June 18: Happy Birthday, Rohan!

I'm not sure what we'll have for dinner - my expertise is in desserts and that will be warm chocolate pudding cake. Though it's been so hot, something colder might be better. But wait! Is it possible to go wrong with anything chocolate?

We started fishing in earnest on Monday morning at 9 am and we'll go until 9 am on Friday morning. After that, we listen to the radio, call the recorded announcement, or watch our email for announcements. The management of this fishery is what keeps it so healthy. It is run by biologists and they are largely immune to political considerations - their primary job is to keep the resource healthy. So they have counters who count fish "escaping" into the rivers to spawn. Really, one-two-three and so on. They want between 800,000 and 1.4(?) million up the Naknek and 2.0 - ? million up the Kvichak. But they don't want the first 800,000. Instead, they want to get some of the early return-ers, some of the mid season returners and some later returners (recalling that "early" "middle" and "late" refers to about a 3 week period). I imagine they have charts and graphs that help them figure out how many they want up the river by a certain date, informed by early indications of run strength and timing from areas that the salmon pass by and by flying over the area to see big bodies of salmon. My brother refers to that as "biomass." Once they get a certain percentage of escapement by a certain date, they'll permit the fishermen to fish. We might get a 10 hour opening. We can't have web in the water a minute earlier than those hours or a minute later. It is a very strict process. And it goes on like that through the season.

We have had seasons were we haven't been allowed to fish until July 4, the traditional peak of the run. In some seasons, the build up started really early - June 20 and in other seasons, it has started as late as July 10 or even July 12. June 20 and July 10 were easy dates for me to remember all these years because they are my and my sister's birthdays.

Now, during "free week" we are enjoying some catch. About 1500 lbs per tide. To me, the most encouraging thing about this is it assuages my fear that the hot weather will throw off the salmon's return mechanism like my brother tells me last year's cold water did. During today's tide, we switched the two hoses on the hydraulics on both boats. After switching the power packs, we found that the rollers' controls had the opposite effect as expected. Coping with this kind of confusion can keep a person's brain young... but we switched them anyway. Ahhh.

Most of these photos are from last night's tide, the second tide in the free week. We got a late start. I won't say why, exactly - you might ask Roger. Ahem. Because of the way we fish, it is very important to get through the nets at least once before the tide turns. So we were flying. We kept Roger in our boat, leaving the Bathtub with only two (even though those two were Josh and Jeff, so they had the strength of 10) because we had quite a bit of wind and that big bow on the Ambi is like a sail when the wind gets going like that. So it makes a big difference to have four to keep the boat straight.

Luka was on hydraulics (coping with the reverse response of the roller) and for a while, Roger worked opposite him, coaching, picking (fast), and providing good cheer. Rohan worked opposite me using his formidable energy to wrestle the fish out of the net. We had the positions that are responsible for most of the picking, while Luka and Roger had the positions that are responsible for getting fish to us.

After more than 50 years of fishing, it is still thrilling to me when we pull a big old king on board.

We see them mainly early and late in the season, when we don't have so many reds (aka sockeye). Rohan is getting the king out of the net, with Roger backing him up.

Here is Rohan with a red. It takes some practice to see how a fish is caught. I'm not completely sure how I do it, but I can usually tell if the fish is inside the net or the net is just folded over it or if it's woven itself a basket by flopping through a hole in the net or a hanging. After more than 50 years, I can usually see it pretty easily and it's something that everyone has to learn.

After we pick the fish, we toss them into a brailer bag. This time of the season, we have only one brailer set up. The way to preserve quality is to toss them so they land flat. If they land on a tail or bounce off something, they might bruise. But landing flat results in a high quality fish. Here is Luka setting up for the perfect flat toss.

The sun sends out a lot of light at sunset. Turning from Luka's toss to Rohan, I caught part of the sunset behind Rohan.

And then back to Luka, tossing in another.

We checked over on the Bathtub and saw them in the sunset's orange light. You can recognize Josh by his fisherman's hat - he says it's what gives him his power.

We had quite a few kings after the flood which we decided to gut when we came in, waiting for the ebb. Roger was taking photos by now and I heard, "Jeff, you look like a Power Ranger!" Here is what inspired that comment.

This photo shows Jeff with one of the kings he is about to clean.

And below are Jeff, Rohan, and Luka each cleaning a king.

The next two photos show us delivering today's flood catch to the Jacqueline W, a family-owned and run purse seiner by winter that spends the summers here as a tender in Bristol Bay. We are always very happy when we see the Jacqueline off on the horizon because delivering to her is so much safer even though it can be rough sometimes. They come out in as rough weather as they safely can, but when the tide is too low and the winds are too high they can't take the risk of their boat being picked up by a big wave and then slammed down on the mud flats. Today was a calm day so we were able to take photos. If it hadn't been calm, all hands would have been needed to hold the world still while someone hooked up the brailer bag and to keep from being jerked off our feet when a wave hits and the boat's movement is curtailed by the tie-off lines.

This first photo shows Rohan and Luka after attaching the bag to the pelican hook.

They hand us the pelican with its two lines, each about 3' long. We run each line through two of the four handles of the brailer and then run the eyes of those lines through the tongue of the pelican. The tongue then folds up and locks into place, holding the bag. The bottom of the brailer has a line connected to it (a tail) and we slip the eye at the end of that tail over a stationary hook on the pelican. The pelican is attached to a hook that is attached to a scale that is attached to a crane. In the winter, the crane picks up the purse full of fish, but in the summer, it picks up and weighs our bag of fish.

Then they swing it up and on board their ship, stabilize it, then lift it to get a good weight. After centering it over their hold of refrigerated sea water, one of the crew (one of their kids) pulls the line that releases the tongue of the pelican, so it drops the handles of the brailer bag and all the fish inside fall down into the hold. But the brailer doesn't fall in with them because of the tail that is still attached to the fixed hook. Further, holding the bag up by the tail ensures that nothing remains in the bag. They then return the brailer, we clean out the boat, and head back to the nets for the next pick.

Early in the season, the Jacqueline has double duty - they come to get our fish, and they must collect the fish of the drift fleet that has started fishing. When we get further into the season, the Jacqueline won't be so divided, though it still will have to answer to the weather.

When we can't deliver to a tender, we must deliver to the beach, and that can be hard, especially in rough weather. It seems to always happen that we have rough weather when the fishing is heavy, so no tender service and a heavy load to bring to the beach where the valiant beach gang tries hard to keep up, but their trucks, even though they each hold 6000 lbs, become overwhelmed and we are sometimes unable to deliver. When we can't deliver, we can't empty our nets again while we still have water. It becomes a difficult problem. And when we do deliver in these conditions, we can have a dangerously heavy load, combined with the rough conditions that keep the Jacqueline from serving as a tender... well, we have swamped more than once at the water's edge trying to deliver. Other hazards of the water's edge include rocks hitting the prop, not having enough water to get in to deliver, or going dry while delivering when there are still fish to pick out of the net or nets to pull from the water. It is a nerve-wracking process.

But so far, so good. Here is Brad driving his Gehl forklift. It can only come as deep as that strip of sand - and he pushes that just as much as he can. And then he will extend those forks as far as he can to pull fish out of our boat.

This is a closer shot of the pelican. Same thing - two lines go through the handles of the brailer, thread back onto the pelican's tongue which then locks into that spring mechanism. Then the tail goes on the stationary hook. Brad does a great job of keeping that pelican with the heavy scale from beaning us as we try to attach the brailers standing in a boat in the surf break.

Once off the boat, Brad carries it to the waiting totes of slush ice on the back of the truck.

We have this photo from many years ago showing Alex, maybe 13 or 15, riding on a bag of fish to the top of the truck, just for the fun of it. And Brad is letting him do it, which is part of why we love Brad.

Once it gets to Dyame, he steadies it and records the weight, then, when it is centered over a tote with enough room in it, he pulls on the line that releases the tongue and the fish spill out into the slush ice.

That dog in the foreground is Dewey, our canine senior citizen. This is his first trip to Alaska and he waits on the beach for us to get in from the boats. He does not like it one little bit when we go out, though.

Then Brad picks the brailer up by the tail and brings it to us unless we are there to take it from him.

Brad also let Alex fly back down after riding up on the full bag. I am so glad to have these photos now.

It is now naptime. We go again at 10:30 tonight - in one hour. We just finished Rohan's birthday dinner (which he and Luka cooked): Mexican curry. Yum! And I made warm chocolate pudding cake for dessert. No wonder we need a nap!