A Year In The Life - Day 71, July 31, 2014

A cold, rainy day today.  After much delay due to mechanical difficulties, Pappy and Mar Mar finally arrived.  Here is a shot of Abram during the wait, in the truck down by the airstrip.

A Year In The Life - Day 70, July 30, 2014

Today, a shot of a fly after the monster of the day smashed - and I mean SMASHED it.  This was a new fly, about 6-6.5 inches long, and new leader.  The amount of teeth in the mouth of that pike (and his weight during the fight of course) peeled the coating off the leader, kinked/crimped it, and then tangled the fly up like the nest of a Norway rat....Yikes....

A Year In The Life - Day 69, July 29, 2014

Abram all set to go gillnetting with the family. :)  We now are ready to roll with 6-inch mesh, and the fall chum are coming up the river steadily now according to the latest counts.  Fire up the smoker!!

A Year In The Life - Day 68, July 28, 2014

Seeing Eye to Eye. :)

A Year In The Life - Day 67, July 27, 2014

When you live in the bush, you start your garden early, and indoors.  Our first round of beans we put out didn't do so well with our frosts of late May and early June.  So we restarted a few indoors, and kept them there.  Beans have now joined the list of delightful crunchie munchies the gardening has brought us this summer.  Mmmmmmm...  And, as a result, yet another use has been found for #9 trapping wire - holding up tomato, pepper, and bean plants. :)  Why spend thirty bucks on three plastic lattices, and another 10 bucks to ship them?... I have not a clue.

A Year In The Life - Day 66, July 26, 2014

The Fall chum are running!  As last week's rain brought the river up yet AGAIN, new pulses of fish are showing up...we have been seeing them porpoising late in the evenings when the river and the wind calms down.  Here, a set net awaits the next group, out in front of the fish camps.

A Year In The Life - Day 65, July 25, 2014

"Grandma, Grampa, and Auntie" on their flight out of Russian Mission.  A sad day...but, moose season is right around the corner, and they'll be back for that... :)

A Year In The Life - Day 64, July 24, 2014

Well, as today was the last full day that the Nelsons are here to visit, we thought a group shot would be appropriate.  Though the day was an adventurous one, this shot is most fitting.  Cooking out behind the house over the open fire.  Kabobs, deviled eggs, and baked beans.  Mmmmm, summertime.....

A Year In The Life - Day 63, July 23, 2014

Some of the "riff-raff" from today's fishing adventure.  Though not our primary targets, they are useful...at top is a longnose sucker, then a broad whitefish, third down is a humpback whitefish, and at the bottom another broad whitefish. 

A Year In The Life - Day 62, July 22, 2014

A shot from the gillnetting for today - one of Sam watching the corks, waiting for the salmon to hit them.  On this evening we were watching the fish porpoise their way upstream, and it was great to see one surface just below the net and then see the corks dip when the fish slammed into the net. 

A Year In The Life - Day 61, July 21, 2014

Today's pic is a shot of the ladies with their catch of the day:

A Year In The Life - Day 60, July 20, 2014

Today was a good day out on the water - though every time we tried for a particular species, we seemed to get any- and everything but.  At the end of the day though, one success after another.

Erin, Warren, and Sam with the first two humpies of a day that would contain....MANY...

Warren eating lunch while splattered in fish blood and slime...

And Erin with her largest pike...so far...

A Year In The Life - Day 59, July 19, 2014

...Ms. Porcupine was kind enough to climb up in a tree just above head level and offer some photo/video opportunities.  Voila:

"I see You..."

A Year In The Life - Day 58, July 18, 2014

This shot of Warren and Sam says it all about the kite-flying adventures of the day...

A Year In The Life - Day 57, July 17, 2014

A caterpillar today - one we have never seen, this one carries an almost metallic-looking eyespot.  Submitted it to an appropriate website for identification, and if we get feedback, I will post it...  Notice the 'wet' look it got wherever we touched it while picking it up...

A Year In The Life - Day 56, July 16, 2014

"The Milk Run".

A quick trip to Anchorage for one of our bi-annual shopping trips.  Here is a shot of the back of the truck with (just) the milk for this round...getting what you need in the bush isn't easy.

A Year In The Life - Day 55, July 15, 2014

Another day. Another set.  Another beaver.  Just the way we like it - the 100% catch rate continues...

A Year In The Life - Day 54, July 14, 2014

Aggressive little beast, isn't he?  Next-to-the-boat shot of a small pike that attacked a fly more than half his size...

A Year In The Life - Day 53, July 13, 2014

They don't call 'em stinkheads for nothing, folks.  Yep, that's right.   Stink.  Heads.  Take a salmon head (after filleting the rest), put it in the ground.  Under the dirt.  That's right.  Bury it.  Cover it up.  Come back in 2-3 weeks after hot summer days 'cook' it for you.  Then dig it up.  Wash it off.  And ...just... EAT it.  I did, tonight.  But I'm not giving it great reviews.  Village dogs are gathering outside our house because they can smell my HANDS and FACE....  Here's TWO pics of the little beauty, before I dug in with both hands and partook.  Good Lord above, I wish you all could smell it...cause I still can...  The color and texture of the juice that was running off that paper plate was indescribable...   Cheers!  Oh Yeah Baby! 

A Year In The Life - Day 52, July 12, 2014

"Brrrrrr, Dad!!!  The water's COLD!..."

A Year In The Life - Day 51, July 11, 2014

Today we return to the garden.  One of the Irises we transplanted from a boating adventure of note has bloomed, and so I figured it was a good time to snap another shot.  Things are coming along, but for some reason everything in the middle bed is moving at a snail's pace...

A Year In The Life - Day 50, July 10, 2014

A shot today of the first in a string of kuspuks that Sarah is working on.  This is Abram's, and I told Sarah now I have to get back to PA to trap coons again so we can put a ruff on that hood... :D  Stay tuned for more kuspuk action, as there will be more of these showing up soon...

A Year In The Life - Day 49, July 9, 2014

I don't think this boat has moved from this spot since Sarah and I first came to Russian Mission - but it still sees use... :)

A Year In The Life - Day 48, July 8, 2014

Today's subject:  A Great Diving Beetle (Dytiscus marginalis) nymph we found in the slough while Sarah was knocking the pike dead with her new 'Pink Panther" fly.  We found another this spring while frog hunting, and both of them were true to their reputation.  In a word: Ferocious.  They will aggressively attack anything that comes near them, rearing up like a scorpion and stabbing down with a pair of jaws as a scorpion might do with its tail barb.  They use the pincers like hypodermic needles when feeding to inject a digestive concoction of enzymes that dissolves the unfortunate organism's tissue into a drinkable soup.  Pleasant thought when handling one for a pic or two.  :)  Anyways, here's a pair of close ups of the mouthparts - first the top view, and then from the underside - and then a shot of the whole beast, roughly all three inches of him.  The macro was used for all three so the last is a bit blurry, of course...

A Year In The Life, Day 47, July 7, 2014

If your 2yr 9 mo. old asks for seconds of beaver meat at dinner - while sitting next to your fleshing board, that hangs on the wall next to the kitchen table - you might live in the bush.  Gotta love it man. :D

The Mountaineering Beaver...has met his end...

A couple weeks ago, I posted about the "Beavers of High Society" - Click Here  It basically was a setting in which a beaver (s) had built a trail going up and over an extremely steep hill for about 50 yards - seen here:

Looks like  a large animal trail, right?  No.  Beaver-sheared branches snipped off close to the ground all the way up and over the other side, and trimmings/branches scattered all over the trail.  Not a moose track or bear track one in the dirt either - was slick as a whistle - from the beavers sliding down it with trees.  No, not just branches - trees.  And just over the top there was a stand of birch that was being decimated.  In that previously mentioned post were a couple pictures of the cutting area.  To avoid too much repetition I will just add one of those again:

I nabbed some of their wood chips for the smoker to do up some Chums! :) The novelty of it was too much to resist. We filled some gallon baggies and there was lots more to spare...

I had never seen beavers doing something quite like this before (there are other birch around), and judging from the distance off the ground that some of these cuttings were, this wasn't just an average beaver.  Sarah and I immediately decided this beaver needed to be caught.  He would be a unique animal and it would be fun to see if we could get him, and see how big he really was.  Two days ago, we went (the whole 4-H Club) and made a set.  W helped me placed the sticks, lure up the mound and splash it with water - his favorite part.  Meanwhile Sarah fed Abram and drove around in the boat to keep the bugs off.  And she snapped this shot:  Castor mound is two feet left of my right boot.

And today we went back.  The short of it is, here are some pics of The Mountaineering Beaver. There is an amusing GoPro video that I will try and get up later this week - bandwidth is getting slim here at the end of the period.

 Yep, this is he.  Only lodge close enough to the trail in either direction with trees looking like they came from the stand of birch - recently.  Oh, and there is the fact that he is clearly the biggest, dominant male of the lodge that CHARGED the castor mound.  He had a truly massive frame, measuring 49 inches from nose to tail.  Check these pics out!

And even in the middle of summer (with no fat on him as I skinned) he weighed 64 pounds!!!  In late fall/early winter I think this would have been a 75 pound beaver.  Unreal...  He needs to be the centerpiece of the blanket we are working on.  He is one we will never forget.

A Year In The Life, Day 46, July 6, 2014

Well, the family beaver trapping/fishing outing from the other day turned into a family beaver trap-checking outing today.  And it wasn't just a scenic drive, either.  For more on that colossal, prehistorically huge beav, check out the "The Mountaineering Beaver" post, soon to come (this evening).  It was a beautiful, wonderful summer day.  Oh, and getting a ten-second-timed photo on a floating boat with a family of four.....ain't easy...

 

A Year In The Life - Day 45, July 5, 2014

 A representative bush pic today - some friends of ours, heading out in the boat on a glorious day, with the pack of sled dogs in the background howling a farewell.  And their grand-daughter is along with them...riding in the milk crate in the center, of course.  We don't need any fancy child seats out here. :)  It is a rougher way of life out here in the bush, and that's just how it is.  Conveniences are a premium you just learn to do without. 

 

Gillnetting with W

Well, as some of you have seen in posts of June days past, we have been scavenging bits and pieces of gill net, floats (corks), leadline, and floatline from our daily walks and gradually getting them sewn together.

As a recap from those past posts:

The gym up at the school ended up being the final destination for the project, and last night was the opening in the subsistence fishery we were hoping for.  We constructed the net for the purpose of it being a set net, using 4 inch mesh and measuring just under the 60-foot maximum length specified by the regulations we have been fishing under here in Russian Mission.  We have been waiting though for a shot at drifting, as the small mesh is better at tangling the Chums than it, apparently, is at allowing them to swim into it and get caught while sitting still.  In other words, a moving net with slack in it works better when your mesh is too small for your targets.  Yesterday's opening relaxed the dipnet, beach seine, or set-net only regs and allowed drift nets of 6-inch or smaller mesh.  And drifting we went!  Yet another bush task that many folks keep telling us our boat is too small for, yet somehow it keeps on accomplishing everything the larger boats are... ;)  When we sell it next year there will have to be a write-up.  Anyway, here are some pics, and then at the bottom is a dropbox link to the video.

 Some of you have seen or will see these in the video.  This one has to start it all off, taken at the house as we were leaving, with W all ready to go, gloves and all :D

Then, on the boat, before the first set, as we were waiting for start time.  Kinda reminded me of mornings waiting for trout season to kick off - or even the trout rodeos for that matter...the anticipation is always the greatest part, while the unknown is still possible.

And the first fish of the evening, with a boy hooked for life - I hope:

Last of the photos - a parting shot of some curing eggs for the fishing yet to come this summer/fall.  Any steelheader worth his or her salt has their own recipe for curing eggs, and my days (years) on the Olympic peninsula of Washington filling steelhead punchcards taught me mine.  The number one ingredient is pictured, but the rest I will reserve here for now.

Here's the dropbox link to the video of some of the fun - **You should watch it...**

Click Here to watch "Gillnetting with W"

A Year In The Life - Day 44, July 4th, 2014 Happy Independence Day, and Thank You for it!!!

Today's family outing was a fishing/trapping bonanza, just as many of the last 40 days or so have been. :D  Made special by the company, of course.  And here they are:  Here in the bush, you often see folks driving snowmachines, boats, or four-wheelers while holding clinging children.  Sometimes a four wheeler will drive with the driver holding a baby and another child (or two) on each fender  don't worry - those pics ARE coming up for a pic of the day sooner or later...  This happens to be a picture of mom driving while holding Warren, in a picture taken by dad, who is holding Abram.  She held Abie while dad amd Warren got to fish and set beaver traps, and so a trade was only fair.  Yeehaw!  Down the Yukon we go :)

A Year In The Life - Day 43, July 3, 2014

Wow.  Today is a day of multiple pics "of the day".  You'll have to check out the additional post about it entitled "Gillnetting with W" once I get it posted - likely tomorrow.  Awesome stuff. But for now there are fish to clean and eggs to borax.   Meanwhile,  here's a taste: The little dude with one member of tonight's catch.  (I love this little guy)