That’s the river right there.
And over here
is the other half of the river.
The fish travel up this way,
so he put her net there.
We do our work and get our reward.
It’s like pay day.
The fish
that we’re trying to catch
are valuable to us
because we can eat them ourselves.
We can feed them to dogs,
we can trade them to people,
and we can sell them outright
if we wanted to.
And this is an important time of year
because it’s a one time year
that they have eggs.
And the eggs make him so nutritious,
they make the caloric value in him
so, so much better.
And they’re tasty.
They just taste good.
There’s my wife.
There’s my son.
There’s my oldest daughter
and my wife’s cousin.
We all fish together all the time.
It’s never a safe deal.
Should be safe
in another month, though,
when she’s a foot thicker.
I don’t think my mother would like it
if I gave up
fishing because she taught me
and my sisters to fish.
And I just don’t think I’d give that up.
I bring the kids out.
Most of the time
they always know
never to go by the ice walls or
and they always travel in pairs.
We’re going to take this yellow line here.
We’re going to pass
it under from
hole to hole to hole to hole
until we’ve got.
This dozen holes or so,
all the way to the rope is there,
and then we are going to feed it in
and use the rope and pull it back.
That´s it, you pull the rope.
He is really.
He is not dead.
It´s just come off again.
So you can’t stop and give it like slack.
It´s like a fish.
Today we’re setting nets.
We’re trying to get our adjustments
right to where
we get toward the fish are.
And we’re just keeping our wits about us
as best we can to
where we can get this set
and still do it safely
Here you go.
Pull it.
Pull it Ag.
Keep pulling it Ag.
and keep pulling it before you lose it.
Looking at it.
I know I can see it too.
You can see it from here.
Now look at the arms.
Now,
pull it out.
we finally put one through the eye
of this damn thing
We were hoping to get a couple of hundred
fish a day.
This is an important time of year
because it’s the one time year
that they have eggs.
Our preference right now,
while they’re here
are the egg laden whitefish.
And that’s why we use
such a large mesh on our net.
Its because we want the smaller,
skinnier ones to pass through
and the big fat ones to get caught.
Grab that quarter son.
Oh, that one.
it was real timid.
Look, he’s on the inside of the net Agnes.
I do this
the way that folks around here do it,
because the way the folks around here
do it is the right way to do it.
So, of course,
I copy them,
I learn from them,
I emulate them,
and I teach it to my kids.
We got one,
two on the ground here somewhere.
I see eggs on the ice.
Right now,
we’ll be eating the fish
and someday they’ll come for theirs.
We’re all going to die.
Can’t be scared to death.
You just have to be scared of the pain
it takes to get dead.
