#fish camp

[sea-salted-wolverine]

Story time from fish camp: content warning for the god damn dog

So, yeah, fish camp, forget connecting with nature, nature's connecting with you at high-speed impact via fish gut. Yes, the damn dog deserves every ounce of derision, buckle up, here we go.

Let's preface this by saying the dog does not go to fish camp. He stays at home. We are all aware of this issue. No one was surprised by this chain of events. Well, maybe the dog was surprised because he has half brain cell bouncing around in his useless skull but no one else was surprised.

So Adak is a gorgeous dog. He is a specimen of his breed. He goes out in public on a leash and strangers walk up and ask about his stud. We are talking kennel club level specifications.

He is also the most cringe fail fucked up canine who ever lived. You see pugs that can't breathe because their faces are too squashed and their legs don't work but their supposed to look like that because some eugenicists thought it would be fun to pose new and exciting questions about ethics. Those fuckups are intentional.

Adak is a retriever. He was intended to be a duck dog. He is meant to sit quietly next to you while you shoot a duck and then go get it for you. That's the entire purpose of his breed. He came from a litter of pups that do this competitively, and his owner used to train dogs to elite levels of competition. He now no longer does this for reasons we will get into in a moment, but suffice to say this dog started with higher expectations. He's not a Labrador he's a Chesapeake, a breed known for their intelligence but somewhere along the line something went fucking wrong.

The dog cannot retrieve. He doesn't know how. Its not instinctual and he refuses to learn. We have tried. People can't teach him, dogs can't teach him. He won't fetch a stick, or a dog toy or a training bumper or anything else you throw for him.

The dog is gunshy. He panics at the sound of a shot. Sometimes he forgets he's gunshy and there's a solid thirty seconds between the shot and when he decides to lose his shit.

The dog cannot sit quietly. If he is not the center of attention he makes sounds I have not heard from any other organic creature. Is is a squeaky hinge, a far off engine, something stuck in the garbage disposal? No, it's the dog, steadily getting louder because no one has looked at him in the last 2 minutes.

So yeah, arguably the worst possible example of a retriever. He's pretty, he's friendly, he's a good dog and a wonderful pet, just never expect him to do anything useful. Currently his primary function is vacuuming up toddler meals from underneath a highchair so he's happy.

But there's another peculiarity about this damn dog.

He has an engine fetish. A fixation, an obsession, whatever you care to call it. This animal's one true goal in life is to meld his skull to an engine plate and crack off all of his teeth on a spinning flywheel. Yes, some of this is learned behavior because he knows that when an engine starts up his people are off to go do things, fun things, and if he makes himself annoying enough he'll get to go with us. But that only accounts for about a third of how fucking bonkers this dog gets around internal combustion.

Fire up a snowmachine? His head is between the skis and he's doing his best to get inside the cowling. He has chiped his teeth trying to chew on a moving dirt bike tire. He has been run over multiple times, by multiple different machines. There is nothing you can do to dissuade this dog from hauling ass after a four wheeler. His mania is limited to small engines because if he was this stupid around cars he would have been roadkill years ago.

He's been to vets, he's been to experts. He has a wonderful doggy life with plenty of stimulus and affection and exercise and socialization. There's just something wrong with him.

So this is the animal we brought to fish camp. He's having the time of his life because he's surrounded by strangers who would love to pet him and stinky fish smells. Our camp has plenty of people so someone always has his leash to walk him around and he doesn't need to stay in his kennel. There are lots of other families here and a good number of them have wheelers for hauling people and nets and fish up and down the beach, but as long as he has a firm hand on his collar he is at least smart enough not to chase strangers wheelers. He can behave. He just loses his damn mind when it's a machine he recognizes.

We have a four wheeler with us, Adak is insufferable and loudly announcing to the entire beach that he's being cruelly oppressed because he's not allowed to eat the engine, or make love to the engine, or have some long and tender yearning romance with the engine, I don't know what goes through that dogs head, all I know is that passersby are looking at me like I'm skining this animal alive because that's what it sounds like.

We also have a boat, a mid size inflatable with an outboard. Our group has six families and it does make sense to show up with everything but the kitchen sink. Harvest from the beach is perfectly fine but dipnetting from a boat is fun.

There is no way the dog is going on the boat. There are too many people, too many moving parts, some of those parts being live flailing fish, and the dog is not going on the boat. Everyone knows this, including the dog. Yes, he's got a thing about boats too.

So what happens is this.

I've got the dog leash. I've already been out on the boat and now I'm taking a break and getting a rest while someone else has a go. The four wheeler is at the head of the beach, after being used to launch the boat. I'm braced against the dog for when the wheeler starts up again and he inevitably lunges for it.

People are loading into the boat at the waterline. While the dog and I are up on the gravel of the beach, they are down in the indescribable glacial river mud, slick as soap and thick as cement.

My sister inlaw comes down the beach, phone for photo taking purposes in one hand, coffee cup in the other, toddler strapped to her chest. She hands me her coffee cup, to better situate her dozing baby.

I take a hand off the leash and accept the cup.

My beloved husband pull starts the engine.

On the boat.

In the water.

I am suddenly 15 feet further down the beach than I was, skidding through the mud, heels digging a trail behind me. It is worth mentioning at this point that I out weigh the dog by a slim margin of about 30lbs. I let go of the leash. I'm not going in that fucking river.

The dog is going in the river. At speed. He's gonna be the first dog to eat a running propeller. In a river.

(Some dogs are smart enough to be current savvy and not endanger themselves swimming in rough waters. Based on the information you know about this dog, what do you think the odds are that Adak is smart enough for that?)

Despite everything, this animal is a beloved family pet and we do not want to see him swept out to Hawaii or his face made into mincemeat. So now there are 2 adult men in chestwaders wrestling this suicidally stupid dog out of the water and away from the running engine. Oh wait, they were in the process of launching the boat into a stiff current. Now they have to pull the dog and the boat back up into the nightmarish morass of glacial mud, were I'm trying not to lose my boots in the calf deep mud so I can grab him again. Someone is shrieking to kill the engine, which is the most sensible course of action so off course no listens.

Thirty seconds ago my dad saw me telling Adak to stay out of the mud. He blinked and missed the initial drama so now he looks back down the beach to see me and my inlaws mudwrestling that same animal out of the water. He is a master of the "not my circus, not my monkeys" mentality, but he's thrilled to see the show. My sister inlaw came to take pictures and record the moment and she's doing just that, with glee and a sleeping baby.

I have the damn dog. I am back on solid footing. I am only mostly covered in mud. I have not dropped or spilled the coffee.

(Most amazing part of this story tbh,thrashed. The coffee never hit the ground, it was one of those nice insulated to-go cups but still)

The boat and it's fishermen are pulling away. I have given up on the leash and have the dog in an armbar around the belly with a fistful of scruff. He doesn't care. He wants so badly on that damn boat that he's fully committed his weight to his hind paws. If I let go of him right now he would biff it on the concrete pad of the boat launch before launching right back into the water. The four wheeler starts up. I do not outweigh the dog by alot but I now have lifted him bodily into the air with all feet off the ground while he squeals and thrashes.

The sound coming out of this animal is what I imagine a whale overdosing on cocaine would sound like. A weasel in a blender. A clowncar demolition derby. A millennia of tortured souls cursed to damnation possessing a kazoo played by a maniac elephant.

People are staring.

Theres a lot of profanity coming out of me. I feel it's pretty justified.

2 and a half minutes later, the boat is gone. The four wheeler is gone. Adak and his stupid doggy brain have calmed down and quit thrashing. He looks up at me with a completely empty skull and a the canine personification of 😄

I'm gonna skin him for mittens

[lbeth1950]

Uncle Albutt Part 3

Uncle Albert somehow came up on a ninety-nine year lease on several acres on Dorcheat Bayou in Louisiana.  Ready to retire from farming, he decided a fish camp would provide a modest retirement income.  My father bought his farm and stock, but that’s a story for another day.  Obviously, he was a multi-talented man, able to turn his hand to any task.  His farm boasted two cabins.  He moved into…

[uwhe-arts]

. . . | uwhe-arts

[vintagecamping]

A young fella returns from a successful day of fishing at Twin Island Lake with his Uncle.

Missouri

1958

[gunnslaughter]

Cool uncle Link teaches Tulin some fishing hacks

Dungeon Meshi style study

[feyburner]

Damian can of course draw very well, but he’d rather die than let Tim think he put any effort in

Final panel text:

Tim: Got a little sidetracked at the end there huh

Damian: What do you mean?

[valgeristik]

i dont think he remembers what a normal meal is, nor does he care

[vyncentevelyn]

[vegley]

gemgem!

(rbs > likes <3)

[wonders-of-natur]

[key-rk]

(close up)

They're so so so important to me

In the episode 'Bearskin Thug' Drake was really enthusiastic about camping (even if he's not too good at it), but Gosalyn isn't the most keen on the activity. BUT. Lp spent his free time in 'Something Fishy', fishing on the beach. Shared interest that wasn't explored sadly 😔🤞

They would totally go on a day trip to camp from time to time, while Gosalyn stays with the Muddlefoots.

[sea-salted-wolverine]

No one should ever go to Kasilof. It is a terrible place with terrible weather and overflowing porta potties and overstuffed dumpsters with child snatching and dogfighting and some crazy guy swinging a sword that got shot by the cops. Awful stuff really. Best avoided. Just not worth the bother.

That was the gist of the news stories leading up to the kasilof sockeye runs this year it was no issue at all to find a camping spot and it wasn't nearly as crowded so I totally agree with the mainstream media on this one. It's a den of vice and iniquity. Stay away. The rent lowering gunshots clipped a reporter.

So this year we went down with a largish caravan of 4 family's worth of people and junk and a limit of 170 fish to catch. We're soo good at planning and logistics that this went off with no hitch and no arguments (lying). Since we also had a very pregnant lady and excited 2 year old who would not be fishing but were still counted towards the limit we planned on being there for a while, at least 3 days if not more. We also had the damn dog.

So at least I was planning on a few days of chill fishing and a long slog. My brother in law left an hour or so early with his girlfriend and had one job, to find us a good spot to descend upon and set up our camp. They did not do this. One job. The fishing was hot so they didn't even really bother to park, we pulled up on his truck kinda packed off to the side of the road and he was down in the water with a pile of fish on the beach because he didn't even have a cooler ready.

So by the time we bitched him out, found a campsite, set up camp and squared everything away, it was approaching midnight. This is normal, you fish the tides as they come and its not like it gets dark so wandering the beach all night long is expected so long as you're considerate of those trying to sleep.

But then.

My Sunshineman brought his boat. I knew he brought his boat, I was in fact the one arguing that he needed to do things like park and set up camp rather than do exactly what his brother did and throw himself into the river as soon as he saw fish coming in, while neglecting those little things like, food and sleep. But since we were done setting up, he wanted to go fishing from his boat. At midnight.

I had been up early that morning to do terrible things in the bilge of a different, much larger boat that resulted in fun colored bruises on my ribs and sore shoulders, so I wasn't particularly feeling the vibe on this one. I helped launch the boat and then bowed out to go pass out in a pile of blankies in the sand.

In the time it took two set up camp and launch the boat Adak, the dog, managed to get into a fight and have his face ripped up. He is huge and he is stupid but he doesn't take shit but he was on leash while the other dog was running loose, so the impulse was to pull him back, if he had been left to his own we probably would have gotten away with out anyone getting bit.

He's fine and chicks dig scars but its indicative that I had no idea this happened 25 yards away from me until adak came up to me and smeared his face all over my pants. My pants already had engine grease, bilge slime, grass stains, fish guts, coffee, mud, sand and a few baby boogers on them so what's a little dog blood too?

So yea, not my circus, not my monkeys, in tent, pants off, pjs on, cozy bitch in the blankies, out like a light, nothing better than sleeping on the beach.

Except for the fact that your husband wakes you up at 2 AM asking for help.

I'm convinced he kept it vague on purpose.

I'm up. I'm out of the tent. I'm still in my pj's. I have my drysuit on over top. My waders have a hole in them. It is, I cannot stress this enough, 2 AM.

The boat is a 16 foot mil surplus zodiac with a 40 horse Johnson, if you care about that sort of thing. It gets nice comments from people who do care. We usually run one person to drive, 2 to work the nets, and one optional person to handle fish as they come in. Sunshine went out with our 2 friends who AFAIK crawled off the boat and directly into bed after 2 solid hours of midnight deathmatch fishing, because I watched them stumble out of the boat and didn't see them again until breakfast. The boat was entirely full of fish. THEY CAUGHT 49 FISH IN LESS THAN 2 HOURS. Kasilof reds are usually smaller than Kenai reds but there must have been a secondary run because half were the average 6 or 7 pound fish and the rest were something like 10 lbs each.

At some point sunshine must have woken up his brother because he materialized from somewhere and we got the fish out of the boat into a cooler so we could drag them up to clean them. Then came the thing that we're all still more than a smidge irritated about. Sunshine went back out in the boat, by himself, to go get more fish while BIL and I cleaned the ones he had just brought back. We couldn't even yell at him because a good chunk of the beach was asleep.

So at about 4 am the sky has decided to shift from twilight to morning and I am sitting on a cooler of gutted fish in a superbly uncomfortable drysuit having a moment of perfect communication with the bald eagle sitting on the light pole at the end of the dock. We would both enjoy breakfast, preferably of fish. But it is four fucking am in the morning. And we should both be alseep. Breakfast is not a meal best enjoyed at 4 am. A nap sounds best.

Sunshine comes back with 3 more fish. I honestly do not remember what happened to those fish. Either I gutted them or he gutted them or maybe they got raptured into fishy heaven, (which looks suspiciously like the inside of a cooler) I legitimately do not know, because I think my REM cycle was starting up again.

I get a hand to haul the cooler back to camp. I peel out of the dry suit and was asleep back in my cozy sleeping bag blanket pile before Sunshine even made it to the tent.

At something like, idk, 6am, someone started splitting wood. loudly. I was awake enough to identify that it was near, and probably not a problem and I distinctly remember making the semi conscious decision to sleep through it. At about this point my phone died and for the rest of this trip I had no idea what time it was. I intended to take pictures and document things and whatnot and that just did not happen. The phone stayed dead and my hands stayed busy.

I woke up last, presumably because the demon that compels my mother-in-law to get up at 5 AM every morning had already woken everyone up with the wood splitting. She was toasting breakfast burritos, and it wasn't as if I had slept through the whole morning because I wasn't even the last to get a burrito.

My FIL made a joke that at least one of us got a full 8 hours and BIL earned back all his brownie points by jumping in to defend me unprompted. She was indeed up at ungodly hours playing with knives and dead fish. How dare you impune her honor simply because she looks so dewy fresh after sleeping in the dirt?

I did at least get the chance to put a net in the water from the beach but we were limited out by 1pm. That's enough fish fast enough that we were dumping out food and drinks coolers because we planned on freeing up space as we went. So I had our camp that we had intended to stay in for as long as a week broken down and hundreds of pounds of fish gutted and iced in a few hours. While drinking, because we had several days worth of food and drinks and beers that had been displaced by fish. The solstice vodka lemonade from matanuska brewing is great btw.

We had planned to overlap the end of our trip with the beginning of my mom and sister coming down so we could fish together, so I called mom as were were leaving the beach. From Sunshineman's phone of course, mine being dead at the bottom of a bag somewhere. As the current time was something like 16 hours from when we arrived, she assumed I forgot something or was just calling to tell her about the nice weather, or terrible weather, or confirming the news report's porta potty horror story. She didn't expect us to pull in a years worth of food in a single tide cycle.

So we get home without incident, and get to cleaning and fileting and packing and labeling at, some, late, evening time, maybe? I'm time blind on a good day and if I had a watch it would be covered in fish slime.

So yeah, this year's fish camp was condensed into a single solid slug of dense firey whatthefuckFISHfishFISHcleanpackgutgohome. Niece creature didn't want to change our of pj's so she wore the same outfit for her entire trip which is spectacular from a laundry standpoint because a toddler given free reign to a muddy fishy beach goes about as well as expected. She had a ball and then napped through almost the entire cleaning and packing process when we got home, which is what I wanted to do but instead I fileted triple digits worth of fish.

Mom went down later for the weekend and she got rained on for 3 days and caught 7 fish and a flounder. We caught the hot run and came home with fish but at what cost?

[whereifindsanity]

[end-of-xistence]

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[vintagecamping]

A group of friends camp beside the Rio Frio

Texas

1972

[krasnyel]

the weak dogs