April 14 and it's over!

I have been working on the boat and not paying much attention to Cod, but the 4/14 closure date got my attention. I should make a final trip.  Rumors are zipping around again about Cod going to an IFQ like program. I really doubt it, but stranger things have happened.  My friend Thor Olsen is done fishing his Halibut and two of his crew are interested in going for a short trip.  Game On!  Since I can't really work the deck, I'll cut bait and be the cook while  Brian and Calvin do the heavy lifting.  Groceries, bait, ice and away we go down the East Side to Ugak Bay. The weather looks as though it will cooperate, so if there are a few fish around, we should do OK.

When it's Hot and you're Not!

The Cod fishing is excellent and it looks like the jig quota will be caught before the end of April. I'm hearing some of the best boats are going to be in the 400,000 lb of fish caught range.  Wow! They deserve it.  They started January 1st and fished every day they possibly could.  By  the time I got to Kodiak and set up, almost half of the quota had been caught.  That's just the way it is.  I'm really not interested in starting that early.  Too much time away from home as it is.

Here we go

I have a pretty good recollection of the first trip.  It sucked!  The weather was bad and made it miserable for me.  My back is not up to the task yet and it may never be.  The bending over to pick up fish is too much strain on the fused vertebra.  The fishing is OK, but I need a crew to handle the deck for me.  I'm not happy about it, but that's the way it's going to be from now on.  So, back to town, deliver the catch and work on the boat as much as I can.  Poop!

Where to go, where to go?

Picking the destination for the first trip of the year is almost always a painful process. You don't want to go to a spot which may have been picked over already or has a bunch of boats working the area.  Or, you may go to a spot where the fishing is marginal.  Too many questions and not enough data.  It takes a trip or two to get a feel for what's happening. For my first trip, I've decided to go west through Whale Pass to the Shelikof Straits side of the Island.  It is a couple of hours more travel time than going down the East side, but I haven't been this way in a while and I'm curious.

Take the weather and shove it.

Dismal weather so far this spring.  It has been one storm after another and spring actually feels like a very distant prospect.  I got the skiff picked off, sent out to the storage yard, and picked up the jigging equipment.  It only took me about 5 or 6 hours to mount everything and wire it up.  Next is a trip to Fish and Game to register for the Kodiak area misc fin-fish jig fishery.  Each district in Alaska has it's own specific area which it controls and manages.  The permit card is "statewide", but you are only allowed to register and fish in one district.  It's called "super exclusive area registration".  Well, I'm setup and all I need to do is get groceries, bait and ice.  No more excuses, it's time to go out.  Weather permitting , of course.

To kill a Codfish or not to kill a Codfish?

The boat survived the winter without incident.  Everything started right up and ran fine.  I have to make a decision about jigging this year.  I'm only 8 months out from back fusion and while I feel pretty good, I'm not sure the back is ready.  I have plenty of boat work to keep me busy, but catching fish is what I do and I don't think the season is going to last much longer.  The seine skiff is still sitting on the back deck, so that's my first job.  Getting it lifted off and sent out to the yard.

I got locked out!

Technology is a wonderful thing (I think) I did something and haven't' been able to get into my site since June.  Anyway, I'm in now and I'll update historically,starting in June if I can remember everything.

It all worked, somehow.

I finally made it to Homer.  The rest of the trip was beautiful and uneventful!  I saw lots of wildlife, some of it almost too close. I saw lots of Moose butts (in Canada) in the camera lens, but never got a good shot until just before Homer.  Every time I stopped to take a picture the Moose would turn and head into the bush. This one stayed still for the shot and so did I until I noticed his/her ear position.  Oh boy, time to move!

It's Just Too Much Fun!

The new engine arrived and the shop has installed it. Oh boy, this is not good.  This engine has a very bad knock on the right hand side down low.  It sounds like a bad bearing or a bad connecting rod.  The shop is sending me to the supply yard where the engine came from.  It's about 70 miles north of here.  Both shops are watching me to make sure I get there ok.  I'm going very slow and easy to make sure this engine gets me there.
 I made it to 100 Mile New & Used.  The owner listened to the engine for about 5 seconds and said, there was no way he was going to let me drive off with that engine in the Exploder.  It will cost me another day on top of the 2&1/2 days I have already lost, but I don't see an alternative.
 I can't tell you how impressed I am with both of these shops.  They have both been 100 % on top of this mess.  I's real nice to see people who exhibit such a high level of integrity with their business practices.
 I'm sitting in the Imperial Hotel in 100 Mile waiting for the call from the shop.  I went out side to walk around and get a little exercise, but it's awfully cold outside.
Here we are, it's noon and the engine is installed and sounds terrific!  Joe Schweitzer, who is the owner of !00 Mile New & Used, apologized for the inconvenience.  I assured him I was most satisfied with his shop and his people.  I know he must have had a lot of ongoing work, but he made sure my engine got swapped out in under 24 hours, so I could get back on the road and not have to wait through the weekend.  Very impressive and heart warming.  Thanks to Joe and his staff for a super job!
Back on the road to Homer!

You gotta be kidding me!

I'm on the ALCAN, but I'm not moving an inch.  Of all the bummers, when traveling, breaking down is right up there at the top of the list.  I didn't even get 250 miles into British Columbia and the Ford's engine spun a rod bearing.  I wish I could say it was just a bad car, but I picked it out after weeks of searching. I'm a victim of my own thoroughness.  I picked a car that had lived on Vashon Island it's whole life.  Evidently a car which only does short trips to the store and whatnot can have a problem when put under a pretty good load like a long haul to Alaska.  It seems they build up a lot of junk in the oil ways and internal parts of the engine from being a short distance personal vehicle.  After years of easy driving and maybe stretching it's oil changes a bit, I buy the car, have it checked out by my mechanic, load up the old Ford Explorer and head for Alaska.  The short of it is, all the junk breaks loose and drops into the oil screen and plugs it up.  The engine doesn't get quite enough lubrication and bingo, you get a spun rod bearing!  I checked all my options and concluded I will be better off putting a "slightly" used engine in it and continuing my trek north.  It will take two and a half days to get it done and be on my way again.  I really really didn't need this!!!        PS: This is the view from the hotel room

The Halibut industry in disarray.

The international commission which manages Halibut from the lower 48 to the Bering Sea passed down its verdict on the catch limits for 2011 this week.  They aren't very pretty.  2A is up 12% - 2B is up 2% - 2C is lowered a whopping 47% - 3A is lowered 28% - 3B is lowered 24% - 4A,B,C,D all up a little bit.  The reason for the big downward adjustments in several area catch limits, we are led to believe, is smaller fish.  The scientists would have us believe that fish which used to be 100 lbs. at 12 to 15 years of age are now only 35 lbs.  They cite competition for food by Arrow tooth flounder as the culprit.  I don't know about you, but I doubt very much a 2 lb. flounder can out muscle a 35 lb. Halibut or almost any sized Halibut for that matter.  Where did all the Arrow Tooth, that are competing with the Halibut for food, come from? Are there really that many flounder in area 2C? Of course not, but they do have a problem or two. So do areas 3A & 3B.   There are several 800 lb. gorillas in the room here which have to be dealt with, once and for all, or Halibut will continue to be unmanageable.  The charter fleet must be brought into Federal and State compliance and there has to be 100% observer coverage in the trawl fleet.
To start with, you have to designate what sport and charter really are.  If it's sport, it's catch and release.  If the fish are harvested it's a commercial fishing enterprise and should be managed according to the State and Federal laws, already in place, for these "fully utilized" species of fish.  Only when you can account for every lb. of fish removed from the ocean, can you have a good enough data-set to manage a resource from.

40 Days and Counting

In all the years I've spent in Alaska I have never driven the Al-Can Highway.  This year it's time for a change.  No getting on an airplane in Bellingham and getting off in Anchorage.  No driving a boat up the "Inside Passage", although, it's a beautiful trip (except for the Gulf of Alaska part).  I'm going to drive a car all the way from Bellingham Washington to Homer Alaska, take pictures, meet people, then take the ferry to Kodiak.  Should be a fun experience.  The only uncertain part, at this time, is where am I going to spend the nights?  Camping out for the duration of the trip doesn't appeal to me.  Especially since I'm starting out the last week of February.  A little research on hotels and cafes should come in handy. LOL, I'm too old to sleep on the ground any more.  It's just not as soft as it used to be. More later.

Holy Cow! Somebody read my Nobeltec blog!

Of all the unexpected things, comments on my last blog entry.  I guess putting your thoughts online is a bit like having sex in a public place.  Sooner or later, someone is going to see you and say something.
Anonymous's comment made me go back and reread my last entry to make sure I was being accurate. Yep, it pretty much correctly describes the red night light function in vns 9.3, when your using vector charts.
I haven't called Joel Haney yet, (head of Nobeltec's quality assurance) but I did go buy the Nobeltec upgrade to version 10.7 ($350.00).  Once installed, all the vector charts I had purchased and updated no longer worked (why?).  I had to buy the Max-Pro charts unless I was willing to accept the inferior Raster charts which came with the upgrade, which I don't care about since I already own them all anyway.  (This is where the "cynical" part from my tag-line comes in) Why did I have to move from one chart company to another?  Who owns the first chart company and who owns Max-Pro?  Wait a minute, I think Boeing/Jeppesen owns Max-Pro, I mean C-Map.  I had previously paid for vector charts which were supposed to work with any and all versions of Nobeltec, so, no joy here.
And the most significant observation and /or question is: Why are we having to pay for an "upgrade" to fix an existing programing error/incompatibility in the nav system? So far I haven't seen anything significantly new in the 10.7 release to warrant the $350 dollars.
Here is an analogy which pretty much explains my annoyance with Nobeltec...  When Microsoft releases a new operating system they know there will be problems and issues.  When they learn about these issues they find the solution and send the fixes out for downloading but, they don't charge you to fix their programing mistakes.
I'm staying with Nobeltec for now, because of the significant investment in time and money over the years.  But I'm not happy about being used in this fashion.
Good value for the money you spend.  That's what its all about and I don't see much value for the money spent this time.