Hey guys! Happy 4th of July by the way.

Well, after being out at sea for 7 days, I'm back on land. We've caught almost 40,000 pounds of salmon so far, things going pretty well. Fishing is still a little slow, but it should be picking up because it's still the beginning of the season.

The reason we're on land and not fishing is because we are switching rivers. Bristol Bay (where we are fishing) is just a place where a bunch of rivers spill into the ocean, and each river has a section of the bay. And the fishermen have to decide which section they want to fish in, because you can only fish in one section at a time, if you want to switch sections then there is a 48 hour waiting period during which you can't fish. So that's why we aren't fishing right now. Since we switched rivers, we have to wait 48 hours before we can fish again. That gives us a chance to come ashore and fix the nets, and gives me a chance to check E-mail and stuff.

The Fish and Game has been letting the fishermen fish during the outgoing tide, from high tide to low tide. In a nutshell that means we fish 6 hours on, 6 hours off, give or take an hour depending exactly how the tide is. So it's been tough work, my days are all messed up because we fish twice a day, and we sleep twice a day, so one day feels like two short days. So it's a bit confusing. Later on in the season we will be fishing for 24 hours a day, at that point we will fish in shifts, 2 guys up and 1 guy sleeps, that way we can always be fishing.

Sorry Jeremiah, I lost my/your gear at sea. It blew away in the 50 m/h winds we were having a couple days ago. I tied it up just like everyone else's gear, but it still managed to blow away. :( I've been using an extra set of gear that Rick had on board. It's really frustrating, my gear was tied up better than some of the other gear, but my gear was still the gear to blow away, I was pretty frustrated about that.

Well that's all for now, I uploaded a few more pictures, but not a whole lot. I've been busy working, so I haven't been taking very many pictures lately.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/27950064@N02/2637773672/


Have a good summer.
Timothy