13 days!

Hey! Lemme first start out by stating... I'll be home in less than 2 weeks! YAY! I'm ready for it too... Second I'd like to say somewhat of an apology. I meant to put a Shout Out to the dads out there, Mine in particular, last week and I didn't. So Happy Belated Father's Day to you Dad, and Uncle Eddie and Uncle John! And every other father that may read this.

Well it's only been a week since the last posting but we've had a fairly busy week I guess. Nothing all that exciting but we've been working hard doing alot of random stuff. I think I posted on... a Saturday last week? Well either last Sat or Sun night, we had a bit of entertainment. See, the maintanence guys have been building a brand new floating barge last week, but to build it, you have to do it upside down. Build the frame and then put the big floats on top of that. Well, when it's a big barge built upside down, about 30 foot by 30 foot, can you see an issue in that? It's gotta be flipped. So when the tide came up to the highest, they needed to flip it over. It was a little nerve-wracking to watch them lift it up with the two loaders we had... lots of ropes attached to all different places. Lots of groans and creaks. They got it pretty high up but stuff wasn't right I guess so they put it back down. Then figured some things out and once they did that, it went up, over and down pretty smoothly and fairly uneventful actually. We were hoping for atleast a big giant splash when it hit the water but I guess they were too gentle. In the process, however, a big beam did crack so there was some repairs to do on it and then to finish the top up. They're still working on stuff but it looks pretty nice. Oh yeah, and then there's MY funny story of that night. While trying to dip under one of the ropes tied to the barge, I crouched and felt that familiar rip I have felt before... ripped my pajama pants pretty nicely. Gah... lovely.

Anyhow, we started the week off working with the dreaded Barrier net. It's this long, huge, heavy-as-heck net that we stretch out back behind Adam's house. I guess it's sort of hard to explain where, but it blocks the opening of the little cove that leads to the weir, where the fish will be so they can come up to the weir for spawning. We'll later have a crew seine up chum for us and put them in the cove so we can make sure we have enough fish. Anyhow, we had to mend up this net, get any fishing hooks out of it that we missed when we pull it out of the water (I know I talked about that disgusting task). There are huge chains on this thing so it's tough... and a few hundred feet long. Then we mended up more chinook, coho, and chum nets, which feels like it's taking alot longer than last year!

Wednesday I helped out in moving some small chinook into one of the ponding troughs out front. These 250,000 fish were going to be boated to Haines, Alaska, which is a 17 hour boat ride away, past Juneau. Benji, one of the guys who's been working here, is going to take care of them for a month there, then they'll be released. Something about Alaska Fish and Game are paying NSRAA to raise them? I dunno. But they could only take 250,000 and unfortunately, we had some left over. Since they don't want that stock of fish coming HERE to the hatchery, we had to kill the remaining fish. It wasn't THAT many but it was still sorta sad.

By the way, Adam's got another king on his line as I type this. Stay tuned for a story in a few. So, then more net mending. Then yesterday I helped to transfer some coho to the ponding troughs. This fish are bound for Deer Lake, which is another NSRAA-run project. They have to be flown to Deer Lake in 6 different trips, which were supposed to start today. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't cooperating, which is ironic since the past few days have been gorgeous, clear and sunny. After we finished up, I was going to spend a bit of time getting some R48s ready for spawning, when Adam came to me and said he had a better job for me. Letting in some chinook into the lagoon... All the fish would eventually end up in the lagoon, however, on the weir, we keep the gates closed so we can allow only a certain amount in. So for the past few days we let some fish in, the ones that are ready to come in. So far it's been like 16 fish the first day... a few hundred the next. Well yesterday, it seemed like ALL of the kings were ready to come in. I stood there and tried to count them coming in as Adam opened the gates, but I was going as fast as my clicker finger would go so he only kept one gate (out of three opened). I counted in 550 fish in about 6 minutes! There were still about 1000 fish waiting to come in, but we don't need all of those. It was pretty amazing though... it looked like chum season, where they are just packed on top of each other pushing against those gates to come in.


During chum season, ALL of that water you see is just packed with fish.

So you'd think I'd be catching loads of fish... not gonna lie, I haven't even caught one, but I haven't really even tried much. Most of those fish in that picture wouldn't be that great to eat anyhow... they are "changing" for spawning so their meat would be mushy. But don't worry, there isn't a lack of fish. Everyone has started to call Adam the "Fish Whisperer" because he can catch a fish like it's nothing. You know that if no fish are biting for him, then there's no point in even trying. I can't even tell you how many fish he's caught so far.... but I've barely even seen anyone else catch any. I did try the other day a few time, but I gave up shortly one time because I couldn't cast the line to save my LIFE! I think it was just mental but I was getting annoyed with myself. The other times, they just weren't biting. And for you guys who wanted some Halibut, you're in luck! Dan set a longline yesterday and he and Adam came back with 1 big halibut and 2 small ones!

Hummm... I just heard a plane leave. I wonder if the Deer Lake transfers are back on? Well, I'm not sure what else I have when it comes to stories. I have a few pictures of random stuff though...


I took this picture a while back at Takatz and for some reason, didn't show you guys. It was a sunny day and the seals were sunning themselves on this rock. There were alot and I caught them right before they all freaked out and wiggled off the rock. It's cooler if you make it bigger.


The whale has been around but never like that one awesome day. I was hoping to catch it feeding again. I attempted to start taking a video of it but was on the wrong camera mode and caught this picture. I think it's the side fin... the whale was doing some circles to try to round up whatever it was eating... probably our baby fish!


Alright, here's a game... there are 5 eagles in this picture, find them! No, really I swear, 5. The other morning, the tide was really low and there were a ton of eagles eating some dead fish. You can see 4 pretty well but one is bending down eating. Two are adults and three are juveniles... the spotty ones are juvies.


They must be getting sick of eating grass because they've been fishing alot. I haven't seen them catch anything yet though. That cub, which is pretty lanky looking, is pretty fun to watch. Since it's older, mom is letting it wander more a bit, but she's a pretty paranoid bear. She's always on the look out for threats. This night, they were fishing but the cub wanted to wander. So since the water was raging, it didn't want to cross so it ran across the weir to our side and was walking around. There's this big pipe running right under the porch and I'm not sure if the cub was trying to cross it or what but it had it's arms hanging over just hanging there. It was amazingly cute. Adam was right above it with the camera and I was inside at the window so I yelled for him to get a picture. Mom must have heard be though and she ran over and did her motherly snorting and paranoid looks and the cub went over to her. Usually they run off at any sign of humans but they stayed on the other side. A few minutes later we hear footsteps on the porch (not bear, but human) and then we hear Muttley, Dan and Deena's dog, going NUTS and the bears took off. He has this horrible barking howling sound when he sees a bear. It was pretty funny.


Giant cake! I made that yesterday. We decided to do a movie night and I figured it was a good time to make the cake I wanted to make. It's an Almond Joy layer cake. It was my first big layer cake... and it was pretty good! 4 layers of Chocolate cake, chocolate frosting with Almond extract on the inside, and the same on the outside but with coconut flakes and nuts in the outside frosting... Get it... Like an Almond Joy candy bar.


So we're still alive! :-D Have a good day! See ya in like 13 days! Ok he won't but I will!

Friday the 13th...

Alright Alright, I know it's been a while. But hey, what better day than Friday the 13th for a new blog, eh!?

Well, there's been a bunch happening in the past few weeks. Last Wednesday and Friday, Adam and I sent our baby chum off into the vast sea. We pulled our nets and our net weights. Then on Saturday we packed up our stuff and said good-bye to Takatz and came back to the hatchery.


MMM dinner... no... Some of our fish on the day of release... We were taking the lengths and weights of them.


FAT FISH! He's a monster! We released our fish at an average of about 2.4 grams. This guy was probably almost 4.

Here are a few more random Takatz pictures...


Alright so that bird looks so small in this picture, it's almost not worth it. This is a female hummingbird... the pictures I showed before were of males. I looked in a bird book and discovered the brown with red necked birds are males and the green ones are females... atleast in the type we have here. Michigan has different hummingbirds.


Jellyfish... about the size of two of my hands. It's really not that big... but they look sorta cool and I was trying to get a good picture of one. This is the best I got.

That night, Dan was set to release his first group of fish... at 11pm! See, there'd been a few humpback whales trolling around the bay and I guess they thought the whales wouldn't be feeding at 11pm. So Adam and I helped out Dan and Deena... at 10:30 really. Thankfully it's fairly light here until almost 11, so we weren't feeling around in the dark. We finished at 11:15 and it was starting to get pretty dark. The whale did not make an appearance. Thanks guys.

So I had the next few days off. Adam worked on Monday though setting a few gill nets in a few of the upper lakes... Hidden Falls lake and Cutthroat lake (I know, that one sounds bad but it's named after a fish... Cutthroat Trout.) We need to send in some fish to get tested for some... virus or something. Anyhow, Tuesday, first thing in the morning, Adam and I had to hike up to both lakes. The hike to Cutthroat isn't very hard but.... something with the mixture of early morning hiking and yogurt almost killed me close to the top. OK not really but the yogurt almost made a special appearance. I was fine after a few minutes though. The hike to HF Lake is a bit tougher... it's a pretty quick hike but at a pretty steep angle. Your calves start to burn 10 feet up. We did get some fish too. Then the rest of the day was spent putting the lagoon net out. If you remember from past pictures, there's a long net dividing the lagoon and going right to the fish ladder. This keeps the fish from trying to spawn in the stream in the back.

Now what the heck did I do Wednesday? I started to mend a net while Adam and Scott went diving in the lagoon to secure the bottom of the net. Then we made our second set of hikes for the week up to the lakes. It went a bit better that time. Then I helped Dan attempt to sample his fish. They're very temperamental. He was set to release his second group of his fish that night. The whales had moved on so we went out at 9. But guess who showed up... Mr. Whale. He kept his distance so maybe the chum were safe for a while. When we got done, it was about 10 and Adam and I decided to hit the hot tub. I can't remember if I've mentioned that... we have a hot tub here at the hatchery! It's pretty nice... sitting on a platform right above the water. The hot water felt good. Yesterday was a dreary day. We were on a streak of super nice and sunny weather for a while. Then sometime last week, we got some rain and clouds. Then it was decent for a few days... Then we woke up to rain... alot of it. Unfortunately, our first task of the day was outdoors. We pulled Dan's dirty chum nets off the deck of his pens so they could come in to get washed. It's a pretty wet job anyhow... Then it's been net mending since then. Now my back aches a bit from bending down alot and there's quite a few more nets yet to be mended. BLAH BOO... :-D

But now, a cool whale story! So I've seen whales... I've seen whales feeding. But the other day I saw the most amazing whale sighting! Adam and I had just come back from Takatz with some nets. Then we went to get some stuff from the house and right as we pulled up to the dock, a whale came up for a little snack right next to the dock! When you aren't expecting to see a giant whale come up to the surface of the water near you, it's a pretty awesome surprise. We weren't on the dock yet, so I grabbed some stuff and high-tailed it down there, where there were a bunch of other people watching it. It just decided to feed right there. It comes up pretty high so you can see it's whole mouth... and it rolled onto it's back so you could see it's underside. Pretty cool... Lemme tell ya, a whale blowing water out of it's hole at close range sounds a bit like what you'd think a dinosaur would sound like. I SO wished I had my camera. So the next day, Adam brought some more nets back. When he came back, he said he wished I was with him cause I could have gotten a really good view of the whale then. A few people were on the chinook pens (right behind where it was feeding the day before) counting some fish from a pen. The whale was still there, but coming up under the pens and blowing bubbles under the net of fish. Waylon, Angie's dog, was apparently going NUTS (He goes nuts at anything... birds, seals, rocks!?) Adam said once the whale rolled over onto it's side and just looked at the dog. I was very jealous! Apparently Scott got a picture of the fish counter shooting fish right into the whale's mouth... or atleast that's what it looks like.

Well, now I have some random pictures.

On our attempt to get some more shrimp, this is about all we got....






We tried to close the shrimp pot up and keep the octopus alive to give to Dan to eat it... but the darn guy got out... smart creatures!



NICE! Oh, the fish is nice too! ;-D YOU might be the lucky one to eat some of that fish.


It was a female and I already had the camera and I wasn't sure if I had shown pictures of fish eggs. The egg pouchs are pretty long... and each fish has two. This is only one.


That's a close up view... this is what we call "skeined" eggs... still all together and not loose. When we spawn the fish, the eggs just spill out if they are loose. These are just not ready yet... which makes sense since we don't spawn King salmon for a few months.

SHOUT OUT OF THE DAY - To my cousin Lindsay, not even sure if she reads this but Happy Graduation!!

RECOMMENDATION - Grandma Moser sent me the book, The Kite Runner, and I thought it was really great! It's a story about a kid from Afghanistan and it talks about growing up there and then fleeing the country and coming to America, but then going back later on. It's really good! This week for Netflix, I'm getting the movie so I'll let you know how that is.