Plugged! The nets were sunk

I haven't written since earlier yesterday (7/5) because I've been fishing since 7/5 at 8 PM. It was blowing hard and the water was deeper than we can reasonably do a walking set. So we ran it. Except that the net got caught on a brailer hook on its way out of the boat, taking Jake out of position and tearing the net. Dang. We set anyway. Not too bad.

We did spend quite a bit of the flood trying to get the sets right. And we sort of overlooked the inside site in our limited time with the flood. So it wasn't until the tide was ebbing that we got to the inside site and discovered... no corks! Could the whole thing have broken? (At four different points - any one should hold a net gone awry.) So we started at the buoy - can we find a running line? Yes. I knew what that meant. It's something that causes a slight loosening of the bowels. If the running line is there and behaving as it should, then the net is still there. If everything is sunk out of sight, that means... eek!! Too many fish!!! And that was what it was. And that was only one of the nets. So we picked fish (20,000 lbs of them), pitched them and hauled them in from the outer sites to the waiting Gehl fork lift. Finally, we got in at 6 AM - 10 hours later, to discovered that we're going out again for a 6:30 AM opening. No one suggested not going, so we went and got another 16,000 lbs, for a 36,000 lb day. Yikes! Our total is now at 138K and we go again in a few hours. I'll go sleep now.

This is a later edit because it remains on my mind. Our crews were all mixed up that night. Helping one another with our sets, we ended up in different boats and suddenly it was time to fish. So we fished from where we were, with whatever boat we were in, with whatever crew we had. It turned out that the crews were well distributed by experience, height, and other factors. Erik and Bob were on my crew and of course, both plugged away with courage and determination. But Erik was also especially cheerful and encouraging. That was what has been on my mind - we'd struggle our way through six feet of sunk nets and at the end he would say with good cheer, "That's one fathom down." It was a real pleasure to work with someone with such confidence even if I did think it was misplaced. It was still heartening.