There was a break in fishing seasons so going back out on the boat wasn't an option, at least not one I could hope to make any money on. Yet I needed to make money so I took another trip outside. We'd sold my Jeep Cherokee because we needed cash. I had the pickup truck I used to outfit my boat and run around in, but it wasn't capable of running the ALCAN Highway. Mary had her four wheel drive Suburban which she liked, so on this trip I drove Mary's big Dodge van to use to sleep in as needed. I'd gotten pretty good about traveling on a shoe string. I was able to sleep in the van then shower and shave in a truck stop. Not the most glamorous way to travel, but I made do where I could. I remember this trip because I remember driving the van, but I don't remember much about the trip. I think I did a small job and made a little money, but all I can really remember is leaving the van in long-term parking at the Pittsburgh airport and flying back to Alaska.

My next memory was going back to the boat. Mary didn't like me going out alone, but there was little choice since I couldn't possibly pay a crew and there wasn't much prospect of making money fishing Prince William Sound. She suggested taking Emily but I wouldn't hear of it. Prince William Sound was relatively safe, but it wasn't safe enough for my daughter. That, plus the boat was dirty, cold, and uncomfortable. I didn't want to expose any of my kids to that. So I went fishing alone.

There was some fish on the next few trips, but not enough. I did make it all the way across Prince William Sound to the small town of Valdez. In doing so I sailed across the shallow shoal where the super tanker Exxon Valdez grounded and dumped crude oil into the pristine waters.

That weekend before leaving home I'd watched the cleanup effort on the nightly news, but out there, the spot where it happened, there were no cleanup crews and as far as I could see there was no mess of crude oil. In fact, the water and the shore were pristine and beautiful. After docking in Valdez I asked around about the cleanup crews. For an answer I heard much criticism about the media. My own conclusion is that the media suffered from a hyper-green agenda that caused it to report the news in a way to paint Exxon and the oil industry in the worst possible light. One year after the spill the media reported on the spill as if it was a current disaster, yet there weren't any cleanup crews in Prince William Sound. They'd been there immediately after the spill, but the cleanup efforts were wasted in that the sea cleans up just fine on its own. Yes birds and seals had oil removed from them by a small army of volunteers. Birds and seals were saved. But the sea began to clean itself with the next high tide after the spill. It continued to clean itself. Twice a day, with each changing of tide, the sea cleaned the rocks and washed away the crude oil.

Alaskans knew the media exaggerated the disaster. Alaskan's were upset with the exaggerated news reports that made Exxon a villain. They were so sick of those false reports that when Captain Hazelwood, the skipper of that ill-fated super tanker went on trial for criminal negligence in an Anchorage federal court the jury of Alaskans found him not guilty. There is no doubt of the man's guilt. He was criminally negligent because his super tanker turned across a shoal so shallow I had to cross it carefully in my little boat. Alaskan's found the man not guilty to make a statement, one that was never reported in the news.

So on what would become my last fishing trip Mary convinced me to take Lady, our two year old Rottweiler. I'd never heard of anyone taking a dog on a fishing boat in Alaska. But Prince William Sound was so calm that it would work. I think Mary wanted Lady with me because she thought I was losing my mind out there alone, which may have been true. I didn't like the idea at first, but before Lady and I reached the North Wind I was convinced of my wife's wisdom. I was lonely and Lady and I were good friends.

The first time I set gear a hook caught a finger on my right hand. These hooks are large and strong enough to hold a 600 pound halibut, so it had no problem holding on to me. With a sixty pound anchor sending the long line into the deep water the hook snatched me off the deck and over the back of the boat. I always carried two sharp knives strapped upside down on the straps of my gear, kind of like thick suspenders. This way if I needed to cut something loose in an emergency I could pull loose a knife with either hand in a hurry. This was a perfect example of why I carried those knives as I did. In the second it took me to free a knife with my left hand and cut the line my body was half hanging over the back of my boat. A tenth of a second longer and I'd have been in the water. A second longer and I'd have been twenty feet under water and headed for the bottom. As I write this I am still amazed at how close I came to dying that day.

The hook was stuck in my finger and there was no way I could pull it out. Fighting pain that was unbearable I left my gear behind and made my best speed for the nearest town, which was Whittier. It took six hours to reach Whittier. I called out to a guy on the dock for help so he tied the boat up, something I could not have done. The guy then walked me to his pickup truck then drove me to the small town's sole law enforcement officer, who was also a paramedic. Since there wasn't a hospital anywhere in Prince William Sound and it would be two days before the train arrived. I was elated Whittier had a cop/paramedic. The guy was pretty good and well equipped. He numbed my finger, removed the hook, sewed my finger up, and gave me tetanus and antibiotic shots. When he was all done he was pleased with his work and said, "Don't look like I'll have to shoot you after all." Which wasn't all that funny since he had a big .44 magnum revolver on his hip. Quite a bed-side manner.

I slept on the boat a few days to recover then went back out. Lady was used to the boat by this point and seemed to be having the time of her life. She jumped in once to chase a humpback whale, which didn't work out so well for her. Lady couldn't have known how cold the water was, but she figured it out a minute after she was in it. She swam ten feet towards the breaching humpback whale before turning back to the boat. I'd actually thought about how I'd get her back in the boat if she went over, so I knew exactly what to do. I had a sheet tied between two floating bumpers, which I tossed into the water. It wasn't easy for her, but she managed to climb up on to the sheet. At that point I was able to grab a bumper in each hand and pull her into the boat, which wasn't easy for me. It left both Lady and I exhausted, but it was a lesson learned. She never jumped into the water again.

One day the boat was adrift in calm seas while I was below making coffee and lunch. Out of the blue Lady started barking and going crazy. At first I thought she was just barking at the marine life which she liked to do. She'd barked at humpback whales, killer whales, dolphins, sea otters, seals, and sea lions. Twice she even spotted black bear on the beach, which she barked and growled at. But all of those barks had had a playful resonance to them. This bark was different. This was a dangerous bark. When I went topside to see what had her so excited I brought my rifle.

Twenty feet off the stern of the North Wind sat a man in a seagoing kayak. He had his hands up in a friendly gesture but Lady wasn't buying it. I tried to say something friendly to the guy but couldn't be heard over the dog. I had to manhandle her into the cabin and close the door, but even then she barked. When I apologized to the guy he paddled up to the boat.

"Not your fault," he said. "Imagine what I look like to your dog." When I did so, I had to laugh. We'd been on the water together a month at this point and in that time Lady hadn't seen another person. Now this guy, sitting upright on the water with his legs hidden in the bow of the kayak looked like half man and half boat. It's not difficult to see why she'd go crazy at the sight.

He wasn't willing to come on board with Lady still barking, but did sit there and drink a cup of my coffee. The guy was spending a month exploring Prince William Sound in his kayak. I said it sounded great. He said, well, not so much in that I have camp on the shore and these islands are populated with black bear. He explained that since these black bear had never been around people they walked right up to him, which was a problem. Interesting guy.

After the kayaker left Lady and I ate lunch then went to work pulling the gear we'd set -- well, that I set since Lady wasn't much help setting gear -- six hours earlier. I wasn't too excited about this set since I'd done many like it and the catch was always thin. Too thin to even pay expenses. This set felt different the moment I began to pull it up. I could tell from the way my hydraulics strained that the line was too heavy. This had happened a few days earlier but it was made heavy by some type of fatty shark that was nearly as long as my boat. He'd wrapped himself up in the line and died. I never did figure out what type of shark that was, but it was big and made of nothing but fat. Freeing him from the gear had been hard and nasty work, so I hoped it wasn't another fat shark.

When the hooks reached me I was shocked to see the line was full of black cod. The hooks were eighteen inches apart and each had an eight to twelve pound black cod on. At $2.25 a pound I was into some serious money. Lady was barking like crazy at the fish still on the line so I put her in the cabin, then ran the gear and started plucking twenty dollar fish out of the water. The deck was half full of fish when I noticed nothing but fish heads on the line. I couldn't believe what I was seeing, so I kept running the gear and kept pulling up fish heads. I stopped then ran to the back of the boat and looked down into the water. Ten feet below the water was a stationary killer whale.

This is something I'd heard of but not seen myself until now. The story was that killer whale loved black cod but had trouble catching them on the sea bottom. At some point killer whales figured out that when they heard the distinctive sound of a boat's hydraulics straining to pull gear there would be a string of cooperative black cod there for the taking. Gapes of a vine, fishermen called it. What I witnessed was exactly what I'd heard about. The big killer whale waited patiently for me to continue raising my gear so he could continue his meal. He knew there were hooks on that line so he had carefully eaten the cod's body only, leaving the head and hook to frustrate the fisherman. To frustrate me.

I tried throwing stuff at the killer whale but he ignored everything. I actually hit him with a wrench but he didn't budge. Ten feet under as he was the wrench sunk until it hit him, then slid off the side and continued to the bottom. I needed that wrench. Remembering my friend the black mailing sea lion I opened and dumped a thirty-five pound box of bait in the water but the killer whale ignored the herring and waited for me to turn on my hydraulics and bring him the rest of his dinner. The black cod that represented the first decent pay day I'd had in nearly a year.

In complete frustration I went into the cabin and got my rifle. Lady followed me and seeing the killer whale in the water began barking at him. Of course he couldn't hear her. I fired two shots into the water, well to the side of the killer whale, but he didn't flinch. I fired another round closer and again, no reaction. I'd like to say that I didn't intend to hit the big killer whale, but that wouldn't be the truth. The next shot I fired in the water was aimed center mass at the killer whale.

A bullet slows fast in water. Ten feet of water is quite a bit for a bullet to travel through, but my bullet was a .308, which is powerful. The killer whale had ignored my first shots, but this one caused him to take off immediately. The killer whale surfaced far enough away from the boat that I could only see his tail fin. He seemed to watch me for a few minutes then took off. I don't know if my bullet hit him, but I think it did. I hope it hadn't done any damage, but I can never know. That I shot such a beautiful creature bothers me a great deal now. So much so that I came very close to excluding this story from my memoir. But I wanted to be honest so I've included it. While I'm being honest I'll admit that at the time I shot that killer whale it didn't bother me too much because he left my fish alone.

I laid my rifle in the cabin then quickly cut the heads off and gutted the black cod on my deck, then tossed the catch into my iced fish hold. It was exciting to continue pulling the line. There were a dozen or so head only fish, but these few were followed by a beautiful run of black cod.

With a long steel gaff I hooked each fish as it neared the surface, pulled it free of the hook and tossed it on the deck. Hooking each fish was a tedious task, but if I didn't do so there was a good chance the fish would free itself from the hook when its body left the water. With the hooks eighteen inches apart and a fish on every hook my arm and shoulder muscles burned from the motion of bending towards the water, hooking the fish, then pulling it free and tossing it on deck behind me. After twenty minutes of this action I needed a break so decided to stop for a while. Besides, I had to have enough fish on the deck that I needed to get them below deck before they were stacked high enough to squirm over the rail and back into the sea. With this in mind I hooked and tossed several more fish then stood straight to eas sore back muscles. As I did I turned around and looked at the deck. There wasn't a single fish on the deck.

This tragic mystery was easily solved. Lady stood on the other side of the deck with a black cod in her mouth. Black cod have more blood than most fish, so there was blood all over the deck. Lady was covered in blood. While I took all this in she snapped her head to the side in a practiced way and tossed the fish over the side. I know it's strange to say a dog smiles, but Lady was definitely smiling. Her entire body rippled with excitement. Since I've said she smiled I may as well go all in and say that my favorite dog's body language said that she was having a blast. It was this that made me realize she thought we were playing a game. She thought that when I'd throw a fish on deck I was throwing it to her. Somehow she figured her job was to throw the fish back into the water, which she'd done the entire time I threw them on to the deck. It was clear she was having the time of her life.

I felt like I should be furious, but I just couldn't do it. I think I was still pretty skunked from shooting the killer whale. Whatever it was, I didn't show the first sign of anger. Lady's entire body vibrated with joy as I petted her. She was covered in fish blood. I wanted to throw a bucket of sea water on her to clean off the blood, but the clock was ticking. I needed to haul in the rest of my catch. So I coaxed Lady into the cabin and closed the door. The line of black cod soon thinned out then stopped. The greatest part of the catch was lost. Lady got far more than the killer whale. That this was still my best catch of the year. Evidence of how bad my year had been.

When I finally went to my bunk in exhaustion I learned that Lady had picked my bunk to sleep in while she was covered in fish blood. My sleeping bag looked like an axe murder had been committed in it. It was at that moment that I decided I was done fishing. I stuck an anchor in my bloody sleeping bag, tossed it over the side then headed to the nearest town, which was Valdez. There I called Mary and asked her to come get me. It would take her a full day to reach me so I used that time to pay a boat lift to put the North Wind on the shore. I hammered together a cradle out of used wood lying around the yard and set my boat in it. After Mary picked me up I never saw the North Wind again. That was twenty-four years ago and I haven't missed her for a moment.