July 5: Fish hit hard on the flood

We have settled into around-the-clock fishing. This means, for example, that we need to be at the boat by 6:30 AM on July 4, two hours before high water. If there are a lot of fish, we'll stay out, clearing the nets, delivering the fish (that is, if the trucks or tender are out taking deliveries) and doing it again. If there are not a lot of fish, we might come in for... between 15 minutes and 2 hours, depending on what we expect for fish. (It's a bummer when we underestimate what is out there.) On the 4th, it seemed to slow after the first pick through so we went in at about 8:30 and came back out at 10:30 or 11 AM to complete the tide. We underestimated by a little bit on this one, but wrapped up the morning tide by about 1 PM. (We often have kings from the tide, including on the 4th, so someone - usually Rohan - uses the truck to run them in to the freezer in town.)

Our pattern is to eat protein bars during the tide (you can hear, "Bar me!" to mean, "Hand me a protein bar!") and a real meal afterwards. After the meal, we nap for a while and then go back out about two hours before high water to do it again. On the 4th, we were back out by 7 PM. It was a short tide and there were a lot of fish, at least on the flood, so we stayed out all tide that night, coming in at about 1 AM. The next day, we were earlier to the net in the morning, because some fish have arrived and that's what we do during the run. So we were out again by 7 AM on the 5th to find the fish hitting constantly, so we stayed out all tide and got back in by about 1:30 or 2 PM. Then a meal and another trip to town with kings. Jeff and I did that one. We were back out to the nets by 8 PM and found that they were plugged!

So our round-the-clock fishing schedule goes:

July 4 6:30 AM - 8:30 AM flood pick

July 4 8:30 AM - 11 AM break

July 4 11 AM - 1 PM ebb pick and delivery

July 4 1 PM - 7 PM break

July 4-5 7 PM - 1 AM flood and ebb pick, delivery

July 5 1 AM - 7 AM break

July 5 7 AM - 2 PM flood and ebb pick, delivery

July 5 2 PM - 8 PM break

July 5 8 PM - 2 AM plugged! Fish fast... until it slowed down at high water

What happens during that break period? Everything other than fishing and eating bars. It's when we gear up, gear down, replenish the food bag, replenish the water containers, cook, eat, blog, read, figure out when we'll go out next, sleep (is it a nap if it lasts less than 4 hours?), brush our teeth, feed the dog, do the dishes, hang wet things to dry, take kings in to town, and other mandatory town things, like get drinking water and gas, and get things fixed so we can keep fishing, as well as other non-mandatory town activities, like shower (I had the first shower since my birthday on the 5th!), laundry, check mail, get groceries, and here at camp, check/respond to email, pay bills (using our very spotty Internet)... what are the other things people do in their lives? Anyway, all that stuff has to fit into the break periods. So on July 4, we had from 8:30 AM to 11 AM (2.5 hrs), and 1 PM - 7 PM (6 hrs) to do everything we need to do, other than fish. On July 5 we had from 1 AM to 7 AM (6 hrs) and 2 PM to 8 PM (6 hrs) to do everything we need to do, other than fish. You can see how the dishes might pile up and personal hygiene... well... It is interesting, though, that making notes in the blog rates higher in importance to me than most things - certainly more important than dishes, showers, and sometimes, even sleep.

In our afternoon tide on the 5th, we were plugged which is fishing jargon for lots o' fish. We went through one of the sites and because it was kind of windy, decided to deliver without going through our second site first because we were already pretty heavily loaded. Returning from the delivery, we looked at our second site - it hasn't been performing nearly as well as the outside sites - and finding it much less full than the outside site, we headed out to help the New Boat crew that has been shouldering the weight of those two high producing sites all season. They had finished one of the sites and decided not to go deliver then; instead they went on to the other site. We took over for them so they could go unload and together we tackled the less full inside site. When we went through the outside site again, it was again loaded up but by high water, most of the fish activity had slackened.

That gave us time to motor out to visit Harry and family on the Janice E - here is a photo (from another day that I forgot to post earlier) with the New Boat visiting the Janice. You can see David still on the New Boat but the rest of the crew has boarded the Janice and is visiting Harry, Ev, Hannah, and Makenzie who had just arrived.

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We were happy to see that our friends on the Goatroper were also in the neighborhood, so we also went to see them. This is a photo of their boat, with Tom and Trevor on the deck - ready to pick the heck out of a net... or a guitar. A very talented crew.

Coming back from seeing our goat-roping friends, we noticed another bit of beauty that we get to live under. These are our humble little cabins under a glorious water color sky.

July 4: Happy Fourth of July!

This is the date that most of us in Bristol Bay think of as the peak of the season. This year, I was ready to think it was about a week past the peak. But we heard yesterday that another spike came through Port Moller, headed our way. So, we remain ready. The Bristol Bay Economic Development Council (BBEDC) has boats out test fishing at Port Moller (which, in fish time, is about a week+ from us) under very controlled conditions. They count the fish caught and conduct some scale and DNA analysis to determine which district they are bound for: Naknek/Kvichak (that's us), Egegik, Nushagak-Wood River, or Ugashik and apply a statistical model to let us know what to expect about a week+ hence. Their website is http://www.bbedc.com/?page_id=1405 and I really appreciate the science of their approach.

Even when the fishing has been slow relative to the big tides, it hasn't been that slow. The Kvichak run is returning stronger than expected - ADFG now believes that at least 7 million are coming back, up from the 5 million they expected pre-season. Regulations allow them to adjust the escapement goal mid-season to half of the return, which they have done, from a goal of 2.5 million salmon to 3.5 million. The impact of this on us is that it slows down the transfer of the drift fleet from whatever district they're in to the Naknek/Kvichak.

Sometime early in the season, each drift fisherman must "drop their card," meaning they have to commit themselves to a district, registering it with ADFG and that's the district they are allowed to fish in. One of the four mentioned above. If they want to change districts, they can, but once they drop a new card, they have to stop fishing in any district for 48 hours. That's referred to as the 48 hour transfer period. Fishermen do not like to change districts mid-season because they lose too much fishing time. This is an important management tool to the ADFG because if the drift fleet were allowed to fish freely whatever district they wanted from one tide to the next, ADFG wouldn't be able to anticipate the fishing effort (or impact) in any fishing period. The 48 hour transfer period is waived for a district once it reaches its escapement goal. By increasing the escapement goal in the Kvichak, those of us already in the Naknek/Kvichak district get a little more time fishing without the competition from the part of the hungry drift fleet that would immediately come here if they could do it without taking their gear out of the water for 48 hours.

For the sake of completeness, I should mention that there is also a fifth district: Togiak. I don't really know much about Togiak, but I do know that they are managed a little differently. People who fish in Togiak make a season long commitment.

The difference between the super heavy tides and other tides, even the ones where we have a really good catch, is whether we ever stop moving during a tide. The afternoon/ night tide of the fourth was really good for us, but it dropped off after the flood. So here we are in a beautiful sunset, rocking in the gentle breeze on the water, all in a row, waiting to go through the nets for the last time in the tide. I took this photo from the stern of the Ambi. You can see Rohan's silhouette on the left and on the right are AJ and Roger, sitting on the rail. The Ambi is tied off to the New Boat, with Jeff on the left, then Jake, David, and Sarah. The New Boat is tied off to the Bathtub, which is anchored until the end of the tide when we'll use it to deliver the last of our fish. If you squint, you might be able to see its tall fairleads beyond and through the New Boat's power roller. In the distance you can see the Grayling. That's the fleet and being the big boss lady of a fleet, we've decided that that makes me an admiral. I'll be expecting the hat in the mail any day now.

Even without the fish and the fishing, I think this is a spectacularly beautiful place to be. This is just after the sun had set and I don't know why there is a ghost sun in the photo, but it was there in real life too and it was just after midnight. The sun, though not its light, was below the horizon. The sky was this sort of turquoise color and pink and golden clouds feathered across it. I remember in third grade walking home from school and looking up to see the tall green Douglas Firs against the Seattle blue sky and thinking, "It didn't have to be this beautiful." I think that was the beginning of feeling lucky to just be able to look around and see this gorgeous world. It's possible to do and though not always easy, I think it's helpful to do, even (or especially) at the worst of times. And it was doubly beautiful tonight because to the west over the water, we got this beautiful sunset and on the beach, people were setting off their Fourth of July fireworks.

We watch where the tide is on the beach - has it receded to the sand? Is it off the sand? At about half-sand, it's time to run through the nets again if we hope to deliver those fish to the beach under outboard power. If the tide has dropped too far, the boats won't be able to get far enough onto the beach for Brad to drive the Gehl out to pluck the bags of fish out. It can be a frustrating matter of just a few feet, but in this case, a miss is as good as a mile. We have to return to the flats with the fish in the boat, only to have to transfer them by hand to the Bathtub and push them in through the mud by hand, or if there are too many, by ranger. It's always a near thing. We want to wait till the very last minute so that we can deliver as many of our ebb fish as possible under outboard power, but if we wait too long, we miss the window to deliver what we can.

So here is the noble New Boat crew, charging off into the light of the sunset and in the direction of their next-to-last ebb pick, with Sarah at the helm and Jake navigating. Jeff? Actually, that's Mighty Jeff. He's an apprentice navigator.

I was so excited that we came in with enough time for me to get out The Big Camera with tripod and manual exposure and everything to take a long exposure shot of the early moonset over the processors on the horizon.

We watched it descend and become more and more orange, and bigger and bigger, looking like it was going to land on those processors - and those processors are the size of a small village. It was a big moon that night.

July 3: The greenhorn groks the gillnet!

As I watched AJ tackle the net and the salmon caught in the net today, I realized that something has happened and he now understands the net. I did realize that he was getting better and better with each opportunity to interact with the net and the salmon, but as of this morning, he consistently put the salmon on the correct side of the net and knew where to focus when picking one out.

He already was fast to see a few things that needed to be done: bail (always), pull in the anchor, set up the brailers, keep Rohan in the boat when he's leaning over the roller to pull out floaters! But the nets and the salmon caught in them... those are tricky. Happily, he stayed with it and now understands the fundamentals of how they work. After that, it's just a matter of practice (and maybe opening a tiny little can of... uh... aggression) to get the fish out quickly.

Rohan has been great at volunteering to run our kings into town and generally do town errands. This time, he planned to take the 45 hp Evinrude up to John at Charlies - to get it out of the back of the truck. He first stopped at AGS to put the kings into the freezer. Luckily, he was standing near Roy when the rear seal on the white truck just let go. I think Roy used the verb, "pour" in his text to me. He poured in some "mechanic in a bottle" to try to preserve it. I'm not sure what to do next. Can we drive it if we check the oil each time? Do we have to park it until we get it fixed? I'm not sure, but I guess I'll find out.

One of the things they did while in town was pick up a package that had been mailed to AGS for me, with some delicious cookies (I think there may be a half a cookie left, and only because Rohan advised AJ not to eat the last of my cookies). Thank you, Meredith, Steve, and Acadia! It was such a welcome treat, packed with so much love! It was just what we (I) needed.

We planned to go out at 7:15 pm to pick the afternoon flood, but luckily, my brother is watching out for me. He called me at about 5 to say that he was getting lots of fish and he thought they would be coming my way, advising us to treat this flood like the run.

So we went out about an hour earlier and it made a big difference for us. Thank you, Harry! We were able to go through the nets three times on the flood, with more on the second pick through than the first.

When we deliver, we run up to the beach, Brad sends over the "pelican" hook for us to attach a brailer of fish and then he pulls it up and over to the beach truck, waiting there with six totes of slush ice. Then he comes back for more. It's a little tricky for us - when the tide is coming in, we can be calm (unless the weather is rough) because if the tide is continuing to rise, we won't go dry. But if the tide is falling, it can be a very iffy proposition for us as we really can't afford to have our fishing boats out of commission early in the tide. So one of the common things the crew will hear is, "keep us floating!" Tonight, delivery at the end of the tide was a challenge, but thanks to the ranger, it went fairly smoothly.

While we were waiting for the Bathtub and the ranger at the end of the tide, we turned and saw this sunset. The sun itself has already gone down in this photo, but we can still see where it was.

July 2: I have a great crew

Yesterday, I hurt myself at the end of the tide. I believe the power roller is leaking hydraulic fluid onto the deck of the Ambi. The positive thing is that thanks to Roy, we are using food grade oil. The negative things are 1) there's something wrong with the roller and 2) it's slippery. My feet went out from under me and I went down hard, right on one of the ribs on the deck of the boat, traumatizing my tailbone. That hurt. But I don't think it hurt as much as Roger got hurt last year, when we were in rough weather and he was trying to settle the brailers in the bow as we were leaving the beach from a delivery through some rough surf. In his case, the Ambi caught the surf and was tossed up, just as Roger was coming down, right on the rail. His tailbone was cracked; I'm pretty sure mine was only bruised. He just kept working through the season, which I admired and appreciated at the time. Now, with my much milder injury, I don't know how he did it. I start to bend over to pick up a line... nope, no, no, no, nope. Someone else will need to do that. I lift one leg to transfer to the other boat and nope... let's try the other leg... nope... OK, belly roll... owww owww owww... don't want to do that again. Let's see, can I start the power pack for the roller using just my arms and shoulders? And nothing that is connected to my tailbone? How about pushing in the Bathtub at the end of the tide? Waahhh waahhh.

I keep thinking, "Suck it up, you big baby!" But my crew is so kind - Roger, Rohan, and AJ - all thinking of how to minimize me having to... well, having to do anything, really, since it turns out that just about every muscle in my body seems to be connected to my tailbone. That isn't to say that David, Sarah, Jake, and Jeff are unkind - they are just in another boat and don't have as much opportunity to help. But I'm sure they would given the chance.

We had another early morning set, with more fish on that morning tide than the previous morning tide. We're all waiting for the "bump" they say is coming, according to the test fishery at Port Moller. It's really important to be able to sleep whenever, wherever, no matter what because the opportunities for sleep come around fishing periods. They are no respecters of time of day or anticipated length of time. But my body doesn't always cooperate, and judging by comments from other crew members, I'm not always alone. So I just couldn't sleep before the 4 am set, nor after it while we were waiting for the tide to turn. But finally, I slept for a good four hours in the afternoon waking up to hear that we had an extension so we wouldn't have to pull our nets until 1 am on July 4 (yay!), and then we all headed out for the evening pick. Those few hours of sleep were particularly welcome once we realized that the weather was a bit rough and the tide brought us almost 5000 lbs.

One of the many reasons we love the Bathtub is because it slides so easily across the mud. We didn't realize this until about 5 years ago, but we've been making up for our earlier ignorance ever since. When it's fully loaded with salmon, we bring the ranger out to pull the fish in. When there are just a few salmon at the end of the tide, we can usually push it in by hand.

This photo shows Jake (at the bow) and Jeff (at the stern) pushing the Bathtub. Other crew members were also pushing, out of the camera's field. This photo was taken at about 10:30 pm, with the sun setting behind us.

While I was wrapping up the final delivery (moving very gingerly to hook up the final bag), David and the crew were re-positioning the stairs. (They had twisted slightly in the earlier big tides.) It wasn't until after I was back at the cabin that I realized I should have had photos of the process. David was using the boom truck to lift up the stairs at the bottom, while Roger either walked down them and shoveled away at the cliff so they could rest flat, or heaved them around at the top. Ungh! I was too distracted by the development of the beautiful sunset to think about pointing the camera elsewhere, like toward the action. Instead you can see the McClain's skiff in the sunset and the Hakinnens in the background bringing in their final fish for the tide.

Rohan went in early to make us some batter-fried Dolly Varden (the same as Arctic Char, I think) for dinner.

I couldn't resist one last shot of the sunset, this time, with Alex's chairs looking out at it.

July 1: Fog morning

Even though we started fishing very early this morning, today was more about the beauty of being here than the fish itself. It was dark when we set the nets at 3:30, and the water was much higher than we hoped it would be. The New Boat crew has the running set down. In my boat, I'd say we are fair at it. It was dead calm this morning, and even though we could walk the net out of the boat, because it was so calm and Roger, AJ, and Rohan were out there about up to their armpits, we decided to experiment with running the Ambi backwards, feeding the net out the bow (and keeping it away from the prop as the prop and the net have a known affinity for each other). It worked out pretty well, though the net got tangled up with the brailers in the last fathom or two, so they crew jumped out and finished the set on foot. The New Boat came over, standing by to help if we needed it. Jake and Sarah went on to the inside site to set that for us. All the nets were set by 4 am.

After setting, we anchored the Grayling in the "quad," the space between the outside buoys of the inside site and the inside buoys of the outside sites. As the sun began to rise, the fog thickened. Sometimes it is so thick it is hard to know which way is toward the shore. When I was younger before we started using skiffs, we experienced that a few times on foot... and it's scary.

We always go through the nets at least once after setting it. There are three reasons for doing this: 1) there might be fish in it and if they are hitting hard, we want to get started as soon as possible getting them out (and if there is a way to deliver, getting them on ice) and making room for more to come in; 2) there might be only a few fish in it, but when they hit in very shallow water when the net is very billowy, they are able to pinch the net closed by getting caught toward the leadline and then thrashing around and getting caught along the corkline too. They can also get caught twice 5' away, becoming the lynch pin in a strained net. When that happens, it is very hard on the fish as the tide rises, and the rest of the net doesn't fish so well; and 3) we might have messed up the net in setting it and this is a chance early on to correct a mistake. Here are Roger and AJ - they are on the roller side of the boat, Roger on hydraulics and AJ helping to pull. (Rohan and I are on the picking side of the boat. Roger and AJ have the frustrating job of keeping Rohan and me in fish, meaning that they sometimes have to give up the fish they are working on to keep the net moving.) Here they've stopped the roller to get some fish out of the net. That light behind them that looks like a search light, is the rising sun.

Here is Roger, making sure we're ready for him to pull in some more of the net. This crew is great to work with. More than one person has said that fishing out here is my religion and I think it's kind of true. But I don't think I'm the only member of this church.

I think we went through both nets twice this morning. Sometimes, they don't hit in the first 20 minutes and come around a little later. But there were only a few in each pass. So we decided to go in and wait until just before high water. Here are Rohan and Roger with the great big sun burning behind the fog, waiting for the New Boat crew to transfer to the Grayling and come to get us.

The fog didn't really let up this morning. We could see well enough to see the four New Boat crew members crowding into the Grayling. It is so great to have a working outboard on that skiff. Even if there had been no fish and no obvious beauty, it would have been worth coming out this morning just to go for a ride in the Grayling under its own power.

The fog was beginning to burn off to reveal a beautiful blue sky. In this photo, the sun is still low on the horizon over to the left, about a quarter turn from where it sets. After rising it follows a big looping arc across the sky, sort of tracing the shape of a C. In the winter, the pattern is the opposite. The place of the sunrise is still surprisingly close to the place of sunset, but in the winter, the sun takes the short path between them, staying low in the sky. This photo shows the crew dispersing to separate cabins - David, Sarah, and Roger over to the Space Hut; Jake to the bunkhouse, Jeff, AJ, and Rohan to the crew cabin. We came together briefly to agree on the time to return to the boats. Some people napped, some read, some ate.

Before we came up, AJ noticed a "rainbow without any color." This is the second time I've seen one of these. I don't really understand it. Maybe someone out there does? I think both times it was in the fog - if it doesn't already have a name, I want to call it a lightbow. It was still out when we got up to the cabins, so I was able to grab a different camera and get a broader view to try to capture the whole thing.

Here is the crew cabin and the walkway from my cabin, both under the lightbow, which ends on the left right on the Space Hut.

July 1: I keep forgetting

The same night I needed to go out to turn off the generator after the bear had been on my porch, I learned that he and his brother had also visited the crew cabin. AJ was up reading and heard a noise. He looked up at the window that faces the beach and saw a bear standing up, leaning on the glass, looking in at him. I think it was a closer encounter than he hoped for. I do know that under those circumstances, it is impossible to avoid wondering whether the window is going to break. He wasted no time climbing up into his loft areas.

June 30: Beautiful day for a sad anniversary

Fishing was better today. Here are the chairs I have come to think of as Alex's chairs, overlooking the bluff I sometimes think of as Alex's bluff about 2 hours before we headed out to fish. I thought the contrasting shades of gray were beautiful, so it was my first photo of Alex's day. You can also see the ranger tracks in the mud and if you squint, way over on the right side of the photo, you can see the Ambi out there on the mud flats. We were busy during the tide, so I didn't get additional photos until the very end. More about that in a minute. We got in at about 10:30 tonight and we go again at 3:30 tomorrow morning, so a short post. David made a quick trip to town to pick up the 25 hp outboard for the Grayling which we've just been towing around because the 45 hasn't been starting. Once he got there, we figured out that John was out of town. But he saw that we were trying to call and got back to us, telling David how to get in to get it. Whew. David got back just in time to set the nets, so I asked Roger to work on getting the 45 off the Grayling (it had been bolted on) and I told him that I would bring out the 25 with the ranger. I brought down our little aluminum dory that we call "Skook" to load the 25 into, and to receive the 45. At least, that was the plan.

But the ranger was low on gas... and this was an incoming tide. My nerves can stand taking a chance of running out of gas in the ranger out on the mud flats if it is an outgoing tide, but as it's coming in? No thanks, I'll get my stress other places if I have a choice. So I gassed it up and tried to start it... dead battery. Jumper cables in the white truck - really short ones, so the vehicles have to be really close together. Got it started, but we didn't have all the right tools to get the 45 off and decided to postpone that whole operation till the end of the tide.

As we finished setting the inside site, Sarah waded by - the new Honda wasn't working for the lack of a whole o-ring. She was about to run into town to get a piece. Meanwhile, the problem-solving New Boat crew robbed the needed piece from our beloved and loyal Yamaha 60 in the Bathtub to get them going for the tide in the New Boat... and they repaired the Bathtub by the end. Whew.

The fishing started strong, tapered down a bit, rallied at high water and then tailed off at the ebb. We ended with a total of about 13,000 lbs.

We used the ranger to bring in the last of the ebb fish and I was planning to run back out with it to help Roger finish with the outboard. But I noticed that the tread was sagging and David noticed the flat-ish tire that was allowing it to sag. We are all about work-arounds here, so I sent Jeff up for the tank of air I keep on my porch... it was empty. So I ran up to get one of those compressor things you might carry in your trunk and plug into your cigarette lighter, hoping that we actually have one and I found it quickly. The ranger doesn't have a cigarette lighter so Rohan got the generator and extension cord from David's cabin to run the little machine and re-inflate the tire, hoping it will hold. Jeff, Jake, and Roger went out to the Grayling to switch outboards, and noticed that the bulb in the Grayling is pretty stiff. That too may need to be replaced. We haven't been able to test it yet because the tide has been out. But we can do that tonight if we want (in the dark... hmmm) or on tomorrow's day tide.

Here is the end of the beautiful day for a sad anniversary. I do feel Alex close here - closer than anywhere else. But if it were mine to choose, I'd choose to have him here - or anywhere - in the flesh.