This summer I did a lot of traveling by boat, hunting, fishing, logging, swimming, and water skiing. But the one I want to share with you is the fishing trip I took to my great uncle's fish camp to commercial fish.

It was June 9, and everybody was leaving town for their fishing areas. I just awoke from staying up too late the night before with some friends, and I went out to the living room to get something to eat. Sitting on the table was my mom, and on his lazyboy was my dad watching T.V.

"After you are done eating get ready to go fish camp," my dad said in a loud voice. So after eating I got my fishing stuff ready, then we went to the boat and started down the river. I was getting excited because I knew I would see some people that fished close by us. But as we were passing our camp I was wondering what was going on? We were actually going to Y1, and all this time I'd thought we were going to fish up here. When I asked my dad where we were going fishing, he answered, "We're going down river!" Then I started thinking of seeing my cousin, and what we might do there.

After we passed our camp we saw a female bear and her cubs. When I got tired of standing I sat back down on our gas tank. After a while I was getting bored sitting down for so long and since I was still sleepy I thought I would take a nap.

The next thing I knew I was awakened by large waves, and I stood up to find out where we were. At first I did not know where we were, but then I realized that we were by Boreal, a cannery located below Pitka's Point. Then I asked, "how much further is the fish camp?" My dad answered that Boreal was only half-way from Marshall to their camp.

I was thinking in my head, "Holy smokes, so we have about 2 or 3 hours left." It was a very long ride, and that night we never made it to our auntie and uncle's fish camp. By 3 a.m. it was very dark so we stopped and camped in the boat.

When we got up next morning my dad tried calling by VHF for our relatives. Finally they answered, and my dad told them that we couldn't find their camp. We gave them our location and they figured that we were right outside their camp. It turned out that we were!

After the fishing opening was over we got some sleep. When we woke up we got something to eat then we headed back up to Marshall. On our way up, about a mile or two away from my great uncle's fish camp we ran into some huge waves. A couple of times when we plowed through the waves, there was so much water that came splashing into the boat that we could not see through the windows of our cabin for a few seconds. When we finally got to Marshall I was glad to be home. But the next day we went back down again.

So about half my summer I was traveling between downriver and Marshall, and I was getting tired of traveling back and forth. But I had tons of fun with my cousins. Once while drifting during an opening a king salmon even jumped into our boat. And because I had a lot of fun time flew by quickly, and pretty soon fishing was over and we came back home to help put fish away for the summer.

By: Matthew Shorty