The run has arrived

Our catch on the afternoon tide was 21,075 lbs bringing the total to 32,073. We got in about 30 minutes ago - at about 1 am. The first time I was out of that dry suit in more than 12 hours. We go again tonight at 2, but I had a moment of wisdom. This morning it occurred to me that the three horsemen of getting our butts kicked out there are: too much water or too fast, too dark, too much wind. Well, we had all three. My thought this morning was that if the opportunity comes again for us to take a risk with all three of those horsemen waiting for us, perhaps I will decline. So, the opportunity came right away - today. And I brought up the possibility of declining - no one objected! I feel like I should feel worse about it, but I don't.

For a while there, each day we doubled the overall total. It's tough to pick, pitch, and deliver that many fish, with the tide running out from under us and the mud too soft for the cannery's equipment. We have to find a way to get it from our sites at the end of the tide to the beach where the cannery's equipment can safely tread. The power roller in both skiffs was out of commission for most of the tide. Finally I noticed that someone had turned off the fuel supply. Don't think we'll be making that mistake again. Chris and Jake probably pulled in about 6000 lbs of salmon... without using a power roller.

We did have trouble delivering. The trucks fill up quickly, though they'll usually offload our bags so we don't have to go back out onto the mud flats full. On a tide like today, bags of our fish just litter the beach - four up on the propane truck, 2 on the beach while they were waiting for the next truck to arrive and at the end of the tide, boatload after boatload shifted into the Bathtub because it slides so easily across the mud and pulled in by the ranger. The purse seiners that receive our fish out on the water just didn't appear like we were told they would. So that was difficult - such a big tide and really, no way to deliver. That makes it really hard at the end.

We figure we'll be giving up between 5000 and 15000 lbs tonight, but no one really minded - me included. We were all pretty empty. Though I think they would have gone if I'd asked them to, and that, I appreciate enormously.

The storm remains with us, but it has calmed down a bit. Up until the tide turned and I heard and felt it pick back up again. That was when I started contemplating the wisdom of fishing last night. We have another opening on the afternoon tide - we'll fish that and hope for another 20,000 and more ease of delivery.

Cumulative escapement into the Naknek by 6 AM on Sunday June 27 was about 50,000 sockeye and into the Kvichak, 1400.

Note that we deliver salmon by the pound; ADFG counts them by the fish. The numbers can get confusing.