I remember cleaning my first salmon there, and eventually hanging out at the fish cleaning tables and cleaning fish for money, when other fishermen didn’t want to clean the fish they had caught. After one particular summer I had made enough money to buy a chain-mail(!) fish cleaning glove which I wore proudly at the cleaning table, which allowed me to clean fish much more quickly.

Sekiu never had much of an economy outside of the Salmon fishing it provided. All of the houses and stores were weatherbeaten by winter storms, and the roads were often muddy from the incessant rain that would fall during my family’s yearly fishing trips there.

On a good day, I would get up at 4:30am with my dad and brother, and head out to fish for King Salmon in the first light of morning. If we limited quickly, we would come back to shore, clean the fish and take a break before heading out again in the evening for Silver Salmon.