Fish are tricky

We fished two tides today. The first one was like the others of the past several days. We had about 700 lbs - 300 on the incoming tide (it was a fast tide) and about 400 on the outgoing tide (it was moderately paced - from a high tide to a hold up). We were late getting out to the nets for the ebb pick this morning. With so few fish, there really isn't any reason to sit on the nets, especially when it's this cold and we're accumulating this sleep debt. So we come in for 1 1/2 hours and nap for 45 minutes, or whatever is available.

I thought if we were back out at 10:15-ish it would be in time to roundhaul the nets if a miracle happened and there were lots of fish, or time to go through and then pick up if it didn't. But we were nearly out of water for delivering to the truck when we showed up on the beach. We moved quickly and it was OK.

Then we came in for a while - had some food, slept till 3:30 pm for a 4:30 pm set. Only it was more like sleeping till 4 pm and then racing to the boat for the 4:30 pm set. We were all pretty lackadaisical, expecting a repeat of the morning tide or the day before, even though we had some wind. The flood was initially encouraging, but when we looked at the bags when we finished the net, we saw that we'd really gotten only about half a bag, maybe less. It just seemed so much better than we had been doing. We delivered our flood fish - about 1100 lbs - an improvement. (I just picked a scale off my forehead.)

We saw one of our drifter friends so we went out to visit him - and he had a lot of fish hanging from his net. I had fish envy. We went back to our net... and found some more fish, even though the other boat had perceived that it was slowing down. The problem with getting a lot of fish on the ebb is that we don't have much time to get them out of the nets and delivered because we rely on water to do that, and the water is running out. And this evening, it was running out fast. So when we have a lot of fish on the ebb, as appears to be the pattern for this season, we have to move fast and waste no time. We pick like maniacs, planning the pick as they crest the roller, figuring out which need to be flipped outside the bag and which should be pulled through. We mentally pick it before it gets to our hands.

Then we went to pick the inside site, and it was really picking up. I thought it was just because they come off the beach on the ebb, and the inside site is closest to the beach. We delivered 800 lbs. Then we went back through the outside site - hey, more - and the inside site. More yet. We delivered about 2500 lbs. Then we went through the outside site again and - still (barely) had time to deliver again.

David brought the New Boat in after we'd delivered -- and the New Boat needs a lot of water. Uh oh. Brad used their giant forklift to pull it in and after delivering, we were surprised and thrilled to see that David had been able to use the ranger to get it back in the water. I didn't think the ranger would be able to do that.

Then it was time to pick up the nets (we do not want to do that in the mud) and the other boat needed our help. The water was about knee deep by now and they still had a net out. And it had fish in it.

Bob and I took Ambi and went through ahead of Chris and Jake who were in the Bathtub, picking the net up behind us, after we cleared it. We got through about half the net, but the tide was slipping out too fast and I was afraid we'd be stuck in the mud with a net full of fish. So they roundhauled a little less than half of it. Not so bad.

David understands the importance of starting to move the fish off the mud flats at the first possible opportunity. So on both big tides now, he watched for the right time, and marched the quarter mile in through the mud, got the ranger, and came racing out like the cavalry. We had only two loads to tow in on the bathtub - about 1600 lbs from the final picks on their sites, and about 2000 from the final picks on our sites. It all went smoothly and we delivered the final fish just before midnight. We're missing one of the fish ticket, but it looks like today's total was about 14,000 lbs - about 90% of it on the ebb. We cracked 60K lbs for the season today.

Trina had come in early to make us salmon chowder. Yum... Now we sleep for a couple of hours and go back and do it again on a 4:30 AM set. No telling how it will be. I don't hear any wind, and the fish don't run reliably in the wee hours... and they aren't that committed to following rules, either. We'll see. I'll let you know tomorrow.

Liz