Selling Sockeye

August, 2006 — Ever since I sold those few sockeye last year, I have had people asking me with anticipation about buying fish this year. It reached the point where I felt it was my civic duty to get out there and catch some fish to sell to the people of San Juan Island.

On the first opening, I just felt lucky to have been out there fishing. I didn’t have a list of people ready to buy my fish because I didn’t have time to advertise that they were for sale. When I fall into fish mode, I get so focused on making the opener that I give most of my attention to my boat instead of my wife. When this happens, I lose Maureen’s enthusiasm in the fish-selling department. Since I was way too focused on getting my boat ready, I was on my own for fish sales.

I brought along my fish list, which consisted of several file folders, heavily scratched with names and phone numbers sporadically written on the front and the back, plus an assortment of business cards and scraps of paper. The plan was to call the people on the fish list while I was drifting on my net, or running to the next set. The problem was that cell coverage is so sketchy on the south and west side of San Juan Island — and anywhere on the islands for that matter — that I could only contact a few of my customers via cell phone during the day.

I wound up with around 130 fish to sell. I finally had decent cell coverage when I steamed around the corner of Cattle Point. The fishing period ended at 6 p.m. so I had the chance to call a few more customers. By the time I made these calls, some of the people had already heard from their friends that Matt Marinkovich had fish for sale off the boat tomorrow morning at the Port of Friday Harbor.

When I arrived at my boat the next morning, late as usual, I had a few people patiently waiting to buy fish. I thought I had too many fish to sell, but it turns out that people started calling our home number looking for fish to buy, and Maureen is such a good fish seller that she couldn’t help but sell quite a few fish without even trying. Because of Maureen’s help, I was sold out by noon.

One thing I don’t like about selling fish is the fact I have to be down on the boat all day, or at least until the fish are sold out. This would be fine, but since I have been gone all summer I would really like to spend some time with my family instead of with my boat and fish customers.

After the second opening I came up with a way that I could sell fish and be at home with my family at the same time: Self-Service Salmon Sales. I bagged up a bunch of individual fish, and laid them in a nice, clean tote with ice sprinkled around. Then I made a big sign that read “SELF-SERVICE SALMON,” with instructions to slide the money through the slot in the window.

People couldn’t believe I would just leave my fish down there so anybody could just walk up and take one without paying. But I figured if anybody needed a fish that badly, they could have it. It turned out that not a single fish was swiped, and I sold all 20 fish I had bagged up in the ice chest.

I heard feedback that people loved the novelty of Self-Service Salmon so much they were taking pictures of my selling setup, and calling their friends up on the cell phone to tell them about it. I was just happy it worked so I didn’t have to be hanging around the boat all day long.

By the third opening, I had gained favor from my wife, Maureen, so she helped me sell fish, which made a big difference. The really cool thing about it was that she didn’t make a single phone call. Instead she sent out a group e-mail to the people on the fish list who had left their e-mail address. There were only a handful of names, but it had great results.

This set me to thinking about how time-consuming it is calling everybody up on the phone. I have always been limited in how many fish I could sell because I never have time to make the phone calls. Well, the e-mail trick solved that problem, and over the course of the next 10 days (Washington Department of Fisheries likes to shut us down when there are fish to catch) I made a point of collecting e-mails from people on my fish list.

The next opening turned out to be the final opening, and I sent out another group e-mail announcing “The last sockeye opening and the LAST CHANCE to get sockeye this year.” This brought a tremendous response. Within a few hours Maureen announced we had more than 60 fish sold, and there were more orders still coming in — pretty good for not making a single phone call!

The pressure was on to catch fish on this final opening. A hundred fish would be perfect, but I would be happy to catch even more! What I didn’t figure was that would be no fish, which turned out to be the case. For all my efforts, I wound up with just 10 fish, and since I had myself and three guests aboard, I split the catch with my crew for the day, and called it a season.

I had never been so bummed out than when I had to be down on my boat the day after the opening to tell all the people showing up with their ice chests that I didn’t have any fish for sale. They were very understanding, and said they would be looking for more fish buying opportunities in their inbox next year.

TO BE CONTINUED…

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Getting Ready for the Opener

Late night, August 8-9, 2006 — When I brought the boat back to Friday Harbor on San Juan Island, Wash., I was on a tight schedule. An opening was announced for the next day, and if I wanted to make it I would have pull an all-nighter and leave with hopefully enough time to take a nap in Griffin Bay.

I worked in family time during the day, and decided to leave the majority of the boat chores to the evening and late night. I decided when I bought the Satisfaction that it wasn’t going to take priority over my wife and kids. Even so, part of the family time was having my pre-teen girls help me load my net. In addition, I had to take ice that afternoon, and get groceries before the store closed at 6 p.m. (things close early on San Juan Island).

With the family winding down for the evening, I headed down to the boat with a truck full of gear — jacklights, buoys, ice chests, clothes, mattresses, etc. But before I could even start loading the gear, I had a list of small boat projects I needed to complete in order to keep things operating smoothly on the Satisfaction. Those small projects always take longer than one can imagine, and by the time I was done it was after 2 a.m.

With the projects complete, it was time to load the gear and supplies onto the boat, which was tied near the bottom of the main ramp at the Port of Friday Harbor. I parked my truck at the top of the ramp on the main pier and proceeded to make about 20 trips up and down the dock loading stuff onto the boat. As I put it all away, I discovered more projects to complete in order to start with a trouble-free, ship-shape fishing vessel. Again, time slipped away as I organized my boat, and by the time I was finished, it was near 3:30 a.m.

With everything all loaded and my boat ship-shape for the opener, I was ready to go fishing. I ran double-checks through my frazzled brain as I paced back and forth on the float next to my boat; the only thing remaining for me to do was leave. So at just before 4 a.m., I let loose the lines and headed out for fishing.

I managed to grab a couple hours’ sleep in Griffin Bay, then tooled around Goose Island in Cattle Pass, around Cattle Point, and I was on the fishing grounds. I set about a mile off the southern shore of San Juan Island between The Trap and Eagle Point, and breathed a sigh of relief. It had been a long journey getting this net set out into the water.

As I sat contemplating my toil, my cell phone rang. It was my wife, Maureen. She was asking me an interesting assortment of questions, prodding at my late night preparations in getting ready to go. I couldn’t figure out what she was after, until she asked, “Are you sure you didn’t forget anything… like your truck?”

My truck? How could I for get my truck? “Whad’ya mean, my truck?” I asked.

“You forgot to park your truck. You left it at the end of the dock with the door wide open and your keys in the ignition. Patrick [our neighbor] saw it there at 6 this morning and parked it for you up by the courthouse.”

OOPS.

I had done something like this once before when I was fishing in Everett. I left my old fishmobile car in the fire lane, and there was nobody there that knew me, so nobody noticed it and parked it for me. It got towed away. The tow truck driver said he was so embarrassed towing my Sockeye Special car that he took side streets all the way to his yard.

I guess in both instances I was so focused on preparing my boat and going fishing, I forgot I had things to think about on land.

TO BE CONTINUED…

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Addicted to Fishing

Early August 2006 — I swore I wasn’t going to fish the Salmon Banks off of San Juan Island, Wash., this summer.

I had way too much stuff to do in my life that wasn’t related to fishing, and I know that if things really need to get done shoreside, sometimes a fishery might have to be skipped altogether. My plan would enable me to get way ahead of a ton of projects I had been neglecting, but there was one aspect I did not factor into the equation: I am addicted to fishing.

I was back for less than a week before I determined the most important thing for me to do with my time was to dash off to La Conner, Wash., and get my Puget Sound gillnetter, the Satisfaction, ready to go fishing.

I drove my truck over to La Conner, and I didn’t even leave a way to get it back to San Juan Island. I went right to work on the out-of-the-water projects. I installed a new transducer for the upstairs depth sounder, changed the zincs, and touched up the bottom paint.

To keep my bunk dry I changed out my leaky porthole so I wouldn’t have to live with a wet sleeping bag all season long again. To keep the bilge dry, I installed a new float switch in the engine room bilge.

It took just a day to get her seaworthy and in the water, heading back to Friday Harbor. Of course the boat was still in disarray, and I figured all the smaller, non-essential projects could be fit in any time I have a spare second when I’m on the boat.

With all my traveling back and forth, leaving my truck in La Conner, getting the net loaded onto the boat, and taking extra time to get her ship-shape, I had devoted a solid three days to the get-the-boat-ready project. Right away there was an opening, which was the reason I was doing all this nonsense, and that slurped up a couple more days.

Before I knew it, a week had vaporized. This would normally be just fine, but I was supposed to be starting work on the addition to our house, and my office was so backed up on paperwork it wasn’t even funny. People were calling me asking where I was and what had happened to me, befuddled at my disappearance and my neglect for the commitments I had made.

And these relatively unimportant people in my life were the least of my concerns; I had also neglected my wife in the same manner. She deserves better, I know. She understands what fishing is about, and I believe she understands better than I, my addiction to fishing.

So with the notion of taking the summer off, I was once again geared up and ready to embark on another gillnet season in the sunny San Juan Islands.

TO BE CONTINUED…

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Season Summary

June and July 2006 — I arrived Naknek on May 24, 2006. I had way more stuff than I wanted to do, with the installation of the refrigeration unit on the Claude M. Bristol and also an extensive hatch/fiberglass project on my boat as well.

It was an overtaxing preseason, but we managed to have the boats in the water and ready to go fishing Wednesday, June 14, in order to make the Thursday 9 a.m. opening in Egegik. The following week we fished the 48 hours of scheduled fishing in Ugashik, which was basically 12 hours of fishing each day, starting Monday, June 17.

I spent those early openings running drills with my entirely new crew, consisting of Conor, a longtime friend of Crosby’s, who fulfilled the Maine requisite on the SLIII; John, who is the guy who leases my Puget Sound crab permit; and Edward Albert, the man with two first names, who called me via a reference from one of my Santa Barbara friends.

My wife, Maureen, became an advocate of his hiring because of his disadvantaged upbringing and his need of a leg up in life. All three of these guys turned out to be great hands, although they lacked the speed on this first season, which would come with time.

Crosby spent the early time in Egegik running drills as well, along with other antics, such as searching the mudflats for his bow thruster propeller, which spun off because the nuts weren’t tightened enough to hold it on. In Ugashik he spent the majority of one opening anchored up because his battery was dead. This was the beginning of a chronic alternator problem that would lead to a small engine fire, and much lost fishing time later in the season.

Upon our arrival back in Naknek after the preseason fishing, we welcomed aboard the PSG film crews, who were shooting a documentary about the Bristol Bay fishery for the National Geographic Channel. They came out with us during several openings of fishing in the Naknek River Special Harvest Area.

Fishing was slow all over the place; the run was late. The fish were still trickling in on the second of July. Nobody was really panicked, because the runs have been coming in late all over Alaska. And that is what happened in Bristol Bay as well, and finally the fish started showing up in big numbers. The fleet was moved out into the Naknek and Kvichak districts later in the season, and the fish kept coming. In fact, they kept coming all the way through the end of July.

Crosby had no end of problems with the Claude M. Bristol during the season. The alternator caught fire; the high-tech hydraulic pump kept blowing hoses; the U-joint drive shaft to that pump spun out of round, and then the pulley to which it was mounted on the engine spun out as well; he blew hydraulic lines on the antiquated deck system; he got the web in the wheel a couple times; he got the bow line wrapped up in the bow thruster; and he had a hell of a time keeping the engine room pumped out because the float switch didn’t work on the bilge pump.

There was more than that which burdened his season, but those were the highlights. But through it all, he kept up a good attitude, and he managed to land a respectable season despite all his in-season disasters.

While we were fishing outside in the Naknek side, catching good fish in some really shitty weather, I found it a slick trick to deliver to the Stellar Sea, Peter Pan Seafoods’ floating processing vessel; I actually delivered to whatever tender was offloading its fish at the time.

Although the wind was a really shitty southerly of 25 to 30 knots with the waves stacking up absurdly high against the outgoing 2-knot current, the Stellar Sea, and the tramper to which it was tied, and the delivering tender, all swung sideways in the wind with the Stellar and the tender on the leeward side.

This made an ideal delivering condition, with a relatively flat-calm oasis alongside the tender. I even figured out a way to tie off to the leeward stern of the Stellar so I could tend to damaged nets or even take a nap. The Stellar oasis was definitely a cool trick.

The end of the season was kind of a dud for us during this season when so many fish arrived late. I had the best of intentions when I scheduled, even before the season began, to bring the wife and kids up at the end of the season to check out the fishery. Well, dad had a tough time just turning off his fishing switch when there are still fish being caught.

To make a long story short, the family adventure didn’t turn out as I had hoped. It had its good parts, for sure, but my inability to focus on my family rather than the fishing I was not partaking in really fouled this family holiday retreat in Bristol Bay.

The lifesaver of the family vacation was the trip to Brooks Lodge to see the bears chomp down on salmon, and the trip we took to Seward to check out the town that I frequent when I am longlining. That was good, fun family time that helped make up for the distorted family misadventure in Bristol Bay.

All in all it was a good season, full of much adventure and angst, and definitely one to remember.

TO BE CONTINUED…

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Distractions and Actions

June and July 2006 — For the most part the National Geographic Channel film crew wasn’t a problem having aboard the boat. They did distract Crosby one time on an ebb set, and he actually wound up drifting over the line (Crosby thought). This was when, in the show, Crosby was saying “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” no less than 20 times in succession.

The only instance their presence was somewhat stressful to me was when they needed to get off the boat in a hurry to catch a ride to shore with somebody, so it put a halt to my program for a few minutes. This kind of spun me out, so I went down and hurried along the guy with the sound bag.

I stuffed his last bundles of wires into the bag, zipped it up, hauled it out on deck, and did a 6-foot over-the-water toss to the guys already on the commuter boat. I think everybody about shit themselves when that bag of vital (and I’m sure expensive) gear went flying through the air over the water, but I had eye contact with the receiver and I knew it would be caught safely.

They really captured some good footage when they were out with me. Within the first few minutes of filming, I smashed into a boat. It was just a love tap, and nobody was pissed, but nonetheless it was reason enough for that high-tech camera to come poking in my face with the standard set of “What just happened?” questions.

Not long after that, my crewman John fell overboard. I had him up on the bow messing with a setnet buoy, trying to drag it around the bow so it was clear of the boat. Well, those buoys have a chain on them so they are heavy, and this one drug him over when he wasn’t paying close attention.

The footage was priceless, but John didn’t like the aspect of his falling overboard being broadcast across the nation where his friends and colleagues could ridicule him, so he told the PSG guys to not show the footage. The result was its use in just a promo clip, but not in the show, so it had viewers wondering what happened to the guy they saw falling overboard, and why didn’t they get to see more?

Another great bit of footage was when Crosby got a bunch of web in the wheel, and I towed him off the beach, then up to the anchorage where he spent the next two hours cutting it out. The funny part about this was that the camera crew was initially on my boat, so they had me wired up with the microphone.

After Crosby’s net-in-the-wheel incident, they wanted to stay aboard his boat and film the saga of the removal, so they jumped aboard the Claude M. Bristol. Well, they left me wired up with the microphone, so the notion of having that little man on my shoulder was really present, because although there were no film guys around me to indicate somebody was listening, I knew for certain that there actually WAS somebody listening, and it was PSG Brian, who was over there on Crosby’s boat. I couldn’t shut up during that experiment, much, I’m sure, to the transcriber’s dilemma.

By far the most exciting part of being involved with the film crew was when they had the helicopter out to get some aerial footage. It was about an hour after slack water, and fishing was slow, but fortunately for the show, this big shot of fish came squirting buy on the north beach.

Me and Crosby were right in the middle of the action, picking up a couple of great sets. It was absolutely insane trying to haul the net with that helicopter whirling overhead. That whirly-bird is LOUD, and it makes this crazy wind that comes right down from the sky! It was hilarious, and a load of fun, hauling that net aboard with that chopper whacking away above us. What a gas.

After the fleet was moved outside the river into the Naknek and Kvichak districts, the film crew never came out with me, but they did come out with Crosby once more. Our final interaction with them came on the Stellar Sea, Peter Pan Seafoods’ floating processor, when they did the exit interview for the season.

The end result was a highly entertaining, even educational (which should be the case coming from National Geographic) program all about me, Crosby and Bristol Bay fishing. There was a third fisherman, Syd, but he was separate from our dynamic in the show, and they did a portion on the fish cops.

The show had mixed reviews from the people in the fishing industry. It seems the majority thought it showed too small of a segment of the fishing styles in Bristol Bay. Boo-hoo, I say. The show was a fascinating little bit, and it captured the attention of anyone who laid eyes on it. The American public most assuredly will be asking for more. And if it works out, I’ll be happy to give it to them.

TO BE CONTINUED…

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Hollywood Head Trips

June and July, 2006 — Probably no one would believe me if I told them I was trying to do something like this on my own in the first place, but when the National Geographic Channel film crew showed up to film a documentary about the 2006 Bristol Bay season, I figured they came upon my order, so I tracked them down, introduced myself, and welcomed them into my world.

The season had already begun when they showed up; Crosby and I were back from the free week shakedown in Egegik, and were waiting for the first Emergency Order opening in the Naknek River Special Harvest Area. PSG Films, a Seattle production company, was just handed this project from the National Geographic Channel only a couple weeks earlier.

National Geographic gave them a budget, and they went to work producing a show. Before that they had never heard of a place called Naknek. In their research about the fishery before they arrived, they contacted Peter Pan Seafoods, who invited them to stay at their “Nornak” facility, which is where I call home in Bristol Bay. They put them up in the Italian bunkhouse, which is where I tracked them down.

I offered them myself and my own unique style of fishing, AND my colleague Crosby LeVeen, five-year veteran deckhand turned first-year rookie skipper aboard the newly rebirthed Claude M. Bristol, as we fished the highly competitive and close-quartered fishery of the Naknek River Special Harvest Area. Brian and his partner, Dan, the owners and producers of PSG Films, couldn’t pass it up.

The first time they were aboard my boat was an interesting experience for me. First off, they mounted one of their cheap throw-away cameras (price tag around $5,000) right on my flying bridge windshield, staring me square in the face. This really didn’t bother me too much, because I am so used to making a spectacle of myself, I figure everyone is watching me anyway, AND I knew only an incredibly small fraction of that footage would be used, so I just pretended the thing wasn’t there.

The thing that did throw me off was immediately after anything significant happened, like if I bumped another boat, or if I had some verbal interaction with another fisherman, all of a sudden they would poke their big, fancy, super HD handheld camera (price tag $115,000) right in my face and start asking questions.

That never happens when I’m fishing, so it took a little getting used to, and a bit of discipline on my part to wait until I was certain I could spare the mental capacity away from fishing in order to answer their questions.

The real head trip for me was being wired with the microphone. It was a cordless unit that I wore on my hip, but it still had a wire running up my shirt that clipped onto the inside of my sweat jacket. The mechanics about the microphone was not the issue, but when I wore that thing they could hear everything I said, whether they were filming or not, even up to a mile away. I viewed it as having a little man on my shoulder — someone to talk to even when there was nobody there.

And talk I did. I would actually verbalize those crazy thoughts that get drummed up through the monotony of the long days of fishing and isolation from regular interaction aside from my barking orders. A crazed thought would pop into my head, and I would fire it off to Brian, or whoever may be listening.

What was really hilarious for me to learn was that when the season was over and all their footage was stored on video and audio digital recordings, the PSG production staff had to turn the 400 hours of footage into 45 minutes of airtime.

Somebody had to transcribe every last mumble, song, obscenity, or random declaration of wisdom or nonsense that spewed from my lips. Unbelievable. I didn’t know if I should feel embarrassed for myself or sorry for the person who had to listen to all of my gibberish, and then type those words into forever recorded transcribed text. YIKES!

TO BE CONTINUED…

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Stresses of the Season

May and Early June, 2006 — My 2006 Bristol Bay season was a year in which I took on too much. Too much financial burden, too many projects, and too much stress.

As always, if I were to just be satisfied with fishing my own gillnetter, the Sunlight III, I would have enough to keep me busy. But I have effectively doubled my boat maintenance burden with another boat, the Mirage, which this year, because of its essential rebirth because of all the work we did to it, I chose to rename it the Claude M. Bristol.

The rebirthing of the Claude M. Bristol was essentially my decision to install a $40,000 refrigeration system in the boat. That is $40K of just parts and minimal labor, with Matt and my man Crosby doing most of the work, along with the Claude M. Bristol crew.

It was an absurd amount of work; so much, in fact, that I am not going to list even the major components to the job, for fear I might pass out from the shock of the mere recollection of the task. I was overwhelmed, and really freaked out about the cost of everything, and I’ll tell you, even now that it is all said and done, I wish I hadn’t installed the system last year.

The problem we encountered was that we spent so much time installing the new system into the old boat that we didn’t have time to focus on the old systems in the old boat. We addressed quite a few of them, like relocating the electrical panel, and fixing the stove, and necessary functional creature-features like that, but we never took a close look at the existing deck hydraulics, which blew a few hoses during the season, or the charging system, which stopped doing its job during the season and lead to a couple of alternator replacements, the first one leading to a small but expensive fire, which necessitated the second alternator replacement, etc.

Yes, if I would have simply stuck with my single boat, I would have had more than enough to keep me busy. I totally reconfigured my hatches into six equal bins with 12 bags between the two sides, with nice new fiberglass dividers and aluminum caps, which the hatch covers rest on (it’s a really nice job — the complete opposite of how the Claude M. Bristol hatches turned out).

The other big stressor to me was the fact that Crosby was now the skipper of the Claude M. Bristol, instead of Harpo, who had run the boat for the three prior seasons. Crosby had never run a boat before, but he had fished with me for the last five years. He knew enough about catching fish, which is half the game, but I found out he was a bit lacking in the arena of keeping a boat running when the thing throws a curve-ball in his direction.

Through this learning curve, we had an unusual group of observers with us through most of the season: PSG Films, the film crew contracted by the National Geographic Channel to shoot a documentary special about the Bristol Bay fishery. They showed up in the Peter Pan Seafoods camp one day, and it was a no-brainer for me to invite them aboard for our sure-to-be chaotic seasons.

The cameral crews, for me anyway, proved to be the least of the seasons stressors; in fact it was a great stress release. I always had a commentary running in my head as I was fishing, sort of like a play-by-play, calling my every move, and adding color during the lapses in action. Well, now my mocked up world was a reality, and there I was with a camera poked in my face, just a part of the show for the whole nation to see this fall.

By the end of the season, Crosby and I were so burned out we could failed to optimize on the late run of fish. We had enough, and vowed to solve all the Claude M. Bristol’s problems in the 2007 preseason.

TO BE CONTINUED…

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Delivery Day

Friday, April 28, 2006 — Our delivery was scheduled for 7 a.m. on Friday, April 28, at the Arrowac dock in Bellingham, Wash. Instead of simply enjoying the easy task of pitching off tens of thousands of pounds of halibut, I lined up a bunch of work for myself.

I arranged with my neighbors to sell 1,000+ pounds of halibut at their farm stand on San Juan Island. I woke up at 6 a.m. to finalize things with the guys at the plant, because no matter what I had planned, I still had to be on the boat to help with the offloading.

My first SNAFU of the morning came when I discovered my truck had a bad case of dead batteries. I scrambled around for a battery charger, and then hooked it up and prayed.

I was on a really tight schedule and didn’t have time to run off and buy new batteries, let alone spare the time it would take to change them out. I needed to drive my truckload of halibut to my neighbor’s house on San Juan Island, then swap trucks and drive my beater blue truck off the island so I could meet up with the Discovery in Port Townsend at 5 the next morning to offload the gear (we were starting early to make the high tide).

The hang-up was the ferry schedule. Port Townsend is on the other side of Puget Sound, and although it can be seen from San Juan Island on a clear day, it takes at least two ferry rides to get there.

Because there was no early ferry that could get me there by 5 a.m., I had to get there that evening, which meant I needed to connect with the last Keystone ferry by 9:15 p.m., or I’d have bust balls to drive to Edmonds in order to catch that last ferry across.

The delivery went really well. The halibut were off by 11:15, and I had clearance to be on my way by noon, which gave me plenty of time to catch the 2:40 ferry to Friday Harbor, which was good because that was the only one that would give me time to run back to my house and grab my beater truck.

It was really too bad for me that my non-beater truck batteries would not charge, so I had to drive to Costco and grab two new ones. That trip took an hour, and it took another hour to change the damned things. Once the truck was running I still had to load the totes of halibut in the back.

By the time I was on my way I had zero chance of catching the 2:40 ferry, which meant I had to catch the 5:05, but that didn’t give me enough time to drive out to my house to swap trucks and make the 6:45 ferry off the island.

I called Jim, my neighbor and fish-selling partner, and asked if he could fire up beater-blue, drive it to the ferry landing, and put it in line for the 6:45 ferry to Anacortes. That way I could drive my halibut-loaded truck off the ferry, hand it over to Jim to drive to his house, where we are selling the halibut, and then hop directly into my truck and get on the 6:45 ferry to Anacortes.

Maureen and the kids were waiting for me at the ferry landing when I drove off with the halibut. It was strange seeing them for such a short visit. Fifteen minutes is all I got, then I had to be off again.

I took my dog Ginger with me for the ride. She would be confused if I just came and went so quickly, and we wouldn’t want that because she is confused enough as it is. Because of Jim’s help I connected with the Keystone ferry with no problem, and was on the Discovery in Port Townsend by 10 p.m.

TO BE CONTINUED…

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Discovery gets Sirius

Longlining 2006 — Music has always been a difficult luxury to obtain on the Discovery. We have tried many different set-ups over the years, but none has proven to last. The boom-box in the galley wired to the back deck seemed to work the best, but after it got trashed, it never got replaced; today its old bracket holds the Brita water filter by the galley table. Our MO is to have an old beater boom-box and keep it out on deck.

One year I had it out on deck so Brett and I could hear it while we were hauling blackcod gear, and the weather breezed up and sent a big wave crashing into the side of the boat, knocking the radio off the top shelf of the shelter-deck rack, and slamming it down on the deck so hard it spit out George’s Santana CD, breaking it in half on impact.

This year the quest for the optimum music listening system continued with the Sirius Satellite Network. That’s right, the Discovery was hooked up to the sky! Not only do we now have a satellite phone on the boat, but we have satellite radio! We are becoming so high tech, it’s scary.

Brett and I bought speakers in Bellingham on the day we left, and Mike installed them, one on the back deck and one in the bait house. All through the Sitka trips we were happily listening to tunes.

Unfortunately for me, one of the favorite channels was country. All country, and with no commercials. During the country-music sessions I would think of more pleasant things, like getting my teeth drilled by the dentist without Novocain, or being attacked by a swarm of killer bees.

Things improved when Brett installed the new speakers in the wheelhouse. I’m not sure what he did, but he made it so the audible volume in the wheelhouse caused the deck speakers to be so quiet we couldn’t hear it if we put our ear right next to the speaker. It took the guys about five days to figure out how to work the Front-Back FADE control on the wheelhouse stereo. It was a pleasant five days, and then it was back to country.

During our stint in the Gulf of Alaska, the Sirius Satellite Network didn’t work for us. That was good in eliminating the no-commercial country barrage, but it didn’t keep the Norwegian Cowboy from plugging it full of his country favorites. It was almost worse because the CD player was set on auto-repeat, so the same old country junk just repeated itself. It was back to the dentist for me.

I did manage to insert an assortment of music, and when we returned to the Sirius coverage area I introduced them to some channels offering them a variety of options, so there is hope.

The one thing for which I am very grateful is that nobody had an interest in talk radio, which can totally dampen one’s mood. At least with country I can tune it out — like a white noise; you know, static. But talk radio can really drive a person bananas. Plus, I like to be totally out of touch with what is going on in the world when I am up fishing. It makes life much less stressful when you don’t know what there is to stress out about.

So now the Discovery is wired for sound, and we can all rock out, or pretend we’re at the dentist!

TO BE CONTINUED…

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The Crab Feed

March 30-31, 2006 — This year, I dined on one of the most fabulous meals I have indulged in in years. It was a king crab — two to be exact. They were brown king crab, caught in Chatham Sound by one of the local Sitka fishermen. He was selling them off his boat at the loading dock in the big boat harbor on the north side of town.

I picked them out myself. Last year, he sold me one good-sized one for $5 per pound — it was missing a leg. The total was about $60, and it made a fine meal, but there just wasn’t quite enough to stuff ourselves, to the point that we felt truly satisfied.

So this year I pointed out the biggest one I saw crawling around in their live tank/tote on deck. He was a dandy, weighing in at 11 pounds. But just to be sure I had enough to finish us all off, I picked out another smaller one. The total was just over 20 pounds of living, crawling king crab, and the bill came to $120.

We eat good on the Discovery, there is no doubt about it. I am the cook, and I like being the cook because I like to eat my own cooking, and I like to cook good food. I don’t bother with top sirloin steaks or rump roast. We start out every season with a round of fillet mignon as our first meal, then we step it down a notch for the rest of the season with rib-eye steak and prime rib.

I counter these more spendy menu items by eating as much fish as possible, and by avoiding any processed foods; I’d rather eat my own lasagna than Costco’s. In the end we spend only about $15 per day per man on groceries, which is really a miserly rate.

So this spendy little taste treat was welcome aboard without so much as a bat of an eye. I immediately put a kettle of salty seawater on the stove, which took its time building to a boil. I had to cook the buggars in two batches because, even though I was using the biggest pan we had on the boat, I could barely fit one crab at a time in the pot.

I butchered them out in the bait house by centering their bodies over the 1/8-inch aluminum plate that Mike built the baiting benches out of, then clubbed them with one of the rocks we snap onto the groundline for weight. Then I ripped the leg-and-shoulder sections free of the shell and scraped off the gills with a butcher knife.

After the water had reached the boiling point on the oil stove, I moved it to the electric Jenn-Air cooktop to speed up the cooking procedure without turning the galley into a kiln by cranking up the stove. I cooked the crab for 15 minutes after the water began to boil after I added the crab, which was just over 20 minutes total in the pot. I served the crab with boiled potatoes, a green salad, warmed French bread and melted butter.

I slipped up to the wheelhouse while the boys feasted on the first wave of crab, then finished them off with the second panload. Shortly after, Roald came up to the wheelhouse to relieve me, rubbing his belly.

“Oh hey, that was GOOOOOOOD!” He said, as he has said a thousand times before, but this time it sounded like he really meant it.

I went down and sat in Roald’s seat at the head of the table with the remains of three-quarters of a freshly cooked king crab right in front of me. I saw that one half of the granddaddy was there untouched, so I started in on him, breaking his shoulder apart and selecting the biggest leg on the biggest crab I had found crawling in the tote a few hours earlier.

I peeled away the shell on the shoulder and exposed a shock of steaming crab meat about the size of a lobster tail. I ate it straight — without butter or anything — so I could taste it naked. It had a rich, sweet, salty taste with its own buttery flavor bursting through. The taste filled my mouth and caused an involuntary mmmmmmmmmmmmm as I chowed my first bite.

I used to fish these things in the Bering Sea, and this bite tasted every bit as good as any other king crab I had eaten all those years before. The best part was I didn’t have to spend two months in the Bering Sea ice pack chasing after the thing. My share of the $120 this added to the board bill was well worth the price.

The second bite was just as astounding, and the third was even more tasty since I dipped it in butter and ate it with the warm bread. A couple bites later I cracked open the main leg section, which slid out of the tube of shell intact.

There I held in my hand an 8-inch-long chunk of crab leg, about as thick as a thin cucumber. I dipped that thing in the butter like one would a piece of celery into the ranch dressing at a wedding party, and brought it dripping to my mouth. I chomped an oversized bite of this seafood sensation, and my God, it was delicious.

This orgasmic eating experience kept up until I could hardly move. You should have seen how full the claw was when cracked it open. And there was still enough left over for an outstanding seafood cioppino the next day.

If you ever get the chance to dine on a freshly cooked brown or red king crab, spare no expense; pay the price and enjoy one of the most memorable meals of your life.

TO BE CONTINUED…

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