CLALLUM BAY, SEIKU, FISHING PARADISE.

We are camped at Clallum Bay. The weather was beautiful and we walked out on what the locals call an agate beach. From this sand spit we could see nearby Sekiu, pronounced see-Q, across the bay.
The waves bring up piles of polished stones. You could pick them up by the handful. It is very pretty and an excellent place to kayak. But, we found no place to rent a kayak.

We walk over a bridge to get to the beach. A channel of clean, shallow water flows on the land side of the sand spit, which is where I had hoped to kayak.

We drove the short distance to Sekiu and looked down on their fishing fleet.

Each one of these long plank piers has a fish cleaning station.

The gulls wait for any little morsel the cleaners drop or throw to them.

Then they bring it to the water’s edge and fight over it.

Most of the campers come here to fish. They bring in King Salmon and we saw it at a fish house for $6 a lb. Unbelievable. Unfortunately, they were closed. A note on the door explained:  Closed “Dale is gone… ” couldn’t read where he was gone from the car window. Hope to get salmon today.

Right in the marina parking lot are three huge “stacks.” The sea eroded the land around them. This harder block of rock, didn’t wash away. But it tells you how deep the soil was and how much of it washed into the water.

On the road here, multiple logging trucks, whiz by loaded with what looks like toothpicks. The locals say they haul them to Port Townsend to be shipped to China. It seems wrong to me, and one guy we talked to, that we ship our natural resources to China and leave the locals looking at clear cuts for such skinny trees.

This clear-cut, taken from the moving M.Home is much uglier than shown. I didn’t get the  huge mounds of graying cut slash. It seems stupid to let China have our wood to make stuff and sell it back to us, when we are threatened by forest fires and cutting down our carbon sink. Right now it is the freshest, cleanest air you can breathe. Hope it stays that way.
I don’t vote in Washington, but it seems to me a serious enough issue to rate National Curbs on cut size and method. My rant for the day, I guess.

NETTING SALMON

On our evening walk yesterday, a point of land that is normally deserted was alive with activity. We walked over to see what the encampment was about.

The land here is part of the Swinomish Indian Reservation. Thousand Trails leases from them and all fishing rights belong to the Swinomish.  When we got to the top of the point, the fishermen were gathering in a huge net.

We watched for about a half hour as the gathered net got smaller and the pile of floaters got larger. They periodically tossed crabs back into the water that were caught in the net.

These two men pounded a huge stake into the ground to affix the next net being spread out while the fish from the first net were unloaded into bins on the beach.

All hands worked swiftly to free the fish from the netting and toss them into bins.

The catch is pink salmon.

It they happen to net a king salmon, like this prize, they set it aside. Maybe for the harvest celebration party. The Swinomish own a fish company and all proceeds are shared. This point is not the only spot they net salmon. The catch was not big this year according to one local observer.

This is a once a year event and we were glad we just happened to catch it.

The bin was loaded on a truck to be processed. From the number of bins, the work must have gone on all day. Then surprise, when we began our walk back, the tide had come in and we had to slog through water to get back to the park.
I will resume my China blog tomorrow.