June 23: Offshore wind

We had a fishing period today. We were allowed to start at 11 am and could go until 6:30 pm. That ending time is a bit later than we can actually fish because we run out of water, so once we set the nets, we don't pay much attention to the clock - instead we watch the tide.

We go again tomorrow at 12:30 for one tide. David and Sarah are scheduled to come in at 12:12 - so they'll be taking a cab to AGS where the truck will be waiting for them.

It was a good tide, despite the strong and consistent offshore wind. The waves were breaking backwards and we got splashed from the shoreward side of the skiff. We delivered almost 8,000 lbs, nearly all of them on the flood. That gives me confidence that we could pretty easily handle twice that amount, we would just have to fish during the ebb instead of waiting hopefully for more fish and finally pulling in the nets. I even had time for some action shots!

Rohan and Luka are doing great. They get what it takes to make the boat work and get fish into it. They know that the first priorities are safety of the crew (#1) safety of the equipment (#2) and then getting the fish out of the net and getting the net back into the water. When the fishing is heavy, we try to drop the fish we're picking directly into a brailer but they sometimes just fall to the deck of the boat and get "brailered" later. They also know that each time we deliver, we try to clean the boat by dumping in buckets of water, rinsing down the boat, and then bailing it back out. Other things to notice in this photo include the brailer stand with Luka's hand over it toward the bow of the boat. One bungee loops over the brailer hook under Luka's hand and the other three loop over three other hooks making the shape of a cube, open at the top.

Here are Rohan and Luka - Rohan is picking a fish out of the net. Luka doesn't have a fish he can reach, so he is springing into action with getting fish off the deck into the brailer bags. It's what we do when we have a spare moment because it's always wise to control a boat's load whenever possible and because they can get re-tangled and either have to be re-picked or worse, they might back out, unnoticed until too late.

This is the heaviest tide we've had so far this year. It makes such a difference to have this power roller. It pulls the net into the boat, the fish with it. Of course, because of the way we fish, it pulls everything else that might be out there with it too, so we get a lot of flounders.

Here is 99% of our by catch. This was toward the end of the tide. We usually toss them back in the water as we go, but we were moving through the net too fast this time to get them all out. This might be half of the flounders we picked out of the net on this pass through. All were still alive by the time we got to the end of the net and released them.

We can tell that the fishing slowed up on the ebb. My boat always swings by the Bathtub to make sure all is well (and it always is). Sometimes the Bathtub comes by to check on us. Here are Josh and Jeff (at the tiller), coming by to check on us. I can see that I need to clean that lens.

This photo of Roger would be really great if it weren't for the splat in the middle of the lens.

Luka asked if we every get any by catch other than flounders. I would have said, "No, not really," if it weren't for the fact that we had a bullhead in the next segment of net we pulled in. I think these creatures are ugly, but that's no reason to treat them poorly. I've only found one way to hold them that lets me avoid those spines they have all over them. It's by the upper lip. Sometimes, looking down the gullet we've found baby flounders, partially swallowed. Bleah. I think its real name is "Ratfish." Bleah.

I just couldn't resist including this one too.

When we pulled in the nets at the end of the tide, we pulled in this smelt with it. I can't remember how the heck it was caught. Our web is 5 1/16" from top to bottom. Smelt should be able to swim right through it. I've always liked the smell of these fish and I was surprised when one of our new crew members observed that they smell like cucumbers. Cucumbers??!! Yeah, kinda.