You've had a spare thumb all this time and you haven't told me?

That was Jake, in response to a fake rubber thumb that was on top of my rice container. It's another story. And it's the time of the season. We've decided to pull the nets as soon as we get our homepack and meanwhile, only fish the ebb. Everyone is sort of giddy with the idea of having all that free time. And the fog has lifted, the clouds cleared, and the sun has come out. It happened in stages. The whole crew went into town.

Erik calculated that pulling out 20 fish a tide (so as not to overwhelm the walk-in freezer at the processing plant) would take us far too many tides to accumulate our homepack goal. So we took everything we caught, not just the perfect ones. And we all headed into town with the idea of joining the Fishtival and seeing about camping gear for the Katmai trip - we ended up with two 6-person tents, two new sleeping bags (one for me!), and some small bottles of propane. Jake and Chris, our camping experts, are going to make sure we have everything we need. We'll take the New Boat because it's the fastest and the trip is kind of long - a couple of hours. We are sure to see bears on the way, on the shores of Naknek Lake. Hmmm, I'd better charge up the battery on the handheld radio. I'm not much of a navigator, but I think that as long as we stick to the right hand shore, eventually we'll see the commotion that is Brook's Lodge - it's the place where those photographs are taken that you might see in National Geographic of the bears on top of the falls catching the leaping salmon. Our plan is to see the bears, Jake and Chris might want to fish a little bit (people come from all over the world to do that) and the next morning, we'll take the trip to the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes - I've never done that and I think it'll be great.

While we were in town, treats abounded. There was mug up and the diabetic smorgasbord offered there (Chris had a long list of what he consumed), then a box of ice cream drumsticks from the store (it had become hot!), and then we went to the D&D for our one and only pizza night. Though they had very little room left for pizza. One of my secret goals for the summer is to see if we can put a belly on Jeff. I am beginning to lose hope on that one.

Freezing 55 salmon at once is a little tricky. One year, we tried freezing them in a heap - that's a good way to guarantee a very slow freeze (opposite of blast freezing) - so slow that the ones in the middle smelled bad by the time we found our mistake. But spreading them out all over everyone's boxes inconveniences everyone - they can't get into their own boxes because they're covered with our fish. So we spread them out for a few hours, until they freeze a bit and then stack them up on top of our box, like Lincoln Logs, so they still get air circulation but don't take up so much room. We put them in the freezer first thing when we arrived in town. The headed off for treats (which included showers and laundry!) and then stacked them up last thing.

It was a beautiful evening for fishing - and the whole beach was alive with people wanting to fish for about the first time all season - except my crew who are just too tired. We went out on the ebb - I was seduced by the sunshine and didn't dress warmly enough. So I think I was colder than I had been all season, wearing just thin polypropylene long johns under my dry suit. Brrrr. So I bailed out and left the crew to finish the tide and burrowed under my covers, sleeping for 10 hours! So I guess I was cold and tired.