Yesterday we deployed our subsistence gill net for the first time. If you remember we got it for free from Mike in Seward when we drove from Key West to Kodiak last year. We have carried the net this far and finally set it to catch salmon.
When we were in Kodiak town working on the net, friends teased us because the net appeared bizarre. They said it had too heavy of a lead line and the buoy’s on the float line were knock you out buoy’s, made of all solid plastic instead of the new foam cushion, the webbing was the right size (5 1/2″ diagonal) but was in poor condition. The normal cost to build a new subsistence gill net is around $1000 to $1400. We were just happy our net was free, well minus the $150 in repair supplies to mend parts of the webbing and rehang new hanging line that attaches the webbing to the float line.
As soon as the whole net was in the water we noticed the float line sank. Thankfully we were in deep enough we were not entirely dragging our net on the bottom of the sea floor but pretty close. We dinghyed back to SV Just Drifting and grabbed big finders and tied them on various places of the float line. The float line started to actually float . . . at the surface. While tying on the big finders Wade noticed something in the net! Presto two pink salmon. This isn’t the biggest score in fish, but we were happy. We did not want a lot of pink salmon and we had heard they were running pretty hard right now but we accomplished the goal of launching the net, retrieved the net, and caught fish in the net. Maybe now we’ll be ready for more taster fish like Red salmon in Bristol Bay or Silver salmon in the fall.
This morning we headed to what we remembered as our favorite anchorage from two years ago. Captain’s Harbor has a beautiful river flowing into a well protected anchorage, no williwaws, and the first place we caught a pot full of Dungeness Crab. We set the trap where we remembered we set it before and we lowered the dinghy to take a walk around the spit along the shore. As soon as we started walking we noticed bear tracks and later we noticed bear dung, but thankfully we saw no bears. As the last time we traveled this area was in late August there were some minor differences. The major difference is the bugs! Oh my goodness there are so many flying bugs! At first we thought they didn’t bite but then a couple of times we felt these little boogers break skin. One of our favorite anchorages has turned sour.
On another note, we are no longer able to send or receive data using our Iridium Go device. Hopefully we can stop off in King Cove to call the company and find out what is going on, but until then we’re back to using our SSB to send Noon Reports and download weather.
Cheers,
Wade and Sara
Captain’s Harbor Inlet 35 feet Mud Anchorage 55° 09.800’N, 162° 05.837W Fair VHF Weather Signal, Great SSB Signal, No Data Iridium Go connection
To find where are Wade, Sara, and SV Just Drifting, copy and paste these coordinates 55.16333333,-162.0972833333 into Google Maps!
