December 14, 2022 — Muckleshoot tribal fisherman pursue chum salmon along the heavily industrialized Duwamish River
Clouds blanket Puget Sound and the rain starts at dawn. “Do you have oil gear?” Leeroy Courville asks as we sit in the wheelhouse of his boat, the High Liner.
“Just this Red Ledge.”
Leeroy laughs and digs out some Grundens gear for me. It’s a good thing too, because the rain starts to beat down.
The High Liner lies tied to the Muckleshoot tribal dock in a heavily industrialized stretch of the Duwamish River. A pair of 454 Mercruiser gas engines power the 32-foot by 11-foot bow picker, but one is broken down. Nonetheless, one is enough to get us out to Elliot Bay, where Courville hopes to gillnet a few more chum salmon before the Tribe closes the season.
“This could be the last day,” he says. “I might just make one set and come in. But if I get 40 fish, I’ll make another set. A hundred fish is $2,000.”
Leeroy bought the boat from his father. “I had that one over there,” he says pointing at a nearby bowpicker. “I sold it and my father gave me this one. I just bought that gray bowpicker over there for my kids.”
Leeroy’s son Kobe arrives with a skiff, and I get into the open boat with him to follow his father out to the fishing grounds. “Only people from the Muckleshoot Tribe can go on our boats,” Leeroy has informed me. The Muckleshoot are among the tribes whose ancestral fishing rights were recognized by the 1974 Boldt decision, a federal court ruling that upheld Washington tribes’ treaty fishing rights.
“My father was fishing before that,” Leeroy says. “And he has some stories.”