Alternative Homesteading: Fishing in Alaska

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PHOTO: LESLIE CARTER
The boat was built in 1920 and, at the time of purchase, had sunk to the bottom of the harbor. But with a bit of work, Leslie and Steve made their craft sea-worthy and joined their friends, fishing for salmon in the 'Freak Fleet'.

Good old Mother Earth is two-thirds water … and that’s where some of us are doin’ it.

I playfully call our group the Freak Fleet. Our 24 or so craft — all ages and sizes — work an area of southeast Alaska between Juneau, Sitka and Yakutat. We’re of various years, sexes and species (humans, cats, dogs, plants, etc.) but have in common — among many other things — a love for boats, the ocean and its creatures.

It all started for Steve and me when we over-amped on the city scene and began to look elsewhere. Living off the land took more money than we could get together, and we lacked the self-discipline to work a straight job for one, two or five years while we piled up cash enough to do what we really wanted to do. Then we thought of fishing.

That idea didn’t just come out of the blue. Some of our friends were already into the Pacific Northwest’s large fishing industry … and as long as we’d known them they’d kept saying, “Come on up to Alaska! It’s really far out.” So we did.

After a couple of months of hustling we got together $1,500 … a phenomenally small sum for a fishing boat. Among freaks, however, old craft kept alive solely by their bilge pumps were still around. As a matter of fact, our chosen vessel’s pump failed two weeks before we closed the deal, but we decided to go ahead anyway.

  • Published on Jul 1, 1974
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