yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Beached Wheel | Life Below Zero


2m read
·Nov 11, 2024

Just got done having my morning cup of coffee, and down here I can see the river really start dropping. Last night, it dropped a couple feet. I'm going to head up river, make sure my fish wheel is not high and dry. I can't afford to just let a functional fish wheel go to waste.

The water's been high for about 2 weeks now. It just kind of like planed out in the last couple days and just dropped overnight, just like that. And that's how this river is; it's constantly changing.

Jesse Holmes relies on the resources along the Tanana River to maintain a subsistence lifestyle. Getting his fish wheel up and running is crucial to feeding himself and his team of sled dogs for the year ahead.

So, the fish wheel is made out of spruce log rafts, and it floats out in the river. What we do is we take it with big logs and we push it far out into the river into a deep channel. We drop the axle down, and the big baskets dip through the water, turning with the current. As it scoops down, the fish have no place to go, so they swim right into the scoop. It scoops them up.

Now, the purpose of a fish wheel is to put up a large amount of fish. I can put up 900 fish in a day if the fishing's going good. I need to be catching fish and feeding the dogs fish right now because it's the most cost-effective way for me to be able to keep these dogs.

This could be a real big deal to me, to not be able to use that fish wheel. My main goal is to not fall in the river; it's one of the fastest navigable waters in the U.S. The Tanana River is, and there's just tons of silt in here. The minute you're in there, the silt starts filling your pockets, filling your clothes, filling your boots. Little things can become big things quick.

This thing's definitely up on the sandbars; the river dropped a couple feet here. Yeah, it definitely looks like I got my work ahead of me. If I didn't get this thing out here on the water current soon, it's going to get a lot worse because the river's dropping fast. If I wait any longer on this, it could put me out of the season.

It's stressful. The stakes are high, and like, it's very easy to mess up with the fish wheel. There's a lot of things going on; you got the current, thousands of pounds. I mean, this is going to be one hell of a job. Every minute that goes by is a minute wasted and another couple inches of water loss, possibly.

So, it's time to get to work, bust this thing out, and get on to the next process. It's a lot of work, but it provides a lot of food for the dogs. There we go, she's moving.

More Articles

View All
Dua Lipa: The 60 Minutes Interview
Plenty of teenagers want to become pop stars, but few convince their parents to let them pack their bags and move to another country to try and make it big. That’s what Dua Lipa did when she was just 15 years old. She’d taken some singing lessons but didn…
Bullet vs Prince Rupert's Drop at 150,000 fps - Smarter Every Day 165
All right, Keith. Prince Rupert’s drop. Prince Rupert’s drop, right? Paper submitted from 1660 to the Royal Society. So this is a very early stuff. Hey, it’s me, D. Welcome back to Smarter Every Day. I am in the basement of the Royal Society in London, En…
The Upcoming 2021 Real Estate Collapse Explained
What’s up you guys, it’s Graham here. So today we’re literally going to be talking about my favorite topic in the entire world. And I know you think this might be a setup for me to say, “And that topic is asking you to smash that like button for the YouTu…
My Problem Spending Money
What’s up, you graham? It’s guys here, and today we’re going to be talking about why I save so much money. Because over the last few years, I’ve been called quite a few things, ranging anywhere from stingy, cheap, thrifty, frugal, economical, a penny pinc…
Too Drunk to Stand | Underworld, Inc.
On the Fort Berthold Reservation, tribal police are racing to a domestic violence call. It sounds like he used these days hands and assaulted a female. Lieutenant Harte has seen a spike in this kind of crime. It’s often a result of out-of-state workers ha…
Shark Side of the Moon | SharkFest | National Geographic
The full moon emerges as if on cue. Sharks take off. Palaio and the team track their movements in near real time. [Music] Swimming 30 miles a day. [Music] So now we are big brother. Living as we sit here, I’m receiving messages saying that 11 out of t…