It's now two days later and I'm likely to leave tomorrow, not at all eager to do so! Yesterday dawned surprisingly bright with enough sun poking through blue holes that I put out the solar panels which, I was pleased, put up a decent charge even with cloud covering the sun, adding about 10% to the battery. It was a day with anxiety just beneath the surface, each boat engine spiking my stress while I tried to enjoy it nonetheless. Tea on the porch came shortly after breakfast, a delicious cup, while I birdwatched and read a little. One of the eagles carried an adult chum across to a perch near the eagle tree, perhaps the same one it used last time I was here. The day before, I watched him carry a silver-bright fish, presumably a sockeye, from downriver, upriver, and back around the eagle tree and out of sight. I do wonder where they are catching them and how far they travel just to get here. Are there sockeyes heading up the Whiting right now, or do the Sweetheart fish nose into the inlet as they gather the courage to brave fresh water?

From here the water looked perfectly calm, but while I was watching I only saw two boats head into Gilbert Bay and two head out, so I hoped the impending storm and getting away from the weekend was overriding the fine weather. After tea I fertilized the garden, bringing liquid fertilizer from the kitchen to the garden beds and then watering them with water from the seep on the beach. After that, I finally got to work painting the outhouse, disappointed at how much lighter the paint I have is relative to the existing beige paint. I think it would be have more subtle if I'd only painted the new floor and the siding to either side of the door (primed but never painted), but in order to hide the old rot/mildew on the bottom of the siding to either side of the floor, I needed to paint those as well as the joists between. Actually, it was less the color difference itself that annoyed me than the fact that a second coat will definitely be needed to hide the underlying paint. 

Although I probably could have painted the inside of Schist House as well, the minutia involved in painting all sides of all the joists wore on me, as did the anxiety about the rest of the day, on top of the need to paint ALL of the walls in that outhouse over a much darker gray with beige paint. I thought perhaps priming it first would be a better avenue than two coats of beige. In any event, it was nearly lunch time by then so I had a quesadilla, read on the porch, and then took Cailey for a walk at low tide, which was needed (because it was such a high low tide) to access my goal downriver: the landslide. I'd seen a large spruce with root wad at the edge of the river laying across a mud slurry, but I was unprepared for the scale of this mud slide. It had come down one of the many chutes across the steep mountainside, culminating in a cliff at the edge of high tide. I couldn't tell how far up it originated, but as far up as I could see, the chute had carried mud down, taking everything along its edges. The detritus of the slide was about ten feet high, mostly dirt with a few rocks and a number of trees buried inside. It was still fairly soft and I aborted my attempt to reach the waterfall. I think the top of it is well above the tideline now and I can't wait to see how it evolves. I wonder if both my meadow and the grassy point were created by similar, it somewhat larger, events. 

At 3:30, as planned, I fed Cailey, closed the door, donned waders, and carried my backpack, extratuffs, and piece of plywood to the water's edge. This is a nice, sturdy piece of T-111 that I had been using as the temporary outhouse floor when the other piece was rotting out and now can be used to cover the rotten hole in the back bench of the Ronquil. As much as I tried to talk myself out of it, I was very stressed and hot in my hoody (the only overshirt I'd brought that I was willing to wear in "public") as I paddled to the boat, added five gallons of gas to the engine, emptied my dry bag of camping gear and tucked it in the tarp under the dash, removed binoculars and trail camera from my pack and reorganized everything. As much as I hated the delay, I was happy to have done so for the simplicity it offered once I reached Gilbert Bay. The water was flat calm and beautiful and I was delighted to find but two boats at anchor--or, actually, two boats rafted together with a bunch of people on board cleaning fish and another boat alone, with no tenders ashore. After I anchored, I asked the group how fishing was and they said it was great and gave me the rundown on the various bears around including a mother and three cubs. I put my pack in the kayak and off I hustled to the beach, dragging it all the way to timber since it was a rising tide even though I knew it wasn't going to reach that far. With bear mace in hand, I chatted to the bears as I crossed the peninsula, headed up along the beach, over the first promontory, and down to the second section of flats. There I saw a surprising number of people--at least five or six--for one small boat, and learned later that some of them were from one of the rafted boats. Seeing two crossing the creek from the other side with a couple of fish dangling, I hastened my pace and, with a few nods and a hello to the only person who looked or spoke to me (a woman), I shot up the steep slope of the second promontory and thence to my point, having made the trip in only about ten minutes. I was pretty sure at that point that there couldn't be more people fishing, but was a little bit afraid that the guys crossing the river were repositioning, possibly to my site. And I may have been right.

But what I found was an unoccupied rocky point with the water at the level that seemed the most familiar from my many years of fishing there. One green hole rippled in the center and a handsome, round-faced mama bear stood on the point above while her three young-of-the-year cubbies wandered about carrying fish. I'm pretty sure I soon saw her catch one out of the corner of my eye. I was ever so grateful to have the opportunity to fish, just what I had asked for, and couldn't believe how few people were there at this point of the season. I was lucky and my strategy had paid off. My backup plan was to quickly retreat if my point was taken and not soon-to-be-vacated (or if the bay was just full of boats) and do a bird survey at Birding Beach, but this was what I really wanted. 

Having set myself up to fish and made prayers to God and sockeye, I threw my net toward the pull in great expectation. Nothing. And nothing. And nothing. I began to wonder if there were any fish in this pool! Had the other people been fishing lower, as the people I'd passed apparently had? But no, they had seen mama bear, and she was obviously catching a lot of fish. What was going on?? I was baffled. In the meantime, another group was fishing in the crevasse below and when they popped up we communicated with hand signs that neither of us had caught any fish. That at least made me feel a little better. I was still working on my technique and extending the reach of the net and, as I finally encompassed the pool a little better (after 25 minutes of bewildered fishing), I felt that thrill of fish vibrations in my net, subtly different from the thrumming of the current. I was crouching on the rocks over my first sockeye when I startled to see a man looking around the corner of the point at me with a gun in his hand. It was one of the guys from the point below and, when I'd bonked my fish and extricated her from the net, I looked around in bewilderment for my stringer and found him uncoiling it for me. I was a little taken aback by that, and more so as he told me how he usually brings his whole net over to the bleeding crevasse to take care of them there. The implication was that he felt I needed instruction. 

I strung my fish and placed her in the bleeding crevasse and talked, as well as I could over the roar of the river, with Mike, the man who had joined me on the point. This was a first for me--no request or anything, just matter-of-factly setting up to fish the lower pool while I fished the upper. That was fine with me, for I never catch sockeyes in that pool, but it was odd to have someone fishing at my back. Just a few casts later he caught my eye and showed me/explained how he cast, a somewhat different procedure from mine, but one that I've seen others use. I'm not sure if it was because he didn't think my technique was effective or because I'd mentioned (after he mansplained that the fish were in the green hole in the middle as though I had no idea that was the case) that I was limited by range and this might increase it. Certainly he threw his all the way to the current with no apparent effort. Either way, I was in no position or mood to learn a new casting technique and kept at it. After a few more minutes, Mike finally gave me a sound piece of advice, politely asking if he could offer it to me. A little grumpy about it, I agreed. He suggested that after the net hits the water, I should hold the line up, out of the water as much as possible (which for me means taking up the slack quickly first). He said that the line in the water, and there was always a lot for me, drags the net downstream with it, closing the net instead of letting it settle in a circle. I wasn't sure I had a lot of control over this, but as soon as I managed a decent cast and held the line up, I had two sockeye in my net, and then two more. I think I could actually see the net descend in a circle when I did this. I was finally catching fish and felt increasing comradery with Mike as the bleeding pool filled.  

He was also catching fish fairly regularly in his pool, and in no way put pressure on me to leave, which I appreciated. He and his partner (on top of the point on bear duty) had been here earlier in the weekend and had apparently limited out by Saturday and had to return to Juneau to process fish, so they were not in the state of fish anxiety that I was. Early on, as he opened his dry bag where he stowed his fish, three of the four fish they'd caught on the other side of the creek came spilling out down the smooth slope and into Sweetheart creek. Mike managed to grab two and I plunged in to crook my finger under the gill plates of the third, swooping it into the bleeding crevasse for him to grab. When I had fishes four and five in the net (I think), one of them slipped out a hole and flopped across the rock, deftly saved by Mike, so hopefully that made us even. Mike was there every time I caught a fish, which was a little weird, him crouching and hanging on to flopping fish as I was trying to bonk them, then again hanging onto the tail while I had them by the head as I strung them. He was clearly eager to be helpful, which I appreciate, but I felt rather like he was patronizing me. Still, no harm done, he saved a fish, and gave me the advice that let me catch them. 

Sixty-five minutes after I caught my first fish, I caught my tenth (actually eleventh, but one did successfully slip through the net once landed, oh, and a twelfth jack that I released). An hour and a half total and I magically had my annual goal of sockeye, three weeks before I usually even give it a go! I was elated. And a little exhausted too, so I took the packing up slowly, lingering to clip fins, fill out my permit, pack everything up, and load fish over about fifteen minutes while Mike repositioned where I had been fishing and, when I got my phone out to photograph my beautiful fish, offered to take some photos of me with them, which I was grateful for and which turned out great. When I started sliding my ten fish into my pack, he rushed over and helped me with that too, then insisted on carrying it up the slope for me. I wasn't going to argue about that! He closed it and held it up for me to put on, I slung my small pack with my net in it over the front, and off I went with mace in hand. 

Amazingly, it only took me about ten minutes to get back to the kayak, my new(ish) dry bag so much more comfortable to walk in than the old one. The mama and cubs had recently headed upstream and I saw no bears on the way down, or people either, and found that the two rafted boats had departed. I took a breather at the top of the beach, appreciated that many Lincoln's sparrows were also gamboling about this meadow, then laboriously drug the kayak far down the beach to the water over about five minutes, enjoying as always the serene kayak out to the boat over Gilbert Bay which is, somehow, always glassy calm and pretty as a puzzle when I leave.

I got organized and set myself up on the Ronquil to clean fish, first dousing myself twice with deet to deflect the menacing horde of noseeums. It took me about half an hour to clean the fish, grateful that I'd remembered the plywood to use as a platform under the bath mat, got everything ready to offload, and sped off for the ten-minute ride home. With all my camping gear to offload (having appropriated the tarp they were sheltering under for the cleaned fish) as well as fish and fishing gear, I decided to land on shore first and offload, then anchor the boat. I carried everything but the fish up first, then released Cailey after I anchored and brought the tarp of precious cargo to the porch. There was a lot of prep to do from putting away the solar panel and the camping gear to setting up a cleaning station to gathering knives and plates and bowl and spoon and wine. I'd paddled to shore right around 7:30, four hours from departure and the maximum time I feel comfortable leaving Cailey contained in my absence. The fillet fest ended a little after 9:00 pm. It probably would have gone faster, but I'd forgotten to bring, as I'd intended, my fillet knife and sharpener, so I was limited to what I had on hand. I used five different knives, of which my leatherman was the sharpest, surprised to find that the bread knife was the best choice for the initial cut removing the two sides of the fish, at times resulting in a new filleting method for me which involved peeling back the fish as I cut rather than leaving it laying on the backbone, a strategy I'm sure others use with much more skill. From there, I used a couple of different kitchen knives to remove the ribs, my leatherman to cut off the bellies, (being the only knife reasonably capable of cutting through the skin), a long knife to slice the fillets, and again a leatherman to cut the skin. They were decent sized fish and I was pleased with how many produced five portions rather than just four. And, oh what beautiful fish! I don't remember every appreciating just how vibrant blue-green they are! Perhaps it's been a long time since I caught fish this silver-bright, especially filleting them before being iced, which changes the skin color. Each one was a marvel in beauty. One had been attacked by, perhaps, a seal, with a whole circle of bites around the underbelly, but they appeared to be shallow. 

Having not eaten since a cookie around 2:30, I considered just putting the portions in the fridge, but decided to plunge on and get them cleaned and in the freezer. In two rounds I laid them on paper towels after rinsing them off, putting them in ziplock baggies. I had a lot of sandwich sized bags, which fit most portions, and used the few gallon sized bags for the longer pieces, several to a bag. I had deliberately left the vacuum packer behind so as not to jinx or put too much pressure on myself, so this was a known issue. My plan is to glaze and vacuum pack them at home, frozen, which has worked well in the past. 

I put the last pieces in the fridge a little after 10:00 pm, bleached the counters and cleaned up, then heated up a can of baked beans for dinner, having only had wine since my cookie, which under other circumstances would be unheard of for me. I pondered the transformative nature of hunting: during the four hours between departure and return, I had not thought once of thirst (though I was thirsty when I left, having deliberately moderated my liquid intake), of food, or going to the bathroom, two of which are often forcefully on my mind! Amazing.

By the time I'd collapsed in bed and read a few pages, barely understood, it was 11:30 and I could not get to sleep. My mind was racing with all the things that could be going wrong, partly because the day had been SO SUCCESSFUL, I must have messed up somewhere to break the spell, right? Did I leave the fathometer running on the boat, or the engine down? No, and almost positive no. Did I leave the fridge door open like I did a couple of days ago? No, I checked that. Did I leave something outside I should have taken in? No, everything came in and is soaking in the sink, carcasses in the river, everything rinsed. And then my welcome reprieve from frequent bathroom breaks flipped and I had to get up twice while trying to get to sleep and, when I woke up an hour later, had to do the same thing again. My tennis elbow, which like all my other worries had never twinged while fishing, was now aching, and I found my shoulders somewhat uneasy as well. 

Long story short, it was not a great night of sleep, though I felt okay when I woke up at 8:30. All was well at the lodge and I started the day as usual on the porch. The outhouse walls are still quite tacky and probably shouldn't take another coat so soon, but the floor might be ready in the near future. I retrieved the screwdriver from there (which I'd used to remove the hooks for painting) and headed over to Hermit Thrush for a long-needed project: moving the light lower so I can reach the switch while lying horizontal and replacing the tapestry that was removed for the light. I was grateful that I'd spontaneously brought a hammer because I found both wing nuts on the battery too tight to turn by hand. I think perhaps they got salt spray on them on the way down and are corroding. I managed to get the positive one off, but it was clear I'd have to hammer the negative nut off all the way around every turn, and decided it would be safe enough with just the positive side off. 

I had intended to simply lower the light from its position in the center of the bed until I could reach it, but this brought the fixture quite low with its horizontal rod and rather large bulb. Rather than creating a bonking hazard, I moved it to the side of the bed next to the shelves, then decided on the new location of the tapestry, not where I'd expected in its former location (somewhat pale compared with the rest of the wall), but lower and more centered over the bed, which wasn't there when it was originally hung. I was quite pleased to have accomplished that.

A hot lunch sounded good and, with my trip waning, I needed to use my Sweetheart sockeye portion from last year, so I cooked some cheddar-broccoli rice with cabbage and carrots in it and steamed the sockeye on top. While that simmered, I did the many fishy and other dishes along with the hummingbird feeders not currently in use and was done just in time to eat a meal in the (for once!) pleasant breeze on the porch. Well, more than a breeze! This was kicking up 3+ seas out in Stephen's Passage and the boat was rocking dramatically at anchor as the smaller ones off Gilbert Bay rolled in. For once, I didn't mind and, surprisingly, the sky was bright, even washing yellow sunshine over the meadow! It had started sprinkling just as I finished filleting last night and roared most of the night, diminishing before I got up, and I had expected it would pour during this blow. It was so bright I put out the solar panel which immediately picked up a high flow of energy--more than yesterday, enough to fully charge the battery, plus one and a half of my laptop batteries at the same time and the LED light on the fridge that I used extensively last night while cleaning portions.

In the afternoon, despite the very pleasant temp, light, and benign breeze, I went inside with the express purpose of napping, knowing that I needed it badly, and eventually managed to drift off once Cailey snuggled against my feet (pretty sure that was the nap catalyst) and we both slept for about an hour and a half. While I worked on the puzzle after that, Cailey disappeared and I eventually wandered down the path to look for her. I found her burying something in a sedge clump on the beach, her prize a sockeye carcass! So cute. This morning she put her front paws up on a sawhorse before I put them away and slurped a bit of salmon left there. I'd seen an eagle circle and, once, even swoop down on the carcasses earlier, but I'm not sure if they ever took one. There were only seven this morning, so it's possible! They do love heads. Now it's 6:30 pm, the wind is dying and there's a great blue gap in the clouds following a very brief but dramatic shower. The high tide is at 11:30 tomorrow, but the low tide is a 5.5 which makes for a decent departure, though if I want to avoid getting trapped by the falling tide I'd have to leave at low, which is at 4:45. I am sure not eager to leave, but with another trip next Thursday (hopefully), it is probably wise. What a nice stay I've had!

The wind was much calmer than anticipated when we got to the lodge in the morning and I was pleased to find the forecast reduced to 2' seas diminishing to 1-2' in the evening. I wrestled with the decision of whether to leave on the 11:30 high tide or wait until the 4:40 pm low tide (5.5'), swapping a leisurely afternoon at home with a slightly more stressful one at the homestead. Having thoroughly cleaned up Hermit Thrush, it was already 9:00 and I'd have had to start seriously getting ready no later than 10:30 for an 11:30 departure, so opted for the homestead afternoon; this way I'd be able to, at the very least, put a second coat of paint on Gneiss House.

After breakfast I found my window squeegee, filled a tub with hot water and vinegar, and headed out to wash the windows on all the cabins. While out, I set the trail cameras, replaced the moisture absorber in Hermit Thrush, and brushed the cobwebs from the roofs of both outhouses, finding that Gneiss House, though not bone dry, was dry enough for a second coat, which I put on after lunch and weeding the rhubarb pot, pleased so see that the leaves, if not large, were at least larger than they'd gotten last year. From there I packed and cleaned and did some small organizing in the lodge including the food shelves and the firestarting materials which had become overrun with cardboard trash ready to burn in the absence of regular fires. Poor Cailey was anxious as soon as I undertook the first of the departure chore hours before we left.

Around 4:00 I paddled down to the boat, having hauled most of my gear as low as I could on the beach before it became mud. The day had been dry and fairly bright, but a shower descended just after I began and I used the tarp to cover the vulnerable items, though it soon passed. After fueling and prepping the boat, I pulled in as far as I could, coming ashore on the upriver side of the see's channel about ten minutes before the tide and hurried up the path to put the kayak away and fill a small tote with the mostly-frozen sockeye. Then I began the laborious process of packing the gear little by little across the mud. It wasn't far, but far enough! We shoved off at 4:50 and had easy sailing about a quarter of the way out of the port entrance before swells arrived, so smooth I could hardly see them at first. Pulling out to Stephen's Passage, I was impressed by the brightness of the sky to the south--even with a bit a blue perhaps--especially in contrast to the wall of whiteness ahead of us. It had started sprinkling on the way out and a deluge soon descended upon us. Thankfully, Cailey had settled into her bed well and was already covered by a blanket in addition to her jacket. The rain was so hard it splattered silver droplets on the surface of the sea, making quite a pretty sight. And I had picked a fortunate time to leave, as the seas were about one foot (once we left the slightly larger ones at the entrance to the port) and we were able to maintain full speed all the way home. A few gillnetters were out and I simply swung wide of them to avoid them completely.

A wet ride home