Fish Pirate's Daughter & Fishing Trip 7.25.09

What a great weekend! If you look into coming to Ketchikan, one thing you will see as a ‘must-do’ is attend the play, The Fish Pirate’s Daughter.



It’s a musical melodrama and this year was it’s 43rd year of ‘rollin’ em in the aisles’. The ‘home grown’ production was written by a local playwright and music by a local composer, is performed by locals, and tells some of the spicier history of Ketchikan’s zesty past. During the heyday of the huge salmon catches, Ketchikan also had the distinction of having a large contingent of ‘ladies on the line’ who were more than willing to entertain the hard working, hard drinking fisherman along a stream running through town aptly named ‘Creek Street’. Because this creek was also a salmon spawning ground the location has been called ‘the only place in the world where salmon and men go upstream at the same time to do the same thing!’ The past era was also a time when the hated fish trap was in use, which, of course, gave rise to a villainous canner owner and trap robber, Kurt Van Ohlsun (the villain). Also in the play was Little Nell, a sweet beautiful heroine with tossing curls and true devotion to the hero, Sweet William Uprightly, the high principled Commissioner of Fish. Of course there was also Creek Street’s notorious madam, Violet LaRosa, The play was hilarious – we booed, hissed, hip-hip-horayed, awwwwww…ed, whistled, & woohooed all evening long. It didn’t disappoint in the least bit. There were lots of fun songs, including one called “Motherhood gets in the way of being a Madam”…haha! I shot a video of the ‘working ladies’ singing a quick song.



Oh! And the 2nd best part of it was that it was dinner theatre! All you can eat Dungeness crab with all the fixins. Woohoo! What started out looking like this….



ended up like this at the end of the evening!



We were seated at a table for 10 and got to meet some wonderful folks, had great conversation, saw lots of folks we know, had a spectacular dinner and a show! Not bad for a Friday night… :-)

Saturday was that much better though. We were scheduled to work on Saturday but got an unexpected day off so we called up one of our co-workers at the Duck tour, Larry, and asked if he was going fishing! Turns out….he was. We met at 7am at The Narrows restaurant (no use starting on an empty stomach!) and after a hearty breakfast, jumped on Rowdy’s boat (a good friend of Larry’s).



We had a group of 6 – Rowdy the boat owner, Larry and his Dad, Paul (another Duck employee), and myself and Michael. The day started out a little gray & overcast but quickly gave way to a beautiful sunny day out on the water.



We fished at several spots, fishing for salmon, rockfish, & halibut. And we caught some nice ones! Four or 5 Silver Salmon, about the same number of Pink Salmon, two rock fish and one halibut.



It was great! It was even sunny enough to give us all a nice pink shine, something I haven’t seen since leaving Mexico – a sunburn!

We used Rowdy’s fishing poles and all of his gear as he is a fishing guide out here for the summer. The group of guys were a hoot, you could tell they liked each other by the way they were constantly tormenting each other. Michael was well liked as before we were half way through the day he had fixed a couple of problems on the boat – being boat electrician (his favorite!), gear maintenance, switch switcher, & anchor puller (deckhand).



Me? I just reeled in the fish! The men hollered out instructions - Tips up!, keep reeling!, faster!, bring him to the step!, and finally...Good job! As soon someone yelled ‘Fish On!” a pole was sent my way where I would reel in the fish. I lost several, I’m not ashamed to tell you (it was my first day!), as those smart fish would jump up out of the water or roll around on the surface and release themselves. Oh well!



Even with the special ingredient (Ewww...I don't even want to know what it's made of...)



we only managed to find one halibut though there were promises of going out another day and trying other 'secret' spots. We still ended up with 11 fish, some blisters, a sunburn, & great memories of such a wonderful day.

Back to work tomorrow!
Rene