June 26: Reading the net

Doug Olsen, aka "Hippie Doug," stopped by to visit last night and talked about learning to "read the net." I'd never heard that expression before but it's exactly right. There are simple things - is the fish on the inside or outside of the net? (This is important because you want it to drop out of the net when you disentangle it.) Is it under a single or a double layer? Is it caught in more than one place? If so, where does it need to be disentangled first? Which fish should be removed first? And things that are more complex – is this basket fish just twisted? Or through a hole? Where’s the hole? Was it also caught again after it went through the hole? Is it a hanger or a roller or is it gilled?

This is a really good crew and they seem to automatically know how to read. They are learning to mentally pick the fish as it approaches them. And the crew who were new last year are picking like pros. Oh wait - they are pros. We got a beautiful big king this tide. Here are photos of Chris and and Roger with it. (Trevor did predict that we'd start getting big kings once he got off the boat. Uh oh...)





Today started out still and sunny - even at 6:30 am. The search was on for insect repellant and sun screen. It was a really slooowww tide, coming in to a short tide from a hold up (meaning coming in to a low high tide from a high low tide - not much distance to travel in the 6 hours to do it). We had to wait for water to set the nets. Here we are, with our neighbors, doing just that. Part way through the tide, the wind picked up - off shore (not so great for fish) and became downright strong - maybe around 20 mph by the end of the tide - and I hear it blowing out there now as I type.

The New Boat is back up on the dock with a broken seal on the steering ram. Not that I know what all that means - there's a rod that goes side to side in response to the steering wheel. It looks sort of hydraulic-y. When it gets to the compressed position (which it takes many revolutions to achieve), it squirts out oil. I'm pretty sure that's not good.

Roy diagnosed it over the phone and David, Sarah, and Jeff took it back up. A few more days to order in the part and get it put back together. Sure glad we have the Bathtub. That outboard is a champ. And Roger fixed the antenna on the Ambi so we almost have a radio.

Despite the still weather and then the offshore wind, we got 6000 lbs, pretty evenly distributed across the flood and the ebb. In 2009, everything we caught was on the flood – that’s easy fishing because it's easy to deliver the fish. In 2010, it was all on the ebb which is tough because the tide goes away so the Jacqueline W, the seine boat that tenders our fish, can't stick around because they draw too much water, and we can't reach the trucks because the water has gone out, and the truck can't reach us because they can't get through the mud. That’s hard and stressful – a constant race. I’ll be happy for evenly distributed. The best news is that this crew managed 6000 lbs with time to take the New Boat to the outboard clinic, mess around with the 2 ½ HP outboard, stand and watch the person with the fish do the picking… we didn’t break a sweat. If the wind turns and we end up with a 23,000 lb tide, I’m confident that this crew can handle it.

When we deliver on the beach, we bring the skiff in to where the giant forklift (the
Gehl) can reach it without getting stuck in the mud. Brad lowers the forks over the skiff and we attach the brailer - the bag that holds the fish - and he takes it to a "deuce and a half," a big truck that carries six totes of slush ice and salmon. It's really important for us to do it as quickly as possible - if there's a wind, being on the beach beats us up, threatens us with swamping and/or damaging the outboard on rocks, and even if there's no wind, if it's on the ebb, we're always at risk of going dry and then we're in trouble. Brad had lifted the first bag out of the skiff and was waiting for the truck to catch up. But it seems that it was stuck between gears, meaning Brad was going to have to back up to it... and it was all going to take a long time. We just needed to offload, so Evan and Roger held a brailer out of the boat that we filled up to leave on the beach for Brad to get when he could. This photo is of us pitching the fish into the brailer. Do you see the fish approaching Evan's shoulder? They get pretty blase about fish flying past them. Though everyone usually gets a fish slap at least once in the season.

In other news, Kyle, the young man we gave a bunk and friendly faces, has found a boat at Peter Pan cannery that needed a deck hand. Marilyn, the office manager gave a call this afternoon. One of her captains lost a crewman (he quit) just about the same time that Kyle came to apply. I hope that works out well for him. He seemed pretty happy.

Yin came on board with us for a while and got lots of photos. I felt so terrible because I caused her to have to stand in wet boots the whole time she was with us. She was standing on the beach waiting for us. I thought she was wearing waders with knee boots over. I saw she was reluctant to step into the water but people often are and I thought she was worried about getting the inside of the boots wet. I knew we'd be able to restore them easily enough so I kept gesturing her in and she finally waded in. It turned out that she was wearing sweat pants, not waders, under her boots. And she was worried about getting her feet and her legs wet, not the inside of her knee boots. I felt terrible. But she’s right, she’s not a sissy! Here is one of my favorite of her photos. I think we were pitching fish from one boat to another, holding them together.

And finally, my brother told me that he saw Trevor today on the Italian Leprechaun and he seemed happy when he waved to him. I hope we'll have more news on him later. For now though, dinner has been cooked and consumed (curry with all the vegetables I could find, in addition to chickpeas and chicken), followed by strawberry shortcake (David and Sarah brought strawberries with them and I wanted to be sure they got the celebration they deserve - and I found some shelf stable whipping cream. It worked!) The seven loaves of bread and cinnamon rolls are out of the oven.

We fish again tomorrow from 7:30 to 4:30. Another slow tide... sounds like we'll have some wind, though; might have more fish. I kinda think so...