Halibut!

Ryan and I are really happy about how flat black lake was. Probably the one calm day of the year though.

The Alec river is the biggest tributary into Black Lake and we take flow by stringing a steel cable across the river and tying the boat up. Here Ryan and I are on the bow of the boat. He is recording depth and I am recording water velocity as we slide along

Today we made a trip to the bay to get some fuel (4.35/gallon, not bad!) and propane. One the way there we stopped for a minute to fish for halibut. I brought 3 fish up to the boat, but we didn't have a gaff so I was only able to bring one in. It made about the best fish tacos I've ever had though.

While in the bay we stopped at the Trident fish processing facility. Its a pretty amazing place because they only process salmon, and they are only open for about 2 months per year. During that time however, they can can 400,000 fish per day. Mostly into little quarter pound cans. Interestingly, these cans are sold as a commodity that any company can buy and then put their own label on. Also, almost everyone working at the facility is from eastern Europe, mostly Ukraine I think. They come in on a special 3 month work visa. The really nice looking fish go to a special section called H&G (Head and gut), where the fish are, well, headed and gutted. Then they are flash frozen (see above) and sent to Japan. Interestingly, most salmon is canned, probably 80+%. Almost all of that goes to Europe. Apparently Americans just don't like canned salmon. Only a small percentage is filleted and sent to the US. This seemed silly to me, but the reason is that in Bristol bay, they catch 20 to 30 million fish, in three weeks. There is simply not enough capacity to fillet that many fish while it is still fresh. Its just to hard to hire that many people for three weeks of work. Canning is very fast by comparison, so they can deal with many huge loads in a matter of hours.