A Cold Night

August 10-11, 2008 — We sat on set number two for a couple of hours. While it soaked we dressed our two prized king salmon, cleaned up the deck, and then gazed out into the night at our super-low-tech, super-high-visibility net light made from a strap-on LED headlight shining upward into a cut up water bottle.

We pulled the net around 1 a.m. on Monday, August 11. We had two kings and 40 snaky, skin-pissing dogfish, which we tossed slithering back to the sea after the whole net was aboard. At this rate we might catch eight fish by the 7 a.m. closure, but I wasn’t holding my breath.

We set out set #3 and cleaned the fish and the deck in short order. It was now 2 a.m. and we were tired. Although I designed a pretty good boat for catching fish, I gave no thought to where we were going to sleep at night, or even find shelter from the elements.

Clearly, any sleeping arrangement involved rain gear. The deck was wet with seawater, and dew from the cold night air. There were no chairs, benches, or cushions — only a couple of ice chests and the big, open front deck.

Bruce opted for the ice chests. He was fortunate enough to scavenge up a blue tarp to use as a blanket and keep off the dew. He was also fortunate, or smart enough rather, to bring extra warm clothes to put on during this period of inactivity through this cold night. I on the other hand was wearing only my sweatpants and a hooded sweat jacket. I knew it was going to be a cold night, but I was so focused on making the opening that I didn’t want to burden the operation with an extra bag of clothes just for the sake of comfort.

So there I was, lying on my back in my rain gear on the wet, cold, open deck of a two-bit gillnetter, with not even a blue tarp to protect me from the elements. I convinced myself I was warm in order to catch a bit of sleep, but reality took over when I woke up in convulsive shivers at 3:15 in the morning.

I was freezing. I tried moving around the deck to warm up, but there was simply nowhere to move. I did a few pushups, but that did nothing to warm my feet, which felt like living blocks of ice. I thought about pulling the net aboard just for the sake of it, but I knew Bruce was beat and needed the sleep, so I figured this net could soak a little longer. I was up a creek without a blanket.

Then I remembered the survival suits, which I brought because if ever I might need to use them I’d say the maiden voyage of the Lady Ruth might be a good opportunity. And I was right — and not because we were sinking. These things are designed to be put on fast, and that is exactly what I did. The energy it took to squirm into that thing was enough to warm me up a couple of degrees. Going with this notion, I did a few deep knee bends to get even more blood flowing.

After my heat-generating exercises, that cold deck actually seemed comfortable, because I was now a self-contained, hermetically sealed unit of warmth. I zonked out and fell immediately into some high-power R.E.M. cycles, but again woke up an hour later with freezing foot syndrome.

By now it was 4:30 a.m., and the net had definitely soaked long enough. Bruce was sleeping so soundly I didn’t have the heart to wake him, even though we could be getting slugged with dogfish. I ran through another set of warming exercises and hit the deck for more quality R.E.M. cycles, but by this point I was chilled through, and after tossing and turning until 5:15 a.m. I determined it was time to pick up the net.

The final haul brought us 40 more dogfish, and zero king salmon. I was so cold I hauled the net in my survival suit, which looked pretty ridiculous, but I didn’t care. What a bitch it was picking those dogfish out in those survival suit gloves! When we were done I was much warmer, but still not warm enough to take the suit off until we were half way through the run home.

Thank God the days warm quickly in August!

TO BE CONTINUED…

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Dogged in Samish Bay

Sunday, August 10, 2008 — The early evening sky hinted of a beautiful sunset as I ran toward the fish splashing in my gillnet as it lay in the shallow waters of Samish Bay. We had just laid out the net at 7 p.m., the start of the first king salmon opening of the season on August 10, 2008, and already there was a fish to pick!

I pulled up to the spot where the fish was splashing — he was a big wily one! As I gunned the engine in reverse to slow the forward motion of the skiff, I scared in another fish and it joined the first in frantic splashing. Bruce grabbed hold of the corkline with the gaff hook, and I bumped the boat in reverse to keep the propeller clear of the web. I ran up to the rail to see the first king of the Lady Ruth’s gillnet career.

“Shit! Dogfish!” I was dismayed to say the least.

“Dogfish,” also known as “sand sharks,” or “mud sharks,” can get up to three feet long, with a single long spike on its back and razor sharp teeth that will rip the net, your gloves, or your finger to shreds if any of those come too close to its choppers. The worst part about catching dogfish is their tendency to twist themselves up in the net; no matter how long the net has been in the water they come aboard as lively as when they were first tangled.

The Lady Ruth’s first fish was so twisted he rolled up the whole net so the leadline was tangled with the corkline, along with all 30-meshes of the net, with the dogfish in the center. As we worked to pick the bastard out he fought unceasingly to roll himself up more. It’s like arm wrestling in a spider’s web with a sharp-toothed, spiny-backed boa constrictor that pisses through his sand-papery skin.

The trick to picking out dogfish is to simply grab his snout and pull him through all the meshes surrounding him. Dogfish are caught by their outstretched fins, which prevent them from passing through the net — then they twist themselves into oblivion. They hiss and burp when they are pulled from the net, and their sandpaper skin is so different from a salmon’s slippery slime it made it all the more apparent we are catching the wrong sort of fish. Even though I knew the net was catching dogfish, I let it sit through the change of light because that is the time the most salmon are caught.

We started picking just after 9 p.m. It was amazingly easy to haul the net aboard — the lightweight skiff slipped forward effortlessly as we pulled the net in through the front horns. The dogfish were a royal pain in the ass. We had about 30 dogfish and only two kings in my 200-fathom net, which is 100-fathoms shorter than the legal limit. The cool thing about my net is that the leadline is so light the dogfish roll the whole thing up like a curtain, so it pretty much stops fishing. I bet I would have had 80 dogfish if wasn’t so rolled up — but then I might have had a couple more kings, too!

As we picked, we threw the dogfish on deck because they would very likely swim back into the net if we tossed them over right away. After the whole net was aboard, I ran over to a spot where I knew I wasn’t going to set and threw the pile of slithering, sandy-skinned mud sharks overboard. What a horrible prank to pull on somebody if I were toss all these spiny bastards over right next to their net! I watched them slink away into the darkness, and hoped that was the last I had seen of them for the night.

For my second set I moved a bit more up into the bay, found the same channel, and slapped out my highly effective fish catching apparatus into the dark, shallow waters of Samish Bay. By this time it was close to 11 p.m., and the chatter from the fishermen (heard from hearsay cell phone reports) was of no kings but lots of dogfish. Wayde and all the other deep net guys were pulling only dogfish and not a single king.

I talked to a guy on another skiff who had six kings and close to a hundred dogfish. I gauged my progress from this information; the dogfish/king salmon ratio was the same — I just had less fish. Since I caught a third of his catch with less net and zero knowledge of the fishery, I figured I was doing all right.

I was just happy to be there, catching only fish and not a bunch of crab and eelgrass — who cares about a few dogfish?

TO BE CONTINUED…

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Getting there

Sunday, August 10, 2008 — Bruce and I drove to Shipyard Cove, the marina just outside of Friday Harbor town, around noon on August 10, 2008. The Samish Bay king salmon opening was to start in just a few hours, at 7 p.m. I hadn’t run the Lady Ruth since I put her on the beach a year and a half prior, and I could only hope there were no surprises in the equipment. Fortunately, the only equipment was the engine, because we were hauling this net by hand.

We launched with boat without fanfare or incident. I asked Bruce to park the truck and trailer at the high school parking lot, then meet me at the fuel dock. On the run over, I went the long way around Browne Island to test the engine, and that crazy boat jumped right up on step ran like it was having its own celebration to be back on the water.

At the fuel dock I filled up the boat’s main tank, which just sits in the back deck, with 14 gallons of gasoline and overfilled three additional 5-gallon jugs, for a total of 30 gallons. Bruce arrived before the fueling was complete, and we moved the boat away from the fuel dock then headed uptown to grab some last minute essentials.

We bought sandwiches, bottled water, and other basic eats at King’s Market, then headed to Ace Hardware to get a small plastic storage bin to serve as the tool box, and some LED headlights that I intended to strap on to the end of the floating net-light poles to serve as a makeshift net-light.

When we got back to the boat we took a few minutes to get everything organized. Everything about this operation had been pretty chaotic up to this point, and we had shit spread all over the dock before we repacked it in an orderly fashion. When everything was stowed away, the Lady Ruth set sail on its maiden gillnet voyage around 3 p.m.

We unwittingly loaded the boat stern-heavy, because the bow bounced through the small swells like it was running the high hurdles. Those yachtie boat wakes pounded us like a couple of rats in a storm, and there were lots of them on this beautiful Sunday afternoon around Friday Harbor, a major hub in the yachtie-yahoo world. At first I had Bruce ride up front for ballast, but since it really didn’t seem to make any difference he moved back toward the stern where the pounding wasn’t so shocking to the body. Bruce suggested I simply slow down, but I refused; if the equipment can’t take it, it shouldn’t be in the game!

It was a good thing Bruce moved back there, because as I pounded through the sea of leisure-craft wakes, Bruce noticed the strain of the heavy motor, which stuck way out behind the boat on its heavy steel brackets, was beginning to separate the transom from the rest of the boat with every thumping pound I delivered. It looked like the Lady Ruth was having trouble staying in the game, and for this I slowed down.

Upon inspection, I saw there were two very solidly through-bolted brackets tying the transom to the side of the boat, but the boat’s original construction had a very weak fastening this point, and the rusty old through bolts, and the light fiberglass layup, were disintegrating.

It was time for some emergency repairs. Bruce and I got out the cordless drill, drill bits, galvanized fastap screws, and a 5/16” stainless bolt long enough to pass through all the material in the compromised spot. I worked with focused attention as we drifted through Upright Channel, getting tossed by yachtie boat wakes all the while.

The new bolt held some solid meat, and the fastap screws zipped right in and held all the surrounding material so snugly I knew it would hold for the duration of this trip — If I stopped challenging the equipment. For the remainder of the voyage I found a way to pass through the boat wakes without beating the boat to the bottom of the ocean; I slowed down. As we traveled out of the San Juan Islands and across Rosario Strait, there were less boats to deal with anyway, so we still made pretty good time.

We arrived in Samish Bay shortly after 5 p.m.; true survivors, ready to conquer our next challenge — Samish Bay king salmon!

TO BE CONTINUED…

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Getting it together

August 1-10, 2008 — Outfitting my redheaded stepchild of a skiff was no small task. I underestimated the job, so I deferred many of the projects until the end, at which time I realized I had better get to work if I wanted to make the opening on August 10, 2008.

Between family time (I got home from Alaska just a week before) I managed to complete the construction of the forward deck boards and the windshield, which was just a piece of lexan bolted to a vertically fastened 2x4 that also served as my mast. I swiped the mast light off of the derelict boat in my yard, the earless Fred (the first F fell off), and put some clear red decorative plastic over it for the fishing light. The last dilly-dabble job I fit in was mounting the radios and fathometer.

Then I realized I had to get serious if I was going to get this boat fishing on schedule. My hopes of assembling a simple net guide out of 8-inch PVC pipe was dashed due to unavailability from the limited inventory of the local hardware store on the island, so I opted to fabricate a roller out of fiberglass using a 10-inch ‘Sonotube’ as a form. I taped the tube into the proper shape and started glassing with glass and resin I had on hand. In the middle of the lay up the tape gave out and the tubes let go at their joints, so my net guide looks a bit freaky, but it still serves its purpose quite effectively.

That glassing project took up a full 1½ days plus another day to get the thing glassed to the boat. Mixed in with this was hooking up the electronics, which no matter how simple the job is, is quite time consuming.

Through all this, my net was still incomplete. I leveraged all my favors to get Wayde sitting on the bench and hanging that net, but even with the lure of booze and food he is still tough to direct toward a task. Even though, he managed to bang out about 75-fathoms of lead line, which turned out to be a huge help. As it was, I was up half the night on Saturday, August 9, working like a goon to get that net hung and ready to fish the next day.

Bruce, the “chaperone” who accompanied Madeline to Bristol Bay, and fished with us for a week during the peak, joined me in the final day’s preparation, as he was going to accompany me on the fishing excursion. Bruce helped join together the many loose ends of the project, and built a fine dressing table that slips into a groove on the port rail.

The jobsite looked like a boat had exploded, rather than had been assembled. Power tools, off cuts from the boat, scrap lumber, fiberglass mat and roving, buckets, paint cans, wrenches, screws, ladders, rags, wires, brushes, lost articles of clothing, and just garbage in general all littered the scene of the transformed Lady Ruth. Bruce cleaned up as I ran around slapping together last minute projects.

The final task was to load the net aboard, which we simply hauled right through my newly fabricated net guides, which protruded proudly, yet offset off the front of the boat. With the net occupying the bulk of the deck, we threw all our other necessary gear right on top of it for the time being: life jackets, survival suits, net-light poles, buoy balls, tie-up and extra lines, deck buckets, dry-storage bins, hand tools, cordless power tools (including the sawzall), tarps, ice chests, slush bags, totes, butcher knives, sharpening stones and steels, raingear, boots, extra clothes, grub, and all that last minute random shit that I knew had to come along, but didn’t have time to get organized when I was slapping the boat together.

It was a recipe for disaster, but through it all I kept a pretty clear eye on the end goal, which was simply to survive this first night’s fishing. Through the week I caught myself contemplating skipping the first opening and rather kick off the season on the August 18 opening in a more organized fashion, but I knew that would just prolong this never ending task of getting this boat in the water.

Ready or not, this boat was ready. We pulled out of my driveway and headed into town to launch the newly transformed Lady Ruth. I knew we were pushin’ it, but it was time to go fishing.

TO BE CONTINUED…

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Preparing the Lady Ruth

August 1-10, 2008 — With a seed of the Samish Bay king fishery already planted in my mind in the spring, I took the windshield off the Lady Ruth in April, then thought about the project every time I drove past the boat as it sat along my driveway. I also ordered up enough web for 200-fathoms of 30-mesh deep king gear, plus an easy-to-hand-haul 30-pound leadline to go along with it.

Although both of these projects had their beginnings initiated, I took no further action on either of them until the season was fast approaching. The first opening was slated for Sunday, August 10, which left me an extremely abbreviated time to prepare my boat and net. I didn’t lift a finger until after August 1, and progress moved in sporadic spurts at best.

I always say I don’t want my Puget Sound fishing to cut too deeply into my family time, but I always give myself these tight deadlines that cause me to be consumed by my project, despite my higher ideals. Nonetheless, I tried to graciously blend my family life and fishing into one free-flowing entity. I moved the boat down in front of my garage so it was readily accessible, and filled the “slow moments” in my family time by running out, grabbing the sawzall, and going to work on the Lady Ruth.

The tasks needed to convert this crabber into a gill netter involved cutting away the front combing, constructing floorboards on the newly exposed forward deck, building a set of “horns” for a net guide in the bow, building a windshield in front of the steering station, rewiring just about every electrical component beside the engine panel, adding a red “fish” light and deck pump, eliminating all potential gillnet snags, and then slapping all the gear on the boat needed to actually complete a night’s fishing. Easier said that done, but it is definitely a job that could be completed, so long as attention to detail was tossed overboard along with all the material the sawzall cut away.

Let's not forget about the net. I could have saved more time than I care to think about had I not been so particular about paneling that stupid net together. I bought a multi-strand gillnet so I wouldn’t be sharing that confined deck space with a super-fluffy spider web of a net, which would be the case with a monofilament net. So I went with 150-fathoms of easy-to-handle multi-strand net and only 50-fathoms of obnoxiously fluffy, but better fishing, mono.

I wanted to be certain my competitiveness was not sacrificed for ease of handling, so I cut up that 50-fathom piece of mono into about 20 pieces, and then cut the rest of the net up so the mono panels were spaced evenly throughout the net and sewed it all back together in panels, which made a very fishy and very competitive net indeed. This procedure involved way too much cutting, trimming, and sewing, sewing, sewing. I thought there would be no end to it. I spent some late nights out in the garage screwing around with that damned net. I think I had as many hours into that net as I did the boat itself. I’m not sure — I didn’t keep track; but my wife Maureen, well, she didn’t keep official track, but I know I made some significant withdraws from the “love bank” in my spending so much spare time with this sport-gillnetting project.

I kept my fingers crossed that the end product would be a cash deposit to justify those withdraws from the love bank. But even then I know that money can’t buy love.

TO BE CONTINUED…

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Without a Boat

August 2008 — I returned from Bristol Bay on July 27, 2008. Although there was no sockeye fishery planned for areas 7 and 7a (San Juan Islands), the Frasier River Panel opened it up for a few days in the first week of August. I had no intention of scrambling out to make those openings, since it seems we are allowed to fish only when there are no fish around, which turned out to be the case once again.

A friend of mine who understands the logic of the Frasier River Panel said that even when there are fish in abundance, if there are just a few fish present from a river that has been designated a "stock of concern" then they shut it down so we won't catch those particular fish.

Even if I wanted to make those openings I would have had a tough time because I stored the Satisfaction in LaConner, with the thought of reconfiguring the deck. My net reel is permanently mounted in the back deck, and there's only a pitiful three-feet to pick fish between my net reel and the stern roller. I want to move it to a slider so it could be secured above the hatch when fishing, and pushed back toward the stern when it was time to deliver. This would give me 10 feet of fish picking space, which would allow me to pick lots of fish very quickly.
 
I didn't actually do those improvements, so they remain on the wish-list, but I did have the guys at the yard install a bow thruster tube (I will install the thruster myself). With a bow thruster I can simply thrust myself out of the tight jams I get into out there fishing by myself in the middle of the night.

With no sockeye fishing and my boat in LaConner, the only fishing boat at my disposal was my 18-foot crab skiff, the Lady Ruth, which I tried unsuccessfully to sell the year before. Since the craft wouldn't disappear from my life, I decided it could be easily transformed into a crude, open-to-elements, hand-hauling gillnetter that would be perfect for the Samish Bay king, and Bellingham Bay silver fisheries that happen in August and September.

I fished Samish Bay the year before on the Satisfaction with a borrowed 150-mesh net, and I swore I would never go back to that shit-hole. It took me three hours to get there, and during that night's fishing I caught what seemed like 500,000 crab and 100 metric tons of eel grass. I was up all night long picking crab from that damned net, enduring an endless pincher-torture as I fought to free those ungrateful bastards. The nice thing about catching all those crab was it made pitching the tons of eelgrass overboard seem like a cakewalk.

The three-hour, sleep deprived, 8-knot put-put back to Friday Harbor the next morning was spent damning the existence of that miserable fishery, and I vowed never to return to Samish Bay in a slow boat with a deep net. But now, with the prospect of the summer lapsing without any fishing, the idea of converting my underutilized crab skiff, the Lady Ruth, into a small, open, fish-in-the-shallows-while-I-haul-it-by-hand gillnetter sounded like a great idea.

A return to Samish in a fast boat with a shallow net that would not catch so much crab and eelgrass would trump all the horrid aspects of my previous experience. The nauseating 3-hour run would become a one-hour thrill ride, and what a "neener" it would be to be able to catch fish in the shallows and avoid all those crab. The drawback about the whole proposal is that there is no shelter on the Lady Ruth, and I would spend all night exposed to whatever elements God decides to lash upon me… all for the sake of strangling a few king salmon.

I was up for the challenge... it sounded like fun to me!

TO BE CONTINUED...

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Leaving the Crew Behind

July 14-25, 2008 — It was quiet on the Sunlight III after Dave left for bigger and better things, and Bruce had left us a few days before. Now it was just Edward, Anthony, Madeline and me. It was kind of nice for us each to have our own bunk, but we were definitely overstaffed for the amount of fish we were catching, especially when we ground it out to the bitter end.

I finally threw in the towel when I realized I wasn’t having as much fun as I should, because scratch fishing can be pretty boring, chasing an elusive few sockeye around the tide rips. Our last delivery came on Saturday, July 19, which was the remainder of the fish we high-graded from our go-out-and-catch-our-home-pack day of fishing.

We anchored in the river and gave the Sunlight III it’s final scrubbing while waiting for water to get to the dock. We hauled out on Sunday, July 20, and completed the remainder of the scrubbing, which included every last bit of that boat, inside and out, before it went into the warehouse at the end of the day. After the initial scrub-down I took my time with the other aspects of winterizing the boat, which helps me unwind after living with such intensity for the past two months.

The nets were a major project, as there was a humongous tangle in the net loft, a product of two boats drawing off the same pile of gear. Organizing what needs to be hung next year, and deciphering which ripped-in-half corkline goes with which ripped-in-half leadline always takes a couple of days. This time it seemed to go on longer because as we became more organized we kept discovering more net bags that needed attention.

This slow progression at the end of the season was fine with me because my flight home wasn’t until July 25, so I had time to unwind before I reentered the madness of our “normal” society.

Anthony and Edward both were set to fly out after the 25th, so when it was time for me to leave, they were still there, hanging out in the room. This was a little different for me because I usually go through this sort of meditative ending to the season as I drift around the camp like a ghost, just me and only me, doing whatever it is I do up there at the season’s end.

This year I had Madeline buzzing around, so I always had to keep track of her whereabouts, and also my two crew guys, just hanging out. It distorted my accustomed ceremonial ending to the season, but I could handle it.

I misbooked my flight, so in order to travel with Madeline I had to fly stand-by. We flew out around noon, caught an afternoon flight down to Seattle, and Maureen picked her husband and daughter up at the airport that evening.

My Alaskan fishing merry-go-round had ended for the year, and now I could finally relax with my family. But I knew the relaxation would be short-lived, because right around the corner was the opportunity to catch local San Juan Island salmon and sell it to my loyal island customers.

TO BE CONTINUED…

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Dave and the Redman

July 13-25, 2008 — We arrived at Nornak camp to put on our levelwind as the light from the day was fading from the sky on July 13. Our mission was simple and brief — grab the levelwind off the dock, maybe get a few groceries, let the guys take a shower, and then head back out for more fishing.

The most time-consuming part of going to the dock was bullshitting with all the other fishermen who had come, as we had, to regroup after a long and grinding season. When the crew was fully assembled, we all climbed onto the Sunlight III, which everybody agreed really stank, since our bodies and noses were now clean and we could actually smell the living environment to which we had become accustomed.
 
As we pulled away from the dock, Dave came up to the flying bridge and told me Mike, the guy I go longlining with, was thinking about buying one of the boats at Bumble Bee, which concerned him because one of those was the boat he had his eye on, the Redman.

Dave had been talking about that boat more and more as the fishing action had waned through the season. I told him he should buy it now, borrow a permit holder who is on a boat that is calling it quits, and then fish the end of the season with the boat so he knows what it needs for next year.

He thought that was a great idea, and since I had just come up with it I had to agree. The only thing I could do was turn around and drop him off back at camp so he could pursue his notion of running a boat in Bristol Bay.

Dave negotiated a price with Leroy, but needed the money to buy the boat, so I authorized the Peter Pan office to advance him the funds from his earnings, and suddenly Dave was in the fishing business.

He got a lot of help getting the boat ready from Bumper, who was around the dock because he had quit fishing for Giuseppe on bad terms, but didn’t want to go fishing anymore this season.

For crew Dave took Serena, a gal who was fishing with her Uncle Chris on another boat in camp, and for his permit he arranged an emergency transfer from somebody who was done fishing and going home anyway.

I sold him (at a great deal) some old nets I wanted to get rid of, and for a market, since he wasn’t allowed to fish for Peter Pan Seafoods with that awful wood boat, he fished for Bay Watch Fisheries, who was paying $0.35 for chum salmon, so it was a better deal for him anyway.

In just a few days’ time, Dave had amassed everything he needed to go fishing. It actually took him longer to get out there than it should have, partly because he was a bit nervous about going. He showed the classic signs of dilly-dally and procrastination, including a blowout of a part on his boat, which he says was necessary to usher in good karma.

He finally made it out around Monday, July 21, for some heavy-duty scratch fishing. For Dave, the importance of this year’s fishing was all about giving the boat a trial run to get the feel for it and see what it needs for next year, and not so much about putting in the pounds.

No matter how many fish he caught, Dave was happy with his new boat. It was what he had been talking about, and now he had it. Good going, Dave.

TO BE CONTINUED…

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Levelwind Fish

July 12-13, 2008 — The peak had passed, and the 2008 Bristol Bay sockeye salmon run was winding down. Catch limits were gone but not forgotten, and we were fishing longer periods for less fish.

I would sit on the flying bridge and watch my crew guys push the net onto the reel as it was hauled in, human levelwinds in action. Then I thought about the levelwind I had sitting up in the locker, which, after of years in mothballs, I got ready to go for when fishing slowed down. And it looked like fishing had slowed down.

I’ve fished without the levelwind since 2000. During heavy fishing it is nothing but a hassle — it has to be moved out of the way at the end of each set before I can shut the hydraulics off, it creates another snag for the net when we set, and it is always breaking down. It causes more stress than anything, so why bother?

I figured my current crew guys are sharp enough to diminish the negative aspects so they could enjoy the benefit of having the machine ease the burden of directing the net onto the reel. The next slow opening I decided to run up to camp and put the levelwind on.

The wind whipped across Johnson Hill on another day of crappy weather on July 12. Very few fish came across the line for most of the evening flood, so I decided this would be a good time to run up and put the levelwind on. With a little bit of the flood remaining, I ran with the wind and tide up to Nornak camp, making 10 knots all the way.

As I ran I kept an eye on other nets in the water, and noticed there were a few fish hitting 5 miles north of the line, closer to the mouth of the river. I slowed down and va-rumped the motor a few times to signal the guys we were going to set. I thought they would be surprised, but they immediately popped out on deck ready to go. They were more surprised I had decided to run in, and expected I would be making a few sets on the way.

Part of my decision to go in was because it was really blowing, and I was getting tired of beating my brains out running up to the line for no fish. To avoid the weather I ran right up close to the bank in the lee of the offshoreish wind, and set out my net. And waddyaknow — there were a few fish around!

I viewed these as bonus fish since I had already decided to run in, so I just put the towline on the bow and hung on it in the wind, which I guess was blowing about 35 knots at this point. Then I went down and relaxed, instead of towing the end around in the nasty weather; I figured just being here was enough — I didn’t have to kill myself!

The wind did a great job of pushing us offshore back into the swell, and when it got too rough to be comfortable, we picked it up, ran back in, and made another. We were one of the few boats fishing, so there was always a set, and we enjoyed pretty good, easy fishing for a few hours.

When the ebb started pushing out real fast the fishing slowed down, and I jogged with the tide back down to the line and delivered. With the levelwind idea on hold until the wind, and the fishing, slowed down, I fished another opening through the remainder of the blow.

By Saturday evening, July 13, the storm had moved through, and so had the fish. Nobody was catching anything to speak of and I knew this was the time for a run to camp. We traveled in flat-calm seas, and didn’t miss a thing when we put the levelwind on.

TO BE CONTINUED…

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No Problems… Almost!

Saturday, July 5, 2008 — I had an excellent year regarding breakdowns this season. Compared to last year, this was a dream. I would ask for such a record every year, but there was one breakdown that cost me fishing time, and my goal is zero.

It happened on my first set of the morning tide on Saturday, July 5. The fish were starting to come across, and I had run most of the way back up to the Johnson Hill line when my boat started to go its own course, and my steering wheel became really easy to turn. I knew right away some part of my steering system had let loose, so I slowed the engine down and took the boat out of gear.

I stayed at the helm even though I had no control of the boat. As the boat slowed, it headed toward another boat that was in a set. It probably wouldn’t have been a problem, but I didn’t want to freak the guy out by getting right next to him, so I put the boat into reverse. Immediately I heard a loud CLUNK!, so I took it right back out of gear. OOPS — I knew I shouldn’t put the boat in reverse, because my rudder wasn’t attached to the tiller, and when the propeller drew water toward it in reverse, it sucked the rudder into it as well. After that my formerly smooth-running propeller vibrated for the rest of the season.

The damage from that bonehead maneuver could be addressed later, but first I had to fix my steering and get back to fishing. I opened up the hatch to the lazarette and inspected the steering mechanism. The bronze tiller arm had broken from stress, right where it clamps onto the rudderpost.

There was no quick fix for this one because the business end of the tiller arm was now in two pieces. I knew this fishing period was over for me and I would have to run in and get this fixed in the machine shop at Nornak.

I bummed a tow in from Crosby, but I was zigzagging all over the place behind him, stressing my bow cleat, and threatening to snap the tow line, so we bagged that idea, and Crosby went on his way to catch some fish. Now on our own, we switched to using a large crescent wrench as a tiller arm, and Anthony as the human steering ram.

I think he really liked that assignment; it seemed to be a transcending experience between him and the wooden boat he likes to work on — and it worked pretty good, too! I couldn’t run very hard, but we had the tide in our favor, and we made it up to camp in pretty reasonable time.

We had to wake up Ed the machinist early from his night’s sleep to patch the broken tiller arm back together, but he was cool with that, because Ed is a good man — and he does good work, too.

He had us fixed up in a couple of hours, and we headed back out to the fishing grounds with the ebb. I lost the period, but that was it — just one period, and then I was back in action.

Next year I’ll be looking for zero breakdowns.

TO BE CONTINUED…

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