Pulling a Fish Wheel Out of the Yukon River - Stan Zuray

hey fall time at the ramp at Rapids but right now this wheel here I am breaking a pied I've got it into Shore it's right up against the shore of pop the lead on it and brought the spa alongside and it's up against the shore now and I'm just preparing it to move downriver and we'll pull it out by a winch I have down there so right now I have a live box this is the this is what holds the fish during the summer and i'm winching it up out of its slot in the wheel there there's a little couple of outriggers and and when the fish are caught they're dumped into that live box which is submerged under water and keeps them alive until I get here it just keeps them real fresh so I've got that thing winch it up in the air and I'm gonna continue moving it back onto the raft there so we'll just do that and then we'll move this hook up the boat to the back of the wheel and move it on down yeah this thing's really heavy it's completely waterlogged plywood and lumber from sitting underwater oh wait I mean all summer now it's starting to rain okay straightened out okay that's the lead and the livebox all done not so now we're ready to do what we are ready to put the boat on the back push it down to this fish camp right across the river from me where I got a lot of cables and rope already to pull right up to it and latch onto it look that's here and maybe we'll have this half out of the water today let the wheel dry down low for a few days if the weather cooperates and that will remove hundreds of pounds of water off this thing and make it easier to pull and regardless it'll get pulled anyway so now we're gonna take two chains of those and that's gonna be that's gonna be what poles we would i hook on to and what the winch will pull on when it pulls this wheel you want to put the chains on here before I bring it down to the beach because when I bring it down to the beach down there I'm gonna rim the tips up on shore and then there's no way to get these chains underneath the tips then so right now the tips are real easy to get the chain under self get ready that's full wheel but I'm getting close right now it's just all preparation make things easier so yeah yeah so what I'll do is I'll hook up to the back hold the wheel and place all summer hook up to the back have two ropes coming to the sides of the boat so I can steer I'll have control with the power to it push the wheel forward like a couple of feet put it on the bushes before you know I leave here for the foot [Applause] then yeah just power forward a little bit and then back out into the current get the whale wheel facing down his feet at that point let's say the only thing go wrong with things all stop along it's me that's why things go wrong so much okay okay I have the ropes on the boat the bow is tied up to the back of the wheel and I'm gonna push the wheel forward just a little bit take some slack off of that big cable undo the cable and then we're free to go [Music] we'll use the well just leave the engine running and that's the other thing that can go wrong with this whole operation is the motor this is one time I'm I'm not the only weakling anyway the motor can if the motor quits where there's nobody in between I got a friend down river about three miles two friends two fishermen down there and but I know they're up in the hills today cutting some trail so I don't think if I had a drift by there their camp they wouldn't be they wouldn't be able to help me and I don't think there's anybody else on the river except maybe somebody traveling there's nobody else like got a fish camp or something that I could yell do or shoot a gun to to get their attention to help me with and there's no no paddling this thing into Shore okay so we'll okay and cables loose now the other thing I gotta watch for is is as I'm filming at the same time I'm doing this so I'm real hey this is what I always screw up so yeah just got to be careful here that's all for next year okay this used to be a real pain in the neck in the old days every time I do this I I just I just think of like the the motors nowadays first place in the old days everybody had junk motors and and but they just they never idle good you know they it's just like not like the motors nowadays these these things they're actually like having another person around they run so smooth and good sometimes okay the only hold in the wheel now is the boat [Applause] [Applause] okay head downriver okay and here we go downriver [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] okay here we go I'm only about whatever quarter mile downriver [Music] I can see it [Music] across from my camp yeah so we're good let me straighten this out a little bit here [Music] these things are really easy to scare from the back like this I only have a fifty Hoskote Iran here but that is enough power if I wanted to I could push this up from Canada there's another pallet of fish with a fish meal up here and he he he pushes his wheel up every year it's as big as this one and he pushes it up every year with his 50 horse - so you right now I just I'd a little long there's no sense pushing anything you don't want to press anything you know anything go wrong just get it - sure down there when they push the wheels like if I was going upriver with the wheel here I'd have a different crop on I'd have a power problem a bodging profit it grabs less water per revolution and and you can actually you don't work the motor pushing something like this with a prop leg with the right product you could you know you can push something at a half of mile an hour a good slow closing alarm here his foot like I say as long as [Music] this thing in the getting this thing put away and getting my fish grip to town like I said about four days will be I'll be fishing for 1,400 salmon and I'll probably get that in a day or two right it's a big run this year so there's no reason I probably couldn't get it one day [Music] Hey basically nobody's fishing every few days we put we run the wheel and get a dog bucket full of fish most of these fish they're just going to head to the spawning grounds well yeah like 99% we're going to head to the spawning grounds and spawn and you know all the dog team use from here on up river it just takes a tiny fraction of the fish but it's a lot of fish to us it's 1,400 fish it's an entire witches go on that's what keeps it alive because if I did never get these fish I'd have to give away all my dogs and I couldn't have dogs at winter beach and with a bust the household trying to ship in dog food for a dog usually I don't put this away so early but we me and the other fishermen figured what the hell just get put away and and we'll just fish his wheel and I can help him with his wheel and he's gonna float his wheel to town so he's got more time but it's not as oppressing a matter for him to out of water but I have to get my wheel out of water and either for me to go home and it's getting that time here it's the fourth now with the September and I'd like to be out of here by like the 20 of the stuff like that 25th at most [Music] everybody's saying it's going to be an early fall that's hardly any eat of the ground it's been really cold summer unusually cold summer there's hardly any heat so it died it gets the price right down there ice creaking ro and stop talking so I'm just gonna this is something this one over here or something I don't want to get wrong once I beach this up on the beach I don't want to have to be moving it back in the river because I didn't beat you right here we go coming up on we're coming up a camp on the left there you can see the smoke house and and then you can see my camp over there too [Music] on the right [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] okay so there's a little little branch I got on shore there right where I want to put the right tips of this wheel and kinda high I can't really see the tips it's hard to judge it but I get out and check it I decided I'm not gonna Ram it this year I put uh I think we'll just ease it on in and take a look at like I just hit bottom there so I'm gonna go look at it here and all right that's gonna come I gotta go back a little bit now go back just a little bit okay check that out yep now I'm going to power it forward turn it end angle leave the motor running hook up the left side to some cables and then pull that around and get it faced up that way [Music] [Music] okay now while the wheel is being powered I'm actually gonna go to short hook everything up okay okay hook it up pull it in then I can shut the motor off [Music] okay fine I'm gonna shut the boat off then we'll get that roller anyway everything's at this point everything is uh everything is pretty casual from here on it'd be nice to get it up a little bit because you know wind or something you don't want to do this on a really windy day and wind could screw me up but I've seen a upriver wind push this against the current upriver so but like right now in a calm day like this everything's pretty casual from now on it's just gonna be a bunch of work all these big rollers these little ones I'm trying to get the little ones under first and then I got these really big ones and it'll just roll itself as I'm but it'd be nice before I pull it too much out of the water here to get get at least get a roller under this side because this side I can get one so I'm going to back off on that come along and let the wheel go back a little bit and when I get that get that log under there then I'll pull it up on it okay I'm gonna shut the camera off but basically see this is why this is why on TV shows they don't show how we do things you know all this would have this and the wheel would have been put to bed for the entire winter and it would have shot three moose and driven thousands of miles with my dogs in this length of time on TV but this is just real tedious work I'm gonna get a real tiny roller and get it on top of a tiny one they get another real one a little bit bigger and get this side up on that and then I'll be able to use that one and then I'll be able to use some of my real big ones so probably once I get pulling this thing get it out of water a little bit and get it up on rollers then it's about a oh maybe four hour pull the winch will take about four hours to pull it it's a pretty steady pull and it just pulls an inch well fraction of an inch of the time it's just really slow really powerful though and that's good because you want lots of time to be just and rollers and everything as it's moving and and it's a good way winch to pull a wheel by myself I may not end up pulling this wheel by myself I got my son Joe is getting back from hunting and he should be up here maybe if he can you know he's got a whole house he's got to take care of too and a whole bunch of things he's got to take care of and I got another buddy at the fish camp right next to me he's coming up here in a few days so I may have help pulling it but it's just real tedious slow work and yeah I'll total it might it'll be a eight-hour day or more before this things put to bed up there yeah camera okay here we go I'm gonna try pulling it just a little bit here see if she'll I got it up on one roll or on the right there and can't get one under the other side but I've got a couple ready to go on if it lifts a little so alright so the name of the game here is stop and go when people are helping me I'll tell them I'm gonna stop 30 50 times before the wheels all pulls out and that's and the reason for that is because if you don't you're gonna do stupid things like I didn't know the camera was this close to the wheel it's two feet away I'm almost coming off of that roller and if I lose that roller then I'm back down on the ground here that sides about ready to come off the rollers too and I'm about ready to roll over my winch you just keep stopping I can't see good from up up for the the I got a little winch that got a great big one behind but right now I'm pulling with this little one and I can't see from there and I really can't see with the big one going but the big one is so slow once I get this lined up in everything I can turn that big one on and just kind of walk with the wheel and I can kind of steer the wheel with a sledge hammer you know where the way I have the rollers underneath it and stuff like that anyway it's uh yeah we're good we're good I'm gonna pull it out a little more maybe we'll take a shot of it when I get it out well be nice to get it out of water then it could dry but like I say I got to be careful with these rollers it looks good wild onions all over the beach anyway it looks good I think this is gonna be it I should be able to get it out of water and then quit for the night and and that'll be it [Music] [Music] [Music] okay alright so the winch wouldn't pull it anymore it's the wheels completely out of water now and that little winch will it will pull the wheel completely up the bank but with about take about four blocks you know like pulley blocks multiplying power and and that sort of thing you know so and it's it's a lot of work moving all that cable and blocks and so that's why I have this big winch but I'm going to the thing I can do here is I can run out more cable take more cable off of the spool that's on the winch and thereby decrease the diameter of the spool so the take-up will be you know for every revolution the take-up will be less on the cable and so it'll be in effect multiplying my power just by getting the cable off the spool so I'm going to do that because like as my father said the job the the day ain't done till the job until the job's done and right now the wheel is about two inches in the water on this side I know maybe it's a foot in the water on that side so that would be unacceptable to my father so I won't sleep good at night if there were things touching the water like that so we're gonna get it completely out of the water here okay so that was that's it for getting it out of the water it's out of the water now I can dry a little 100 pounds a day of course the thing right weighs 12,000 pounds but whatever so I got to put ropes on it I got to brace it up because when we go over the hill the things gonna do a lot of that kind of thing and kind of breaks it up so because the sometimes the uprights the big uprights that will spread and you can drop your whole baskets and that would be a nightmare but I'll brace it up and just get ready for the full that's where we'll be putting it up on top there all right well that's it Rapids is losing its sunlight right now it's going behind the hill and as camp right across there I can hear the dogs barking and they want their food and and that's down river down river there it'll still be sunny down there for a little bit but we lose the light in the canyon here pretty fast in the evening okay yeah well well we'll see you now bye bye

Channel: Stan Zuray

Views: 153,585

Rating: 4.8436947 out of 5

Keywords: Yukon Men, Yukon River, Stan Zuray, Tanana, Fishing, Wilderness living, subsistence, Alaska, Fishwheel, Fish wheel, How to

Id: a0CcovU45xw

Length: 54min 55sec (3295 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 06 2017