Ironbender recommended this book. It is the journal of Andrew Berg. He came to Alaska as a nineteen year old immigrant of Finnish extraction. I believe he hit the Kenai Peninsula about 1889. He hunted, fished, trapped, guided, and a little prospecting. In his early days he had a gun incident and was shot in the left wrist, that made his left hand virtuously useless. The day to day journal was great. Andrew made knives from scratch and made gun parts, like a firing pin for his 22 pistol.
Andrew fought a heart condition for his last eleven years. He just laid up in one of his cabins after blacking out. The next day he was felling birch trees and used his dog to drag them to the cabin to saw up and split. He called a rick to be 6' tall, 9' long, and I believe 18" in depth.
Tough, tough men!
Now, how do you fish with a net year round. Maybe he knocked a hole in the ice and just dropped one end into the lake?

Drill a series of small holes where you want to set the net and use a pole to shove a line in the direction of the next hole... fish it out and move it to the next hole.

Pull the net down through the hole and tug it to the end of the line of holes with the line fished along under the ice.

or, wait for summer.... if you don't starve in the meantime!

Some fish move into easier areas in the winter... and keeping a bunch of fish is easier if they can just be frozen rather than split and dried.

another book placed on the B&N wish list!

I guess he ate fish for breakfast every morning and some for the dog or 2 dogs. The dogs were fed a diet mainly consisting of porkie pines as he called them. Iodine was used for all ailments. sore joints, sore throat, and injury. He treated his fish nets with the sap of the willow trees. It was said that the iodine would do a better job on the nets and the willow sap was better for his aches and pains.
He was a big man in those days 6'2" and 235.

Glad you enjoyed it Butch!

I love that bench country and hope my ashes end up there one day.....far in the future!

Butch, have you ever read "North of the Sun" by Fred Hatfield? I enjoyed that one too.

Ironbender, I'm glad that you recommended it to me. Kinda fills in some of the open areas of my Alaska knowledge.
kid0917, I'll have to check. I don't think that I have. I have 297 read books in my Kindle and sure don't remember them all.
I am actually close to the end of Berg's book. It seems when he has a bad case of indigestion he gives himself an enema.

Chain saws make it really easy.

I used a chainsaw in the 70s for ice fishing, but I was not fishing with a net.

A dear friend of mine used to own a cabin at Bear Creek on Tustumena Lake. He had a copy of the daily journal kept by (as I recall) Andrew Berg way back in the day. The daily trips Mr. Berg took were long and arduous - checking traps, hunting sheep, fishing, living off the land. I'm pretty sure it was Andrew Berg, but whoever wrote the daily journal was one very tough fellow. Before the Feds allowed the high bench area to be ruined that part of the Kenai above Tustumena Lake was a hunting and fishing paradise.

Yep. Andrew Berg.

Pretty neat.

A couple of weeks ago some good friends were snow machining up on Tustumena and went by the Berg cabin beside Indian Creek (where I've seen 15-18# silvers running all the way through November). Here are some photos:

Spent many a night on Indian Creek. The "top" above Emma Lake is the best place on the Kenai. Sitting without moving and staring at the headwaters (Indian Ck. glacier) I have counted 28 black bear, a half dozen caribou, a moose, a sow grizz, several sheep and numerous marmot. It can be and remains a wonderful place today...
Still lots of grizzly there.

They do this here for shee fish - maybe some others.

Got that right!

All these pictures were taken above Emma Lake, up on top. I have some even better ones, but they are on disc at the other place. I think. I'll look photo bucket a bit.

The caribou were taken different years. All of the above pictures were on the kid's hunt. This picture is of myself and the wife, packing out the kid's caribou. Most of that 8 miles out to the boat was downhill, fortunately....

A

Not in 5-6 feet of ice! But an Eskimo Brand auger with 10 inch bit does! The guy I saw doing it drilled overlapping? holes on entry, then singles the rest of the way. Might have been side to side and chipped out the web between- didn't look that closely.

Nice caribou.

I don't know how Berg did it, but he didn't have a chainsaw. It does make sense to make the first hole larger to allow the spruce fishing pole to push it to the next hole and so on. It is funny about him telling about replacing the main spring in his watch.

Another shot of my son's caribou - better (or more impressive, anyway) angle. Both trips were second week of August.

If it is a bulls-only permit, and you see only one caribou on the trip, (both times), these will do.

Felt kinda bad, wiping out the entire herd that way. Twice.

I guess the rest of my pics from there are on disc.

Floppy?

5 1/4"

I've set nets under ice with a contraption we called an ice jigger.....Google on "net ice jigger" for pics.....our was about the size of an ironing board and I saw them for sale at the Trappers Supply Store in Whitehorse a few years ago.

Further to the book about Berg.....he mentions changing the stroke length in his single cylinder outboard with very simple tools ......I don't claim to be a mechanic, but how does one do that..?

Now I have a good understanding of under ice net fishing. I have been in the auto repair business about 48 years and don't understand his lengthening of the con rod. I sure don't understand how he did it in the bush and why.

Christ, Art - I ain't that old. Barely.

Well, actually I am- but we were late getting into this new-fangled chit, and missed the floppies for home use.

At present, I can't be more than 10 or 15 years and hopelessly behind.....