Throughout early July to the end of August my family and I would travel to the Yukon River to catch salmon. We catch three species of Salmon on the Yukon River, Kings, Silvers and Chum. Kings being the largest and richest of the species, Silvers the second most sought after, and Chum being mostly given to the camp dogs for food. My family has always depended on the Yukon River as a life source, it is our own highway stretching through our land. Giving us life and also taking life away from us when we are not cautious of the way we use it.

Our family’s hunting and fishing camp is located thirty miles up river from Stevens Village, past the canyon and hills of the river. The land is flat and covered in tall Black and White Spruce trees with scattered meadows throughout the country. Our bear and wolf population greatly outnumbers our moose, and we have not had caribou on our land since the pipeline was laid over it during the 1970’s disrupting their migration route.
On one of my trips to the camp I did something I still do not forgive myself for. We were lazy and in an anxious rush to get back to Fairbanks. It would have only taken two people to pull out our set fishnet from the river and store it away in the cache above the rivers cut bank. My cousins and I pulled it to the shore and tied it the roots of a Birch tree. We decided to let it breath and dry up on the beach while we were gone running errands in the city.
While I was away from the river in Fairbanks I never lost sleep worrying about the net that we did not put away. I only thought about someone else who was using the river stealing it, because some people tend to borrow things without asking first. The only thing that came to my mind because the net was out in the open along the beach was someone else taking it and using it to harvesting food for their families.

While on my way back to camp I realized how high the water has risen since we had previously left two weeks earlier. You can no longer see the rocks lying against the floor of the canyon. The river rose and washed over the rippling sandbars and islands of willows. Because of these changes to my surroundings I knew and began to get a gut feeling that our fishnet was floating in the river and not dry along the sands of the beach.

Once we hit camp my cousin Clayton drove the boat across the river’s currents to the eddy that we placed our fishnet into, from across the tides we could see the fishnets floaters were bouncing together in the river. It began to look like lifeless floating along the island’s point, swaying with the tides.

Lying along the bow of the boat I prepare my hands to catch the nets slimy mesh. My fingers got ahold of the floater line and I felt the dead weight it carried underneath the water’s surface. I did not like the feeling of what the floater line carried. It turned my chest hollow with an uneasy feeling and my throat lumpy.

My cousin Alben and I began running the fishnet along the bow of the boat, I was pulling the net in and Alben was making sure it would not get caught on anything past my arms reach. Clayton maneuvered the back end of the boat under supervision of his father so that the Yamaha engine’s prop would not get caught in the nets mesh. We began to lift dead fish out of the cold water. There were Silvers, Chum Salmon, tiny Whitefish, Sheefish, and even large Pike that swam through the murky sloughs of the islands eating anything it can find.

Lifting all of the dead fish that were tangled in the mesh made my arms burn with exhaustion. The wetness and roughness of the nets mesh turned my hands pink and wrinkled into the August night. My insides and chest swirled with the guilt of all the dead fish. I felt cold and I felt shameful for what I did.

When we got done stripping the fishnet of all the fish I looked at my uncle in the canopy of the boat. His face was long and filled with disappointment. It looked as if we dishonored someone, we were raised to eat all that we kill.
The only word that came out of his lips was “Hutlaanee” which meant bad luck in the Koyukon language, or something you are generally not suppose to do due to cultural suspicions. My uncle looking at me and saying that really made the situation hit me in the gut and I knew he felt the same way.

A fishnet full of fish went to waste and I did not like baring the responsibility of it on my shoulders. It hurt my pride as well as my ancestors. Even though we did not eat the rotten fish we made use of it as bear bait, which further down the line would eventually help manage the numbers of our moose population.