A Word After Kings: Wrapping Up the July Opening

I’m cheat­ing with this one, sweet­ies.  After our 12 day king salmon open­ing, my writ­ten voice is as stiff as my hands, and our immi­nent return to sea has no lee­way for an awk­ward post that can’t hit its stride in a time­ly manner.

The short update is this. Yes, we were briefly back in Sit­ka. Yes, we got lucky. After a steady string of dis­mal July king open­ings, it’s a wel­come change to wrap up with grat­i­tude instead of despair. In spite of some chal­leng­ing weath­er, we enjoyed our­selves, the beau­ti­ful­ly-behav­ing boat, and even some decent num­bers of fish. Nei­ther of us were real­ly ready to quit when it closed on Tues­day night — pret­ty much the oppo­site of our stan­dard scene, where we strug­gle to hold every­thing togeth­er to the end and are des­per­ate to slam the door on this high-stakes opportunity.

Yes­ter­day was a blur of deliv­er­ing fish, fuel­ing up and chang­ing oil on both engines, clean­ing the fish hold, doing laun­dry and get­ting 16-day past due show­ers, and catch­ing up with friends. Today offered more fren­zy: gro­ceries, refill­ing the water tank, get­ting rid of our recy­cling, stick­ing a pile of bills in the mail. Folks often think that our time on the water must be such hard work, but I’ve come to real­ize that being in town and prepar­ing to go fish­ing is far more exhaust­ing that the fish­ing itself.

I’d intend­ed to trade the nar­ra­tive sto­ry­telling for the pho­to­graph­ic, this time around. Got some fan­tas­tic pho­tos of the Ner­ka in action from one of our part­ners, and had hoped to share a lit­tle slideshow in place of the words. But upload­ing even one pic­ture is too much for the mea­ger inter­net con­nec­tion I’ve man­aged to find here. “Here” is a glossy-veneered blond pic­nic table incon­gru­ous­ly plopped down on the edge of the har­bor park­ing lot. It’s quar­ter after 11, and the sky has final­ly passed through indi­go to deep­en into South­east Alaska’s mid-July not-quite-dark. It’s a still, over­cast evening, with the smell of a light sprin­kle just on the oth­er side of the clouds, per­haps. I’m look­ing out at the har­bor that’s still heav­i­ly steepled with trolling poles, know­ing that the exo­dus will begin tomorrow.

It’ll begin with us. The clock is already set for 5 a.m., when we’ll untie and start the search for coho that will dic­tate most of our next 8 weeks. Cap’n J and I are pret­ty fired up this year – dri­ven – so we’re eager to get a jump on this first coho trip. They’re small this ear­ly in the sea­son, and it will take a lot of them to fill even the Nerka’s mod­est fish hold. If we get lucky and land on ‘em, we could be back to the dock in 10 days or so. Hope­ful­ly we’ll have a bet­ter report for you with that turn-around. Until then, calm seas and clear skies to you. Be well, all.