Tuesday, June 21, 2011

June 20: My birthday

It was a delightful birthday, though not trouble free. We had an opening at 9 am that we finally decided to fish. Out there at 8:30, getting ready, we found the Grayling swamped and a flagging line in the water. Ours. Our running line. It turns out that someone ran a boat over our running line (it does stick out there a bit) and cut it. Then the running line wrapped the anchor line of the Grayling, preventing it from riding properly in the fast current whereupon it took on water and swamped.

However, this is another one of those "If it was going to happen, this is about what I would pick." The Grayling didn't have an outboard on it, the net didn't spill out, it wasn't stormy, and we were working in the daylight... it just needed some bailing and it was fine.

We mended the running line - it took a couple of tries because we didn't realize at first that it was broken in the middle. Then we managed our first deep water set pretty uneventfully - and as deep water sets go, that's a smashing success. We decided just to set the other net from the Bathtub on one of the outside sites (the one with the buoys a little extra close together) and that also went fine.

Jeff was leading the Grayling restoration crew and was ready to set that net as we'd talked about on the neighbor's site, since they weren't using it. That turned out to be a good call because as soon as they got it in the water, we started getting hits. That's always exciting.

I had noticed some irregularity on the pull cord on the Yamaha that powers the Bathtub and discovered later in the tide that the irregularity must have been a nick because about half way through the tide, it turned into a full blown fray and that cord pulled its last pull.

Luckily, we have Roger.

We ended the tide with about 500 lbs and a pretty good selection of kings. Here are Jeff and Trevor with two of them, in a photo taken by Yin through a lens of a binocular.






When we went in from that morning tide, I was shocked to see that it was 2:45 - the first half of my birthday had disappeared! We cleaned the kings and prepared to vacuum seal them in our new vacuum sealer. But the 1000 W generator doesn't have quite enough to do it. Sigh. So get that thing (it's heavy!) into the truck, get it into town and use their electricity. But first, to King Salmon to get a cord (before Charlie's Sport Shop closes - he told Roger how to do the Ninja cord swap), and then success with the vacuum sealer before heading back down the beach to the Bathtub for Roger to take a shot at the repair and to the cabin for me to start the teriyaki salmon, couscous salad, and chocolate chip orange cake. It takes a while, but it's worth it. I think the best present I got for my birthday was not only that my brother came back from Anchorage, but he came back bearing vegetables and watermelon. Now, how do you get a watermelon on the plane? Only one way: carry it on. He carried a watermelon on the plane to give me for my birthday. That's a really good brother.

At dinner, Hugh did something to his hair and he looked just like Wolverine (a personal favorite of mine). So he did a little costume enhancement and here was Hugh's look for my birthday.

Down to one working outboard, we use the Ambi to tow the Grayling to the net it'll work on.

Roger was able to get the pull cord installed the ninja way but is having trouble getting the retractor mechanism to function. I didn't fish the evening tide, but the crew brought in 770 lbs and 10 kings, including two pretty big ones. They'll go into the freezer today. Yippee!

When David and Sarah arrive, the big kings will start heading to the east coast to a market David has developed there. Lucky them.

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