THE WAITING GAME
It seems like every year, the week leading up to the 4th of July seems like the longest, most stressful week of the year. In position to fish, and anxious to start pulling in nets full of slippery salmon, we wait and wait and wait.
Every year, I tell myself not to worry, that the fish always come. However, this has been a strange year to say the least, so it wouldn't be surprising if something unexpected happened...
Mike explored the Nushagak River and caught a few fish in the process. They had a considerable amount of downtime. One evening, they tied up to an old, abadoned cannery to explore. Another evening, they had a fire on the beach and found a 8 foot long, 200 pound whale bone, which Mike wrapped up and loaded onto the tender, to ship back to Homer. When the tendermen asked him what it was, he told them it was a swordfish. Funny that some of the guys actually believed him.
The night of the 29th, he was itching to transfer out of the district. Fishing was slow everywhere, but the in-river estimates by biologists predicted more fish arriving to Egegik in the next several days. He fished the Nush the morning of July 1st, and after catching only four fish in three hours, he left and headed towards Egegik.
Fishing started to get hot in Egegik, but they had to hang tight, since you must wait 48 hours to fish after transferring districts. Finally, the evening of July 3rd, they had their first opener in Egegik from 11pm- 4:30am. Mike texted me right before to say it was super foggy, and he was nervous. Making a set with tons of other boats around on a foggy night is unnerving to say the least. They had a decent night of fishing, but not great.
Then, on July 4th, THE FISH CAME!
They had an opener from noon until 5 pm and caught more fish in those 5 hours than they caught June 23- July 3rd. Fishing is crazy.
The fishing has been steady since then. I haven't heard many updates, which means there's no time to talk- always a good sign. This is when sleep comes in chucks of a couple hours, and the crew is pushed to the max. Bristol Bay 2020 is now here in full force!
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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.