September 7, 2015 – Today was Labour Day, and I was definitely labouring. Particularly given the sore muscles I still have from that little bike ride Friday.
The first egg take I usually take part in each “fall” is the sockeye egg take on the Upper Pitt River. The program started last week and I usually try to take part in the first few days, the main reason being the stench that permeates the area by week two. No other reason. Unless you’ve experienced it, you can’t really imagine the smell of a week old pile of decaying fish….I’ll just leave it there.
But this year I was off the first week and I was planning on heading for Bella Coola later this week, so I offered to take part today, on the holiday, and tomorrow. Turns out the decision was a good one given last week’s rain and the fact that the river was completely blown out Monday through Thursday so the crew couldn’t work. So even though there was a three day old pile of rotting fish perfuming the spot, it was better than having missed the opportunity to take part completely.
This is one of the two programs that aren’t on my “official” work-plan, but which I make sure I take part in every year anyway because I enjoy the work and I very much enjoy the crews. The people that work on this project want to be there, and that makes it a lot of fun layered onto a great project.
Plus it involves a boat ride up a very pretty lake. How can I turn that down?
I didn’t expect the Swift to be in use. When I was up here a few months ago on a juvenile release it was out of commission. It’s an old boat…physically solid, but one engine is less than cooperative and uses oil in large quantities. The weather was supposed to be crappy, but we lucked out and got perfect weather for the work: no rain, not too hot, moderately cloudy skies. Perfect.
We had a good set, 70 females and 90 males taken. But there is a fair bit of catch up to do given the lost days. So tomorrow will be two sets and hoping for over 100 females.
And then it was a perfect run back down the lake.
I love my job, at least these parts 🙂
10 comments
Miss my boat, my program and my ex-coworkers…was supposed to join in the egg-take Thursday but as you mentioned, river was blown out and the day was canceled…a busy week coming up with Treaty Table, FVRD and AtBC so will miss Pitt this year entirely for the first time in 35 years…my era has officially come to an end 🙁
Awww, I saw this on my email on the way up today, showed it to Teresa, it made her sad too 🙁
We almost lost today, the river was high and we only had a sliver of shore to work on. Sets were hard and we had to make a few, and you were missed….
And your era will never end Al, you are still the heartbeat of the program and always will be!
And the Swift…one of her engines wasn’t running so well today…..