Sara and I bought some sockeye from Len’s boat yesterday for some friends coming to town.  Even though I know what to expect, it’s still impressive to see perfect salmon.  Len’s fish are pressure bled and all kidney removed.  All I had to do was fillet the sides off then Sara helped me to portion and vac pack.  No further removal of viscera here and there or further rinsing.  I don’t trim fins or ribs.  We filleted, portioned and packaged the dozen or so fish in about an hour I would guess and these fish will still be good a year from now from the freezer.

Been pouring rain here the past few weeks. Which is a comfort after last year’s sunny weather and the potential for lots of visitors to think this would be a great place for them to move to. Bob and I took my new boat out to Pt. Retreat. Cozy cabin. Fast boat. Comfortable seats. We were both getting used to it in a hurry. It was pea soup fog that we thought we could idle out of but it took an hour or more of going round in circles, even with a GPS, and the scary fog horn and radio chat with the ferry before we busted out of it into Stephens Passage and on around to Chatham Strait. We fished with several other boats. Caught a big early coho, then a pink, within minutes of each other, but nothing else. Didn’t see any other fish caught but many of the boats were too far away to see. Warm, dry cabin in the pouring rain. We were already used to it and looking forward to more of warm and dry during deer season.

At 50, I marvel at how long I can do something and never hear of a simple trick to make a job easier. Take splitting wood for example. Yes, I know about the wood splitter, which I find tedious bending over and putting the wood back up for another split, etc. Boooooooooorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrinnnnggg. So I split away with a maul. Then searching something on woodsplitting one day on the net, I see a few sites about putting a tire on the chopping block to put the wood your splitting it. Wah freakin’ Lah. Keeps the wood from falling off each time you split, and when your done, you have all the wood neatly split inside the tire to deposit on the pile and put another round in. Seemed like it cut the time to split a round in half or less. No time spent idly bending over for the split pieces to split again, and all the good physical work of swinging the maul.

Woke up early and was drawing my first sip of coffee a little after 4 am when I saw a dark body moving across the street in the neighbors driveway.  Realized it was a bear and when I saw it go for their garbage can, I opened the front door and shooed him away.  Beautiful medium-sized black bear.  He immediately shyed away from the can like he wasn’t really going to look inside and then crossed the next door neighbor’s yard into the big woods.  The bear probably came down our driveway and had crossed the road when I saw him.  Luckily garbage day was yesterday so I notified my neighbors about keeping their garbage cans inside.