FISHING IS STEADY AND THE BOAT IS HOLDING UP
The past week has been one of the most trying of Mike's life. After pulling the boat from the water and learning how bad the hydraulic problem was, the crew knew they had their work cut out for them. They also learned of a slew of other issues to fix. Mike was worried about the possibility of the boat failing and not being able to fish in Egegik at all! That would be a nightmare.
We have a unique situation with the boat this year. A friend of ours passed away in December, and his wife recruited Mike to run their (nearly new) boat. It's beautiful, fast, and fancy, so naturally Mike agreed. To make a long story short, we've learned that new boats can have just as many (if not more) issues than old boats, especially when they weren't put together correctly to begin with. Mike and his crew have definitely had their fair share of challenges, but they made huge strides last week, and right now, it's (mostly) running fine. I was on the phone with Mike last weekend when Pete, who has proven to be an excellent crewman, figured out the source of a major problem and fixed it. Mike yelled with excitement, declared he would give him a $100 bill, and nearly cried!
The days out of the water cost them four openers. Fortunately, they were relatively slow. They arrived back in Egegik on Sunday, and had the best set of the season so far- 3,000 pounds of fish at once! The fish average five pounds each, so those are some pretty fishy nets. On Monday, they were the high boat for our processor, which means they caught the most fish out of all the boats- a pretty big honor, especially considering the setbacks from the previous week.
Right now, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game is scheduling openers once a day from 10 or 11am until 7 or 8pm. This means they can get caught up on sleep, since they didn't do much of that while repairing the boat in Naknek last week. Soon, they'll likely be fishing around the clock, so now's the time to bank some rest. If you're interested in seeing what these announcements look like, here's the link where they post them. If you want to totally geek out, you can learn all kinds of information from this page, including daily fish counts, escapement, stock composition at test fisheries, etc.
We're happy to hear you like our updates. I'm hoping to send you more good news next week.
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The time has come when sleep comes in two hour chunks and the deck of the Courageous is filled with fish. The crew is working around the clock, harvesting the world's best wild Alaska sockeye salmon to fill your freezers.
The F/V Courageous is currently in the Nushagak fishing district with about 650 other boats, waiting for the sockeye salmon to strike.
We've been super busy with preseason tasks the past few weeks, and now the F/V Courageous and its crew are on their way to Bristol Bay.