Thursday, January 16, 2025
You never know what’s going to happen when you go fishing In Alaska. Some fishermen up there are set netters.
“They set their nets out,” says Joe Bob Brewster who ranches around Crystal Falls just outside of Breckenridge. He calls his ranch NPR, No Problem Ranch. He had an oil field supply business in Alaska for 30 years.
“In other words, they run the net out, like in the ocean. They run it out with a boat, and they have something anchored out there that they hook the net on, and they sit for two hours, ten hours, whatever. As the fish swim, they get hung up in the net. Then they take the salmon out, throw them in the boat, take them to the shore and sell them.”
Joe Bob was never too busy with his business to go fishing.
“My brother-in-law and I were out there fishing one time in the middle of nowhere along the Naknek River when this lady drove up with her daughter and asked us if we had a can opener. We told her that we had one and asked if we could help her."
“She had a can with her, handed it over and asked if we could open it. She told us she had the remains of her husband in there, and that he had wanted to be cremated. He had been a set netter out here on the Naknek River and died during the winter. They couldn’t dig a hole to bury him because it was frozen. The lady said ‘I didn’t know what to do with him, so I just canned him. Like we can fish. I figured since we preserved fish, we’d just preserve him.’"
“So, we opened the can full of the woman’s husband’s ashes. She took it, and she and her daughter went down to the river, had some sort of little service, and, Ker plunk, you know, and poured out the ashes into the river. Then they came back, thanked us, and took off."
“We went down to the river and saw a circle of gray ashes where they had poured out the remains of her husband. About that time, a guy came up and was going to clean his fish. He was a set netter. He asked us what we were doing."
“We told him we were just fishing ad asked him not to clean his fish where those gray ashes were because the woman had just buried her husband. We told the man that the woman’s husband had been a set netter. The man pondered a moment and said ‘I wonder if I knew him. What’s his name?’ We told him his first name was George, but we didn’t remember his last name."
“So, this guy goes out there, looks into the river, and sees that gray circle. He came back up and said, ‘one thing about it, I’ll have to say that I don’t recognize him.’”
“The man then said, ‘out of respect, I’ll go down the river a little ways to clean my fish.’”
Joe Bob says that is sure one fishing trip he’ll remember for a long time.
