Today we visited Mike and Liz Chase’s family owned and operated commercial fishing operation. I was surprised to learn that most commercial fishing operations are actually quite small and their window to harvest fish is very short. The industry is very tightly regulated, as is sport fishing, which they said is a good thing and is necessary to make it sustainable. We first got a brief history of the commercial fishing industry then we got to watch their crew in operation from a bluff overlooking their designated fishing area of Cook Inlet as Bald Eagles circled overhead. Each “permit” is allowed only 3 nets, which are 200 feet long and 8 feet deep and they can only fish Monday and Thursday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. for 8 weeks. This family has 4 permits, one each for Mike, Liz and 2 sons so they had 12 nets in the water. Today the total catch was 86 fish. Sandi won a Flounder as she guessed the closest to how many fish they would bring in today. We grilled it over the campfire for supper. We weren’t too impressed with it and decided we like salmon better. We bought some salmon from them, right off the boat, which they cleaned and packaged for us. It doesn’t get much fresher than that. We bought a King and a Sockeye and put them in the freezer. We just had a great day with the family and learned a whole lot about fishing here in Alaska.
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