I got nothin....

Alright Alright… I know it’s been a while. I don’t wanna hear it! :-)

It’s my “weekend” right now… and it’s felt like the longest week ever. I don’t really know why.

Last weekend, Adam and I decided to go for a hike. On the way up, I was pretty sure it was going to be the death of me! Man, I felt so out of shape. I guess I didn’t think it was going to be as hard as it was. So from the hatchery, we hiked up the trail to the lake right above the hatchery… the “lower lake.” There are stairs up most of it, which is good because it was pretty muddy. Sadly, my lungs were burning after about 5 minutes… it felt pretty rough, but we reached the lower lake. It was a pretty short hike up there actually. This is the lake that the “Hidden Falls” waterfall falls from.



This is the view of the hatchery from the lower lake level. There is this hydro building to my left (I’m standing on a little hill right above it) and the waterfall is on the other side of that. I’ve seen this view in a picture before but never seen it firsthand… it was pretty cool.

So then we took this little boat that is up there across the lower lake to where there is another trail. By “trail,” I mean an area that looks like a glacier left a path of rocks between overgrown brush. Oh, and did I mention it looked like it was straight up!? Yeah… some big rocks… some loose small rocks that would fall or move if you stepped on them wrong. That’s part of the reason I thought I might die! The other part was when my lungs felt like they were going to explode! Anyhow, we finally made it up the rock part, but then we had to go up through the trees... then we had to go up some overgrowth which thankfully, some hiker tied a big long rope so you could hang on to that. It was pretty muddy and steep! I thought it would never end… but finally we made it to the upper lake. It was small but kind of cool.


The upper lake...


This is the view on the way down from the upper lake. That's the lower lake and Chatham Strait in the background. (Make the picture bigger... it's better)

Then we had to go ALL THE WAY BACK DOWN! The rope part was easy… I think I slid down on my butt most of the way down the tree part cause it was muddy… and I was pretty sure I would die on the way down the rocks! I took that really slow because I’m not too good on slippery wet rocks. Plus, Adam was below me so I didn’t want to send rocks careening down at his head! Finally, that was done and we were back in the boat.

When we got back to the area where the boat was, Adam said we had to put the motor back in the hydro building, so we drove closer to the building, which meant driving close to where the waterfall starts. Ok so it didn’t just DROP OFF like Niagara Falls or anything, but I could just envision losing control of the boat and AHHHHHHH! I’m sure you can picture what I was picturing. It was fine though. So all and all, I didn’t die. And I saw some cool scenery from way up high. I guess it was alright after all.

So what else… the weather has been nice and CRAPPY lately. Lots of rain… a few days with rain AND wind. That’s no fun… Yesterday we started to work with the Coho for their spawning. Remember we did Chum and Chinook, but I said the Coho spawning was later on. Well it’s still not for a while but we were sorting them and stuff. Here’s what we did… so there are 4 raceways back there. Two of them we got fish in there from the fish ladder, just like we did for all the other spawning. We would get a load of fish in the shock box and bring them up live and kickin… no shocking. Because that would kill them, and we aren’t using them for spawning RIGHT yet… so they come up alive and we slide them across the table into a big box about the size of wood box like for apple picking, except it’s a plastic box. This box was filled with water and a solution of alcohol and clove oil, which basically puts the fish to sleep for a little bit. Then we move the tote over to the other two raceways and start sorting. We had to count all the fish that we put in each raceway. Most of the females got injected with some medicine to treat them for some disease… some of them didn’t though. A lot of the males were too small so we threw them out… it was a lot of fish freaking out and getting you wet… dipping your hands into FREEZING COLD WATER and them staying wet because you had cotton gloves on so you could hold the fish. You know what was kinda fun in a “chaos-in-action” kinda way, though, was sliding the fish into the tote from the shock box. That was sorta fun… CRAZY but fun. Because the fish were FREAKIN OUT and there are a bunch of them all at the same time.

Well, now it is my weekend and today the weather has been really nice but cool. Adam and I set a long line, which we are going to pull up in about an hour. Well see what we catch. OH, last weekend (the real weekend when it was just Adam and I working) I was pulling up a weight that was in the water on the Chinook pens and there was this weird thing on it that fell off onto the deck. When I gave it a closer look, it was this really cool fish! I still have to look it up and figure out what it is but it looks like it would be a tropical fish and kind of like a puffer fish. It was green-ish and sorta spikey. We kept it in a bucket and Adam kept changing out its water but at the dock today, I saw that it had died. So we are going to put it in a jar and some alcohol to preserve it and see if it works. I tell ya, it looks like it is straight out of Finding Nemo or something! It’s VERY CUTE! I tried to get a good picture of it but it didn’t very well. Adam sorta got one on his camera though.


It's pretty small... fits in the palm of my hand. CUTE RIGHT!?

Anyhow, that’s all I’ve got for ya!

*UPDATE*
So we identified that our super cute little fish is a Pacific Spiny Lumpsucker. Not that you all will know it but it's a cool name. Also, we pulled the long line and yeah... lame. We got 2 shortnose Skates, kinda like a stingray... a little halibut... a Pacific cod... and THIS...


It's a Yelloweye Rockfish. Actually I'm pretty sure I've shown a picture of one of these before but it wasn't of me holding it. It was probably like 12 pounds. These are my favorite... orange of course. He got kind of pale right before this but it was alot brighter orange. Kinda like a big goldfish right? They are cool!

SHOUT OUT OF THE WEEK – Thanks for the card Uncle Eddie, Aunt Stacy, Tommy and Sarah. :-D