June 19: Flounders' carnival attitude

We have settled into the flow of fishing. Since it's free week, we've been fishing every tide. Since we tie down our leadlines, we've been out there on the flood and the ebb of every tide. So starting

Monday June 17: on the water 8:30 am - 1 pm; 9 pm - 10:30 pm

Tuesday June 18: on the water 12:30 am - 2:30 am; 8 am-9:30 am; 1 pm -2:30 pm; 10 pm - 11:30 pm

Wednesday June 19: on the water 1 am - 2:30 am; 8:30 am - 10 am; 1:30 pm-2:30 pm (pulling in the rest of the catch over the mud); 11 pm - 12:30 am

Thursday June 20: on the water 2:30 - 4 am; 10 am - 4 pm

We set the nets on June 17 almost at high water - a bit of stress but we were successful. (It was very helpful that the weather was mild, it was light out, and we were approaching slack water.) We fished that tide, getting the new crew acclimated to fish in the net, the net in the boat, the boat in the water... and so on. We ended up with 713 lbs for our first tide, half of it delivered to the tender, half to the trucks on the beach. We were warned about a big westerly due to hit us the next day. We finished the tide at around 1 PM.

After the morning tide we did a bunch of things around camp that needed doing and before we knew it, it was time to go out again at about 9 PM, about an hour and a half before the turn of the tide. It was windy so we didn't have tender service. We went through the nets and came in by about 10:30 pm, to go out again at 12:30 am until about 2:30 am. We ended up with 1348 lbs for that tide. Good. Really good. My log notes say that it hasn't rained since I arrived on May 30th so my rain barrel is running dry. I had to break into my back-up rain barrel.

Then the 18th - Rohan's birthday. We got up at about 7 am to be out at the boat by about 8 am (I believe we had to row to the boat because we anchored it out, worried about the coming wind). We stayed out till about 9:30 and came in to wait for the ebb pick at about 1 PM, delivering the final bags of salmon by 2:30 or 3 PM, for a total of 1799 lbs for the tide. Then we came back in and did around-the-camp things, like bake warm chocolate pudding cake for a birthday cake, make birthday dinner and then by 10 pm, it's time to go out again. This time we remembered our headlamps but still forgot the lights that need to be on the buoys at night when we're fishing. We finished that tide with 1066 lbs.

We had a pretty darned good day tide for June 19 - 1356 lbs, though with very little on the flood. When I retrieve my camera from the boat where I forgot it, I'll post a photo of the crew pulling in the last of the day tide's catch. These guys work hard and they don't quit. Here are Jeff, Rohan, and Luka pulling in the last of the fish from the walk-through. We believe it is important to completely clear out the net - more respectful of the salmon that have been caught in it. So when there is still enough fish for salmon but not enough to run a boat, we often walk through the nets to bring in the stragglers. Those are the hardest fish to deliver because it has to be done on foot - sometimes carrying fish on fingers, sometimes dragging in these snow machine sleds, sometimes pushing the Bathtub with its very flat bottom and when there are a lot or we are too tired, by ranger.

Oh, but the night tide was very different. The crew was still very hard working, but it was a different kind of work. It was a very slow night tide (309 lbs) - it combined being windy, the middle of the night, very dark (as it gets here only a few hours in 24 at this time of the year - and those few found us on the water), few salmon and billions and billions of flounders.

Much of the time between tides is consumed by preparing food for the crew to consume. Again, when I retrieve the camera, you'll see the steps in making salmon chowder (with a lot of added vegetables.) Chowder almost always starts with leftover salmon, or salmon we can't sell because a seal already took part of it. That was the case with this salmon. I just can't bring myself to throw it out, just because the seal skinned it or took the bottom half. So here is the beautiful salmon we shared with a seal.

The other ingredients for a really delicious chowder are simple: mostly onions, potatoes, and canned milk. If I have other vegetables on hand, I'll add celery. For this chowder, I was inspired by Rohan to brown the onions instead of just tossing them in with the potatoes to cook them.

This time, we also had some broccoli and cauliflower in our "tundra-ator" - the hole in the floor of the cabin where we have fit a garbage-bag-lined tote to store our perishables - and I decided to add some of those before we find that we've asked too much of our tundra-ator.

I tried and tried but couldn't get a clear photo of the finished product because of the steam.

To put it all together, first cook the potatoes, onions, and celery. When those are almost done, add the faster cooking vegetables (I gave the broccoli and cauliflower another 2 minutes). Then pour out much of the water so it is below the level of the vegetables by a few inches. Add a can or two of canned milk and bring it back up to just below boiling. Then add the pieces of salmon - canned salmon works great with this recipe, as does leftover salmon, and fresh. Sometimes I'll add canned corn or garbanzo or kidney beans.

Though we are good to the flounders - they are our only by catch - they do sometimes try our patience, especially when the flounder:salmon ratio is so unfavorable. We release them from the net and sometimes store them on deck until we reach a good location to release them. I don't know if they are part amphibious, but they do last quite a long time out of the water. Once we get through the net, we toss them out of the boat. Luka took a look at the pile and thought we should use shovels to get them out of the boat.

Josh is almost always good natured so it meant we had extreme conditions when he told us that he is getting "...sick and tired of the flounders' Carnival Attitude," where it's "Do it again! Do it again!" He believes that getting caught in our nets is the flounder equivalent of an amusement ride - when else are the flounders going to have a chance to fly? Is being so gentle with them backfiring?