Color Action Photos

It wasn't a great tide for catching fish, but not bad for photos. The first is of a few of this tide's salmon, in the brailer, ready for delivery. Sadly, for the past several tides, though we've fished well and faithfully, the pile of fish has been only a few layers deep. Some are beginning to worry. In my 51 years fishing, the earliest the run has ever arrived is June 20 (that was 1999) and the latest was July 12 (that was 2006 - a difficult year for us). That's arrived. Then it goes from there. Prior to 2006, the latest was July 10 - we had despaired until then and on the 10th, we were surprised. We have had a few years when they just didn't come at all - 1972 and 1973 were the worst, and they were expected to be poor. The runs were also depressed in the late 80s (at least where we fish), and again in 1997 and 1998. So I won't despair yet. But I do reserve the right to despair at some time in the future - maybe July 13th.

This photo features David's crew in The New Boat. It came equipped with everything, including the outboard; the power roller; a Pacer pump - pumps lots of water in a short period of time; a bilge pump; the trailer it was on; lots of lines, fuel cells, totes - we were very lucky to find it. I think David saw the ad. The owner lived near my brother (who lives in Palmer) so he visited her, checked out the boat, and made the strong recommendation that we buy it. Then he hauled it down to Homer where my friend Allen said he could take it on his tender around to Naknek. Lucky us.

Some doubt whether my sister from Micronesia is really here. This photo shows her (Trina) and Erik, intrepid crew member since the disastrous year in 2006. You know something about a person when you throw one of the worst fishing experiences possible at them ... and they come back and give it another try. I suppose it's debatable exactly what you know about them, but as far as I'm concerned, it's a good thing and it contains courage, confidence, and maybe even optimism. This is Trina's first year since 1986. Her first commercial fishing experience was on our father's drift boat in 1959. She also worked on the set net sites, but at almost 12 through almost 14, I think she was our father's main crew. Her last year of indentured fishing was 1967. She came back again in 1970 and then in 1980. She may have been here a few additional years in the early 80s, but in 1986, she smashed her hand between two boats (which is why whenever my boat approaches something hard, everyone hears "fingers!"). Her hand healed and she wanted to get more involved with the fishing, but her future ended up involving the creation of an amazing eco-lodge diving resort in undiscovered Kosrae in Micronesia. I wasn't sure who would be able to come this year that I could count on, so I asked Trina to come help - and she did. That tells you something about her too, doesn't it? Again, it's debatable what it tells, I suppose but again, to me, it's a good thing and involves courage, loyalty, self-confidence, and optimism.

This is the Bathtub. Josh, the temporary gimp (and recipient of occasional bursts of power dubbed "Gimp Rage") and Jeff usually run this boat alone. Josh gets this year's award for valor. That was a pretty serious injury to his hand and he has found ways to be as valuable as ever, one-handed, left. Well, his left hand and his right elbow. He even still helps me with the zipper across the back of the dry suit - he uses his elbow for that, for example. For fishing, he puts the splint on to remind himself to be careful, wraps it up in some combination of baggies and plastic wrap. Then holds it out of the way for the entire tide, almost as if it belonged to another person and another activity. David is waiting for someone to approach him and return the high five. (Come to think of it, it seems that Josh is using his one-handedness to find out what he can do one-handed. I think that's an admirable approach to an injury - keeps the injury safe, directs away from self-pity, and turns the whole experience into an interesting learning experience, while remaining as helpful and possible.) Josh approached the net with the skiff, and Jeff leaned over to catch the corks. He pulled it up over the bow, and then "climbed" down the mesh with his hands to find the leadline, pulling that on board as well. Then the two of them pull their way toward the other buoy, removing the salmon they find in the net on the way, dropping them into the brailers in their skiff.

They were going to be the first ones done, so I asked Trina to hop into their boat so she could catch a ride in to get the rice started for dinner (which would be a grilled salmon cleaned and prepared earlier in the day - thank you, Matt, for teaching me how to do that). Jeff is the quiet one in the group. He is very smart and aware. He has picked it all up really quickly. He is willing and active. We really didn't have an opening on the crew, but I was so impressed by the letter he wrote that we made room for him. I'm really glad we did; he is an excellent addition to the crew. Here they are again.


Josh did the town run today, taking in some kings to freeze, check the mail, buy bread. He took the opportunity to stop by the clinic to have them look at it. They were concerned about a) how swollen it is and b) the amount of dried blood that hadn't been cleaned off. So he reported that they scrubbed away at it using an instrument with a sponge on one side... and some device with plastic hooks on the other. He was watching that one carefully... and passed out during the process. I think it probably hurt quite a bit. I'm not sure how it all fit in, but there was mention of a wire brush for cleaning the wound.

Here are Bob and Chris, half of the Ambi crew. Jake volunteered to be the one to face the chaos of the cabin - chaos which had been somewhat ordered earlier by Trina. But still, when I asked for volunteers to leave the rainy and cold tide to tame the cabin, only one person volunteered - it was Jake. Which is only part of why I feel really lucky to have him in my boat. Chris is proving to be a very quick and willing learner. And I love his deadpan sense of humor. There is a lot to pay attention to - the web getting caught on any number of things; the floaters, rollers, and hangers outside the boat (one of those, we definitely do NOT want to come into the boat, and the other two we are afraid of losing); roller backlash; his mates. He does a great job - and some things he is really the only one big and tall enough to do. He jumps in with competence, enthusiasm, and good humor. And he has beautiful eyelashes, which I confess to envying.

And of course, Bob has been enormously helpful to us - the water system, fixing... well, just about everything from the hydraulics on the boom truck to the ends of all the ropes he gets his hands on. He was another who expressed an interest in being on the crew after we were all crewed up, but how could I resist the initiative and the skill? So I didn't. And I'm really glad he's here.

This is another shot of the Bathtub crew - this time, they are picking up the net at the end of the tide. It gets stacked into the boat until the next opening time, which has been every tide for the past several days. Marcia Dale who does a meticulous job of hanging our nets (under the business name of Watzituya, which tells you something about Marcia) told me that for the last few years, she has dug into our nets in mid February, pulling out the corkline full of red corks (possibly the only one of those in Bristol Bay), on Valentine's Day.

This photo just shows some of the mystery and beauty of using red corks, well, in combination with dramatic evening light and hulking drift boats.

I suppose every place gets shafts of light like this - but I can't seem to resist. I had my camera handy and not many fish to distract from my photography impulses, so I asked Bob to back up, no, no - forward just a little bit. OK, I want to try to get both skiffs (the Bathtub and the New Boat) along with the drifter, all backlit by that shaft of light coming through the break in the clouds. He was patient with me. I had the feeling that he's been asked to rearrange the furniture or re-hang a picture on different walls a time or two.

Most of these photos were taken around high water. They all show an almost complete absence of wind (never good for fishing, but not bad for photos). Here, the Bathtub is approaching the Jill Anne I to deliver the salmon extracted from the net on one of our sites. The Jill Anne I is a purse seiner out of Kodiak - tendering in Bristol Bay is their summer gig. We're so happy to have them - it's run by Nate, Jake, and Tony. They are friendly, attentive, helpful, and cheerful (and don't tell them I said so, but they are also adorable!) Nate has seen the little orange bag in which we keep the permits, and where we clip it onto the rail. We were all busy with something and instead of asking us to stop what we were doing, he just leaned over the boat, unclipped the bag and fished out the permit he needed to complete the delivery. I so appreciate that stepping-forward kind of help.

The next photo shows our neighbors in the process of delivering. The skiff ties up to the tender, fish already in a brailer bag. (That's part of our power roller in the foreground.)

The tender crew sends over a "pelican" - a device to which we attach the brailer (that's what Chris is doing in this photo).
Sometimes the crew hands us the pelican and after we have the brailer attached, Tony uses the crane to send the scale over with the hook to which we attach the pelican holding the bag. If the weather is calm enough to reasonably ensure that the scale won't hit someone in the head, they send pelican, scale, and all at the end of the crane (easier because it's held up in the air). Once it's all attached (crane to scale, scale to pelican, pelican to brailer), Tony lifts it over to their ship. They have big refrigerated fish holds - they probably hold something like 50K lbs.
Jake makes sure the tag line is on, he gets and calls out the weight, and once the bag is positioned over the hold, he pulls the release on the pelican so that it opens its beak, releasing the handles of the brailer. The tag line, which is attached to the outside bottom of the bag is then all that is holding the bag so that the bag is now open and upsidedown in their holds, emptying the fish into the hold with very little handling. It's a big improvement from the days of stabbing the fish with peughs to lift them individually into trucks or tenders, or later, pitching them by hand, one at a time.