July 16: Beginning to button it up

The crew went out for the night tide, leaving me to sleep and prepare the hamburger and gravy with mashed potatoes. I've been thinking for much of the season that it's really no wonder that I like this as much as I do because I get to do my favorite things: fish, cook for people, and write. And I get to feel lucky because although things befall us - after all, we are fishing - they do it in the most considerate way possible.

After breakfast, while the crew slept, I used up the egg whites left over from Rhett's cake, along with some of the remaining shelf stable whipping cream to make a milk chocolate orange mousse (making a few substitutions for missing ingredients). I think it came out pretty well. Then at about tide time, everyone sprang into action.

We've now split into two crews (and I'm not on either one). Today, Josh's crew (Josh, Jake, Evan, and Hugh) tended the nets, and put things away back in Debby's cabin, while David's crew (David, Sarah, Jeff, Chris, and Roger) began to pick up the things at the bottom of the cliff, took the Grayling in to come out of the water, stripped nets, and worked on homepack. Trevor and I both tagged along with David's crew. Trevor is a cheerful addition and a great hand. I came along mostly to help with the homepack and because I've winterized the outboard before.

At the end of the whole thing (we worked till midnight), I was a bit daunted by the prospect of picking up a full 5 gallon can of gas from the tailgate of the truck and lifting it to put it into a crate a bit inside the truck but above the bed of the truck and under the canopy - without spilling any. Trevor saw what I was trying to do and ... just lifted it up and put it in. I don't know if everyone who knows him know this, but he is very sweet.

Here we are on our little fillet line. Roger and I are filleting the old-fashioned way that is a bit slower but saves a bit more meat - especially the delicious belly.

Jeff and Chris are using the faster but less belly-preserving sportsman's style that sort of scoops the fillet off one side of the fish, turns it over and scoops the fillet off the other side. Here is Jeff having scooped off the first half.

After filleting about 3/4 of the salmon, a few of the crew went to start the vacuum sealing process using our nifty new chamber vacuum sealer. It takes a while to get through all the steps, but we were finally ready to freeze them... just as the freezer closed. Roy let us in with his key and we broke the rules by laying them out so they would freeze faster, while running the fish we already had out to the scale to try to figure out what we already had and what more we needed. We had to wait around a bit until these sides had frozen enough so that we could stack them like Lincoln Logs inside empty wooden boxes in the freezer. It wouldn't do to put them in a heap to freeze - they would freeze much too slowly. But other people use the freezer so we couldn't leave them spread out all over everyone else's boxes. And we have been warned that some people are not all that careful about whose fish they take. Our beautiful, well sealed sides would be very tempting. So before we left, we got them all stacked into locked boxes. I think we have a little more than half our home pack done. More tomorrow. For now, good night.