Kevin and I planned our annual burbot fishing trip to Crosswinds to start on March 12. The end of April and start of March was when the Covid seriousness kicked in. On March 4, I was pulled from daily duties as the Manager of Accreditation and tasked as the Liaison to all state-wide Tribal Health Organizations (THO) for Covid-19 Preparedness and Response. The next day, I was requested to deploy to California to staff an incident command for incoming international flights. Luckily, my new assignment as the state THO Liaison meant I was “mission critical” to ANMC and Alaska, so I was effectively deemed unavailable to deploy.
The deployment would have certainly resulted in our annual
Crosswinds trip being cancelled, however, the trip still occurring was
questionable due to my new Liaison role just beginning. Luckily, the Incident
Commander was very kind by allowing me to get a backup trained and to fill in
during the trip.
Kevin understood that the trip had a chance of getting
cancelled. We didn’t know for sure that it was going to happen until the day
before. His wife is a USPHS Officer too, so he knows about my potential
conflicts with disasters and deployments.
Crosswinds happened… thank goodness. I needed a break from
the crazy amount of stress and hectic work schedule (more about that in the
next entry).
This year we made it to the parking lot without any truck
issues.
The trail into crosswinds was in the best condition we have
ever seen. The bumps and heaves were almost nonexistent, which made for fast
traveling. This was likely the result of the large amount of snow we got over
the winter. Speaking of snow, this was also the deepest we have had to dig to
get to ice for the base of our tent. If you want a good workout, try digging a
12 foot by 12 foot area of snow that is three feet deep!
After setting up the tent, we put up our burbot jigging tent
and tip ups. I had the idea to try and create a tip up alerting system. I
rigged a trip wire system to fireworks hoping to hear and see a spectacular
alarm that a fish was biting. Well, the system worked great in the garage, but
they failed miserably in the field. Back to the drawing board!
After everything was setup, it
was getting close to burbot jigging time. We settled in for a night of drinking
and fishing. We weren’t disappointed, the fishing was good and beverages were
tasty!
The days were spent looking for
lake trout. We seem to do this every year, with new lures, tactics, and hopes,
but continue to fail to connect on a lake trout of any size. I’m beginning to
think that only stunted lake trout live in Crosswinds Lake.
The weather on this trip was not
too good. It was often cloudy, windy, and rather cold. Temperatures were too
cold to keep the burbot from freezing. Ideally, we would catch the burbot,
prevent them from freezing whole, and then fillet them in the field. That is
not possible when the temperature drops well below zero. The poor weather also
meant cloudy skies the entire time. This made northern lights gazing
impossible.
I recently added an underwater
camera to my ice fishing arsenal. When it’s used in clear water, it’s amazing!
Ideally we could drop it down to the lake trout fishing depths (up to 80 feet),
but unfortunately it gets too dark and dirty that deep. We were limited to
using it during that day at our burbot jigging hole. Regardless, we were able
to capture some really cool footage of burbot and lake trout. The format of
these videos is a little odd, so if the videos aren’t included below, it’s
because I couldn’t figure out how to convert the format.
Kevin and I both ended up with
our desired amounts of fish. Little did I know at the time, but social
distancing recommendations would result in the annual April fish fry not
occurring.
