June 9: AJ and some salmon arrive

David and I were up early this morning, setting our inside site at 9 am. It was still rough so I wouldn't say it was a magnificent set and it probably didn't reach the bar where we're supposed to fish in a "substantially straight line, perpendicular to the beach." I would call it more a half circle, starting on the beach. But we caught some fish! 11 of them, giving 3 to the collection of eagles, ravens, and seagulls that were fighting over the first three just as they started to go dry. Wow. Them's some hungry birds.

I wasn't there for the excitement, because I was heading into King Salmon to pick up our newest crew member, AJ. He flew in all the way from D.C. today, finally arriving in King Salmon at about 4 pm. We made a hasty trip to Naknek, just making it to the post office in time to collect David's permit!! Yay, now we can fish all the sites.

The other excitement I wasn't there for was the discovery of a flat tire on the ranger (how did that happen?) and possibly something wrong with the clutch. This prevented the setting of the outside sites this tide, but we can do it in the morning.

David and crew loaded the ranger on to the boom truck, using the boom (I'd sort of like to type that a couple more times because it is just so danged cool to be able to do that), and brought it into town for the folks at Pen Auto to set right. I hope. We met at AGS and I got some photos then. David got a really great one that we'll have to wait for because he hasn't sent it yet.

They brought in the eight salmon to be cleaned and start off our home pack. In the past, we've had to be careful about where we plug in the vacuum sealer because... uh... it blows breakers. So we ended up putting it on the back of the boom truck with Roger's welder (the huge generator that is part of the welder can power the sealer - convenient!) so that the boom truck, in addition to carrying a boom and the ranger that it lifted onto the bed, has become part truck/part traveling welder/part traveling fish processing plant.

One of the salmon that made it to our nets today was a king... and he became our first salmon meal of the season. I learned from our good friend and former crew member (and fisheries major and sports fishing enthusiast), Matt, how to grill king salmon: smear it in olive oil, grate on lemon pepper, put it on a hot grill, flesh side down. Let it cook till it releases easily from the grill, flip it and continue to cook it until when you gently press down on the flesh, it resists. To this I add that I first brine it in a 50% solution (1 C salt to 2 qt of water) for about 20 minutes, or just sprinkle salt on it while I'm waiting for the grill to heat up. Oh my, it was delicious.

We will get up at 4 tomorrow to keep the salmon from the birds (I know that everyone has to eat... but I don't want the birds to make a habit of eating our salmon - they are for people) and set the other three nets. Welcome, AJ; welcome, salmon.