June 22: Fish are starting to show

First, Happy Birthday, Sarah! We really miss you. I'll make a chocolate chip orange cake in your honor. But probably not today. We'll sing for you before we eat it.

We got about 100 lbs on last night's tide (Josh, Erik, Jake, and Chris went through the nets from about 1 am to 4 am) and about 500 lbs on today's tide (Josh, Bob, Jeff, and I went through the nets from about 1 pm to 3:30 pm). Josh remembered that in his first year, the first day (June 19) we got 500 lbs; the next day? 5000. The climb is usually steep once we get to the bottom of the fish hill.

We got a small king last night, so we had grilled king for breakfast. It was soooo good! I learned from Matt, a former crew member and fisheries major, how to grill salmon. Make a fillet, cover with a little olive oil. Grind on a little salt and some lemon pepper. Flop onto a very hot grill (ours sounds like a blow torch now), flesh side down for a while (depending on the thickness, how much charring of the flesh you like, and how distracted you became after putting it on the grill - maybe 4-8 minutes), then flip it over. Press with your finger to see if it has firmed up. If it has, it's done. Remember, it'll cook a little more after you take it off. It was heavenly.

Going through the nets this morning, we had four kings in addition to the 500 lbs of red. These fish are so beautiful. When we went through the nets for the first time this tide, nearly all the fish were still alive. Yesterday, the tender operator noted that often, our fish are still flopping when they receive them and get them chilled.

I don't like the killing part of this work, but the thought that the magnificence of these salmon will be transformed into a human's health and welfare comforts me greatly. Our crew learns to be very respectful of what these salmon represent - I think that further increases the value of our fish.


We save all our kings. The processors don't pay much for them - there aren't enough king salmon for processors to set up to handle them - and we love to eat them, so we keep them. The kings in this photo are on a 3' cooler. The big one is probably about 25 lbs. I think we'll clean today's kings, vacuum seal them, and then freeze them in AGS's big walk in freezer.


So we made a trip into town with the one-ton propane flatbed boom truck, empties (gas and water), and a cooler with kings. We planned to have our small tread ranger (a tracked vehicle that will crawl through the mud... with fish in the back) forked onto the back of the truck to be our back up ranger on the beach. We did get the kings cleaned, vacuum sealed and into the walk in freezer. Gas and water are full. But the small ranger is still in the container van we use for storage (we'd I leave the battery?) Things always take longer than I expect.

Another glorious sunset to close the day before we start the next one fishing at midnight. We need to pull the nets on this tide and then wait for the announcement that we're allowed to fish.