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.