Gratuitous bear photo of the day

Across the river from our camp there are some nets that locals use for their subsistence fishing. The neighborhood dogs patrol the area pretty hard and sound the alarm when bears come by to pick the nets. The dogs are pretty tough and will often challenge the bears to a point. Even the bravest dogs will turn tail and run when the bears take a serious nip at them though. These nets are a constant source of entertainment for us. Thanks to Chad for the cool shot.

Fish On!

So after dropping Chad at the airport we headed down to the lagoon to get front row seats for the commercial salmon opener at Hume point. Fish and Game keeps sockeye counts at their weir and finally had enough escapement (~200,000) to allow a 48 hour opener. So, they decided to open the season at 3:30 pm on June 20. We arrived a half hour early to ensure that we would not miss it. There were about 20 boats waiting for the countdown to make their first sets of the season.

At 3:30 the Fish and Game boat gave a radio countdown and fired a flare gun ( a couple seconds early) to indicate the fishery open.

Nets out!

The Kurt Eldon makes their first set of the season with the tender practically pulling the net up on the beach. He is only about 50 feet from where we stand on the shore.

Kurt Eldon with a nice haul pulling the boat over. The first day of lagoon fishing netted about 19,000 fish for the fishery, so now the cannery is in full swing as well. More on that later.

Chad goes home

Two significant things happened the other day (June 20). In the morning we took chad to the "airport", so he could go back to Oregon. Luckily he had a nice relaxing vacation here with us. See how happy he is?

Luckily the lines at the airport were short

The security can be pretty tough though.

Chad's ticket out of here, a Caravan. He said that after he left Chignik they landed on a beach somewhere and loaded up 35 50 pound boxes of frozen salmon from a fisherman, which brings us to the next significant event.

All decked out

Last year Ray Hilborn mentioned that a deck on our cabin could be nice and might help keep the cabin cleaner (note sweet inlay of steel grating near the door). Anyway, we made it happen this year. It tooks a couple of days to pour the concrete footers and get it set up, but in the end we are pretty happy with it. It was even t-shirt weather the day we finished. Thanks Ray!

Black Lake Sampling

A few days ago we headed up to Black Lake, the trickiest sampling we do. To get to Black Lake we have to run through the delta where the Black River flows into Chignik Lake. At points it is a foot or less deep. Running the delta basically involves taking a jet boat as fast as possible while swinging the boat back and forth to keep the jet intake as near the surface of the water as possible. Sometimes it is very smooth.

Sometimes you get stuck.

For our two day trip we stayed at a cabin on Black River. When we showed up, we had a rare and amazingly clear view of the volcano, Mt. Veniaminof (seen in the back).

Sampling at Black Lake this trip involved lots of hydrology for Jen's work. She has river height gauges in the rivers flowing into Black Lake, and we were there to set them up and calibrate them. All in all it was a successful trip.

Finally, some science

So we finally got to some beach seining the other day and caught several hundred thousand sticklebacks. We had to sample 1/2048th of the sample just to finish in a reasonable time. It must be some kind of record. We have had some extraordinarily nice weather for June though.

Down in a hole

Well, it was high time we dug a new outhouse hole, so down I went. We ended up about seven feet down and only hit a little ice. This one should last a while. I hope.