Anchors Up LLC

July 4th 2026, let freedom ring!! 🎇🎆

Witness the Bristol bay tender experience! Our 6 holds are lined with heavy duty fitted bags called brailers. This allows for streamlined offloading, the larger boat called a tender uses a crane with a scale and special releasing hook to lift the fish right out of our boat and dump the bags in their own holds which are filled with refrigerated sea water. Each offload is recorded and reported to the fish and game, we receive a fish ticket as a type of receipt for the fish we just delivered. At the end of each opener the tender hauls the salmon up the river to the processing facility, then returns with fuel and freshwater, allowing the fleet to stay on the fishing grounds!!

This was a fun day!! Steady fishing adds up quickly and you never know when it's gonna be good! We prepare for each opener the same way always hoping for the best! We start out by partially filling the holds with seawater. This water is then circulated through our hydraulic driven refrigeration unit chilling the water to 34°F. As we haul the net fish go directly into the cold water bringing them down to temp quickly which preserves quality! When the fishing period is over we head to a tender to make a delivery!

And the fishing begins!!!
Early season is always a bit unpredictable. Biologists from the Alaska Department Of Fish And Game monitor the salmon run to ensure enough salmon make it up the river to sustain the fishery for years to come, they use the escapement data to determine when to allow fishing and for how long. The fleet anxiously waits for each announcement, ready to fish with only a few hours notice! This continues throughout the season as the ADFG opens and closes each district.

Last week I had an awesome view of lake lliamna and the Naknek river as I flew into King Salmon AK to start off my 2026 Bristol Bay season! These rivers and lakes make up an incredible ecosystem that hatches billions of salmon fry each year!! This year's prediction is over 45 million adult fish returning to Bristol Bay and approximately 32 million of that is allowed to be harvested! There is always a mixture of excitement and anticipation as I arrive here each year! 2026 salmon run HERE WE GO!!

Check out operations on the Kruzof!! Being that the salmon season is so short, most of my fishing season is spent working as a crewman on board this unique longliner fishing for Black Cod! The Kruzof is specifically designed to catch and process black cod, we do this by longlining hook gear or slinky pots! Once the fish are aboard we remove the head and scrape the stomach cavity clean, then we size grade the fish and freeze them in 40-50lb cases! The cases are unloaded into freezer containers at the end of a trip, then sold in bulk, or reprocessed into fillets or portions!

Salmon season is just around the corner, and one of the most important pieces of gear we use is our nets! Each net is made up of 3 main components a cork line (to float the net), web in the middle (to catch the fish), and a lead line on the bottom (the weighted rope sinks, causing the net to spread open). Each year the web takes a significant beating, since the Bristol Bay fishery lasts only a few weeks fishermen often cut the mesh to remove salmon quicker and get the net back in the water, this results in holes that are nearly impossible to repair effectively. Luckily the web is relatively inexpensive so after each season the old web is stripped off of the cork and lead lines and a new web is tied in place. We call this the process of hanging a net! We use twine and special knots to secure the web back in place. The "hanging bench" that I use has adjustable components that allow me to space the corks and web evenly!