All spawned out...

Chum spawning - CHECK

Spawning party – CHECK

Can you believe it’s the middle of August already!? I mean, where did the year go? For the past three and a half weeks, we’ve been spawning chum. Since I missed all of chum spawning last year, I was looking forward to it this year! It’s such a tiring time but it’s so fun! It’s one of those times that I wish I was still paid by the hour, instead of salary. We are always working past 5pm… and since I am in charge of the numbers, I’m usually the last one working. But still… I’ve had fun. This year, instead of grinding up our carcasses, we’ve sold them. It seemed like it was going to be such a pain but really it ended up working out pretty well. As we spawn the fish, we send them down a metal shoot and into the grinder. But this year, they installed a conveyor belt coming off the end of the metal shoot and the fish are diverted onto the belt, instead of into the grinder. Then they are moved on the belt and dropped into a fish tote. You always have to have someone manning the fish totes and moving them, but since it takes 10 minutes or so to fill up a tote, it’s not a really fast thing. Coming into this, we thought we would have to take a few permanent employees off the spawning table everyday to deal with the totes, since we are the only ones who can run the equipment, but they ended up training a few of the seasonal on the forklift.

I dreaded the times I might have to be the tote mover, but I’ve gotten a lot more comfortable with it. Now I feel like I can just jump into a few of our pieces of equipment and do something, instead of feeling nervous about it. I can drive the forklift pretty well now (which was a bit difficult at first, getting used to dealing with a clutch and stuff) and even our telehandler. The telehandler is a smaller loader that has an extendable arm that you can reach out and pick stuff up with. It’s pretty easy to use but has a bunch of blindspots, which is the hardest part. I’ve been pretty proud of myself about that though. I can use the Skid Steer too (I dunno what else it’s called…) but I haven’t driven it very much. We also have a Case loader, which I’m not real comfortable with because it’s so big! I drove it back and forth a few times the other day though, and on the last trip, I started to understand it a bit more and get better. That loader is a bit different because it’s split in the middle, I guess, where as a car is all one piece. You turn the steering wheel and the front half of the loader moves so if you are going really slow (like I was!) it turns sort of jerky. I’m not sure if that makes sense to you or not. Guess I won’t be working for Mike and driving a combine anytime soon, but I might be able to do a little tractor work! HA I guess it does give me a bit of a confidence boost to know that I can drive something like that, if I need to!


This is a telehandler... all of these aren't really ours but basically the same thing.


The Big Case loader... it looks small here but it's pretty big.


The Skid Steer


Similar to our Forklift... minus that tank on the back.

We still have most of our Chinook spawning to do but that shouldn’t take that long. We did some of the Chinook on Thursday. Last night we had our spawning party, which was a lot of fun. We were set to get a pig (and maybe even a lamb) to roast on our spit, but it fell through. So we have chunks of pork. Scott smoked two of the chunks in this smoker and then the other 4 we put on the spit. The smoker meat was done at like 6pm maybe, but the spit meat took a lot longer and they didn’t take that off the spit until like 11:30pm! So that was a bit of a “midnight snack pork.” There was so much left over, so we have a chunk of meat in our fridge and a few other people do too. Our weather was AMAZING so we all just sat out and talked, drank, ate, hung out. It was very casual, like normal. I think everyone gathered around 12:30 or so…. And dispersed about 12 hours later! We played our games of course! The egg guess, bucking contest and chum toss. Those are always amusing! Adam and I cleaned up when it came to prizes. We got first and second place in the bucking contest!! Adam was first, I was second. Then we both got first prize in the boys and girls chum toss. I felt a little bad for winning most of the prizes, but hey, what can you do!? I was giving tons of tips out to everyone… trying to get them to do their best job! It’s more fun when you have close calls! It seemed like the bucking contest was a bit of a struggle this year… not real long distances! Though Adam’s winning distance was 24 feet, 7 inches. I think I only made it to around 21 feet maybe. But I’m not even sure. I threw my chum first and thought I blew it. It felt like it slipped out of my hand, but I guess no one could beat me so I won. Hey, what can I say!? I’m just good. HA


Hanging out


Emma and I matched! Hair and all.


Just a cool picture of the fire pit


A fancy picture we took with a sparkler.

Now it’s the weekend… some people are recovering, some people are just hanging out (like me… no recovery needed!), and some people are on a mission! Those “mission” people would be Adam and Ben. They are currently hiking up to the alpine (That’s ALL the way up to the top of the mountain.) on a mission to hunt a monster mountain goat! They both were pretty excited to go… Ben compared it to the excitement at Christmas. Personally, it doesn’t sound fun to me! Heh Last year I hiked up with Adam and we didn’t even get close to the alpine, and I thought it would be the death of me! So that’s what Ben is for! Ben’s practically a professional hunter… he takes a month off from here, in November, to work as a hunting guide for… rich dudes essentially! But this is Adam’s trip this time… he’s going to be the one shooting. Ben is just going to help him pack the goat out. They should have great weather up there so they should get one. They went up a few weeks ago with Scott to check it out, to leave some supplies up there, and to see if they could spot any, which they did (like 13 I think!) So they’ve had their eye on this one goat, and they think he’s a big one. So I’m crossing my fingers for them! Glad that I’m not up there with them, but ready to admire the goat hide and horns, and eat the meat when they get back.

Scott couldn’t go with them this time, even though I’m sure he would have loved to. He’s heading to town today in his boat, because he has to head to Colorado in a few days to get married! Last Thursday his friend from Sitka showed up and they (Scott, Kyle, Ben and Adam) were supposed to go up goat hunting, but the weather wasn’t good. It was supposed to be a sorta surprise Bachelor weekend for Scott. So instead, Scott, Kyle and Ben drove over to Admiralty Island (which is across Chatham Strait) to look around and ended up getting two deer on the beach. Well when they got back, they hung the deer in the big walk-in cooler, like they always do. Unfortunately, they forgot to put the pin in the door handle (to kinda lock the door) and a bear broke in and stole the deer. It sucks, but at the same time, it’s a little funny. There are a few bear paw smudges on the door, but it probably didn’t take much for it to hook the handle and pull. It (or multiple bears) walked off with the deer, ate it and then buried the rest right near the cooler, by the spawning shed, for later. That’s a bad thing because that bear could get territorial of that area, even if the guys dug the deer up and took it away. So they hung around back there to see if the bear was going to get mean about it…. They scared a few bears away back there but who knows which bear it was. The guys did end up digging the bear up and taking it away and we haven’t really seen much bear activity back there so that’s good. It seemed like it would be a lot more dramatic than it ended up.

We haven’t really had any issues (except for the deer thing) with the bears, but there have been a lot around. We have a sow and 1 cub, and possibly 3 sows with 2 cubs. There is definitely a sow with 2 really small cubs and a sow with a bit of an older set, maybe 2 year olds. Melissa and I think there is that third set around but we aren’t sure… just seems like there’s another small set with one darker cub and one lighter. But who knows. There are a bunch of single bears… atleast 3. My favorite is the sow with the single cub. Ok and the sow with the 2 small cubs! They are so cute! The single cub is sort of rascally and mischievous, it seems. I always see it on the other side of the weir from its mom… always just standing up on its back paws looking at its mom. I watched it climb through the little space over the weir pickets the other day and almost got it’s leg stuck in the metal poles. It hung there for a minute but came free. It was pretty cute and funny.


The Rascally cub climbing through the pickets


It's hard to tell what the heck he's doing... but he's almost all the way through. His head is on the other side and he's sorta hanging. This was when he was stuck.

Well anyhow, for now, Tucker and I are hanging out and going to enjoy the nice weather today! It’s supposed to get up to about 75 today and tomorrow, but is perfect. It was probably almost 70 yesterday. Tomorrow, we are planning to head to the beach with Jacquie and the kids and Melissa, assuming we can wrestle the boat away from someone! I guess that’s it for now.


Hangin at the beach


Tucker loves digging in the sand.