I grew up in a world much different from the Alaska Peninsula. I spent my boyhood exploring the woods on the bluffs high above the Mississippi River. I disobeyed my parents by hiking in the jungles along the banks of the bay and river. I learned to identify and be wary for copperhead snakes, rattlers, and cottonmouth water moccasins. I recognized and avoided poison ivy (even though I learned later that I was not affected). When I ate fish, it was fried catfish. I tried other fish but did not care for the taste. My role models were Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. After all, Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) did grow up only twenty miles down the river.
Now, the Air Force sent me to an exotic place where I learned so many new things. One of those new experiences was fishing for salmon. Russell Creek taught me how to do that. I did know that salmon spawned and died soon afterward. I didn’t know the process that they went through before dying. I was fascinated to see how salmon decay while they are still alive and swimming. This is a photo of a dog salmon pulled from Russell Creek. I sent this picture home to show the family a salmon just starting to decay. The fish was too rotten for human consumption, as evidenced by the red and green coloring. One of my friends used his foot to show the relative size of my catch.

A SALMON STORY

Anyone who has resided in, visited, or even heard of Cold Bay knows that it is famous for the marvelous salmon that make their awe-inspiring pilgrimage each year to produce a new generation of incomparably delicious dinner-fare. Honestly, eating Silvers from Russell Creek spoiled me from enjoying Salmon from anywhere else. Now, I am no stay-at home. I have lived on the East Coast. I have lived on the Gulf Coast. I have made multiple visits to the West Coast of California, Oregon and Washington. I have lived on the shore of the Great Lakes and on the Plains of the Midwest. For ten years I made annual visits to the Desert of Arizona. I have lived at the foot of the Rocky Mountains of Wyoming. In several of those places I have perused menus of various restaurants. (My wife is a “foodie.”) When the opportunity and inclination arose, I ordered the salmon. Never, ever for the rest of my life has any salmon measured up to those my friends and I caught, prepared and then ate in the VOQ (Visiting Officer Quarters) at Cold Bay AFS. However, there was one drawback. This is that story. WARNING! Don’t read any farther if you have a weak stomach.

When the salmon were running, the temptation was just too strong. Everyone with a pole and line headed for Russell Creek. The excitement was just too great to imagine! My friends and I frequently stayed until midnight when it became too dark to feel safe…errr, you know why! I’m assuming you have read some of my other posts about our bruin friends. Anyway, on this particular occasion we brought our catch back to the radar site for one of our evening meals in the VOQ. After cleaning our salmon outside, we brought them upstairs where we fileted the best of them and put the remainder in one of our freezers. The ones we ate, we cut-up into chunks, seasoned and rolled them in one of our concocted mixtures of corn meal and wheat flour. Then we deep-fried them to a golden brown until we devoured every morsel.
After we ate, we were standing in the room talking when one of us noticed an unusual movement on the surface of a platter. That plate had held the filets before frying. The light above was shining at just the right angle to show the entire surface of the water on the platter moving. Upon closer inspection, we saw a multitude of tiny worms swimming where our fish had just been! Needless to say, all three of us became wildly disgusted and ill at the sight, worrying about what we had just ingested. I don’t remember who, but one of us went to the medic to see if he had any idea what we had just eaten, and whether we were going to DIE! Of course, he didn’t know. We all went to our beds and worried ourselves to sleep that night. However, the medic eventually came to us with a print-off about a parasite that had been a health problem in Japan due to their eating raw fish. The medic assured us that we were ok, if the salmon had been thoroughly cooked. Whew!
In my recordings I sent home to the family, I told this story. When I arrived for a visit a couple of months later, the family gave me a hard time for telling them about this. Most of them were now afraid to eat salmon! This is one story that has become family lore, and was re-addressed at many family gatherings thereafter.
P.S. I still don’t eat raw fish!