July 1: Wind is down but waves are up

Still fishing two tides a day. Since the fish aren't coming on the ebb and we have the ranger and we now understand how well the Bathtub pushes through the mud, it isn't all that hard to get sleep, though we can't get it in one session. We can get a pretty reliable 4 hours between the ebb of the previous tide and the flood of the next one and we might have between 45 minutes and 1.5 hours at the top of the tide if the fishing has slowed down. But all activities must fit into that non-fishing time, like cooking, eating, using the bathroom, washing dishes, fixing broken stuff, replacing nets, getting vehicles out of the way of the tide, feeding the dogs, uh... writing, and so on.

On the positive side, we're getting lots of fishing time - what a relief. And we expect a lot more. The Naknek River is not quite half way to its escapement goal at 490,000 sockeye. (Really, they have counting towers where I am told that people sit with clickers and count the individual fish that go by.) The Kvichak River is also not quite half way there with a current cumulative escapement of 775,000, a daily passage rate of 65,000 and an estimated 400,000 milling around in the river, just waiting to go up (though they could also back out). I think this means that both rivers are doing well - and better than I expected this year. It seems we still have quite a bit of fishing ahead of us.

The wind really calmed down on the morning tide so David was willing to run into town to bring back the New Boat on which Roy had fixed the power pack. He found a carburetor we had ordered previously but didn't need to use... probably because he performed some magic to get us back in business sooner. David was also going to see if he could find a replacement bilge pump for the washdown system - the barrel is empty and the pump won't refill it. That means the ranger isn't getting washed as it should. I got a call from him that they had launched him, but then he couldn't get the outboard started. He got a new battery and was able to start it up, but as he got into the river, the outboard kept dying on him. Groan and frustration. He tried a couple of things and then limped back to AGS to be hauled out. He commented that it was an interesting challenge to get into the haul out slip with only two speeds: high and off. But he is very skillful and he managed it. Overall, a frustrating adventure.

However, fishing was OK - not great, but OK and the Jacqueline W was able to make it down to our sites to take our fish (it's always a relief when we don't have to deliver to the beach, especially when there's a big surf break). They were even able to wait around a few minutes while we finished picking the inside site. I love to see their big, beautiful seine boat anchored inside our sites. In the background there, you can see one of our cabins up on the cliff.

In this photo, you can see Luka in the foreground, (the blurred person is Rohan - maybe it's because he's moving so fast, or maybe there was something on the lens) and the Jacqueline in the background and behind her, there's an even better view of the cabins.

By the evening tide, the wind had come up a little and the waves had come up a lot. My brother said they got chased off the water because of the waves - they were in 12' seas with waves breaking over the cabin. He headed for the safety of the river. Good call and apparently he didn't miss much. He said that those who stayed out only had about 1000 lbs. Rough weather does seem to stir up the fish, but it also makes them fall out of the net and it is harder for us fishermen to take the steps needed to bring them into our boats. That translates into more dropouts which feed much of the ecosystem, but not before much of it decomposes and gets caught in our nets. Bleah.

I don't think we had 12' seas at our sites - though come to think of it, there were definitely times when the bow of the Ambi went down and all I could see was water, and then it went up and all I could see was sky. But it's a little different for us - we can choose not to go out in the skiffs, but we can't really choose to stop fishing because our nets are out there. So we were out there too.

The tide was too high to wade out to the Bathtub, so David and I went down early, pulled down the Fold-a-bote (we had just repaired it that morning - whew!), pushed it into the waves... and swamped immediately. Then some of the crew caught up with us and Luka, with his surfing experience, understood when to push the rowboat out, so they got us through the surf break and we made it to the Bathtub. We had quite a few fish on the flood and I knew it would be very difficult to deliver to the beach. One net gave us about 2500 lbs. That's a lot, period. In rough weather, it's a real lot. Really not wanting to deliver to the beach (much as we love Brad and Dyame, those were swamping waves) we tried to telephone the Jacqueline and... as is often the case in rough weather, the phones were not working. So we radioed and asked them to come in about 30 minutes to give us time to clear the inside net. (It is OK to add some more weight, as long as we know we're not trying to go to the beach.) They weren't able to stay so as soon as we saw them, we had to throw off the net and run over to deliver. We got most of the way through both nets and it was a huge relief to get that weight off the boat.

The Bathtub went a different route. They didn't have a way to contact the Jacqueline and their boat is much less stable than the Ambi. So when they had 2000 on in these waves, they were feeling very vulnerable. We don't have communication between the boats, except to come up to each other, so they didn't know the Jacqueline was coming. They decided to deliver to the beach before they got so heavy it would be a sure disaster if they did. But it was just too rough and they got into trouble anyway. Even though most of the weight was in the stern and they got the bow into the weather right away, a 6' breaker just swamped them and that was that. It gets worse immediately. The tide was very high and it was on the steep part of the beach - the place where swampings are most likely to occur. The high tide also meant that Brad had very little maneuverability. But somehow, he was able to pick the two brailers off and the Bathtub crew was able to push the skiff out of the surf break into calm enough water to bail, fast. But not before swamping the power pack. So they had no power roller for the rest of the tide. However, everyone and everything else was OK, so we are grateful.