The Official Return of the Porch Salmon

Happy Beautiful Sunday! And I mean that... it's nice here today!

I don't have much to tell this week really.... hasn't been THAT eventful. We had some rain this week, which makes things a bit on the BLAH side. Tuesday was sampling day and our fish grew better than we thought, which is always a plus! Everyday we are netting alot of dead fish off the top because well.... they're dying obviously. But they are just really tiny fish that just never grew. Dan has been having alot of die-off issues with his Hidden Falls chum so Thursday Adam got dive tanks to use with our mort sucker. Though Dan has pulled out ALOT of dead from the bottom, we didn't really get much of anything.... except alot of extremely foul-smelling fish poop and liquid! Friday was a busy day of feeding 4 times a day, morting the tops of the pens with the dip net, morting the bottoms with that mort sucker, and trying to get all of our nets dropped to the deck like we did last year. We were on the go ALL day but we managed to get it all done... and in the rain!

So it was nice to come back to the hatchery and have our weekend on Friday, but it was a very wet ride back. Despite being tired from the week, my night was spent freaking out in front of the computer until I finally gave up at 11:15pm. Last weekend I was looking into flight to come home and the prices weren't exactly great. But I figured out what I'd do and I was planning on booking my ticket this weekend. Friday, however, didn't go as smoothly as I thought it would. I kept running into alot of issues with stuff being sold out or the price jumping up! Finally I had settled on a ticket to Midway airport (even though I had previously decided to pay a little more to get closer to home) But it was the cheapest flight I found at a cheap $653 so I went ahead and tried to book. Note the TRIED! I had literally pushed the purchase button but on the next page it told me that flight was gone or something and the price was now $900 something! WHATTTTT!? NO... That's when I pretty much gave up. I looked at a few other things, such as Adam's flight stuff just to see if it was just me who would have issues. Then I went to bed.

Next day, I talked to Adam about my airline-induced headache I was having the night before... his flight stuff seemed fine still. I still don't know what the deal was. Apparently alot of people were flying to Chicago at the same time I wanted to!? So he booked his flight... then I looked on the same website he did and just found a flight... close to home... but costing a tad bit more than Adam's ticket! However that works out...!? I just didn't want to deal with it anymore... Adam's flights had a 5-ish hour and 7 hour layovers in Seattle so I said "Hey, might as well keep you company." So we both have the same flight from Sitka to Seattle and Seattle to Sitka on the way back. So you can expect me home July 4th... hopefully WITH my luggage! I'm stayin until July 15th.

Anyhow, that's one of the announcements. 2nd announcement... Today, Adam has spotted the official return of the season's King Salmon. He's been out standing on the porch looking at the water and finally spotted a few swimming in. It's a surprise he didn't fall running down to the water IN FLIP FLOPS with his fishing pole. Like a little kid on his birthday, I tell ya! But that makes me happy too.... fresh salmon! YAY.

Well, we got a new girl this week.... Lexie. Anna is leaving this coming week too. Our chum should be large enough and ready for release in a few weeks. Probably about the first week of June, just like last year. Then we'll be back and forth to the hatchery with dirty ol chum nets... then back at the hatchery period. So in the coming month, we'll be washing and mending nets and setting up incubation and the spawning shed for spawning season. Then we'll head off for vacation and return with spawning season not far off. Where does the time go!?

Alright, guess that's about all for now. Sorry, no pictures this week. Congrats to Dad and Lee for their remarrying shindig yesterday! I was there in picture and spirit! :-)