Adios!

Have you ever had the feeling that you were being hunted down by the Terminator? Now, I can honestly say that I have. Thanks Sean. Won't this boat go any faster?

Last week we took our last trip up the Alec river with our late season crew (Jen, Rachel, Me, Sean, and Conrad). It was a successful trip and we saw ~25 bears along the way. Luckily they are all pretty satiated on the 700,000 spawning sockeye that are there right now (note the fish heads in the foreground, the area was littered with them, as its the only part the bears won't eat).

We also did our last trip to Black Lake, which was an overnighter, so we stayed at Ron's cabin on Black River. Here we are waiting for some better weather to get out and get the work done.

After the bulk of the field work was done, Sean and I put in some time for coho. The water is unusually murky, but the ~1500 coho entering the river every day has made our job easier. We had some fun, and Sean got to take some fish home. Here's a little one I took on a fly this morning.

One of our last chores for the season is to pull all of our boats out of the water. We don't have the capacity to get our 19" workskiff out at camp, so we take it to the Trident Seafoods dock in the bay, and they haul it out for us. We are closing up camp now. Tomorrow we will board up the windows and drain the water system as our last activities. Then we wait for the nice folks from the ADF&G weir to give us a ride to the airstrip so we can head home. It has been a great season, and I think we are all pretty happy about the progress of the work we got done. See ya!