July 6: Getting ready for the next push

When the catch slackens its pace, it is easy to feel like the season is over. But looking over our catch history from the past four years, I see two years where we still had 27% of our catch to go after July 7, one where we still had 12% to go and one, the only one where we weren't given much fishing time after July 3, where we still had only 4% to go. I think this year looks more like the other three than this one. As with most things in fishing, time will tell.

Since most of the activity on the afternoon tide was during the flood and since we are expecting another push of fish, we decided that we'd better get prepared for it. Reflecting on that process, I realized that most of a person's success in fishing can be traced to preparation - preparation for things we hope for (being out there on the nets when they are full of fish) and preparation for things we hope against (having a second truck, and a boom truck, and a back up skiff, and a back up outboard, and a spare prop, and another set of nets... you get the picture). Some of our nets were looking pretty darned ragged - one because I caught it in the prop early in the season; the others just because of standard wear and tear. So we decided to pull in the most ragged nets and roll out the new ones.

Rohan suggested laying one net out the stern of the boat while pulling the other in over the bow. Sounds a little scary, but it should work. The tide was falling so we hurried to the beach, planning to load the nets (those same nets that were scattered along the tide line early in the season, picking up all kinds of high water debris) into the ranger to take them out to the Bathtub. (We didn't want to risk getting the Ambi stuck in the mud on the falling tide.) While Rohan and I went to investigate the nets to be sure they were what we thought they were, Roger went to air up the slowly-leaking ranger tire. He came with some good news and some bad news. (Sigh.) The good news was that he could tell where the tire leak was; the bad news was that it was no longer a slow leak - he could feel it on his cheek and hear it hissing near the valve stem. That means the ranger is out of commission. OK, let's use the Red Truck (the White Truck is parked at AGS pending repair of its prodigious and threatening oil leak) - load the replacement nets into the back of the Red Truck, back it down to as close to the Bathtub as we can get it and transfer the nets. (If it gets stuck, well, the processor's trucks are right there and they will pull us out.) The Red Truck won't start. (Sigh.) I conclude it's time to stop trying to do this this tide - we have time tomorrow. We went out to share this decision with the New Boat crew, who had already pulled in their shredded net. Oh. I guess we do have some urgency now. Having a net in the water is the #1 step in being able to catch the fish coming past.

So Jake and Jeff joined our efforts. With Roger driving, we used the boom truck to transport the replacement nets as near the Bathtub as we dared. Rohan traumatized Roger in the process by raising a great alarm as he backed up. Roger felt that the amount of alarm Rohan raised was appropriate to the risk of running over a person, when Rohan's concern was that Roger might run over a tote. Roger continued to mention this for the rest of the tide. With Jake's and Jeff's additional muscle power, the crew was able to (quickly) pack the replacement nets from the back of the truck across the 20' or so of mud to the Bathtub. Then we needed to spin the Bathtub and push it back out to the water (the water had receded during our procedures). The crew just got on one side or the other and all pushed in the same direction - it turned. Then we used Rohan's strategy to lay out the net on the almost dry inside site Roger and AJ pulled in the old net while Rohan alternated between helping them and making sure the new net didn't snag on something. I jumped out of the boat to push it at first (it was bottoming out and that would put a quick end to our plans) and once it was in a little deeper water, I scouted ahead to pull out fish so they wouldn't have to stop. Success! Then we moved to the outside site and repeated the procedure. Meanwhile, the New Boat crew laid out their replacement net ... and we were done. Now the nets are ready for the next 27% of this year's catch.

We all then finished going through the nets for the last time and pushed the remaining fish into the beach in the Bathtub, which we would then use to go out early in the next tide.

Once we got the fish from the tide delivered, we got serious about the equipment, knowing we'd need that to be ready for the final 27% of the catch. So David, Jeff, and Roger started to work with the boom truck to lift the ranger onto its bed. The plan is to take it into town to get the tire repaired. We weren't sure whether that would be possible, so we were preparing to cannibalize the Killer Ranger for one of its tires. And as it was Sunday, it was difficult to find out what to do. While they were doing that, I went to try to start the Red Truck... and found the battery dead because the key had been left on. (Sigh.) For a reason I don't quite understand, we have the world's shortest jumper cables, so after getting the ranger on board, David had to re-position the boom truck to jump the Red Truck. OK, that's working again... for now.

One year, we worked hard to build a nice boardwalk (out of the scraps we could scrounge) between the Crew Cabin and my cabin. The main reason for this was because my mom was here with us that season and we wanted to be sure she wouldn't trip or twist her ankle. The very next year, it needed repair and that made me think that chaos is actually the natural order of things. Is that entropy? And we industrious humans are locked in a constant and doomed effort to create order from it. On the other hand, what else are we going to do? If we don't repair that boardwalk, then we'll be living in chaos with twisted ankles and skinned knees. So we'll keep having the tires repaired, the batteries jumped, and the boardwalk restored, until the next time it or something else needs repairing. And then we'll repair that, too.