California boy Matt Mankiewitz hitchhikes to the remote fishing town of Cordova. He buys a decrepit old boat and net. Commercial fishing for the famed Copper River salmon is a solo operation and what Matt doesn't know about boats and fishing is pretty much everything. The sand bars and towering waves of the Copper River Delta prove to be a very unforgiving place to learn. It is 1972. The war in Asia is tearing apart the country. Longhaired hippies are not universally welcomed in small Alaskan towns. Before long, Matt is enmeshed with Cordova's quirky characters and their alliances and rivalries. He pisses off ex-mobster Marty Gauer and collides inextricably with "Black" Nick Vasiloff, who has never lost a bar fight and has been in far too many. Matt falls in love with Nick's niece, the Russian-Aleut beauty Anna, but Anna may not be as smitten with Matt as he is with her. She seems in no hurry to leave Arnie, her highline fisherman boyfriend with his big paydays and his Silver Star from Vietnam. Getting involved with "other people's women" and catching "other people's fish" leads to inevitable and violent conflicts.