can't even pitch our tent here. We walked five miles back to the truck, totally soaked. Just that there's no way that you weren't going to get wet. We stopped trying to hop on the tussocks and just sort of trudging through the water because it was going to be way faster that way. Didn't see any caribou after those first couple that we saw right off the road. So we kind of pissed off, marching back to the truck, just angry. So we got back to the truck, dried out, and then we just ran kind of the road system. And it was amazing how many other people were up there. And that's, as we started to drive kind of back and forth, looking to these areas, the people that were up there that were locals hunting, plus people from down South, it was, you didn't get that feeling of loneliness that I thought I was gonna feel. You get to the Arctic, north of the Arctic Circle, and you're on the North slope, and there's just nothing out there. I expected to just have this feeling of absolute isolation and loneliness, but there was enough hunters where I thought, oh, I'm not lonely at all. This is actually pretty crazy. We're going to have to hope that we see something before someone else does. Otherwise we're going to have multiple people stalking the same caribou. That happened on day three. Ryan went to stalk on this caribou and I was watching from up top. Some guys came from south and they were making a stalk. I'm thinking, "Dude, do they not see us? What's going on here?" The guy made it to the caribou before Ryan did, and it was maybe 20, 25 yards away. It looked like it was pretty close, but there was, I guess, some texture or something like that in the way. So the caribou bumps right up towards me. So all of a sudden, I'm the one who might end up getting the shot. So I get ready and I knock an arrow and I adjust a little bit 'cause I'm down as low as I can. It's, we're in this little, at the bottom of two little hills. And there's a little creek in there with some cover. And that's like the only cover there. Everything else is just barren. So I see the antlers kind of moving below me. And so I kind of get ready. And as it starts to kind of pop up a little bit, it's broadsided 60 yards, but down over a little knob is where Ryan should have been. So this thing has popped out of the low lands. I have no idea if anybody can understand at all what's going on here through my descriptions. But anyway, um, Ryan couldn't get it. Guy, uh, botched his stocks. Now the caribou is right in front of me, but I don't take the shot because if I miss or I get a pass through, I think the air is going to go right to where Ryan is. Cause I can't see Ryan right over this, the spot. And so it was just a mess. And the thing takes off. And so I kind of pursue it a little bit. And then I look up the bluff a little bit and there's someone else that's up there with a bow too. And I think, man, this one caribou did not get shot by four different hunters. Um, and so it was just, it was pretty crazy. And I think that happened a couple more times. We would drive on the road and you would see two different trucks parked and you would see one group of hunters coming from this way. And one group of hunters coming from another way. And part of this is because the herd hadn't really congealed and started to move South and migrate. They kind of stayed up there a little bit longer. And so we were a little bit early. I wouldn't recommend going at the very beginning of August. I think mid-August is probably going to be better. But yeah, it was just bizarre because there's nothing really, there's some texture once you get closer into like the foothills of the Brooks Range, but there's not really any cover. And so you're trying to make a stock and it's almost impossible. You have to use texture, you don't have bushes, branch, cover and stuff like that. and then caribou don't really have a lot of places to hide, but then they can see you coming. So it was just a pretty bizarre experience, pretty fun. We ended up both getting some small caribou and we're excited about that. But yeah, so those are the two caribou stories. Mountain goat, really quick, took a boat for a couple hours, hiked up a mountain, had to use some ropes in a couple spots, but hiked up the mountain, shot a mountain goat and came home and that was the mountain goat hunt. I tried to do an abbreviated one there because that took so long with the caribou one, but yeah, just kind of what you do.
Katie
Oh, the caribou almost sound like our pronghorn hunting here. Obviously pronghorn are known for their amazing eyesight, but it kind of sounds the same in that there's no cover. And so you can see them from like miles away, you know? So it kind of feels like you're into animals all day long because you're like, I can see four different groups of them right now, but they're all four four miles away from me. And then you're like, well, it's gonna be so easy. I'll just walk over to them. And it's easy for the first three miles. And then suddenly you realize that there's nothing for you to hide behind. And it suddenly becomes very strategic and you mess up almost every single time. And I don't know how good of an eyesight caribou have, but it sounds like a very similar stalking experience.
Jeff
I wish I would have made that connection right at the beginning of the story. It would have made the story a lot better. But yeah, it's very much like that. You can see them way out there, how far you're not exactly sure. And then just a little bit of texture here and there. And then there's little river bottoms. And yeah, it's very, very similar to that. So trying to get an archery range for a pronghorn seems like absolutely ridiculously impossible unless you can see them and get into some texture and then make your way to them. But yeah, very similar to caribou hunting up there.
Katie
Why is the U-Haul the current fad on this road? Like what's the argument for bringing a U-Haul up there?
Jeff
I guess you can take a lot of stuff. It might be cheaper. It's probably cheaper. But yeah, I don't know. I think someone probably got that idea, and then it became this kind of cool, hip, minimalist sort of approach to it. And yeah, I don't know. To each their own. But yeah, we wanted the truck for all the good things. The truck added two spare tires. You know, it's going to be made for that sort of terrain. So taking the U-Haul on that road in some areas, it's pretty not horrible, but you want to have a good solid truck. So yeah, the U-Haul is a thing.
Katie
I'm looking at the map right now, just kind of like looking at this road. And I see once it gets up farther north, it does start to parallel a river and lots of little ponds and things. And you mentioned little streams that you're crossing and trying to stay dry. Is there much fishing going on that far up north? Or is it iced over so much of the year that it's just kind of like you got to come farther south for that?
Jeff
Uh, that river, the Sag River is, uh, it's got a lot of, it's got char, uh, grayling, and so we stopped to fish a little bit on our way back when he both had, uh, had caribou. And so, uh, we both got a couple of grayling, which is pretty cool to get the Arctic grayling, like in the Arctic. It was kind of a, a cool little, uh, cool little thing there. It looked exactly like the grayling I've caught at different places, but you know, that different feel that's, that's exactly what fly fishermen say, right? It's not about this brown trout's going to look a lot like this brown trout, but it's a brown trout from Arkansas versus the brown trout from California. That's just kind of how it is. So yeah, there's definitely some fishing in there.
Katie
And what's the fishing like for grayling and char? Are you casting streamers out for the char? I've never fished for Arctic char, but I've seen some pretty big ones. And I know I've caught grayling on dry flies, little tiny dry flies and little tiny nymphs, but what are you doing to catch those fish?
Jeff
I just used a couple of nymphs. I didn't bring, I just brought one fly box. I was trying to keep stuff as contained as possible. So I brought some dry flies and a couple of nymphs and a couple streamers. And the char are pretty voracious. Down in Southeast Alaska, we have Dolly Varden, which are similar to a char, and just voracious eaters. So anything that looks leachy or sculpiny or whatever they're gonna take, they have to be advantageous because the amount of food up there is, You got to take what you can get when you can get it. So, um, yeah, the, the, the sag river braids out so much. Uh, there are some people who, that take pack rafts up there and then they'll, they'll row across, they'll float across. You can get to different areas. You're not actually on the road. Um, some people also wait across, but that drains a lot of water. And so if you have snow in the Brooks range, as it's melting and moving down there, uh, it doesn't take much extra water and all of a sudden you can't see the bottom, it's already hard to see the bottom because it's that kind of milky runoff, super, super cold. And the difference between waiting at knee high and mid thighs is massive, especially if you got those rolling river rocks that start to give away. My buddy Ryan, who I went on the caribou hunt with, he was sheep hunting two years ago. And there was a spot that he and his buddy were going to cross, and they thought about crossing, but they couldn't quite see the bottom, and so they didn't. They went around. And a couple days later, someone was in that same area, and they tried to cross, and they drown. Um, so it's, that's kind of the scary thing about watching YouTube, about how to do the haul road hunt or some of these hunts, because you know, this person's crossing and everything's fine, but that doesn't mean that the conditions are going to be the same. If this person goes in September and the water is, you know, a foot lower, then that's going to be a huge difference. Um, so yeah, it's, you gotta kinda, it's okay to, to, to not cross and come back alive and not, you know, you don't have to go epic. And if you don't feel comfortable with it, not the only way to do it. But yeah, it's pretty awesome, that's for sure, but different than we thought.
Katie
Well, just to wrap up, tell me about your book. It sounds like you've got one book out and one book on the way. So tell me about those.
Jeff
My book, A Miserable Paradise, Life in Southeast Alaska, published it in 2021. And my writing project for 2020 was just to write 5,000 words per month. Just kind of like what life was like. Most people that come up here, they write awesome magazine articles, they write books, they're hunting stories and make films and whatnot. It's really cool to see. I like watching people come up here and really enjoy it because it makes it fresh and reminds me of what I should appreciate. But I wanted to give people an idea of what it's like to live here year round. And so of course, you know, steelhead fishing for January, February, and then March happened. So it ended up being mostly about hunting, fishing and lifestyle in Southeast Alaska, but also a little bit about COVID toward the end because it, you know, it was happening. And so how that was impacting teaching and whatnot. So by the end of the year, I was tempted to go back and look at what I wrote in March and April and May and kind of edit it based on information that we now had. But I just kind of kept it how it was that way. It was like, this is what I thought at the time and that's it. So it's, it's not a COVID book, but happened to be written during the COVID year. So it's, I think it's a pretty good glimpse about what life is like in Southeast Alaska or particularly Ketchikan. Cause the story on Prince of Wales would be different. The story in Haines would be different. So, um, but fishing, hunting, outdoors, uh, lifestyle. Um, and then there was a lot of stuff I wanted to talk about just as, as far as hunting goes. Um, and so my book that's coming out this spring, It's called beyond the hunt and I broke it up into five different sections. So it's not just about hunting and tags and whatnot. Uh, talk about the process, kind of getting better at hunting. So the first part is some of those clumsy first, um, first experiences. And then part two is, uh, mentors and talking about people who are, uh, impactful in the life of a hunter. And it's not just like your uncle or dad or someone like that. A lot of times, that's, you know, celebrities can be influencers in a positive way because if you, if like you're watching Randy Newberg or whatnot, or you're watching Steve Rinella, or you're watching some random person on YouTube, and that's your experience, so that's what your idea of hunting is, then that's gonna inform your decision making, that's gonna inform who you become as a hunter. And so if you end up following someone on YouTube who is kind of a, you know, shoot first, ask questions later, full send type, then you're being mentored by, but whether you kind of admit it or not, you know, that's, that's influencing you into, to being a type of hunter. So I kind of tackle that a little bit. Uh, part three is kind of life of a hunter. Cause as much as we like to say 24 seven, that's not true at all. Uh, we have our jobs, we have the rest of the year. If, if you're hunting and it's a, it's a one month season, that means 11 months out of the year. You're not hunting. You might be scouting, but you know, total days, if you were to tally total days, you're living a lot more of a life than you are actually in the field So talk about that and then I talked about tags and then I talked about the industry itself and it's not to be critical of it just to kind of Look at at some of the elements and some of the things that we have going on. It's it's a great space to have There's no gatekeeper. So you can anybody can have a podcast and you know, anybody can contribute anybody can make YouTube videos anybody can write articles, it's just such a great time to be a probably consider going forward. And so it's not meant to be an insult or a lecture or anything but just kind of a written ideas about some of these things like brands and selling and spending and entrepreneurship and standing out. So five sections, 195 or so pages and yeah pretty excited about it.
Katie
And where can people find it when it comes out? Will it be available on like your website or on you know wherever books are found kind of thing? Where can people get it?
Jeff
I on just because the publishing is kind of a racket. You have your main publishers, the publishing has kind of been consolidated and the process of getting published takes months and a lot of times publishers won't even listen to you unless you have an agent. So then you get an agent, you do all this sort of stuff and by the time it ends up being you publishing your book, you're making 6% of it because it's going to everybody else, your publicist that you had to have and your agent that you had to have so that the publishers choose. I'm like, man, I've been writing an outdoor column for 15 years, so I'm just gonna, I'm not, I don't want to get into the whole everything else. So it'll be on Amazon. I'll also be able to get on my website. And yeah, so if you follow me on Instagram @alaskalund, I'm a lot more active on that one. The Mediocre Alaskan is kind of the second one, but I kind of like use Alaska Lund as my primary Instagram. So there'll be a link there to the website where you can or you can get it on Amazon.
Katie
Great. Well, um, Jeff, this has been a ton of fun. I, every time I talk to someone from Alaska, I just feel the need to go research plane tickets up there and, and go visit. I'm sure it's going to happen at some point, but it's really fun to hear, um, just about the lifestyle. It's so different from it is, from what we have down here. So, um, thank you so much for, for taking the time to tell me about your, your hunting and fishing stories and maybe we'll cross paths at some point.
Jeff
Yeah, that'd be great. Thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it.
Katie
All right. That's a wrap. Thank you all for listening. If you want to find all the other episodes as well as show notes you can find those on fishuntamed.com. You'll also find a contact link there if you want to reach out to me and you can also find me on Instagram @fishuntamed. If you want to support the show you can give it a follow on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcasting app and if you'd like to leave a review it would be greatly appreciated. But otherwise thank you all again for listening. I'll be back here in two weeks with another episode. Take care, everybody.
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