Extra adventure on the water

I had mentioned in a previous column that I wanted to get out one last time with the riverboat to get more running time on the engine and burn some of the older gas before winterizing and storing it. Well, I made it out earlier this week but things didn’t go quite as planned.

Folks from the borough’s public relations section wanted to do an interview with me about this past coho season and how the new regulations managing the drift net commercial fishery might have had a bearing on the strong salmon returns to the Knik Arm systems. They wanted a nice setting for the filming, so we decided to go out on Finger Lake and use the water, shoreline, and distant mountains as the backdrop. I also wanted to give a friend, Doug, a chance to get some boating time in and maybe even do some fishing after the interview.

We all met at Finger Lake about 2 p.m. Tuesday. The weather that crisp afternoon was clear and sunny. The boat launch was open but there was a lot of activity with the contractors working on the campground reconstruction. Doug and I were launching the boat when Patty and Stefan from the borough arrived. We loaded up and idled out into the lake.

I should have known better. I wasn’t watching the water depth all that closely as we idled out. My boat is a quality, name brand model, but is heavy. With four of us on board and only idling along relatively close to shore, the intake for the inboard jet unit was sucking up bottom plants like crazy, even though we’re running in two- to four-foot-deep water to maneuver for shooting the interview.

The boat was not responding very well to the throttle and I finally got a clue and looked at the water depth. I figured we had a plugged water intake screen. We were located on the lake about where Patty wanted to shoot the interview with the preferred backdrop, so we anchored and did the shoot.

I was hoping that, with the water flow into the jet stopped, the materials blocking the intake would either wash off or would simply drop away. That approach usually works quite well in a river current situation but the calm lake waters didn’t have the same effect. There is also quite a difference between rocks dropping away in a river verses plant material in a lake!

The interview took a little longer than I had thought and, after about an hour, I fired up the engine to take Patty and Stefan back to their car. Needless to say, my plan to clear the intake grating hadn’t worked. We had virtually no power for lack of water to the jet. I shut the engine down to eliminate possible overheating and broke out the one oar on board. Doug and I took turns using the oar to push the boat back toward the launch. We were only a couple hundred yards away, so it wasn’t a big deal but did take some time.

We dropped Patty and Stefan off and pulled the boat back onto the trailer. After removing about a half-bushel of plant material from the grating and making sure things were clear, we launched the boat again. This time, I made sure we were up “on step” quickly and we began the run around the lake.

I had never been on Finger Lake in a boat before. I’ve ice-fished it several times, but never boated on it. Finger Lake was smaller than I had thought and a run around the majority of the lake, avoiding the obvious shallows and skim ice forming over some of the shallow bays, only took about six to eight minutes according to my hour meter. We made a couple of circles and then encountered a floatplane taxiing for a take off. While the plane warmed up and positioned itself, Doug and I made a couple of circles on the far end of the lake to give the plane some room.

After the plane took off, we returned to the launch to pull the boat and head for home. Doug had some prior commitments and we needed to leave. We never did get to fish and I was only able to put about a half-hour of running time on the boat. We still had fun and I learned some lessons.

Next time, things will go differently!

Howard Delo is a retired fisheries biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. You can leave him a message by emailing sports@frontiersman.com.