"OH, CRAP."
It was my third day on the Erika Leigh, and we were anchored in the middle of the bay during an active fishing period—a huge breach of protocol because, when their nets are in the water, the boats drift with the current, motoring around only when the nets are pulled in. We were a still point in a cat's cradle of nets. Already that morning, Bloom's boat had gotten tangled with trailing nets from two other boats; now a third was drifting toward us. Before long, its net was wrapped tightly around the Erika Leigh's snub-nosed bow.

"Fucking motherfucker fuck!" the exasperated captain shouted when he saw what had happened. "You guys should have been drifting!"

Bloom had suffered through a nagging morning of battery and engine problems that had forced her to stop fishing, shut down the boat, and anchor up. Then the engine wouldn't restart. Later, after being towed out of harm's way, she checked in by radio with her father, 63-year-old Art Bloom, who reminded her that fishing with engine trouble was a bad move.

"If you wake up with a dead battery, you can't just go fishing," he said, in the daily installment of their Socratic dialogue. Art, who was aboard his boat Cape Clear, had lived most of his life with fish. He came to Alaska in 1972 as a fisheries biologist with the Forest Service, once owned a fly-fishing business, and has had a Bristol Bay permit for 18 years. Lindsey worked her first season for him at 17. Six years later she took over the Erika Leigh, and while the two usually fish near each other, she was in a different part of the bay that day. "When you've got something wrong," he continued, "you've got to figure out what's behind it right away."

"Yeah, I know," said Bloom, madder at herself than her dad was. In past seasons, she, like any young captain, had hit a few rough patches—nets caught in props, hydraulic-system failures, tearful breakdowns, even a man overboard. "The self-reliance you have to learn to fish out here is powerful," she said. "When the shit hits the fan, nobody is going to come save you."

Bloom is a bold captain, notes her boyfriend, Brian Delay, 28, a crewman in his fourth season with her. Other captains, he says, "see this five-foot-tall redhead" setting her net in front of them, "and, whoa, they get mad." Bloom recalls an angry captain once yelling at her, "If you want to screw me so bad, why don't you take off your raingear?" She enjoys such reactions. "It kind of messes with their heads to see me out here."

Though top boats may catch as much as 300,000 pounds of salmon in the two-month season, Bloom's goal is more on par with the average: 100,000 pounds. "With 100,000, you're in the black, you're making a living," she said. At 2008 prices, that would have worked out to about $68,000 gross, less roughly $12,000 in overhead and another $17,000 for her crew. Of course, some seasons, a blown engine or other unforeseen cost will burn through any cushion pretty fast. But fishermen are gamblers, and the fishery still offers the chance to make a good chunk of money in a short time. "It could be more," Bloom told me, "but I can't complain—fishing paid for my house, fishing helped pay for grad school."

As we motored west, Bloom kept an eye out for anything that might suggest fish were near. "What I really like is the strategy. Watching the wind and the tide and trying to figure out what the fish are doing."

Despite being born to it, Bloom is not a typical Bristol Bay fisherman. She hunts and fishes but also teaches yoga, and onboard she's as likely to dine on Thai Kitchen noodle soup as a pile of roe pulled fresh from a salmon's belly and fried with lemon pepper. She pursues a sustainable lifestyle; salmon fishing fits into that, and so do moose and deer steaks in the freezer.

One tool she'd been using in the Pebble fight was the product: the salmon itself. She was experimenting with a "fresh market" idea, off-loading freshly cleaned fish in Dillingham and having them shipped to customers in Juneau, at a premium price. "In surveys I did, people were way more concerned about the environment than the fishermen," she said. She thought if she could get them to identify a quality product with the pristine environment it came from, it might help the cause.

The mine's presence could pose a marketing problem if consumers come to identify it with a polluted area, but the site is more than 100 miles upstream from where fish are caught. While it could affect the ecosystem immediately, it would likely take years for any pollution to damage the run itself. But for Bloom, the generation-to-generation continuity, and her desire to see the fishery continue, makes the fight more urgent. "For me," she said, "what's at stake is whether or not my children will know what it's like to live by tides, winds, and the life cycle of salmon."

The next day, the crew of the Erika Leigh got into the first "hot" fishing of the season. "It's a great morning!" said Brian, down on deck, working a tangled fish out of the net while Johnny Cash played from speakers in the pilothouse. "Wait, is it morning?" It was 2 P.M. "Well, a good early afternoon. I don't know what time it is, but that net's got some fish in it!"

Bloom was beaming. "I find many fish for my boys! Yes?"