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Smith was one of a handful of gillnetters working the 72-hour Sunday-Wednesday coho opening in Taku Inlet. The Home Fire, his 34-foot Ohima, was spotted washed up in the mud flats early Tuesday morning, and friends said they thought he was waiting for a high tide to free himself from the shallows. But when high tide approached at 10:30 a.m. and he failed to move or answer radio calls, an intensive search began.

U.S. Coast Guard, Alaska State Troopers, the Civil Air Patrol and numerous friends looked for Smith on Tuesday and Wednesday.

"We felt we've exhausted all our possible avenues that we use in these cases," said Petty Officer Thomas McKenzie, public affairs specialist with the Coast Guard in Juneau.

Smith has been a gillnetter for almost 15 years, his friends said. He has a wife, Karen, and two school-age sons.

"He was definitely, if not the best fisherman in the area, the best producing gillnetter," said Robert Mosher, owner of the Patience. Mosher has gillnetted in the same seas as Smith for 10 years and often hunts with him in the off-season.

"He was real good at what he did, real cagey," Mosher said. "He was a very avid outdoorsman and a really good dad to his kids. This is probably the first week Mark had been on the boat without one of the boys on there with him."

"I don't think he had one enemy," said gillnetter Mark Buchkoski, owner of the Marco. Buchkoski has two sons approximately the same age as Smith's, and their families spend time together in the off-season. "He had the gift of gab, and he could talk to anybody. He was a very social and likable person, and he did a lot with his kids."

Slocum Inlet is south of Gastineau Channel and Taku Inlet, ducking off Stephens Passage about two miles northeast of Grand Isle. The inlet is considered a steep, tricky place to anchor, but it's one of the few anchorages near Taku Inlet, Mosher and Buchkoski said.

"I've anchored there this year, but I hate it for the fact that in the middle of the night, you'd get blown out of there and have to get up in the middle of the night and reset your anchor," Buchkoski said. "It's not at all like it's some poor-judgment spot. On any given July day there were 30 to 40 boats there. There's just not very many good anchorages around."

Conditions were not too choppy Tuesday morning. The wind was blowing southeast 15 to 20 mph, and the swells were anywhere from 2 feet to 4 feet.

Early that morning, a gillnetter reported on the VHF radio that a boat had washed up on the beach in Slocum Inlet.

"There weren't very many boats around, and I looked around and realized that he wasn't one of the boats out there," Buchkoski said. "He's definitely a hard-charger. He's an extremely good fisherman."

On the VHF, it was soon obvious that it was the Home Fire in the mud. Cindy K owner Todd Daugherty, one of Smith's best friends, repeatedly called Smith. There was no answer.

High tide arrived around 10:30 a.m., and there was still no sign from the Home Fire.

"Todd started expressing some definite concern, and there was definitely panic in his voice," Buchkoski said. "There were six or seven of us in the immediate area, and one by one, we basically got tuned up on the situation and arrived on the scene."

By 11:30 a.m., Buchkoski reached Cooper Point, where he saw a boat from the state Department of Fish and Game. He asked if they had time to look at the Home Fire in Slocum Inlet.

"They were able to get into the shallows where the Home Fire was, and they went about the boat and found nobody there," Buchkoski said.

The anchor line was also missing. Daugherty immediately called the Coast Guard.

"I think Todd made the call on (channel) 16 to the Coast Guard and said we're definitely looking for somebody in the water," Buchkoski said. "At that point, I hauled my net and ran down there. By noon we all split up and started covering the beaches."

The Cindy K, the Patience, the Marco, the Lucky J's and the Restless were a few of the gillnetters on scene. Shortly thereafter, a few high-speed skiffs from the Coast Guard showed up, along with the first plane from the Civil Air Patrol. Thirty minutes later, a few more Coast Guard vessels, including the cutter, joined the search.

"We fish there all the time, so we know the currents and the drifts and where everything is," Buchkoski said. "Within four hours, we pretty much covered everything, and wherever we covered the (Coast Guard) was there at least two times."

Wednesday afternoon, volunteers from the Southeast Aquatic Safety (SEAS) dive team went to the inlet with a underwater camera operator and a small Coast Guard craft, Alaska State Troopers spokesman Greg Wilkinson said.

At 3 p.m., the Coast Guard called Alaska State Troopers to report the camera operator had spotted an unknown line 85 feet below the surface of the water. The Coast Guard planned to transport more SEAS volunteers to the scene Wednesday evening to search for the line, Wilkinson said.