July 5: Fish hit hard on the flood

We have settled into around-the-clock fishing. This means, for example, that we need to be at the boat by 6:30 AM on July 4, two hours before high water. If there are a lot of fish, we'll stay out, clearing the nets, delivering the fish (that is, if the trucks or tender are out taking deliveries) and doing it again. If there are not a lot of fish, we might come in for... between 15 minutes and 2 hours, depending on what we expect for fish. (It's a bummer when we underestimate what is out there.) On the 4th, it seemed to slow after the first pick through so we went in at about 8:30 and came back out at 10:30 or 11 AM to complete the tide. We underestimated by a little bit on this one, but wrapped up the morning tide by about 1 PM. (We often have kings from the tide, including on the 4th, so someone - usually Rohan - uses the truck to run them in to the freezer in town.)

Our pattern is to eat protein bars during the tide (you can hear, "Bar me!" to mean, "Hand me a protein bar!") and a real meal afterwards. After the meal, we nap for a while and then go back out about two hours before high water to do it again. On the 4th, we were back out by 7 PM. It was a short tide and there were a lot of fish, at least on the flood, so we stayed out all tide that night, coming in at about 1 AM. The next day, we were earlier to the net in the morning, because some fish have arrived and that's what we do during the run. So we were out again by 7 AM on the 5th to find the fish hitting constantly, so we stayed out all tide and got back in by about 1:30 or 2 PM. Then a meal and another trip to town with kings. Jeff and I did that one. We were back out to the nets by 8 PM and found that they were plugged!

So our round-the-clock fishing schedule goes:

July 4 6:30 AM - 8:30 AM flood pick

July 4 8:30 AM - 11 AM break

July 4 11 AM - 1 PM ebb pick and delivery

July 4 1 PM - 7 PM break

July 4-5 7 PM - 1 AM flood and ebb pick, delivery

July 5 1 AM - 7 AM break

July 5 7 AM - 2 PM flood and ebb pick, delivery

July 5 2 PM - 8 PM break

July 5 8 PM - 2 AM plugged! Fish fast... until it slowed down at high water

What happens during that break period? Everything other than fishing and eating bars. It's when we gear up, gear down, replenish the food bag, replenish the water containers, cook, eat, blog, read, figure out when we'll go out next, sleep (is it a nap if it lasts less than 4 hours?), brush our teeth, feed the dog, do the dishes, hang wet things to dry, take kings in to town, and other mandatory town things, like get drinking water and gas, and get things fixed so we can keep fishing, as well as other non-mandatory town activities, like shower (I had the first shower since my birthday on the 5th!), laundry, check mail, get groceries, and here at camp, check/respond to email, pay bills (using our very spotty Internet)... what are the other things people do in their lives? Anyway, all that stuff has to fit into the break periods. So on July 4, we had from 8:30 AM to 11 AM (2.5 hrs), and 1 PM - 7 PM (6 hrs) to do everything we need to do, other than fish. On July 5 we had from 1 AM to 7 AM (6 hrs) and 2 PM to 8 PM (6 hrs) to do everything we need to do, other than fish. You can see how the dishes might pile up and personal hygiene... well... It is interesting, though, that making notes in the blog rates higher in importance to me than most things - certainly more important than dishes, showers, and sometimes, even sleep.

In our afternoon tide on the 5th, we were plugged which is fishing jargon for lots o' fish. We went through one of the sites and because it was kind of windy, decided to deliver without going through our second site first because we were already pretty heavily loaded. Returning from the delivery, we looked at our second site - it hasn't been performing nearly as well as the outside sites - and finding it much less full than the outside site, we headed out to help the New Boat crew that has been shouldering the weight of those two high producing sites all season. They had finished one of the sites and decided not to go deliver then; instead they went on to the other site. We took over for them so they could go unload and together we tackled the less full inside site. When we went through the outside site again, it was again loaded up but by high water, most of the fish activity had slackened.

That gave us time to motor out to visit Harry and family on the Janice E - here is a photo (from another day that I forgot to post earlier) with the New Boat visiting the Janice. You can see David still on the New Boat but the rest of the crew has boarded the Janice and is visiting Harry, Ev, Hannah, and Makenzie who had just arrived.

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We were happy to see that our friends on the Goatroper were also in the neighborhood, so we also went to see them. This is a photo of their boat, with Tom and Trevor on the deck - ready to pick the heck out of a net... or a guitar. A very talented crew.

Coming back from seeing our goat-roping friends, we noticed another bit of beauty that we get to live under. These are our humble little cabins under a glorious water color sky.