I had the wonderful opportunity to “fall back” into my old school days the past couple of weeks. I just returned from a wonderful visit to Northern Wisconsin where my hours were absolutely packed with activities! Quality time spent catching up with friends, a variety of speaking engagements at my Alma Mater Northland College, direct marketing of our coho salmon, and even an afternoon spent trolling on the pristine waters of Lake Superior (The greatest of the great Great Lakes).

Getting ready for the trip was an opportunity for much reflection. To prepare for my Northland presentations I dug deep into the last 25 years of my life. From my first day as a freshman heading out on my orientation trip to mountain bike in the rolling hills of the Chequamegon National Forest in the fall of 1990 to the morning of Sunday, October 25, 2015 when I returned to those same hills for some eye popping vistas of the lakeshore clad in all its fall glory. If you find yourself with a free afternoon, why not spend a few hours doing some deep reflection on where you are and how you got there. I bet that like me you’ll eventually find a few patterns that may help you lay out a plan for the next 25 years of your life, or at the very least inspire you to reconnect with some core values.

This trip reminded me that our friends and family are our greatest possessions and no matter where you go or what you do, those relationships need to be nurtured. I have a handful of jade plants scattered around my house. I love them because they are beautiful and odd. They also require little to no attention. In fact, they seem to thrive better when I forget about them completely. It goes without saying that friendships aren’t like that. They do best when you take care of them. Your friends themselves can do fine without you, but the unique sparks that move between you are what you need to attend to. 

What does any of this have to do with wild salmon? Everything! For starters we’ll be ramping up our relationship with all of you this fall by launching our quarterly Springline Seafood Newsletter. Sign up here, or just sit tight and see if you’re already on the list…

We want to stay in touch with you. We have news, ideas and information to share and beyond the blog and we think a newsletter is the best way to do that. If you disagree, just unsubscribe (we won’t be offended). 

We also promised our friends up North that we'd share a recipe for salmon chowder - a perfect meal to put together this week. Reach out to a friend you haven’t seen in a while and invite them to connect over a hot bowl of soup…

This chowder skips the bacon, instead featuring smoked salmon. It also doesn’t use a roux or other thickener, so it turns out rich, yet still delicate.  

Salmon Chowder
Serves 4 to 6

6 Tbs. butter
1/2 cup chopped sweet onion
1/2 cup chopped carrots
1/2 cup chopped celery
2 tsp. chopped garlic
1.5 tsp. dried thyme
1 bay leaf
1 bottle clam juice (8 oz.)
3 cups whole milk
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup cooked salmon
1 cup smoked salmon
2 cups cooked potatoes
salt & pepper

Melt the butter in a soup pot over medium high heat. Add the onions, carrots and celery and saute for about 10 minutes or until vegetables are soft. Add the garlic, the thyme and the bay leaf and saute for another minute or two. 

Add the clam juice, milk and heavy cream and bring to a simmer. Next, add the cooked and smoked salmon and the potatoes and simmer until the fish is warmed through. Taste, and add salt and pepper as needed.

Apparently I am not the only person thinking about the term “fisher” and what it means to people. Let’s get this party started. I hate that term. It makes me cringe. When I talk or write about fishing I use the term fisherman without fail. But why? I have been struggling to explain why. To others, to myself.

Might want to grab a snack. 

Yesterday on Twitter I stumbled into some buzz about a paper entitled “Should We Call Them Fishers or Fishermen?” written by Trevor A Branch and Danika Kleiber. Hey, for starters, don’t call me at all unless you’re calling to tell me that you’re ready to order some #1, 10 and up H&G FAS King Salmon. (907) 229-2908. Or text me, it’s easier. 

Let’s start with this quote from the paper:

“While the use of ‘fishers’ may be more inclusive, its use is not universally appropriate. In North America, both men and women who fish find the term ‘fishers’ offensive and self-identify as ‘fishermen’ (Reedy-Maschner).

I’m not going to go so far as saying that the term ‘fisher’ offends me, but I obviously don’t like it. I cannot picture myself using the term “fisher” in front of other fishermen. I image myself talking to (insert name here; Phil, Mike, Gary, or Jason. No women right? Because I probably wouldn’t feel as goofy saying it in front of Michelle, Tele, Mariah, or Casey). We don’t have all day here but that’s more about me than anything. I want to be accepted, I want my identity to be something I wear naturally and casually like an old sweatshirt. “Fisher”. It sounds fussy and academic. It sounds like you’re trying too hard. 

Maybe worse. Maybe it sounds like you are one of ‘them’ and not one of ‘us’. I wanted to get on the boat more than anything. We need a couple of lawn chairs and a few gin & tonics for this entire conversation, but all I have is my personal experience and my journey from the land of them to the land of us. It’s a long one. It still isn’t over. 

A lexicon already exists. Galley, deck, line, starboard. Learning that language isn’t any different that learning French. All you want to do is dream in it. I didn’t buy my first crew license until my late 30’s, but I am here now. Do I sound like a local? Am I one of you?

The paper touches on this, stating:

 “Female-specific or gender-neutral words used by women in fisheries may reinforce their differences from the rest of the crew resulting in their marginalization. “One self-described fisherman from the Hawaiian bottom fish fishery explained: “Guess it seemed there were always so few of us [women.] [“]Fisherwomen[“] seemed contrived & awkward. [I w]asn’t into “making a statement”

But then it follows up with this statement which admittedly at first left me asking, “huh?” 

…Thus the cultural value of the term “fisherman” is connected to the worth given to masculinity and the feminization of labour becomes synonymous with it’s devaluation.”

Let me work that out.  If we start to use a feminine term, it implies (unfairly) that the job isn’t as valuable. Sure, I can see that. I mean we have the Tour de France which everyone agrees is a powerful endurance test like no other. We also had the Tour de Feminine, which is hard to say without conjuring up a bunch of pink tutus and white wine spritzers. Why isn’t the women’s race also called the Tour de France?  Why don’t women just ride in the Tour? So the problem is a deep river running beneath the title.  But I think we already knew that from simply walking the dock. 

Branch and Kleiber sum it up for me with two words (out of context but the meat of the matter), “…inclusion and validation”


Enter: Reality

5 long days into the summer king opener I am so exhausted that I can’t hold more than one thought at a time. The situation dictates that the only thought I can hold onto is “fishing”. Crawling out of the rolling bunk in the dark, putting on damp clothes, groping and weaving across the dark deck to the pit, putting out the gear to start the endless day. Then the big kings like thrashing bags of lead just past the tips of my tired fingers, my hip bones grinding into the rail, my back screaming, my lips dry. My husband tries to drag me into a pre-breakfast anxiety-fest of low prices and crappy sales and we haven’t even glazed our first load yet. I have a headache. I’m hungry. I have to change my tampon. Snot runs constantly from my nose. My wrists are chafed raw by my wet gloves and burn with each movement. It’s only 7 AM. 

Later, in October, when a guy at the bar says “so, now you have the whole winter off?” in that way that people say it, I want to punch him but my shoulder is still so sore I don’t want to lift my arm. What’s my point? My point is that on day 5 of the summer king opener I want to say unless you hang it all out there then don’t tell me what you’re going to call me. Later I still want to say it but not as cattily.

Anyway, when do you even become a fisherman, or a fisher for that matter? When you clean >50 halibut during a class 2 vomit session? When you finish your first midnight to 4 AM watch? When you don’t piss your pants in a situation you would later describe to your friends as “code red”, one eye on the survival suits, the captain screaming “PUT ME IN THE FUCKING LEE” as he leans over the port side rail into the wilding dark to deal with some impossible 2 AM nightmare entanglement? When you grab the wheel and put him in the fucking lee like a boss?  

“What defines me”? I have been, at various times in my life, a “chef” a “cyclist” a “political activist”. One time someone asked me if I had ever run a marathon and I answered “no”. And then, after a moment or two, I said quietly, in utter sincerity, “well unless you count the one I did in the Ironman.” 

Oh hey, let’s talk about the Ironman for a moment. When do you become an Ironman? It’s when you cross the finish line at a Ford Ironman Triathlon sanctioned event in under 17 hours after swimming 2.4 miles, biking 112 miles and yes, running a marathon and someone drapes a medal around your bent and heaving body. And back to points 1 - 3, unless you’ve floated in the icy waters of the Tempe reservoir 1 mile into your swim hyperventilating in the sticky cloud of a panic attack, trying to count down from 20 to calm yourself.  Unless you've wondered should I yell for assistance and nullify the last 6 months of my life I spent training for this thing or should I just drown?  Unless you have thought “…oh come on you are not going to drown” as you are possibly really drowning then don’t ask me if I am actually an “Ironwoman”.

Ironaman, Ironwoman. Fisher, fisherman, fisherwoman. My college sports teams were called the Lumberjacks. Unless you were a woman, then you were a Lumberjill. Is that even a thing? It’s not. It’s a term someone made up so that women playing sports at a college in Northern Wisconsin didn’t have to be erroneously called Lumberjacks which apparently only applies to men. And because there isn’t a gender neutral term for someone who works in the forest for a living. Or is there? (Googles “Forestry Gender Research”) OMG there is!  It’s a “Forester”. Figures. But who wants to play for the Foresters?

But there I am again sort of being disdainful towards academics. Oh, all you do is sit at your big desk all day in your corduroy pants and your deer skin slippers and do your research. “Shall we call them harvesters?” <Sips Cognac>.

Did I tell you about the time the Captain said to grab the line holding up our 200 lb. outrigger pole and the block broke and I wasn’t wearing gloves and the line ripped though my hands at like 50000 miles an hour and burned my palms practically through to the muscle? And then I had to fish the very next day and each time I wrapped the mono around my hand it dug into my palm like a red-hot poker?   

It’s you vs. me, it’s us vs. them. It’s breaking away from a desk to tie gear until your hands hurt at a galley table that’s just really another desk. It’s saying so long to the 9 to 5 only to find you’ve joined the 4 to 10. It’s a superstition that women bring bad luck to boats. It’s the fact that it took Grunden’s until fall of 2015 to release a set of bibs cut to fit a woman's body so I can finally stop belting my baggy men’s size small to emphasize my hourglass figure. 

I jest. I wear a belt because it has a knife on it.

But I’m starting to get it. It’s not about being a fisherman or a fisher, it’s not about being an Ironman or and Ironwoman. It’s about a world where when we offer up a female version of a description people automatically assume it’s less tough. If you told someone you were an Ironwoman it’s possible they would think the race was a women’s version. You know, just a 2 mile swim, a 85 mile bike ride and a 20 mile run. 

Sometimes when we golf I refuse to hit from the women’s tee. Then after about 3 beers and 5 pathetic 30 yard drives I move up.

All this soul searching has me thinking maybe our time is better spent actually improving the lives of foresters and fishers everywhere instead of writing and researching and talking about what to call them in our research? I don’t care if you call me a killer if you can get me an extra .50 at the dock! Or some affordable health insurance! Take my captain, please!

And then the deeper connections between identity and self-worth and women even wanting to become fishermen or fishers or frankly ANYONE wanting to become a fisherman or maybe more to the point these days, desire has nothing to do with it. Its being able to even afford to break into fishing. No matter what your gender is. 

I am a woman and I am a fisherman and I am an Ironman and I am ready to listen and learn and hear what everyone else has to say on the subject. Comments section is below, you know the drill.  

P.S. I’m actually a troller. It’s gender neutral already!

Hidden like delicious treasures in our large totes of king salmon are a few Ivory Kings. We offload and box them just like non-Ivory Kings (I was going to call them “normal” but they’re really not just normal, they are extraordinary…). If you're buying our kings this year, you just might get lucky!

What makes an Ivory King an Ivory? This Article in the Alaska News Miner explains it all. If you’re not in the mood to click, here’s the crux of the matter from Terry Thompson's piece:

"The difference in flesh color comes from their genetically-determined ability to metabolize naturally occurring pigments from their food. 

These pigments, called carotenoids, are found in their diet of shrimp, krill, and crabs — crustaceans that are rich in astaxanthin, a carotenoid found in most marine life. Good analogies would be the orange beta-carotene found in carrots or the bright red carotene lycopene found in tomatoes. 

White-fleshed king salmon don’t have the genetic ability to break down their food and store the red-orange carotene in their muscle cells. The marbled flesh color sometimes found in king salmon comes from their limited ability to metabolize carotene, causing the flesh to take on a marbled look. Often, this marbled flesh is more reddish toward the spine and whiter near the belly.

The trait that keeps these fish from taking on the red pigment is passed on or inherited from the adult spawners to their offspring. The ability to metabolize carotenoids is a dominate trait; therefore the majority of king salmon have red flesh.

Essentially, all white kings come from the rivers and streams from the Fraser River in British Columbia, north to the Chilkat River in Southeast Alaska. Biologists with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game estimate that, overall, approximately 5 percent of the king population in this region carry the recessive trait that produces the white flesh."

If you happen to see Ivory King Salmon on the menu or for sale at your favorite fish market - be sure to give it a try. We feel like it has a different, more mild flavor than it’s redder counterparts. Even if you can’t taste a difference, let your eyes feast on that pearly white flesh.

Now that the equinox is here we can say fall has actually started. If you ask me, I’d say it started on the 10th of September. Something felt different that morning out on deck. A special, deeper chill in the air, an unexplainable craving for a big bowl of oatmeal, a real need for a third cup of coffee.

In Alaska we say “When the fireweed turns to cotton, summer days are forgotten”. If that’s true, we started thinking about fall weeks ago! Anchored in Mite Cove on our way home last week the birds around us seemed anxious, restless. Rivers are clogged with fish, bears are fat and happy.

I love the fall. Especially the fact that cooler weather means you can build a fire in the wood stove or dive into an all-day baking project without worrying about the oven heating up the house. Slow cooked meals, fragrant pots of tea, cozy sweaters - it all sounds so wonderful right now!  

Our last off load was a doozy! 8 hours tied up out at the Samson Dock, our amazing crew (thanks so much to Mariah, Jordan and Trina - you rock!) helped us pull the 2000 coho we caught on our last trip out of the freezer and tuck them away in their boxes for the long ride down to Seattle. We fought rain and wind most of the day, and I my abs still ache from leaning deep into the big boxes to place the first couple layers of fish.  

Yesterday we spent cleaning out the freezer, washing bin boards and scrubbing down the walls of the hold. Tarps and gaffs, drag bags and totes, all rinsed out, dried and ready to get packed away for the winter.Right now I’m enjoying a cup of Chai at Highliner Coffee Co., taking a much needed break! 

I happened to bump into our friend and fellow troller Drew who’s taking a short break too, before heading out to chase winter kings on October 11th. Not that far away! For just a moment I started to wonder if we shouldn’t be sticking around for that…  

Hope you’re as excited about fall as we are! Stay tuned to the blog to find out where we’re going to be selling our fish this winter. First stop in late October is Northern Wisconsin - get ready!  

Seems like half the fleet is tied up here in Yakutat for a few days… A two-day blow brought us all in from the drag here, and although the fishing has been good for a while all along the coast we were all ready for a break… there were a few beers consumed, crew shares lightened at the ol’ Glass Door and many mugs of coffee sipped.

We’ve got about 500 fish to glaze so we have our day cut out for us. We can glaze about 100 fish an hour, and along with set up and break down we’re looking at 6 hours of work. Much of it in a 40 below zero freezer… It’s the second to last step in the process for us - all the fish we’ve caught over the last several days have been frozen solid and now just need a protective finish to ready them for storage. Each fish gets dipped into ice cold water so that a sheen of ice keeps the air off the meat and holds the fish in their pristine condition. They’ll sit in our freezer that way until we offload this trip at the Samson Dock and they start on their journey to Seattle.  

We’ve decided this is our last trip of the year - we’ll put a couple hundred more fish on board (knock on wood) on our way back to Sitka, offload and then get the boat ready for winter.  It’s always a bittersweet moment. You’re tired and your entire body aches, you desperately long for a shower and real bed, laundry way past due. You stack the gear and think for a moment, “I can’t wait til this is OVER!” and then the second you tie up to the dock and connect with your friends and share a few stories it’s like a golden shade comes down over everything and all you want to do is troll for the rest of your life…  Maybe we’ll get another trip in!  Cooler heads will prevail once we get to Sitka, I am sure. 

The weather this time of year gets pretty unpredictable and chances are we’ll call it a season. But even as I write this I am thinking “…but you never know when you’ll get a call in that the Cape is slamming and you’ll be running to the fuel dock and setting out hoping for a few more days!”

It’s hard to put the beauty of this area into words, but I will try. We’ve been so lucky to have clear skies. Standing on deck and looking at the full sweep of mountains - from St. Elias down to Mt. Fairweather - is breathtaking. Massive mountains climbing 15,000 feet straight up to the sky. One afternoon we watched huge thunderheads move in and as colossal as they were, Mt. St. Elias still towered above. Glaciers run down to the sea or hang in mountain pockets; we passed the gigantic Grand Plateau Glacier that looked like an enormous river of moonlight thundering its way to the sea.. We fish all along the beach and as the afternoon wears on the sand shines like a golden line leading for miles in either direction. Closer to Yakutat Bay we watched 15 foot waves crest and break, wind blowing spray of the top of each wave as it rolled in. 

We’ve been fishing pretty shallow (no deeper than 20 fathoms) along the beach, hooking up with fish returning to home rivers (The Dangerous, The Akwe, The Ustay, The Alsek). The fish are big and fat and the weather has been spectacular.  The water here ranges from a dusty turquoise coming off the glaciers to a deep cold royal blue, often with a clear line between the two. 

It’s our first year fishing up here, and no doubt it won’t be our last. We almost came last year with The Ocean Cape but we chickened out at the last minute. It’s a long haul getting up here, with no real anchorage between Lituya and Yak, so you’re either drifting at night or anchoring right on the beach (as long as there’s no wind). We did a bit of each on this trip, but old timers reminded us a number of times how lucky we were.  And as soon as this weather breaks we’ll be looking for the first southerly to push us back down to Sitka.

See you when we get there!  

We are in town for a day trying for a record breaking less-than-12-hour turnaround. Fishing has been a bit slow and since we decided to switch from fishing “south” to fishing “north” we had to run right past Sitka. Seemed silly not to stop.

Groceries, laundry, water, fuel, and a few other errands and then we’ll throw off the lines again. It’s quite a scene in front of Sitka with about 100 trollers fishing for dog salmon along with a group of seiners. How they are avoiding each other is beyond me! We’ll take ourselves somewhere a little less crowded.

Lower Chatham was again a rich source of life. We saw a small pod of killer whales one morning and since we didn’t have gear in the water we were able to cut the engine for a few minutes and watch them work, diving and rolling in feed. Although they can be a real nuisance to fishermen (especially long liners) I am always thrilled to see them.

Fishing has been a bit slow. We hear there are only about 250 of the thousand so power troll permits being actively fished, and judging from how many are after dog salmon right now, the coho effort is pretty light. So light in fact that we didn’t even have a closure. ADF&G almost always shuts us down for a handful of days in August. So regular that there’s a “Troll Closure Open” golf tournament in Port Alexander every year. 

Despite the slow fishing we have so much to be happy about!  In fact, I decided to start keeping a list. Didn’t High Times used to have a Top 100 at the end of each issue? Maybe they still do. I can remember looking at that in my teens and thinking “man, adults are SO cool”, although I can’t really remember why. Here’s what we’re enjoying right now.

• Satellite Radio. It’s almost always on. In particular we love Prairie Home Companion followed by The Splendid Table every Saturday. Johnny Knoxville and his Big-Ass Family Jamboree and when we drop the anchor for the night, we switch over to channel 68 and enjoy the corny yet soothing sounds of “Spa”. Cue the lavender oil. 
• Paul Newman’s Frozen Pizzas. Especially when topped with an over-easy egg or two. Although things aren't so easy for the Newman Clan these days…
• Wristers. Wristers are those weird wrist braces that you wear for Carpel Tunnel Syndrome. Which we suffer from. Before wristers came on our scene we used to both wake up sobbing from pain in the middle of the night. But, wristers have solved that! Thank you wristers!
• Reading. We rarely have time for it, but when faced with a 10 hour run or a weather day we love nothing more than to bury our noses. My favorite read of the summer so far is Daniel Menaker’s "My Mistake" - highly recommended, especially if you are a fan of the New Yorker.
• The Sibley.  As in “WHERE’S THE SIBLEY!?!?” when I spy some sea bird that I have got to I.D. Although I am not a bird nerd, per se, there are times when I just feel the need to double check the differences between a Marbled Murrelet and a Kittlitz’s Murrelet. 
  

and finally, it probably goes without saying, but I love Coffee. We just read something about Alton Brown putting just a tiny pinch of salt in his coffee before brewing, so we’re trying that although honestly I don’t know that I could love coffee any more than I already do.  

Hope you are having a wonderful August - hold on to summer as long as you can! 

We’re turning the Virga around this afternoon to head out for our second coho trip of the season, so if we’re out of touch it’s because we’re in a wi-fi free zone. Those are pretty hard to find these days! I do experience a little withdrawal at first, but after a while there is a wonderful freedom that comes from not feeling compelled to pick up my iPhone every 10 minutes…

Speaking of staying in touch, we were talking about how many times we handle our salmon while we were offloading yesterday, and the total number of touches came to 12.  That’s a lot!

1. First contact with the fish at the stern
2. Cutting the gills to begin bleeding
3. Transferring fish from checker to cleaning table
4. Transferring cleaned fish to hatch for final rinse
5. Handing fish down into the freezer
6. Placing the fish on the freezing plates
7. Transferring frozen fish into freezer bin
8. Removing fish from bin for first glaze dip
9. Second glaze dip
10. Returning fish to bins after glazing
11. Removing fish from bin to offload
12. …and finally placing fish in the tote for shipping
    

It’s especially a lot if you imagine that it’s just the two of us completing each of those steps. It’s easy to understand why traceability becomes such an important issue - if you have 12 different people completing each of those steps, at multiple facilities, possibly in different countries (with different approaches to sanitation and labor practices) there is plenty of room for concern.  Add filleting, portioning, smoking, seasoning and/or breading to the mix and the opportunity for issues grows. 

Buying as direct from the fisherman as possible helps you feel confident that each of those steps was done with care.  Keep the chain of custody as limited as possible!  

We’ll be out on this trip 2 or 3 weeks, depending on how fast we can load the boat. Here’s hoping we have good weather and better fishing.

TGIF! It’s raining here in Sitka and we are still tied to the dock… the harbor is pretty empty with trollers, seiners and gill netters all out earning there keep. We are (unfortunately) waiting for a part to come in to fix our alternator. We had hoped to leave today, but now it’s looking more like Saturday.

Which is okay. Tradition holds it’s bad luck to leave on a Friday. Although we’ve left on plenty of Fridays, with no ill effects. David maintains that Oscar Dyson (legendary crab skipper) said it was okay to leave on a Friday, as long as you back out of your slip and turn a circle before heading out. We follow that advice, just in case.

What’s up with all these nautical superstitions?  No bananas on the boat, no talking about horses, nothing green, no whistling in the wheelhouse. And the one I won’t even mention, no women on the boat.

I have a theory about superstitions that isn’t that deep. It’s that superstitions help us feel connected to our tribe. And we use them as a form of exclusion, or inclusion, depending on how "in the know" you feel. 

Sure, I looked up some information on superstitions and learned a lot about how many of them are (possibly) rooted in something useful or truthful.  Bananas for instance. I read that sailing vessels selected for lucrative banana deliveries were often the fastest in the fleet - so fast that if you wanted to troll off them you weren’t going to catch anything. Therefore a banana boat never caught any fish. You can see how that works. 

And of course, some superstitions arise out of practicality - like it’s bad luck to leave a hatch cover upside down on deck - I figure that’s so that rain doesn’t collect on the inside, and that it’s as easy to pick up in a rush as possible. Makes sense to me - thinking of it as “bad luck” may help reinforce a behavior better than reason might. 

But, if you’re new to this whole fishing thing, working your way through that stressful greenhorn year, knowing (or not knowing) your superstitions can be part of what dictates the rate of your acceptance. Don’t walk on board with a bunch of bananas in your hand, and even if you love to whistle - don’t!  

I’d like to start some new superstitions. Like it’s totally unlucky not to talk about your dog once a day or that it’s crazy-stupid to leave the harbor without a 4 bottles of red wine. As Friday winds down here in Sitka, I can already feel lady luck looking my way.

Have a great weekend.  

Here’s how the next 7 days would go. Up at 3:30 AM to George Strait crooning “Amarillo by Morning”. Don’t ask, but it’s been our alarm clock for about 5 years. I know that if I hear him lose his saddle in Houston and break his leg in Santa Fe then I have used up my 30 seconds of respite and I’ve got to get out of the bunk. 

Get dressed, make coffee, check our position, set the gear, make breakfast, haul the gear, clean fish, put fish in the freezer, clean the deck. Haul the gear, clean fish, put fish in the freezer, clean the deck. Haul the gear, clean fish, put fish in the freezer, clean the deck. Haul the gear, clean fish, put fish in the freezer, clean the deck. Haul the gear, clean fish, put fish in the freezer, clean the deck. Haul the gear, clean fish, put fish in the freezer, clean the deck. Haul the gear, clean fish, put fish in the freezer, clean the deck. Haul the gear, clean fish, put fish in the freezer, clean the deck. Eat dinner. go to bed. Up at 3:30 AM to George and repeat until that sweet, sweet voice on the radio tells us that “the 2015 summer king salmon opener will end on July 7th at Midnight.”  

We did get a bit of a break on day 3 when we decided to pick up and run after our first two days down south proved to be a bit slow. Luckily we got some good information from a friend that we decided to follow, and we ended up taking about 8 hours to change position - which ultimately was a smart decision and allowed us to rack up our best summer king opener ever!  

What a relief to finally stack the gear 7 days later and head for Goddard hot springs. We spent the night there (11 hours of sweet, sweet sleep) and then spent the bulk of Thursday glazing our fish. A soak in a hot springs never felt so good! 

Then up at 5 AM on Friday to head for the Samson Dock, where we had an easy offload working with our friends Matt and Vincent on the F/V Born Again (although it rained most of the day) and then enjoyed a well-deserved night at the Westmark.

This morning it’s been a lot of dock talk, coffee and catching up with our friends. It sounds like most of our gang had a good opener, with just a few exceptions. The kings were big and plentiful, and the cohos were looking pretty good as well. We’ll take a few days to rest, recoup, deal with some small projects and then head out on our first coho trip of the summer

Hope everyone enjoyed a relaxing 4th of July weekend!