SITKA, Alaska — IT was a banner summer for us fishermen in the far north, with long, sunlit days pulling coho and king salmon. Anchored up at night, hands hardly able to close around a can of beer, we nodded at the usual stories: the tourist couple who lost their pug when it tried to make friends with a brown bear; the local man who disappeared, his skiff found abandoned in the rocks of Auke Bay; the black bear that fell through a skylight onto a table of cupcakes at a kid’s birthday in Juneau.

Now the boats are tied down against fall storms, and the streets of the island town where I live smell of soy sauce and brown sugar as people brine sockeye, preparing it for the smoker. Talk is that it’s going to be a rough, rainy winter — to say nothing of the gust of media attention that has been blowing up from the Lower 48, swirling around our United States Senate election in November, bringing with it more outside money than has ever been spent on a political campaign in the state.

The last time the klieg lights pivoted our way was when she-who-must-not-be-named became an overnight sensation during the 2008 presidential election. We all know how that turned out. Now, six years later, the networks are back, with Alaska seen as a closely contested “key state” that could affect the “crucial balance” of Democrats and Republicans in the Senate.

Well, if you want to gauge the political mood around here, sit down at the Backdoor Cafe with a cup of coffee and a salmonberry scone, pick up The Daily Sitka Sentinel, have a chat with folks, and you’ll learn that not much is predictable in the 49th state.