July 9: An opening tomorrow

The news of the fishing opening wasn't today's first notable event. This was. But I don't know quite what this was. It had the shape of a rainbow, curving from here, just about on our neighbor's fishing site all the way over to the left, over the other neighbor's site. Is there such a thing as a fog-bow? And if so, what's at the end of it? Does it mean anything that my site was right under it?

As for fishing news, we heard the announcement at noon: a fishing opening tomorrow at 2 pm for setnetters and 2:30 for the drift fleet. I don't believe that the Kvichak has been opened to the drift fleet all season and in the announcement, Fish and Game gave the hint that if the Kvichak continues to have escapement at the rate it's been going lately, they may expand the area to include the Kvichak for the drift fleet.

What does all that mean?

I copied this map from Wikipedia. I was surprised that I needed to put Lake Iliamna and Naknek Lake back in. Please be aware that there are many other lakes and drainages missing from this map. I mention that because it is important for anyone thinking about the impact of water pollution here. The perfusion of this ground is how the salmon are able to be the backbone of the area's ecosystem. Not just for the humans, bears, and birds, but also for the land itself. Decaying salmon fertilize everything here and they are able to do so through the water that runs through the tundra. Using the same mechanism, a little ground contamination in one location is sure to travel to other locations, just like dye in a glass of water spreads through the whole glass. This is an important fact about this land when considering how to use this land, such as a large scale mining operation - or in my case, the use of outhouses.

In looking for this map, I learned that Bristol Bay is the eastern-most reach of the Bering Sea. Now I feel really tough.

Looking at the two lakes I drew back into the map (and don't forget that there are many more that I didn't draw into the map - all down the Peninsula and west all around Dillingham) you can see a red star where they meet: that is where we fish, right at the top of Bristol Bay in the Naknek-Kvichak district. Our nets fish from the run returning to Naknek Lake up the Naknek River, as well as the run returning to Lake Iliamna, up the Kvichak River. The Kvichak returns (that is, the run returning to Lake Iliamna via the Kvichak River) have been weak over the past 10 or 20 years, so the biologists who regulate when, where, and for how long we can fish (Fish and Game) have been restricting the drift fleet from fishing in areas through which they believe the Kvichak fish swim on their spawning run until they believe that the run is strong enough to warrant some fishing time there. They've counted 1.6 million sockeye past the counting towers on the Kvichak River, and they're seeing daily passages of 6,000 to 12,000 salmon past the tower, as well as the 200,000 they estimate are milling around in the river today, safe from the nets, waiting to go up, but not yet past the tower and waiting for their internal systems to tell them to GO and swim up to spawn. In the announcement today at noon, they let us know that the drift fleet will be allowed to fish in the Naknek section of the Naknek-Kvichak district from 2:30 pm to 9:30 pm... but that if they keep getting the escapement they've been getting up the Kvichak, they might also open the Kvichak portion of the district to the drift fleet. They'll announce that at 9 am tomorrow, plenty of time for the drift fleet to stake out their favorite spots on the Kvichak. What it means for us is that if they open the Kvichak, that'll take some of the pressure off us and we might do a little better.

In our domestic news, we continue to help Harry with his subsistence net and he gives us some for our home pack. I think tonight will be the final set. It feels really good to be accumulating the salmon we'll live on over the winter. I may even start smoking salmon again this winter.

As I sit in my cabin writing this, I hear the ambitious hammering that means progress is being made on the new outhouse for the crew cabin. Sarah has even found a window to put into the opening on the wall that looks out toward the lake. I think they have the roof and the door to go. I think this will be the best one yet. I may even have toilet envy at the end of it.

This was meant to be a different photo, with Luka hammering while Jeff drilled, but I couldn't resist the laughing that led to the plan.