JUNEAU, Alaska - In the thick of Alaska's primary election season this summer, independent Bill Hill took a break from his U.S. House campaign to return home to Bristol Bay.

The world's biggest sockeye salmon run was beginning, and that meant he needed to get back to work.

"I told my team that I have got to fish," he said, adding: "Commercial fishing is the way that we pay the bills." Hill, 57, grew up in a tiny southwest Alaska village where he said his family had no phone and had to haul water from a nearby lake for cooking and bathing.