What do you do with free time when you’re in a fishing village in the remote bush of Alaska?  Well, when it’s in Chignik prior to the fishing season, the options are limited, but great!

The fishing season didn’t begin until June 16th, so for the 2 weeks leading up to it we spent a few hours every day working on getting the boat ready to go in the water and the rest of the time spent enjoying all that Chignik had to offer.  A place like this will only help stretch your imagination because there are no restaurants or bars or anything of the sort. We were left to explore the wilds of Alaska in search of our own adventures.

So what kinds of activities are there to do in the bush of Alaska?

Well, to begin with, there is always fishing… of course.  It might seem redundant for us to fish during our time off, but that’s the beauty of Alaska – there are so many types of fishing that it doesn’t get boring.  My personal favorite was going out in our skiff to the mouth of the bay and dropping hand lines to catch halibut, a large flat fish that swims on the bottom of the ocean.

Halibut can grow to immense sizes, often weighing several hundred pounds, and provide quite a fight when you’re fishing for them on a hand line! In the end comes a delicious reward.

Crabbing was another fun and tasty sport. I most looked forward to going out to drop crab pots and then pull them up to find hundreds of dungeness and tanner crabs clinging to the mesh of the pots by their claws. At times we had so much crab that we had to throw some back, while other times the pots would be empty.  Next we would process the crab right on the deck of the Kimberly and pack it into the fishermans freezer at the plant to take home at the end of the summer.

Other than fishing, we enjoyed being ‘land lubbers’ and exploring the area around Chignik.  Jeff, Lloyd and I would jump in the truck and drive to the top of a mountain overlooking the village and shoot clay pigeons at the dump. Or on another note, we would also go looking for bears in the area, and sometimes in the reverse, they would come look for us.

For me, the best part was the scenery of Alaska. It is breathtaking and stunning enough to keep me entertained.

I enjoyed the disconnectedness from the noise and busyness of society, and was finding that the slow pace of Chignik was becoming more familiar and comfortable.

As I experienced all of these incredible and new facets of Alaska, I was getting excited for the fishing season to begin. Chignik itself was a crazy new experience, but only the beginning of what was to be, a summer of a lifetime.