July 9: Surprise!

I know I skipped July 8. After this morning/afternoon's tide, it seems very long ago. The 8th was a modest day for fishing - the fish tickets tell me that. And the wind was blowing off shore, and the weather felt ominous. We weren't awfully busy so I took some time to fillet a king and vacuum seal it.

But July 9 brought us a surprise that shouldn't have been a surprise. Back on the fourth(?) I mentioned the Port Moller Test Fishery and that they were surprised by a bump in their catch - such a bump that they increased their estimate from this being a 20-something million salmon run to a 38 million salmon run. That's a big difference. They are circumspect and calm about it, saying, in the fine style of an honest statistician, that they could be wrong - their conclusion is based on their model (which is based on assumptions) and the observed data. The data could be spurious for unrelated reasons and the model could be flawed, but based on what they have, it's looking like a bigger return than anyone expected. And most of the difference is the number of Kvichak fish. (These are the fish headed to Lake Iliamna, the lake where the Pebble Mine was proposed.) As a preview, I received a report from their listserv this morning saying that "The fish missed the end-of-the-season memo today. Highest catches since June 23-24." OK, maybe we're not done.

We have started to split into two crews - one crew takes the evening/night tides (the New Boat crew) and one takes the morning/day tides (the Ambi crew). Since the tides advance about 45 minutes a day, these will eventually turn around. For various reasons - Jake's alertness and my nervousness about the season's heavy flood tides being two of them - the Ambi crew has joined the New Boat crew for their flood pick. But then we come in for their ebb pick and get some sleep. We have not been getting a lot of fish on the flood of the morning tides, nor on the ebb, so the New Boat has been sleeping through those.

So we weren't surprised when we found only about 1000 lbs in the net on the flood pick. The Jacqueline W was here to take our flood catch. The Jacqueline is owned and operated by a family out of Kodiak. This photo shows the delivery of one of our brailers - and not a very full one. They have weighed the bag (the scale is that cubish-shaped thing above the yellow hook). The pelican is hanging from the yellow hook and the bag is hanging from the pelican. They hand the pelican over to the skiff and we hook up the brailers. Then they use the crane to lower the hook and we attach the pelican to it. Then they raise it off the skiff (that's an excellent time to have one's raincoat hood up to avoid a sliming) and over to their seiner. Once it stills, they record the weight and then empty the brailer into their hold. The boy pulling on the line is opening the pelican hook to release the lines that are holding up the bag. This drops the bag into the hold. There is a fifth line that is attached to a different hook on the pelican, the tag line, so that when the crane is raised up, it pulls the brailer out of the hold and they return it to us. We are always glad when they make it down to our sites because it's much less risky to deliver to the Jacqueline than the beach and wherever we deliver, it's best to get the fish off the boat and chilling as soon as possible. Though the weather has cooled down a lot so I don't worry about them as much as I do on the hot days. We saved out about 50 reds with the idea that we would start working on our homepack after we finished the ebb.

We also got a text from Roy that Harry's Level Wind needs repair. (That's a contraption that many drifters use to level out the net as it is being wound onto the reel.) So Roger thought he would fix that while the rest of the crew was processing the salmon after we finished the ebb pick. Mop up, we thought.

We went out for the pick while water was still on the rocks, but just off the big rocks. It took a little time to get the boat because we had an off shore wind that blew the Bathtub away from us. I took a little trickle down the armpit so I asked someone taller to try. That was AJ - he too took a trickle, but he was brave and persevered. We proceeded without incident and, as we have been doing, our small crew of four has been breaking into two boats. We dropped Rohan and AJ off into the Grayling to tend #1 and the inside site, while Roger and I would use the Ambi to go through #3 and 4. On the way to #4, Harry called. Makenzie blew out her rainpants. He tried to mend them (with duct tape and 5200(?)) but to no avail. Could we bring her some? They were nearby. We didn't really have the time to go back to the cabins for a new pair, so I took off the rainpants I wear to protect my waders and we ran those out to her. Then we went back to the nets. That's when I saw how many fish we had! Too many for the four of us to get on ebb.

I immediately called David and woke him up with, "We've got fish!" "We'll be right there!" We pulled off the net to take the Bathtub into shore for them to get out to the New Boat. Then we picked up Rohan and AJ and started to blaze through #1 - though Rohan and AJ had an excellent start on it. The New Boat crew went from sleeping to geared up and on the beach in 8 minutes!

When we finished #1, we went to deliver fearing that if we went to the inside first, the tide would be out too far to deliver anything to the beach from the Ambi. Because the ranger is still out of service, if that happened, we would have to transfer all the fish to the Bathtub and push it in by hand from two nets. At least this way, we were sure we could get the fish in from one net (and this tide's heavy-hitter at that), leaving the net that is already closest to the beach for a Bathtub delivery. The New Boat followed us to deliver after going through # 4. But another boat was there and brailering, unwilling to step aside to let the New Boat deliver. Afraid they would run out of water, the New Boat crew abandoned the direct beach delivery plan and instead transferred their fish to the Bathtub with the idea of pushing it a lesser distance since the tide was still in somewhat. After we delivered the fish from #1, we went out to #3, pulling off 2/3 through to go deliver what we could. David's crew was pretty sure we wouldn't have enough water, so we added that fish to the Bathtub's load, and asked them to start on the inside - which we still hadn't been through yet, after they finished pushing the Bathtub in to the beach for delivery. I was very glad to see that the beach gang was there waiting for them. We returned to #3 to finish it and then went directly to the inside site. After delivering out of the Bathtub, Jake and Jeff were already going to the inside with sleds. The sleds are actually designed to be pulled behind snow machines. They are sturdy, about 3' long and 1.5' wide with 8" sides, and they float. We use them to have a place to put the fish that we pick out of the net when we're on foot. I took the Ambi in as far as I dared on the falling tide (about mid-calf) to start picking out the fish, moving out into (slightly) deeper water as we go. The shallow-est part of the net was probably ankle deep and losing water fast. I could see about 40 fish and if we didn't get them out while they were still wet, it would be a mess. I grew up running that race, so I had Jake switch places with me and get into the Ambi so that Jeff and I raced that water on foot with the sleds while Jake worked with Roger, Rohan, and AJ to get through the rest of the net in the Ambi. It was a really close thing.

Jeff and I were successful - and believe me, it doesn't always work out that way. The Ambi wasn't done with the rest of the net yet, so Jeff and I climbed in, setting Rohan and AJ free to get out to the Grayling to go through #1 again. When we finished the inside (with Roger pushing from outside the boat), we all pushed the Ambi through the scant remaining water so it wouldn't drift onto the net when the tide returned, and Jake and Jeff went off to help the Bathtub with #3 and 4. The Ambi had a couple thousand pounds in it - maybe a little more. With the ranger out of service, it would be hard duty to push the Bathtub in with that load (and impossible to push or pull the Ambi in with it), so Roger and I got the pulley system set up. Years ago, we planted a screw anchor at the just at the beginning of the mud. In desperate times (like today) we pull out our giant pulley and attach it to the screw anchor with a giant shackle. Then we attach one end of a line to a truck and run the other through the pulley and out to whatever needs to be pulled in - in this case, a skiff full of fish.

6 people pushed the Bathtub to the Ambi, and filled it up with fish from #3 and the inside. Roger had already walked the line out while I got the giant pulley in place. We were able to pull the load in that way with our faithful old Red Truck, the White Truck still being out of service, maybe because of blown oil pan gasket. It could have been a very difficult and draining ebb, but because everyone worked hard and understood the race we were in, it turned out much better than expected.

We all tried to get some sleep, but it didn't work for me, so I decided to take a little time to write this out. Now it's 10:30 PM and it's time to go again. This is turning into a darned good season! We're all pretty happy about that.