Chapters from Fishing for a Reason: An Alaskan boy grows up

Jan 24, 2023
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Fishing for a Reason
Chapter 1: Crabbin' Boy
My first word was “boat,” because boats passed within view of the apartment I first lived in. Hundreds, some summer days, when the salmon were running. I’ve boasted this many times, but for most of my life I couldn’t tell you why. I thought it was pride about where I grew up. Then I questioned whether I could count where I’d been born and raised as a pe…
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2 years ago · Jake Clemens
Fishing for a Reason
Chapter 2: Networking
From middle school on, I’d seen a pattern with my peers. Those who worked on commercial fishing boats didn’t need to ask their parents for money. They bought their own clothes and lunches downtown, and eventually their own cars. They didn’t depend on our teachers to provide them with the keys to a career. In a good summer, some of the older kids made more money fishing than our teachers made all year…
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2 years ago · Jake Clemens
Fishing for a Reason
Chapter 3: Drifter
After we reeled the nets on the boat one morning, I went home and spent the rest of the day packing and repacking. My mom asked, “How long will you be gone?” “I don’t know for sure, but the opener is two days so probably around three days.” She made spaghetti for dinner that night and scrambled eggs in the morning. For the first time, my dad set a half a cup of coffee in front of me while I shoveled down the eggs, then he drove me down to the harbor and shook my hand before I set off with my duffel. I was at the boat a few minutes before 7 am…
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2 years ago · Jake Clemens
Fishing for a Reason
Chapter 4: Catching Shit
We ran a half an hour across Sumner Strait to make the next set. Driving again while setting the net, I worried Mikey would haul the set right back because of my wayward steering. But after we drifted off the end for a few minutes, all the little zigs I’d made got smoothed out. I wondered if gillnetting might be simpler than I’d thought…
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2 years ago · Jake Clemens
Fishing for a Reason
Chapter 5: Roustaboat
“We might not be back to town for a couple weeks,” Mikey warned before I bought groceries, thrilling me with the chance to prove myself a real fisherman. Other summers, multiple friends had been serious enough about fishing to miss the first week of school, along with most of the preseason cross-country running practices. I’d been disheartened being one of the few who made it to all the summer practices, implying I didn’t have anything better to do. Then I got dejected when the fishermen showed up just in time for our first race and I still ran slower than them. More than that though, I wanted to get away from my parents and go on an adventure of my own, and hopefully make more money than I had on the past few trips to Point Baker…
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2 years ago · Jake Clemens
Fishing for a Reason
Chapter 6: Lured
August before sophomore year of high school, I went to Keiran’s house to catch up after our summer fishing in different parts of Alaska. Keiran had returned from Bristol Bay, in southwest Alaska, which had a shorter salmon season than southeast, because mostly just sockeye salmon ran out there. He’d been back a couple days, but he still seemed a little gone. “I slept 14 hours straight when I got off the plane,” he said…
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a year ago · Jake Clemens
Fishing for a Reason
Chapter 7: Landsick
The bluffs of Cape Grieg rose like a rogue wave as we neared Ugashik. Closer, my heart raced looking up at the three-hundred-foot drop from the rolling green tundra, tracing the tan cliffs of silt and ash to the rocky beach near the north line of the district…
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a year ago · Jake Clemens
Fishing for a Reason
Chapter 8: Opportunity Way
“Point zero two three,” the officer said. I knew I wasn’t that drunk. It was second semester of my freshman year at Montana State University, Bozeman, and the campus party scene had started to bore me. Not that I didn’t want to get drunk and high at least every weekend, but I wanted to get out of town. I’d already loaded my camping gear in a friend’s Subaru, but then we got invited on this burn cruise, and he couldn’t refuse. Out of the seven people going, I seemed the least drunk, so I drove. “Ah, the Montana designated driver,” as the campus substance abuse counselor put it to me later…
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a year ago · Jake Clemens
Fishing for a Reason
Chapter 9: Nightcap
Nightcap Driving along the Skeena River in British Columbia, my girlfriend Mariah and I started seeing gillnetters working the wide lower channel. That made us antsy for commercial fishing in Alaska. The next day, we would park my truck on the ferry for the last leg to Petersburg, the finish line of our road trip from Bozeman…
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a year ago · Jake Clemens
Fishing for a Reason
Chapter 10: Fired from Freedom
Bristol Bay gillnetting wasn’t much different since we’d always been apart for that. After six Bay seasons, I could manage six weeks of separation from anything, even weed. But, I’d been looking forward to Mariah working on a southeast seiner for the second six weeks of the summer so we could see each other between openers. The hope of her being there had filled me up. But Mariah’s knee wasn’t healing on its own. After a week in Alaska, she decided to go home to Colorado for surgery. Another summer apart. More plans dissolved by alcohol and covered in clouds of weed smoke…
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a year ago · Jake Clemens
Fishing for a Reason
Chapter 11: Trailer Trash
To my eye the lease agreement floated on water instead of sitting on a desk. I sat in an old railroad house turned rental agency office in Bozeman, Montana, and the night before, Mariah and I had gone to a bluegrass concert and I’d drank too much warm rye whisky. I’d run away from her on the walk back to the car and staggered into a stranger’s garage. When she finally spotted me, I swayed slackjawed in the dark doorway. I’m lucky I didn’t get shot…
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a year ago · Jake Clemens