We had equipment problems today. One of the metal ribs that holds the tracks on the Friendly Ranger broke and punctured the tire of the Friendly Ranger. I had used it to replace the net on the inside site. I pulled it up to the cliff, trailing the old net behind it in our little dory. When we parked it, Chris remarked on that hissing noise. It was the air leaving the tire. The tire is hard to replace. Sigh. However, we were lucky. If we're going to have an equipment failure, I'm really glad to have it above the high water mark. That way we only have to solve the problem; not solve the problem of getting the equipment to safety first, and then solve the original problem.
Today’s tide started so slowly that I thought it was time for me to leave the boat and make some orange chocolate cookies. Trina, the more responsible sister, was thinking about bacon, eggs, and hashbrowns. We compromised - she did the responsible part of the meal and I provided the breakfast chocolate. When we got back out, we were surprised to find that we had a lot of fish on the ebb (why would this still surprise us? I can’t explain). The question is: without the Friendly Ranger, how do we get them in? The plan was to use the Bathtub, which slides easily across the mud, to tender for the other boats while there was still water under it, and then run as far to the beach as possible. The little Killer Ranger, which cannot take much of a load through the mud – it (like many of us) finds it difficult to take itself through the mud – could carry a line out to the salmon-filled Bathtub. That line would feed through one of our giant pulleys and we’d use a truck to pull in the Bathtub and all the fish in it, in one gigantic pull. I’ll have to tell you how it worked out next time because this time we had a small breakdown in communication and the focus of today’s fish moving operation was to test the limits of the Killer Ranger. This experimentation cost us a little of this evening’s nap time. We go again at 9:30 - we’ll test Plan B on tonight’s ebb.
The fish do seem to be here en masse – the escapement in the Naknek River jumped from 640,000 salmon yesterday to 845,000 salmon today (and that’s with everyone fishing both tides), and in the Kvichak River, it jumped from 600,000 yesterday to 865,000 today with an estimated 450,000 milling around in the river (safe from nets, waiting for to make a run for it to the spawning grounds).
Now it’s nap time.
We've been fishing since 9:30 PM. Sets were fine. A few early strikes, but then it slowed down. I had the time to take some photos. Here is my crew in action. This first series is Jake-In-Action.
He used to sort of stand back - I think he wanted to be sure that he didn't get in the way. This season, though, he's been diving in and it's been great. He has become an accomplished picker. Today he found his way through a basket case that was caught in two places, had gone through two holes in the net and spun in the bag it created. It was a masterpiece.
Chris is learning quickly. He's our hydraulics man. There is much to watch for in that position - many ways for the net to snag inside the boat, and a variety of ways and types of fish to be aware of outside the boat. He is also becoming a good picker. And he's fun besides. Bob, of course, never stops working. Even when he had a tide off, we came back to a clean cabin with swept floors and everything! You can always tell when he's been there because he leaves order and functionality in his wake. Knives are sharp, lines are finished and stacked, surfaces are clear, oil is topped off... And he remains cheerful under some pretty demanding circumstances.
One of the great pleasures of this work is that we get to be on the water and actually part of some of the most beautiful sunsets.
I took this last photo a few days ago when it was so rough. It seems like ancient history now - today was sunny and hot. But it was windy - not as windy as it was on June 27, but still, pretty rough.
It's been most of the day since I posted this - The Internet has been out while we've been in from fishing. A friend wrote a few days ago to ask if I still feel that the biggest leap is between no access and any access, even painfully slow rather than between slow access and fast access. Yep, I definitely still do. My view is that it's good to have the option of being connected to the rest of the world, even by a thin thread.
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