June 7: Moving slowly

We just finished Saturday, the second day of doing some of the things we seem never to get a chance to do. At this time of the season, we're allowed to fish from 9 am Monday to 9 am Friday, so we pulled our nets in Thursday night marking the end of the first stage of buzzing around to get ready for the season. We've been sort of stopped with getting the boats ready because we needed to wait for help with the Ambi's steering system. And it turns out that it needs an 8' cable (a 6' cable was in the box and I have a 10' cable at the cabin). We have to wait for the correct cable, but we can start trying to get the New Boat ready, so the second stage of buzzing will start in the morning... OK, maybe the early afternoon.

The current fishing schedule will continue until about the third week in June when we enter the "Emergency Order Period," and Fish and Game (ADFG) begins counting (yes, actually counting) the fish that escape into the rivers to spawn. They have a daily expectation of how many fish will return from about mid June through about the third week in July, with the peak typically occurring around July 4. They manage the fishery to (1) ensure continuation of the resource and (2) benefit Alaskans. I've been told that over-escapement is harmful to the fishery - that when eggs get laid upon eggs, even the top eggs don't fare as well as they would have if there had been fewer. Thinking of it that way, then ADFG use the fishing fleet as one of their tools to manage escapement - in this case, preventing too much of it. But I'm not sure over-escapement is harmful, in which case, ADFG allows fishing time in response to their second responsibility, to benefit Alaskans (which also benefits the rest of the fleet) and not waste the resource.

ADFG has counting towers strategically located so that if fish swim by them, they can be considered to have made it "up the river." This is where people are stationed to count them. ADFG wants around a million fish up the Naknek River, and between 2 and 2.5 million up the Kvichak. They into account the number that have made it up the river, as well as the number harvested and track that against the expected return and escapement pattern by that date. If the return is above what is needed to ensure future runs, ADFG will give us a fishing period. Sometimes, when the run is strong, we'll get continuous fishing time. When the run is weak or late, they'll hold us back to let more of the return escape up the river. In addition to counting what has come into the district and either escaped up the river or been harvested, they'll track the fish coming around False Pass as an indication of the run strength to come and they'll fly over the district, looking for schools of salmon to give an idea of what has already arrived, but not been counted. With all this information about what has passed through, what is milling around, waiting to make a run for the river, and what is (probably) coming, they manage the fishery. Last year, it looked like the run was strong when actually it was just early. So we got a lot of fishing time up front, and when the return started to slow down, when according to the expectations, it should have still been strong, ADFG told us to stop fishing and let more fish go up the river.

When we can see the fish swarming and jumping out in front of us and we aren't allowed to fish, it's hard to wait. But I don't know any fishermen who think we should be allowed to fish even when we're behind in escapement. We all try to catch as many fish as we can, but I don't know any who want to take salmon that the future can't afford to give us.

We'll set our nets again on Monday. David's permit still hasn't arrived, so we won't set more than three... and maybe we'll just set the inside site to go easy on ourselves. It's hard to remember that it's still very early. Jeff just remarked that normally, this is when he'd be getting ready to come up and it feels to him that he's already been here for weeks.

The past two days have been very slow-paced. Carbon came back to us. It seems like he just wasn't a very good fit for the boat he was hired onto, so they paid him for the work so far and sent him back into the job market. Another drifter snapped him up - he'll start tomorrow. And he has had several additional calls indicating interest. Meanwhile, he has been staying with us and helping around camp.

Today, he pitched in with washing dishes after I got them started, which meant that I was free to tackle some of those piles of who-knows-what-is-in-that-heap. It seems that every surface eventually holds things that aren't that useful but aren't quite useless enough to throw away: the large bowl of plumbing components, when we don't have plumbing; the perfectly good left glove, only; the lids without pans and pans without lids; the games and puzzles that no one plays. There isn't a second hand store here and it is painful to throw away perfectly good things... that continue to accumulate and make it difficult for us to store the things we actually do use.

During this down time, the weather started out extremely sunny and Jeff showed off his fashion sense. Later, it blew 30 MPH, making me pretty glad we weren't trying to fish in that weather. When it gets like that, if we can, we just hunker down in our cabins and wait for it to pass.

Despite the fact that Roger has already had to fix a broken pull cord on the powerpack for the roller in the Bathtub, he remains easy going and cheerful. He was even happy to help me fix the satellite dish that was blown out of alignment by the strong winds we had for most of Friday.

By the end of the day, the wind had died down a lot and the skies cleared, just in time to give us this view of the crew cabin in low light.

David has been building shelves for his cabin, and whipped out a set of shelves for the new Warehouse Room in the crew cabin. We use it to store canned foods and those plumbing supplies I can't bring myself to throw away. I'll put them on some low rent shelves until I am finally forced to discard them because something we actually need will demand that space. I don't know what kind of weather we'll have this season - so far, we've had a bit of everything. But it's hard to argue with a sunset like this, isn't it?