A fishing mom

Early in the morning near the confluence of the Deshka and Susitna Rivers my mother, Wendy Couch, lobbed a glob of salmon roe into the slow flowing waters. She waited a moment of two and then asked, “What if it doesn’t hit the bottom?”

I turned in time to see her line streaking through the lazy river as she leaned back setting the hook. She battled a hard charging salmon, for several minutes, before bringing it to the waiting net. After I had unhooked the salmon, put another glob of salmon roe on her hook, and was working at getting her first salmon out of the net, and into the cooler, she was already hooked onto another one.

A few years later, when a friend asked my mom, “How did you get SO into fishing?”

“Fishing was something we did as a family, and I just went along,” she replied. Then she recounted that particular trip to the Deshka River —when she outfitted everyone in the boat. That was a huge adjustment to her perception of her own fishing ability, and after that it was, “Game On.” Aside from my younger brother and my wife, I don’t think anyone in my immediate family caught more salmon, with me, than my mother.

The summer after we moved to Alaska, my dad took the family on a fishing trip to the Moose/Kenai River confluence, where my older brother and I each landed a sockeye salmon. My brother hooked his fish legally, but the two fish I caught were both snagged, and required to be released. My dad was the one who got all us us kids started fishing, and he had a friend teach my older brother and I how to tie flies. My mother, however, took my sister, brothers, and I to Willow Creek one afternoon, where one brother, my sister, myself, and Mom all caught our first Alaska salmon. We each caught pink salmon spawning/preparing to spawn immediately downstream of the Parks Highway Bridge. As a 10-year-old I remember thinking I was quite the fisherman — after harvesting my limit of pink salmon — until we took them home and Mom cooked some up for dinner. The smell was not very pleasant, and the taste and texture was not any better! Lesson learned, about harvesting maturing pink salmon.

While in elementary school, my dad took us fishing and taught my older brother and I how to operate a 19-foot Gruman freighter canoe with equipped a 15-horse outboard. After that, both Mom and Dad shared taxi duties driving us to either the upper Knik River bridge or the upper landing at Jim Creek where we started out on many day long fishing adventures, to be picked up again, at the end of the day.

Wendy Couch was a 4-H leader in the Butte area, and as I grew older she talked me into running a 4-H fishing club for a year. It was a fun experience, throughout the year and highlighted by a winter trip where the younger members caught a good number of small fish and a summer trip to Moose Creek where we enjoyed some wonderful weather, but did not catch much. We definitely passed on some fishing knowledge to some Mat-Su Valley kids that continued on their own outdoor lifestyles. Parents are key to many successful programs, because it sometimes take a little encouragement to get kids involved in a particular activity, and then parents often must provide the transportation for their kids to participate. My mother and father were both champions of their kids’ transportation as we were growing up.

My mother was always a very even-keeled person, who never seemed to get overly excited or frustrated, however, I enjoyed seeing some of her more emotional moments when she caught a particularly nice salmon, or when she snagged up and lost multiple hooks at critical times when others were busy catching fish. About 5 years ago my mother experienced a series of mini-stokes that diminished some of her physical abilities, and robbed her of many memories, and much of her conversational ability. She worked at recovery along with considerable help from my sister who is a registered nurse, and improved enough that my wife and I took her on a couple of salmon fishing trips. A trip where we could use bait for coho salmon was the more memorable. We planned the trip specifically for her success, setting her up to fish first and in the best location. She quickly caught her limit of coho salmon by drifting bait under a bobber — but then after the eager biting fish were depleted, she had to sit around and wait for the rest of us to catch up.

My mother passed on — less than a week before Thanksgiving this year. There was a lot more to her life than fishing, and it was a life well-lived with many people positively impacted. I am thankful for the way of living and life lessons passed on from both of my parents.

Fish on, and know you are having an impact!