June 26: Day of David's arrival

This is Day 4 of Josh's recovery. But who's counting? Oops - apparently not me; it's day 3 today. Dang!

We had an opener from noon to 8. It's like we have day jobs. With three boats operational, we were able to set all three outside sites at once.

When the Bathtub crew prepared to go through their net, they noticed something floating toward the net. They moved to intercept it and found that it was a dead seal. Rather than allow it to get caught in the net, they brought it on board and hauled it out to the channel. It's too bad. The seals can be frustrating - when we're only getting a handful of fish, it's hard to watch the seal snatch half of them (that is, half of each one) out of the net and swim away, laughing at us. That happened yesterday. But as David has noted so many times, we catch many thousands of salmon - how much of a dent will a dozen seals make, really? Funny how easy it is to develop a sense of ownership when it comes to what's in our nets.

These photos are my crew in today's very dramatic lighting. We had a bit of a squall come through. Jeff on the left, Chris next to him and Bob on the other side of the net, looking serious.


We're mid tide right now. We had a little mending to do on one of the nets, but otherwise, we're just waiting for about an hour before high water, so we can clear the nets before the tide turns.

I asked Trina to get some photos of the dry suit - she's a good photographer (you should see her underwater photography at her website at Kosraevillage.com). So this first one is me at the wheel.

We are in from the tide now. Fishing has started in earnest. We got about 4500 lbs this tide, bringing our total to almost 10,000 (well, at least we've done better than 1997). The seine boats that tender for us can't stay after high water, but we've been getting quite a few on the ebb, so we keep our nets out and need to deliver the fish. This tide, we had about 1000 lbs of salmon in to deliver on the beach at the end of the tide. Hence, the ranger. It will climb through the mud and pull the Bathtub with it's very flat bottom. The Bathtub got high-centered on something on the way in so everyone had to jump out and we spun the boat and pushed and wiggled it to get it off and in. It's always a relief to get within easy towing distance of the beach.

We have another opener tonight - from 1:30 am to 10:30 am (it's a set net only and we have a pretty blustery wind, so if there are fish, we should see them) and then another from 1 pm to 9 pm. This will be three tides, back-to-back. Probably not much sleep. And probably some pretty skimpy posts for the next... uhhh - couple of weeks.