May 30 2016: A day at the spa

We slept in. Jean made us breakfast today while I righted the water barrels and got the gutter back up so it would collect water – if it ever rains.

One of the important early tasks is to find the screw anchors. Those are metal poles about 1" in diameter and 5' long with an eye on one end and an 8" disk on the other, split to the middle and made into a spiral so that when we put a rod through the eye at the top and go around in a circle, the blade end will dig into the ground all the way up to the eye if we go around that long. We use the screw anchors to hold the buoys and nets in place. We really don't want an anchor to pull up during the season... nor do we want our lines to break or any other mishap that causes the net to swing sideways with the incoming or outgoing current, to get entangled with our neighbors' nets and generally make everyone's lives harder, most of all ours. When the net does that, it's called flagging. I hope I won't have the occasion to use that term again this season.

The regulations for setnet sites are that they must be fished reasonably perpendicular to the beach, the nets can't be longer than 300' (50 fathoms) and they have to be at least 300' apart. For years, setnet sites lined the Naknek beach from the mouth of the river (smoking hot sites) around the point down to Pedersen Point and beyond. When we moved from the homestead in Kokhanok to Naknek in 1959, Gunnar Bergen gave my parents the two sites that sit below our cabins. My mom said no one else wanted the sites because they were so muddy. That's us: mud people. In 1969, my mom and Jay Hammond (the man who would become Alaska's most popular governor) came up with the same brilliant innovation. They realized that no one ever said that the 300' had to be side to side. They could double their fishing capacity completely within the regulations by creating another setnet site 300' beyond the outside end of their traditional sites. It wasn't too long before other families did the same thing, though regulations were put in place to prevent that strategy in most other places. So as of 1969, we had four sites; two inside sites 300' apart and two outside sites, 300' away from the inside sites and also 300' apart. A second row of sites.

We fished as a family. In 1975, the Alaska government became worried about over-fishing. They didn't have a way to control how much fish the fishermen took because they couldn't control how many people were fishing. They felt that introducing a limited entry system would help them better protect the fishery by controlling the harvest effort. People were allowed to apply for permits. By then, many of my siblings had stopped fishing and my mom was very tied up in trying to change careers. So a few months from my 20th birthday, I got the application forms and filled them out for four permits for each of our four sites. They were awarded to me, Mom, and two of my sisters. To hold them, though, they had to be fished that year. Mom and my two sisters were not planning to fish, so they signed their permits over to Harry, Jean, and Jean's sister, Carol. I got a job to make enough money to get us and Harry's dog, Clydie to the fishing grounds (well, almost enough - and that is another story; a long one). We had a successful season-on-a-shoestring. It was just the four of us, without a truck or four-wheeler, without a ranger or a skiff, and without any money by the time we reached Naknek. I don't remember how many fish we ended up with, but the cannery paid us more than $13,000. I just looked that up and see that in today's dollars, our profits were about $60,000. Not bad for a bunch of kids.

When we returned to Seattle, Jean and Carol signed their permits back over to Mom and my younger sister who did want to return to fishing. But a strange thing happened. After Limited Entry came in, fishing operations began to be seen as individual possessions and not as the family farm. Some family members decided that they wanted to fish on their own, as individuals rather than as part of the family. That was heart-breaking to me because it felt like the thing that I knew as family was breaking apart. As some of the family members who held fishing permits that were associated with certain sites began to want to leave fishing, they sold the site and permit that was in their names to people outside the family. While that brought us lovely neighbors, it felt a little like the loss of a limb. Two of the original four sites left the family that way, but thanks to Debby, the sister just older than me, the last outside sites unclaimed on the Naknek beach that just happened to be next to our outside sites, came into the family. Eventually, when an injury forced her out of fishing, I bought those from her.

So now, instead of two inside sites and two outside sites in a neat square, our sites are all in a row on the beach and we name them that way. Starting with the first one on the left as we face the water, we call that one #1 (it's the site that was originally assigned to me, holding down the southwest corner of the original square), 300' north of "my" site is "Mom's site," or site #2. But this one is an inside site, unlike the other three. This one was originally Mom's, and it held down the northeast corner of the original square. Our neighbors now fish the sites that used to hold down the other two corners (southeast and northwest). Another 300' to the north of site #2 is site #3, an outside site and 300' north of that is site #4, also an outside site. #3 and #4 are the outside sites Debby claimed.

It is much much much easier to get the nets in the right place if we can just use last year's anchors. I mean, if they worked last year, they should work this year. So we strive mightily at the end of the season to mark the anchors to be able to find them at the beginning of the next season. They always bend over from the force of the current pulling on the net, especially when it is loaded with fish. So at the end of the season, we turn them back up so they are poking out of the ground, making it easier to spot them the next season. But that might not be enough. The channels shift over the course of a year, so they might be covered up by sand and mud. So maybe we should turn them up more? But then the icebergs might grab them and pull them out. We tie corks and lines and romex to the eyes of those anchors. If we can't find at least one anchor, we have to walk one way or the other until we find someone's anchor from last year. If we can figure out whose it is, we can pace back toward our nets to try to find where to put the new anchor down. We almost always have to move them again. So we are motivated to find last year's anchors. That was today's main task.

We watched the tide going out so we could start the search as early in the tide as possible. We hoped to find all 8 anchors, one for each end of 4 nets. The easiest one to find is the inside end of the inside site (#2). We straightened it out a bit at the end of last season so we found it easily. We tried to walk straight out from that first anchor. The next one is 600-700 feet from the first one, directly in front of Debby’s cabin. That is a hard one to find because the mud is so thick there, it often buries the anchor. We found it!! Those anchors are way farther apart than the anchors for our other sites because even though it is an inside site, we tend to fish it deep so it will fish longer. When the fish are up on the beach, we miss out, but overall, I think we do better with it deep.

That site is set up differently from the other sites. The outside sites have the two anchors (the inside and the outside anchors) about 300' apart to which 50' anchor lines are attached. Buoys are attached to those anchor lines and they just bob around out there unless we are fishing. When we are fishing, the 300' net is stretched between the buoys, perpendicular to the shore so that the fish will swim into them. The inside site is different because the distance between the inside anchor and the outside anchor is about 650', much longer than the net. So how do we reach between the buoys? We tie the outside buoy to a 650' line that runs all the way to the inside anchor. It's called a running line. It allows us to attach the net anywhere along that line. We could set that site up so that the net just fits between the buoys as we do the outside sites, but the running line serves another very important function. We can use to pull ourselves out to deeper water on stormy days.

The problem with stormy days (with a southwest or onshore wind) is that the wind creates heavy surf break. It is hard to push the skiffs out deep enough to keep the prop from grounding when a big wave picks up the bow and stands the skiff on its stern. Instead of risking the people and the equipment, we go to the running line, everyone hops in while the skiff is still in shallow water, and we all pull against the wind along the running line until the skiff is in deep enough water that we won't get thrown back up on the shore as we try to get off the running line, and we won't ground the prop if a big wave hits us.

The mud flats are different this year. The beach is organized in strips of material. Just below the cliff we usually find about 8’ of sand, clay and a few big rocks. And of course, everything that washes up. I don’t really understand why there was so much metal there this year – broken screw anchors, chains, the steering cable for an outboard, door of a wood stove… were these Sarah’s rejected candidates for garden art from last year? Then, where the beach starts to descend to the water right in front of our cabin for about 50' toward the water, we’ll usually find a band of gravel over a bed of sand and quite a few 1-man and 2-man rocks (those are hard on the skiffs’ props). We don't see the gravel this year; just the sand and big rocks. And only in front of our cabins. To either side we see many fewer rocks. Then the beach flattens out into a 20’ band of sand that is usually drivable. Then starts the bottomless, sticky, shiny mud that eats everything and goes on for about 700’. At least I hope that’s as far as it goes this year.

The sticky mud part is also different this year. I’m not sure how far it goes on because we stopped when we found the outside screw anchor of the inside site, and looking over to my site, we could see both the inside and outside anchors. (Though as I think about that, I wonder if we really saw the outside anchor because it’s been buried for at least 5 years.) Instead of 700 uninterrupted feet of shiny, thick, sticky mud, we found ridges of thick mud and wide swaths of where it seemed that the thick stuff had been swept away. That’s where we started the walk. Ollie and Annie came with us, Ollie in his new yellow life jacket (more for the purpose of discouraging eagles than to keep him safe in the water, since there wasn’t any at this time). As we counted our steps out to where we might find the outside anchor of the inside site, I wondered where the mud had gone. It was pretty easy going at first through the ridges. I got pretty excited about the possibility that the mud was astonishingly easy this year… until we got past the ridge-y part, probably about where the inside net would start. Once past the ridge-y mud, we found the spot where the missing mud had accumulated. And if we really did see both anchors from my site, it might also be where the mud that had been burying that outside anchor migrated to. It was amazingly worse than last year, which was the worst I’d ever seen. Thick – mid calf at least, and sticky! It grabbed our boots and did not want to let go. By the time we got back to the beach, we were both covered with it.

I was lucky because I was in my own gear and I’ve been practicing with pretty sticky mud for about 57 years. Jean, however, was in borrowed gear and hadn’t really been in the mud for 41 years. As it turns out, she seems to have a knack for finding the absolutely worst patches of mud. It was very tough going. To keep her boots on and to help her free her feet from that aggressively sticky mud, we tied some of the lines around her boots, with the tug-point at the back. It is unfathomably exhausting to pull yourself through mud while losing boots and getting increasingly discouraged. The dogs started to complain. One time when Jean was… let’s call it “lounging” on her back, Ollie rushed over, so relieved to find something relatively dry and solid to stand on, and hopped on. He didn’t get any hero points for that one. We considered just removing our waders and boots and taking the cold and foot-punishing route through the mud, but that seemed dangerous because of the cold, whereas we didn’t have any need to hurry and could just stay warm and dry through the increasingly slower haul back out of the mud. We made it!

The dogs were so thrilled to be back on the hard ground. If we had the energy, we'd have been frolicking like they were, too.

I asked Danita, who takes such good care of Ollie's coat to keep his back fur long, so he would look bigger to the eagles but to go ahead and cut his leg hair and belly hair short so he would be easier to clean. In a moment of inspiration, she shaved all around his butt, thinking that he might sit in the mud and this trim would also make him easier to wash. Well, it was a good idea...

We had accomplished much of our objective for the day: search out the screw anchors – we found 4 of the 8 we will need (check). The remaining 4 may still be visible, just not from where we were standing. We got some exercise (check) and a “baseline” measurement of our mud-fitness (groan, check). And we found out about this season’s mud (groan, check). Tomorrow we will go in search of the other four anchors, but this time, with our boots zipped (if possible) and duct-taped to keep them on. (Crew: everyone needs at least one roll of duct tape for the season.) And we’ll walk out at a different location – just in front of those outside sites, hoping it will be better. If possible, I hope that I won’t have to walk through mud like that again this season.

Not much chance of that. By the time we got back up the cliff, we were completely exhausted and Ollie was covered with mud, shivering and whining. Awww. So we trudged on back to the lake behind the cabin, washed our gear … and carried Ollie in to wash him off. It wasn’t quite enough, so I threw him back in. He was too tired to hold a grudge.

The rest of the day, we tried to recover and figure out what day it was, and what day tomorrow will be, what day is Memorial Day and how is that day related to today. And whether June 1 is a Tuesday and when our friend Phil is flying in. That was almost as hard as trying to get out of the mud. Trevor, one of Alex’s classmates who has found himself a home here in the fishery, once remarked that this place not only destroys your ability to know what day it is, it also destroys your ability to know what day comes next.