Cruising Adventures of the Red Witch

June 10th - 22nd (A Wednesday to a Monday) Another twelve days of work has passed for us at the Mowi fish farm.  It was an exciting shift for us because every few days we were getting another load of fish.  The fish came up from one of the hatcheries near Campbell River and they arrived by boat in loads of about 510,000 fish.  Each of the large tanks at the farm holds 340,000 fish, so we would put 340,000 in one tank and the rest into another tank.  On the next load we would top up the last tank with 170,000, and then another 340,000 would go into the next tank.  Over the span of this shift we filled seven tanks, so we now have roughly 2,380,000 fish on site.  That is a lot of little mouths to feed.   Because the fish arrived to us by boat they had to be pumped through large four-inch hoses to a small tank up on shore.  From there they were once again pumped through hoses to their main tank. ...

July 20th (Saturday) Although we did not want to get out of bed in the morning, as we were still tired from our long day yesterday, we got up just after 06:00 and headed out salmon fishing.  It was a beautiful morning, and as the high fog quickly burned off, the sun came out in full strength. Jason was using a hoochie, which the guy on the powerboat had given him last evening, and I was using a lure that we already had that looked very similar. These were slightly different looking from what we had been using in the past, although not that different. We were filled once again with optimism, and this time we were not disappointed.   Jason put his line out first with the fishing rod, and then I started to let mine out with our hand line. I had not even had time to let mine out all the way when Jason had caught one. He got it to the boat, and we got it in. Yay, our first Salmon. It was a Coho, and 24" long. Yippee. Finally!  We reset our lines out behind us, and i...