June 19: We got it about right

Even when we aren’t fishing hard, the days when we fish both tides are dominated by fishing. It’s hard to do anything else – other than eat, that is. We didn’t fish the flood on the morning tide – we get very few fish at night, especially this time of year. So we decided to sleep through the flood, have breakfast at 6 and fish the ebb at 7. We were on top of the ebb this morning, so we finished a little early – with 5 fish.

We were back into the cabins by about 9 AM, I think. I believe we ate again. We weren’t due to go out again until 2:30, to catch the flood of the afternoon tide. We made up a shopping list for Maeve for her trip to town (shopping for my birthday dinner) and I tried to sleep, but no luck. The rest of the crew did better in that regard.

We went out at 2:30 after eating a huge pot of macaroni and cheese. Then we went through the nets – quickly. Among the many requirements of fishermen is the requirement to mark our corks every 10 fathoms with our permit number. This makes more sense for a drift boat – to prevent the practice of cutting a net loose if they get into trouble, without taking responsibility for the havoc a loosed net causes in an environment like this. This is not such a concern for setnetters. If we cut a net loose, it’ll find its way to the beach, probably in the neighbor’s net and no one will have to wonder whose net it was – they’ll have seen it coming.

We forgot to mark the corks until the nets were already in the water – that makes it lots harder. So today when we got a break from the rain, we took out a kitchen towel and buffed dry about 8 corks on each net and used a failing Sharpie to do our best with the numbers.


We didn't have so many fish, so it was a training and equipment vetting tide (Roger got the power pack on the Ambi working!! Yay!!) And I got to take some pictures. Roger got this one of Jake - just waited for him to turn around in his Lawrence of Arabia head wrap.

We put Patrick on hydraulics. Here he is, pulling the net across the boat. Meanwhile, Roger and Evan tackled the fish on the leadline. Here are some photos of both of them picking fish - pros!



We had a problem with one of the nets. There was a break in the leadline that I was surprised our net hanger didn’t fix. So I tried to “mouse” it by overlapping the broken ends and wrapping twine tightly around the overlapped ends. However, the overlap was too small for the pressure on the leadline and it ripped. So in the middle of the tide, my crew, with limited experience, performed the very difficult task of swapping out a net and they did it without any stress. It entailed separating the two 25 fathom pieces of net and tying the remaining piece of net to the running line so it wouldn't trail off down current. (When we returned, we wanted to be able to attach it to the new 25 fathom piece, and lay it out.) After tying off the remaining piece, we pulled the damaged net into the boat. Then we ran the Ambi toward the beach, dropping the anchor on the way in and running out the anchor line with the hope that it would take us just to the water’s edge. We ended up in about hip-deep water – which was good for getting back out (simply pull ourselves away from the beach on the anchor line), but not so easy for swapping the net, which is very heavy. We piled it onto a pallet and onto the back of the four-wheeler to carry it to the water’s edge. Then we piled it into our little aluminum dory (named “Skook”) and floated it out to the Ambi and stacked it into the Ambi’s stern. Then we stacked the damaged net back into Skook, pulled it ashore and stacked it onto the pallet, already on the back of the four-wheeler and up to the cliff. I think I’ll be able to mend it.

Then we returned to the Ambi and restacked the new net so it would come out of the boat smoothly, not tangled and in a big clump. We returned to the site attached the top end of the new half of the net to the end of the old half of the net and rolled our way down the running line, laying out the rest. It went well.



We came in for about 45 minutes - I'm pretty sure we ate again - and then returned to the nets to pick the ebb-caught fish and deliver – 381 lbs, including the 25 from this morning. Plus these beautiful kings, one of which will become part of my birthday dinner.

Jake did a great job of filleting the medium-sized one. Here they are washing to fish off... in the mud puddle that the new berm catches - this is a land of taking advantage of everything, even things that you wish you didn't have. We would be pretty happy not to have that berm or that mud puddle, but we're making lemonade.

And here is my birthday dinner. Or at least the grilled king part of it. I figure a little olive oil, a little salt and some lemon pepper, then flesh down on a grill until it releases easily and turn it over. I am salivating thinking about it.
The rest of the menu calls for teriyaki red salmon, a couscous salad, a roasted corn, black bean, and mango salad (for which we'll use peaches, unable to find mangoes this time), my favorite chocolate chip orange cake and, to make sure we have enough dessert, a warm chocolate pudding cake. It is so rich, we need to cut it with cream. We'll practice our food photography tomorrow.