Snooks Moore skippers the F/V Razor’s Edge, and is passing a legacy of fishing along to her eleven year old great-grandson, Brayden Scott, who will work this year as her deckhand.
After some difficulty having work done to her boat, Snooks Moore of Homer is back on the water and fishing Bristol Bay for her 33rd year.
KDLG’s Nick Ciolino has more:
Audio Transcript
Snooks Moore has fished in Alaska all her life. She’s short and wiry and looks extremely vital for her age. She grew up picking fish at her family’s set net site in Cook Inlet in the 1940s, delivering fish to the old Libby-McNeil-&-Libby Cannery in Kenai.
“When I was young, we still used logs to roll the skiffs up and had a tractor on the beach; delivered part of the fish out to a scow and part of it to the beach. The Libby, McNeil & Libby was a big part of our lives—the canneries were,” said Moore.
Now Moore captains the fishing vessel Razors Edge. She has been fishing in Bristol Bay since 1984, and got her first fishing boat from her husband in 1970.
“I didn’t know nothing as far as running a boat, literally. I mean, it was a trial and error, but what I learned is the guys my age, a lot of them, were college kids coming up and stuff like that—a lot of them didn’t know any more. What I did know how to do was pick fish, and evidently I had a pretty god sense of where to find them,” said Moore.
Moore has employed many members of her family on the Razors edge over the years. This is the first year her great-grandson Brayden will be aboard working as a deckhand. He is eleven years old.
“I’m ready to pick some fish. It’s going to be hard, but I’m excited for it,” said Scott.
Snooks says she is pleased with the direction the fishery is headed, but adds it’s not as lucrative to fish in Bristol Bay as it was in the 80s, and it's more expensive to get started if you want to buy a boat. She says women looking to fish should not be intimidated by the majority male industry.
“Just remember the guys don’t know any more than you do; they think they do, but they don’t,” said Moore.
After more than thirty years in the Bay, Moore says she likes this season’s forecast. She says the Razors Edge is ready to fish, despite her spending 12 grand for metal fabrication work that did not get done as expected in the off-season.
Contact KDLG fisheries reporter Nick Ciolino at fish@kdlg.org or 907-842-5281