Last Saturday at 1 p.m., the Dull brothers careened down the Kuskokwim in the trusty Connie D., a gray boat named after their mother. Their parents bobbed ahead of us downstream, casting gillnets out of the Darth Vader - the family’s second boat. It was the first time the river had opened for gillnet fishing in two weeks, and the Dulls had 12 hours to catch as many Kings as their totes could carry. We watched the white buoys on the end of the brothers’ net and waited.
“It’s kind of our lucky spot,” said Hunter Dull, a high school junior in a baseball cap. His parents called him periodically for fishing updates.
“This summer we’ve only been able to fish here once,” he said. “I’m hoping we can come here more often.”
The Connie D. was one of hundreds of boats on the water last Saturday as subsistence fishermen worked to take advantage of the second federal gillnet opening of the season. The Kuskokwim king run is weak this year, and biologists are concerned that they could see their lowest run on record. Today, managers met to discuss whether to open the river to gillnets again this summer or to keep the river closed. (Update: the Kuskokwim will open for gillnet fishing on both Saturday and Monday).
But despite increased regulation and decreased fishing time this summer, Bethel families have still found time to enjoy themselves.
Three white buoys bobbed under the water. "We have one dancer,” said Hunter, pointing to one of them as Hunter’s brother, Byron, got up to pull the net in. The unofficial captain of the Connie D., Byron is a skate- and snowboarder in loudly patterned board shorts. He told me to call him the Bush Doctor, his alter ego from an old music show that he hosted with my boss, Shane Iverson. Their tagline was: “Subdub and reggae music for the subsistence lifestyle.”
Byron’s childhood friend, Ace Soll, rode along with us too. Formerly a Bethel resident, she’s a preschool teacher now, visiting from Honolulu. Byron lives in Anchorage, and he and Ace were actually planning to fly back there on Saturday.
“She changed our tickets so we could fish,” Byron said.
“We got really lucky,” said Ace.
But so far, the brothers are just netting chums.
Byron worked to untangle them from the net. “It’s a puzzle every time,” he said.
“We didn’t used to have to fish too many days to get all the salmon we needed for the year,” he added. “But these scheduled openers, it’s like a race - everybody’s out there.”
Byron and Hunter grew up fishing the Kuskokwim.
“Since we were babies we got to club the fish,” said Byron. “I remember taking naps in the very front of the boat, shutting the door and being able to fit in those little spaces. Sleeping while we drifted.”
As children, the brothers cannonballed off Bethel’s seawall and cobbled together rafts with their friends which they tried to sail down the river to fish camp (they sank). Fishing was easier when they were younger. Sometimes, Byron said, they could catch enough salmon for the winter in two or three days. There were plenty of chances to fish and hardly anyone watching.
But on Saturday, the Dull brothers were politely interrupted by two officials collecting data for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. According to their survey, more than 30,000 salmon were harvested during Saturday’s opening, but only about 15 percent of them were kings.
With fewer fish in the smokehouse this year, there's plenty of speculation on board about the run's timing. Maybe the kings hit early this year, said Byron. Or maybe they’re hitting late. He suspects that climate change is impacting the salmon this year, and overfishing by industrial outfits doesn’t help.
Around 2 p.m. we get lucky: the first king of the day.
After the Dull brothers filled their totes, we drove the Connie D. down a reedy tributary to the family’s fish camp. The shoreline in front of their smokehouse is overgrown with purple irises.
We sorted the fish as Byron and Hunter’s mother, Connie Dull, gutted chums with an ulu. Their father, Arvin Dull, smoked a cigar and cracked jokes as he measured a king with a yardstick. He slit the king’s belly to check its sex, then plucked three scales from its back and licked them before sticking the scales to a small, labeled card. Mr. Dull participates in a voluntary program that tracks the age, length and sex of king salmon in the river. He'll send the data to Alaska’s Department of Fish and Game, who will use it monitor trends.
Biologists fear that the kings may not meet their minimum escapement this year, and managers say that they are struggling to balance the health of the run with the health of the Delta’s subsistence communities.
But Saturday, the Dull family caught at least a dozen kings and more chums than they can count. So for now, they’re just enjoying it.