Part I

Alaskan School Teachers

In the first several years of our marriage, my wife, Eliza Owens, and I taught school and began our family in the Bristol Bay watershed villages of Port Alsworth and New Stuyahok. We fell in love with the people and the place that is home to the largest sockeye salmon run in the world.

Part II

Fishing Captain

Our family brought us back to Rockford, Michigan but the desire to stay connected to Bristol Bay motivated me to purchase a small setnet fishing operation with my father, Paul Owens, downriver of New Stuyahok, where I had been Assistant Principal and Eliza a teacher for three years.

Part II

Multi-Boat Operation

This was our ninth year setnet salmon fishing and our third year processing to bring the best food in the world – wild Alaskan sockeye salmon – back to our local community.