The run is taking a break

Day 6 of Josh's recovery. He's been sleeping out the night tides, reaching for the healing powers of sleep. I told him yesterday that I would be pushing him, except that I know him and I know he pushes himself just plenty, thank you very much.

We set our nets this morning at 2:30 AM - it was dark. We were able to do a walking set (except David had just the right amount of water to set the net out of the net shoot on the New Boat under power, while Trina held the inside buoy in place on foot). The current was very fast and it was going to be dark for a few hours and we didn't see much activity in the net, so Captain Liz decided we should go in and wait the hour and a half for light, which would put us on the nets about an hour before high water, which is just enough time to run through them before high slack water (unless we have more than 1500 lbs per site). That's the gamble of taking the focus off the fishing nets. We've come back before to find them plugged and us in trouble with not enough of the ebb left to get the fish picked or at least roundhauled before the water is gone and their lying in the mud. (Roundhauling is the process of piling the whole net in the boat, fish, flounders, flotsam, floaters, and all. Then we go through the process of unpiling that tangled mess, salvaging the good parts.)

Because of the way we fish, tying down our leadlines, we catch everything that drifts, swims, rolls, or tumbles by. And because of the way we bring it on to the boat (opposite the way it wants to come on the boat) - sometimes called "cross pick" or "reverse pick," we keep all the flotsam that has accumulated during the tide. The reason we do this is because we can pick up maybe 20% more fish - sometimes fish we would have lost but they are caught in the bag, or fish that have fallen out of other nets and tumbled down current into ours. The price for this increased catchiness is that we get and must handle everything that visits our nets. We get the good salmon - that's good. And we get all the flounders (which we release gently), the floaters (salmon and flounders who have died and have begun to decompose - we have strict rules about those - if they smell awful, the person running the roller must do whatever it takes to prevent them from coming on board. If that means hanging so far out of the boat that they're just hanging on by their toes, well, I'll hold their feet. And I am often the floater removal squad as well. A floater coming onboard is an equal opportunity crisis - sadly, perhaps favoring the more experienced crew members.) We also scoop up garbage, tundra, sticks, and occasional jetsam from boats. The other price is that we must clear the nets before the turn of the tide else those fish that are held in the bag will be released when the bag is turned inside out when the tide turns. To me, it seems irresponsible to set the nets up in a way to catch the fish that tumble in, and then not do our part to complete the process. So I insist that we fish both the flood and the ebb of a tide. That has important advantages: we usually get more fish going through the nets more often; we lose fewer fish - they don't have as much opportunity to get out and away; the fish we sell are better because they haven't been in the net for as long.

So far this tide - we're in the middle of it now - we went out at 2:30 AM, finished setting and came back in at 3:15 AM, went back out the clear the nets before the turn and after it got light at 4:45 AM, and came back in at about 7 to warm up and give the ebb an hour or so to produce some fish so that when we go back out at 8 if there still aren't many fish, we'll pull all the nets in and get some sleep in preparation for the afternoon tide. We've delivered about 1600 lbs on the flood. We were the only ones out this morning - we're the only ones that tie down the leadlines so we're the only ones that need to clear the nets on the flood. Everyone else can sleep through.

I didn't want to want to know how big a tide we missed by sleeping out the night tide after the big day tide. I wanted to have made the decision based on wisdom, and not be overly influenced by fish greed, a condition with which I am afflicted. So I thought it would advance my image of wisdom if I could maintain an apparent lack of curiosity about what we missed on the tide we slept out. I tried - I really did. I passed by many opportunities to ask (but didn't miss noticing the opportunities) and finally I caved and asked this morning. The answer: not much. A really slow tide so that everyone was asking, "Where'd the fish go?" OK, ok, I was relieved. So much for the image.

And now I'm heading into town to try to retrieve the white truck that Josh left when he drove in to get the New Boat. Meanwhile Bob fixed my heater (hooray! it was cold without it. It's a little nippy with it, but this is so much better. It was so cold it stung.)

Bob is also going to look at the four-wheeler. I forgot about the breadth of his expertise when I discovered the four-wheeler not working well, so it took me a few days to ask him to get to it. I'm optimistic, but possibly without good reason.