June 21 2016: First big king and Patrick arrives... and we are complete!

Probably the best thing about fishing the night-to-morning tides is being able to see the sunrise. We don't get this with every sunrise. Sometimes when it's overcast, it just gets lighter and lighter until it's day. But sometimes, it's glorious. It was Oksanna, David D, David L, Austin, and me in the Ambi this morning.

It wasn't until thinking this sentence just now that I understood the phrase, "the crack of dawn." It's not a crack like a rifle report, it's a crack of light on the horizon. At this time of time of year, though, there's sort of a shadow of light we can see as the earth rotates its quarter turn before revealing the sun again. That shadow of light can be a variety of colors, usually somewhere in the yellow/orange range. When the sun is first visible, that's the crack.

This morning we had a pre-dawn pinkness spreading all across the sky, followed by the glorious crack, and then the sun rising warmly through the fog over our cabins just as we came in from our flood pick. Here is my cabin, a little after 5 AM. Patrick is already in the air, coming our way and bringing his mattress, soy flour, and wheat germ with him.

My cabin again, and Debby's.

Now it's just Debby's cabin.

We can go back to sleep for a few hours, but will need to get up again at about 8 AM for the ebb pick. As it turned out, we didn't get anything to sell on this tide. But we did get the sunrise.

The bad part about fishing the night-to-morning tides, especially if we've split into two crews to do it, is that the other crew pretty much has just a day job, while the night crew is trying to sleep in preparation for their next night shift.

The day crew has been getting a few fish - usually enough to sell, anyway. Here they are at the end of the tide with a pretty darned good sized king (aka chinook), and a few reds (aka sockeye) in a crumpled brailer on the beach.

This photo shows the New Kid anchored just out of the swamp-zone. Judging by silhouettes, that's Inku walking in with an armload of king salmon, Matt walking over toward the Bathtub, Jeff just outside the New Kid, and David N still inside next to the roller. Oksanna's camera followed Inku and the king first. I still feel awe whenever one of these comes into the skiff.

Here he is, coming up the stairs with the thought of cleaning the king in our inconveniently located inconvenient cleaning table. It's inconvenient because it's just a cutting board balanced on... something. Maybe a pickle barrel (so the cutting board is moving around under the moving fish under the moving sharp knife, or maybe the more stationary tote at about the height of our knees. It's inconveniently located because we must take care not to leave any of the fish behind on the tundra or anything else lest we attract a bear. So none of the fish parts can stay above the cliff.

Here is Inku and The King, marching past the washdown barrel and Austin, playing fetch with Sarah's and David's dog Zuri.

Now, I'm not 100% sure what happened here. I was in King Salmon picking up Patrick. All I have to go by is the photos Oksanna took, and the story I heard. It looks like Inku carried this heavy fish all the way from the skiff, up the stairs, to the cabin... and David D snatched it from him for the photo op.

Or, Inku was exhausted by his trip with the fish having been careful to hold it out of the mud and dirt, and David relieved him of his burden and showed it off for Oksanna's camera. You decide.

Still, Inku takes on the job of cleaning the king. If there's no ice handy, it's beneficial to get the guts out of a fish soon-ish because the enzymes begin to break down the delicate belly lining. As soon as Patrick and I got back, I finished filleting this fish and we squeezed it into two fish bags in time for the beach gang guys to take it back to camp to freeze for us.

They hand't quite made it to our sites yet, though, so Jeff and Matt are still hanging out at the New Kid waiting. One thing you can say for our mud this year: it's sparkly.

A little drama begins to unfold. I think Inku brought the king guts down to the beach, and Oksanna brought her camera. She's been trying to get some shots of an eagle going for the guts and it looks like she's about to get her chance.

If I were this little white seagull, I think I'd be feeling just a little bit uneasy. Is the seagull watching the eagle out of the corner of its eye?

Tucking itself in...

So it can look like something on a coin.

Well, OK, never mind then.

It looks like Austin has found the mud irresistible. I think this barefoot revolution was started by the Hawaii contingent on our crew: Oksanna and David D. While we've definitely been barefoot on the beach as kids, and played in the mud, as I grew up and became responsible for my own laundry, it seemed like less of a good idea. And my feet became more tender. Oksanna tells me she can walk on lava. So maybe the rocks and clam shells her feet might find in the mud won't hurt her. I don't know if the barefooters will want to make a regular practice of it. As long as it doesn't interfere with fishing, I don't have any complaints. Warnings, yes, but not complaints.

Meanwhile, the buyer has made it to our site. First the Gehl, the giant forklift that pulls brailers weighing up to 800 lbs from the skiffs and lowers them into one of the six insulated totes partially filled with slush ice in the back of the old 2 1/2 ton army trucks, the deuce and a halfs. Jeff and Matt powered through the mud to be there to hook up the brailer.

Here is the annotated photo of a beach delivery. There's the Gehl. Dangling off its forks, you might be able to see a scale. Hanging from the scale is a device we call a pelican. The brailer is about a four foot cube of very tough and water permeable nylon with an open top. We can fit more than 1000# into these bags, but the buyers don't want us to because it's too hard on the fish on the bottom. This brailer might have 20 lbs in it. The brailer has four handles that we usually hang on hooks in the skiffs to hold the brailer open so we can toss fish in as we pick them. When we deliver the fish, the Gehl driver lowers the pelican near us in the skiff, being careful not to klunk us on the head with the pelican. You can imagine - when the wind is blowing, and the Gehl is bouncing over rocks to get back to the skiff after carrying away a load of fish, and the waves are moving the boat around - that pelican can become a real hazard. Two ropes, each about 4' long with an eye on the end hang down from the pelican. I'm usually the one in the Ambi hooking up the bags (because the crew is usually better at holding the boat, once they learn how). Because of my respect for that pelican, I focus on those two ropes as the driver comes back to get the next bag and as soon as they are within reach, I grab 'em to get control of the pelican.

We run one of those two lines hanging from the pelican through two adjacent handles and the other through the other two handles, then thread the eye over the jaw of the pelican, and snap the closer over it. Then we take the tag line that attaches to the bottom of the brailer and hook it onto a fixed hook on the pelican. Once we get it hooked up, the Gehl driver lifts the bag up to the truck. The truck man, with a tote waiting, guides the Gehl driver to the correct tote. At that point, when the bag isn't touching anything, the truck man takes the weight of the brailer. Then, with the brailer partially lowered into the tote, he pulls the cord that releases the jaw of the pelican. The bag falls down, but is still held by the tag that was looped over the fixed hook so it ends up upside down. The Gehl driver gently lifts the fork with the scale, the pelican, and the bag up into the air, dropping out all the fish into the tote, and lowers it slowly toward the ground. A crew member should be there to grab the brailer and bring it back to the skiff.

Just in the nick of time, Patrick arrived. He and Jeff are happy to see each other again.

And he and Inku are glad to meet.

We decided that the perfect activity for Patrick's first day was to trudge out to #1 to try to fix that anchor line. David N., and I were geared up in waders and trudged out. Jeff was barefootin' it and he kind of scampered. Patrick followed us out, taking a few minutes to find some gear first. As we were waiting for Patrick, I was afraid we'd hear something from him like, "You think this is hard? This is nothing!" David said that Patrick was way too smart for that because if he did say such a thing, all we'd have to do is say, "I'm so glad it's easy for you. Will you go back and get..." We still didn't know how close to the anchor the line had broken. So after quite a bit of untangling, we found that it was just inches from the anchor itself. Hmmm. I guess that wasn't cut by a prop. And I guess we aren't just mending it.

While Patrick dug down to try to remove the remaining v-line (we really don't want extra lines laying around out there) Jeff scampered back in to get the ranger with the turning bar, new screw anchor, new anchor line, and tools. And I think he also got a shovel and a hacksaw, just in case we couldn't get that shackle open - the one we haven't seen in five years.

Jeff and Patrick wrestled with that rusty old shackle without being able to see it... and prevailed!! Then Jeff and David (?) put down the new screw anchor, shackled the anchor line to it and to the buoy, checked the length, and wired everything that needed wiring. That felt good!

Not every day ends in a glorious sunset, but when they do, it's hard to resist taking a picture of it.