Catching a Years Supply of Dog Team Fish and Rafting Them to the Village for Winter - Stan Zuray

okay this is a fish will at the ramp at Rapids and right now I'm my fish will I've put it away yesterday actually I finished doing it and today I'm partnering with two other fishermen and where they're hauling there they hauled their fish to town by boat loads and I haul my fish to town by this big law and fishing trip all them all at once they make multiple trips with their boat so just different ways of doing the same thing and and I'm babysitting the wheel for them I'm gonna make sure there's a you know like five hundred fish in the wheel by the end of today and I'm also just anything extra I'm taking during every day and I may I may actually get half my thirteen hundred fish or could even get the whole bunch today it just depends on how they're running this is a two million fish run this year it's a very good run better than average these chum salmon can't like rabbits show that populations are kind of vary a lot they're wild wildly variable to some extent you know any kind of El Nino or weird stuff happening in the ocean and and they come back in small numbers you know and then if everything's good out the ocean and those currents are good then yeah just the opposite so I'm gonna show you some fish here these fish by the way they stopped eating 700 miles ago before they entered into the Yukon we're about at Mile 730 or something and so they stopped eating a long time ago and they go into what's called the squatting mode these things are out in the ocean they're there beautiful solar fish [Music] nice silvery fish male Trump's him the male's develop big teeth just I got most developing cars ruff real pronounced dough's and [Music] t-they getting from Horsham mystics examples here and this guy here is probably sad to get white flesh not nice red flesh like earlier the season on some of my fall chump videos where impending beautiful red [Music] Layton sees you can get I got there or like this and female here's a there's a detail you can see that again the dark bars real dark colors you know and the female doesn't develop the team these eggs are fully developed in here pretty soon you know because they're they're getting close to the ground it's Canada 300 miles then we have here something this fish may actually have a little bit of redness to the plant inside this fish bad fish you can see it before silvery although scientists pronounce it's made this one Spade you wanted to but see this is the mail you see this team it just started developed so that's a small man you might be knowing it all these fish are animals about the sliding stream we used to catch when that's flying stream this was a good fish yeah white flesh fish with we shut off water the Kazakh meal so anyway with these fish come in the these kids fish come in the oak Yukon they stop eat and and they won't eat again I mean it's been like six about 20 days from the mouth the king salmon travel 1,500 miles summer they repeat all the way they say that's why they build up all the oil in their flesh this is a sheet this is a species of white fish and you know it's not a salmon and then this guy like that some areas up there with these things spawn and they he's gonna lay his eggs he hasn't eaten before but some of these things [Music] some of the travel slower you find some of them and some of them travel real fast like the ones that come out of town some of these you know like a half ago they all mean at the same time of the squatting area and they were supplied and then a November bill back down river and and I don't know when they stopped be standing but it's they won't study until they're sometimes so that is an amazing journey for a fish to make if you can imagine not easy for once and that's still these things have have retained their their nuts you know their stomach does still intact if everything like that they just have stopped eating salmon the salmon here if you have them open you should actually see a semidigested stomach some of the ones that are really [Music] some of the ones that are really fought in the spiny mode like this female via their own evil recognize this stomach yeah here's a this is a spawning male this is the kind of fish with it they look like this when they arrive at this morning and everything you know [Music] [Music] first 11 years of my life up here [Music] like I say you look up [Music] this is [Music] I couldn't keep a dog team consistently and just couldn't feed the dogs well over there okay I'm gonna kind of give you a little swing hair of the action on the camera if I can be steady it is the fish wheel I say the baskets are just steady in the current there and that's upriver that's where the fish ahead you can see the current here it's pretty good current pretty good current in the rear in this is the furthest up fish wheel there's in summertime there's about four fish wheels on this bender at least there was the summer in the old days they used to be they say ten fish wheels and and this entire area would be just covered with fish wheels they in let's see why was going 1979 survey was done in the village agenda and there were 47 dog teams in the village agenda now there isn't there's less than 10 and and most a lot of the teams in the village get fed higher quality food because they're racing kennels and so they don't eat as much fish but these traveling teams like I have this they're fed like 95% of their diet is fish so right there that's a rock on an island of rock island in the middle of the river and that's what produces all this current here this fast-moving water and that's what pushes the fish into it sure that's why you can catch fish here a lot of fishing sites you can't catch fish you package hardly any fish and you just kind of put a wheel anywhere it has to be somewhere that there's some sort of an advantage so yeah like I say it's pretty good current here you definitely want to wear a life jacket there's been a number of people drowned up in this area good friend of mine drowned when in my early years up here there's been a number more over the years so just really better be careful like I got to be careful standing on the front of this boat that's bouncing around about ready to dump me in the river okay now yeah we'll just throw a few fishing [Music] okay okay here's the layout of back at camp I got a boatload of fish that we just picked up at the wheel about 200 fish and this is the fish crib big log raft this is gonna be half my firewood for the winter and maybe not quite this year it's a small raft it wasn't much good for wood but but anyway this lot get all cut up into firewood but anyway for right now there's a log raft with a big opening in the center and it's a to log sticking out the back that's where my boats gonna go that's how I'm gonna push it downriver but anyway it's got Seine webbing on it underneath this blue top is a bunch of webbing you can kind of see it right up here you see the same webbing there right there where I have a little opening there you have to have some water running out or you'll sink the whole raft because I got water coming in just black holes that running right here comes from the creek and and that keeps the fish cold so it's a lot colder than the Yukon River because right now the Yukon River is I don't know what the temperatures but it's a lot warmer than the creek water and so basically that Creek wad just keeps the fish fresher and I've kept a fish in there for up to two weeks and then moved them to time they're certainly not good people food after that but you know for dog food there the fish are going to be soured anyway in a crib a land crib a big pile of a enclosed area back at ten anyway there's soured like kind of like you saw with cheese a lot of things to make it more digestible and that's so a little bit of even though they use a little people quality uh sitting in there before I transport them big deal so this fish camp right up there moving a lot of stuff off the beach I'm all through with my cutting table and my big fish totes that we use for storing fish while we get ready to cut them and then I got the right in the center there that's my that's my traveling food that's dry fish it's the same thing as you're looking at in the crib here but it's been all cut and dried I got a video on that too cutting dry dog food video chose for that whole process and and that'll get moved to town it's ready to move to town I just got so many things on my plate right now and yeah so that's fish camp and as my buddy Russ and BJ they're their fish camp they're both in the national guide Russ is retired BJ's still in it but yeah they're they're running a fish camp there Russ Russ actually used to own my fish camp he gave it to me a long time ago in the mid-eighties lay bebe's when he went full-time national guide and now he was back on the river yeah and this is the process of yeah it's a nice day today we've got a couple of nice days it's gotta get right back up the wheel because it's catching them so fast that I can barely keep up okay I just went and picked up a novel load of fish at a 200 fish in the boat I'm going to turn the wheel on now and and watch the kitchen fish okay sometimes the first basket is the one that catches a lot of finish because at seven fish made a video in 2005 they've got a half million views on YouTube and it had it caught six fish my buddy said that earlier would catch six fish right at the same time all of the cars at seven fish anyway my buddy said he turned on yesterday I think it was yeah I guess yesterday you said 11 fish in the bath and then you know because what happens is they sit behind that leaf it's there in the congregate there and then they'll move on upriver you know little by little you know fuel them away by the time you over think there's a congregation behind the lead because it's a nice little Eddy there it's a resting slow water you know but when you turn on the wheel you know they they sent all something happening I mean they can tell when they're sitting behind that lead over there they can tell there's a fish wheel just got turned daughter they can tell something bad just happened and they all scooped and of course when salmon spook they don't head to shallow water and go around in the lead that way they head to its the deeper water and they go right into the fish wheels this pot about live tonight a fish yo one a dip three a dip no difficulties basket so it doesn't catch anything like I say there's a you know there's a very life run this year and the you know every time I put on put something on any kind of social media about catching fish this up especially if it's something like that video I put on its top five where a lot of fish wasn't more than a 30-second video or something you always get comments from people like oh that's terrible you know you're killing all those fish for what dog you know but the thing is is this is a renewable resource and right now the state of Alaska Department of fishings game still on most his considers this run to be under utilized in other words there's plenty of fish wings and whining ground it actually could even this fires like God machine feeding fish the dog they used to be a tremendous amount more of that happen on the river here this I almost know fish wheels on the Yukon River anymore there used to be the river was just lying with it all the way from the mouth to the border is Canada at all into Canada and up in that River and and the fish still maintain themselves you know what what'll kill this fishery is there's a way that's when you see this is supposed to fishing is supposed to have by law a priority over commercial fishing fish the rundown for the point where you find fishing for subsistence with the commercial fishery so anyway so that's the default the ethics of fishing with a fish wheel for what we call subsistence but I know whatever I put these kind of things [Music] 79 37 most of the other village dissolved and that is probably the darkest village of Yukon River [Music] the mode of transportation okay so so Neville this is a load number four yeah I think it's a thing it's a hard work and effort the lifestyle and a lot of the reason the way the reason they start doing all this stuff I step on pictures on Facebook blaming things a lot of people [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] wash out the whole to the wheel you

Channel: Stan Zuray

Views: 264,599

Rating: 4.7739611 out of 5

Keywords: Yukon Men Show, Wilderness living, Stan Zuray, Zuray, Alaska, Salmon fishing, Fishwheels, Fish wheels, dog salmon, Yukon River, Tanana, Dog Mushing

Id: 3yFqXAEmHbc

Length: 30min 47sec (1847 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 10 2018