We are fishing the day away, catching fish by fish. The last two fishing periods the fish hitting the net have come in single hits, and not big schools of fish. With about five hours of fishing left we have about 1,000 fish iced in our holds. Here are a few terms for the different ways salmon hit our gillnet.

Size categories: Singles, Bunches, Groups, Mega hits

Adjectives for a type of hit: Splashers, Bobbers, Jiggers, Tuggers, Deep V, Lead line stealth hit, Tail dancer

For example, Erick Anderson in our radio group recently announced, "Yep, it looks like I had one tugger bunch on layout."

If you can think of terms we are missing comment below to build our list!

Hi Folks, We had a fabulous day of fishing yesterday.  The fish were everywhere and we managed to catch 1,700 sockeye salmon (plus a few of other species).  It was a big day- we even picked fish in our sleep last night! We'll do a more exciting blog post soon, but just found out that there's an Emergency Opener for fishing tomorrow.  We're headed out of the harbor in a few hours. We have reached our order goal of 100.  All new orders will go on a waitlist.  We can now confirm that our prices will be the same as last season: $9/lb for Methow, Anchorage and shipped orders (+ shipping) and $8.50/lb picked up in Homer.

The fish are beautiful!

The Northland has gone through a lot since the end of the fishing season last summer.  She was stripped down to nearly nothing (even the stringers were replaced) and then painstakingly rebuilt into a fresh, new and improved version of her former self.  Emily is glad that the hull was not painted and still shows her age of 40+, but Kyle partly wants to make her completely new and shiny. The launch went well- the engine runs well and we barely took on any water.  Now that all of the rotten wood is out and thanks to Kyle's crafty plywood and foam core construction, she now sits three inches higher in the water! Thanks to these improvements combined with the increase in horse power, the Northland's maximum speed has increased from about 7 knots to about 13 knots.  This is great considering we're a semi-displacement hull (non-planing).  We're hoping we won't be the last boat back to the river this season. We did have a little excitement when smoke started coming out of the mid-ship fish hold.  An overly tightened stuffing box (where the shaft exits the boat) was the culprit.  We had to make our return to the harbor with Emily constantly pouring water on it to keep it cool. Overall we're super excited to be in the water and working out the bugs of a 'new' boat.  We still hope to fish on Monday!

*UPDATE:  Due to your excitement and our limited freezer capacity when we drive to the Methow, Methow orders are full!  New Methow orders will be added to our wait list.  If we can arrange for more freezer capacity we'll take people off of the wait list.

 Alaska and shipped orders are still available, so keep them coming!

The Northland is getting closer and closer to coming out of the shop.  

With the exterior top coated it's almost ready to be out in the weather.  The fish holds are greatly improved since last season and a new power roller is installed.  Even the cabin interior is in progress- we'll have a bed to sleep in this season.  There are a million things to still finish, but we're hoping to be in the water towards the beginning of June!

For our dads, fellow boat builders and others interested in the details of the project, visit this Facebook album to see lots of photos of the process.

 

Thanks for following us or finding us at our new website with our new name Small Scales Seafoods!  If you weren't following us before go to:  www.emilyandkylescatch.wordpress.com to learn about past adventures and last season.  If you were following us before, please subscribe to this new site to keep abreast of things.  We look forward to sharing our fish with you this year and also our fishing tales on this blog, our Facebook site and Twitter! We're now accepting orders for the 2011 season!  Read through the pages of this site to learn more.