He just left my cabin with a warm sock over his hand. He said that he was having trouble finding a good way to sleep. His hand no longer provides it's own heat from healing so when he leaves it out of the covers, it's getting cold. A glove would be too tight. I offered him my cozy pink blankie, but when I stipulated that he wasn't to bleed on it, we went to the sock idea. I may have to sacrifice my blankie - we'll see.
I wear these miraculous polypropylene glove liners under my rubber gloves with the long sleeves (we call them "dinner gloves"). They keep my hands warm, even when they're wet. They aren't quite as effective when it's as cold as the inside of a refrigerator, but since I've been using them, my Reynaud's Syndrome fingers don't bother me when I'm fishing. Everything is wet by the end of the tide, either from sweat or from holes in the gloves. Especially if sweat is the main source of moisture, when I peel my gloves off at the end of the tide, my hands smell like feet. I think maybe feet wouldn't smell like feet were it not for the sweat in confinement.
The other sweat-induced challenge has to do with the dry suit. As a friend pointed out, they weren't designed to be worn for 12 hours at a time. He calls it my sausage casing. Quite a bit of sweating takes place inside that too, resulting in... uh... (wanting to keep the G rating) the equivalent of diaper rash. Ow, ow, ow! I described it to the crew and Jake, without any hesitation, declared, "Gold Bond!" I had forgotten that Gold Bond powder was his answer to just about everything last year too. I think I need to get some.
The next photo shows Jake keeping the Ambi-Fisher floating. He is a really good skiff pilot, so he pilots the skiff. (I think I'm about a C- skiff driver - and I'm a calamity when I try pull up to another skiff or to the tender for delivery. So I have someone who's good at it do it.) David is also an amazingly skilled skiff driver. His skill always amazes me - he could probably sneak up on me in a skiff and I wouldn't even hear him - and I certainly wouldn't feel him jar my boat with his. (When it's me trying to pull up alongside him, his crew thinks they've been rammed. Well, actually they have, but only out of lack of driving grace, not with any ill intent.) Once I was describing David's skill and seemingly innate knowledge of how to pilot a skiff. Knowing it didn't come from me passing down my knowledge - other than the basics of the outboard. I heard myself say, "It's almost like he was born to it." And then I remembered that our first year with a skiff was 1982, which was the year I was pregnant with him while we were fishing. Um, he was born to it. 
The reason Jake is standing there keeping the Ambi floating is because we were delivering our fish to the beach at the last possible moment on a quickly outgoing tide (without pushing the boat in or otherwise getting the fish through the mud - still clean). The picture shows the Gehl giant forklift that has just picked that bag of fish out of our boat and now Brad is taking it over to that deuce and a half with six insulated totes, each holding about 1000 lbs of fish and slush ice. These fish are excellent quality. When they fill the truck, Tony will drive the fish back to the processing plant where our fish are turned into their #1 quality fillets. The very short time between coming out of the net and getting on ice, and the very short time that the salmon languish in the net, plus our careful fishing practices makes our salmon... well... great.
I was too tired to remember one of the thrilling events of yesterday's tide. Roy, my favorite port engineer in the whole world, called to let me know that he had had a carburetor epiphany, which was successful. So yesterday, we cut Josh loose to run into town to bring back the New Boat. I was surprised Mike at AGS was willing to put him in the water, but I understand they didn't have the wind in town that we had on the beach. It was soooo good to get that boat back.
And although the Bathtub's power roller didn't work yesterday, it worked today. That's good. The four-wheeler, however, seems quite ill - and did I already mention that my cabin's heater isn't working? That inspires either sleeping or cooking. The four-wheeler won't shift - Roy thinks it may be fatal. Maybe something can be sprayed in there to loosen it up, but, it is kind of old.
We have an opening 2:30 am-noon June 29 and then a few hours later from 3 PM to 10 PM. Both are set net and drift. The wind has not only calmed down, it has stopped. I'd love to have a nice little 15 MPH breeze. It really helps the fishing (and discourages the mosquitoes). Today's catch was 6590 lbs - down quite a bit from yesterday's. I didn't ask anyone if we missed much on the morning tide - I didn't want to want to know.
Time to nap for a few hours before heading out again. The salmon are beautiful. We've always had the Naknek vs. the Kvichak river salmon difference. The Naknek salmon are giants - 6-9 lbs average, probably. And some are up to 12 lbs. Those are some big salmon. The Kvichak salmon probably average about 5 lbs. They have pointy little heads, and some good meat on them. But there seems to be a new strain. I don't think they're jacks (immature salmon returning early). They just don't look that small. They just look like miniature salmon. Maybe 3 1/2 lbs. I wonder if they're the salmon heading to the Alagnak River. I've noticed more of them in the past 5-6 years. They seem to come at a different time and there must be a lot of them if any are caught in our nets, which unless they're really trying not to, they could just swim right through.
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