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19/04/2019
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Mallory Gruben mallory.gruben@tdn.com
CATHLAMET — If you met Evelyn Clark in June, you’d find her on a raft off the Alaska coast covered in fish slime and saltwater, working in an all-female setnet fishing crew that hauls in hundreds of pounds of salmon each day.
Without makeup and with her hair disheveled, she looks nothing like the woman who will be representing Washington at the Miss USA pageant this May.
“It’s a pretty different way of seeing her,” said her father, Mike Clark. “You see her in the pageant, and you see a beautiful woman, all clean … and shining. And then you see her up there (in Alaska) head to toe in mud, fish slime and scales. … And either one she’s in her element.”
Evelyn Clark, 27, is a Cathlamet native whose family’s livelihood centers on fish. Her parents own C&H Classic Smoked Fish, and her family has owned fishing sites in Bristol Bay, Alaska, since the late 1950s.
Nevertheless, she’s dreamed of representing Washington in the Miss USA pageant for more than a decade. Last November, after years of competing for the title, she was named Miss Washington.
Clark compared the feeling to her second life as a commercial fisherwoman.
“There is days of literally no fish at all and you’re down because you’re making no money … and then one day finally it’s like there are thousands of fish. So it’s worth the wait,” she said.
‘The girl team’
Clark has traveled to Bristol Bay almost every summer since she was seven months old. As a child, she helped out on her family’s fishing crew. In 2012 she bought her own setnet operation on the Alaska shore, alongside her mother’s nets.
Like the name suggests, setnet fishers set stationary nets off the beach. The nets are hooked to a line and pulley system and left out to catch fish for about eight hours. Then, crews row out to the net in skiffs and rafts and pull themselves along the line as they pick fish out of the net and into the boat.
“Setnet is very hard work. I fish a boat, and setnet is definitely a lot harder than fishing a boat. It’s a lot more physical,” Mike Clark said. “The net can go out 1,000 feet … into the water, so they have to pull themselves out there to it, get a raft full of fish and then bring it back in.”
Partly because of the of the physical demand of the job, setnet fishers tend to be men. But Evelyn Clark and her mother, along with other relatives, fish on a all-female crew. They call themselves the “girl team.”
“Anyone who thinks women can’t do a job should come up and watch this because these are probably two of the hardest-working people I know,” Mike Clark said of his wife and daughter. “Tired, cold, wet (or) sore. It doesn’t matter. They get up and do it again.”
Unusual beauty regimen
The setnetter’s lifestyle isn’t a recommended beauty regimen for a Miss USA contestant. The salty Alaskan water and air dries skin and hair, and it’s impossible to maintain a manicure while picking fish from the net.
Clark said doesn’t even take her makeup bag with her when the family heads to Bristol Bay. More often than not, she goes days without showering, she said.
“It’s so nice because it is so different from my normal life, to where I don’t even think about putting makeup on. I don’t even want to,” said Clark, who works as a legal aide in downtown Bellevue when she’s not fishing or competing in pageants. “You just wake up, and you are ready to go. No one cares. Everyone is in the same boat where no one has showered in a week and … no one cares what you look like and my hair is a mess. So it’s kind of nice to have that break about not caring about your appearance.”
Beauty doesn’t completely fall by the wayside, though. While in Alaska, Clark protects her skin from salt by “bundling up,” stocking cap and all, she said. She also brings along leave-in conditioner for her hair, is diligent about using sunscreen and chapstick and even maintains her workout schedule — exercising when the tides give her a respite from fishing.
“We’ll be in total fishing gear, and we are waiting for the tide, and she has us all doing yoga or lunges,” said her mother and crewmate, Leah Clark.
And it’s a seamless transition from Bristol Bay back to the pageant stage, her mom said.
“It’s effortless. … it’s all there. It’s just a shower away (for her).”
Not a ‘Pageant Patty’
Clark competed in her first beauty pageant in 2001, when she was 10-years-old.
“We kept getting this (pageant) brochure in the mail. I was in the fourth grade, and I was having a hard time in school with my self-esteem,” Clark said. “Both my mom and dad were like, ‘Maybe this will be a good thing for you.’ ”
At the time, one of Clark’s biggest insecurities was her height. She was 5 feet 9 inches tall when she graduated from Wahkiakum High School in 2010, according to a college basketball recruiting site.
Clark said she’s always been in the tallest kid in her class, though she sometimes tried to slouch to fit in with her shorter peers. Her mother said the pageants introduced her daughter to “an area where her height was celebrated, not made fun of.”
“In pageants, it’s a perk if you are tall. … There are girls who are short who have to wear very tall heels because they want to be taller,” Evelyn Clark said.
Her first year competing, Clark was “shy and naive,” without any prior knowledge about pageants. But she took second runner-up that year, learning an important lesson about staying true to herself.
“I think that’s why I truly did so well because I wasn’t a Pageant Patty and I didn’t have anything rehearsed. I was truly being myself,” she said, adding, “At the end of the day, the judges just want to get to know you as a person. … So (you must) get the past the idea that you need to be perfect, or have the perfect answers.”
There were some years Clark said she got swept up in the overthinking her performance or rehearsing answers to questions based on what she thought the judges wanted to hear. But last November — her final year of eligibility for the Miss USA pageant — she said she was “comfortable and confident” and “true to myself.”
“It was my last pageant, so of course I wanted to win. But at the same time, I knew I would be okay without it. I was at a point where I was like ‘It’s okay. Just go have fun.’ ” she said.
She will be one of few Miss USA contestants who hails from a town with a population fewer than 500 people. To her knowledge, she’s the only beauty queen whose typical lifestyle involves catching salmon.
“I’d say definitely pageants are a bigger city kind of thing. I definitely don’t know any other contestant who is a commercial fisherman, or has even gone to Alaska to fish,” she said. “It’s definitely a good talking factor and conversation starter.”
‘No-quit attitude’ for fishing, pageantry
Although fishing and beauty competitions seem incompatible, Clark manages to find overlap between her two worlds. Most importantly, she approaches both passions with a “no-quit” attitude, she said.
As a setnet fisher, “you don’t have the option up there if you don’t feel good or if you are tired. … You can’t be like, ‘I’m just not going to go in today,’ ” she said.
Clark took the same approach to pageantry. Even after nine years of finishing the Miss Washington competition without the crown, she still continued to return to the stage.
“And she never did it with a bad attitude,” her mother said. “She was never frustrated. We would just cry on our way home and stop at Krispy Kreme.’ “
“But the next day it was like, ‘Are you going to sign up?” and I’d say, ‘Yes.’ ” Evelyn Clark added.
Once in a lifetime opportunity
It’s still a long road to Miss USA for Clark, who leaves Sunday for Reno, Nevada, where she will prepare to compete. The pageant airs live on Fox on May 2. Before then, Clark must practice her walk, brush up on national news and ready herself to perform alongside 50 other beauty queens.
Only one Washington contestant has ever earned the title of Miss USA since the pageant started in 1952 (Didi Anstett from Kirkland won the crown in 1968). So the title may seem like a longshot for the small-town girl. But Clark has the “benefit of going into the Miss USA pageant” being “comfortable with myself,” she said.
“A lot of the times at Miss USA it’s a mental game. You’re around 50 other beautiful women who have trained, just like you, all year and are at the top of your game. … Sticking to your guns and knowing who you are and being comfortable with yourself is what will get you through the pageant mentally sane.”
Plus, she’s strongly supported by the Cathlamet community, which has followed her journey for the last decade.
“All the support I’ve received throughout the years has been amazing. … Even the years I didn’t win, they still supported me throughout all of the other pageants I’ve done,” she said. “So the community support has been amazing and is something I’m very thankful for. I know there’s a lot of girls who might not have that small-town kind of support.”
Winning the Miss USA pageant — which would require her attendance at many engagements — would mean missing out on a summer of setnetting with her family. Instead, Clark would fly to New York and attend to her duties as Miss USA.
Although she will be missed on the “girl team,” her parents said they would “let her slide” should she win the crown. And for the setnet fishing beauty queen, it’s a sacrifice worth making.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. You only get one year to do it. … Just wearing Washington across my body and saying my name, Evelyn Clark, on stage. I can’t wait for that.”
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