Waiting for Weather

April 13-14, 2006 — Thursday, April 13, found us laying in Seward waiting for the weather to improve. Had the forecast not been calling for 30 to 50 knots outside, we would have been running out to the blackcod grounds, but instead we were tied to the dock. We baited the remainder of the gear, which provided a fair bit of toil, but we were all feeling quite idle. We went out to dinner at Ray’s, a pretty nice spot, and Roald treated us to a fancy meal, restaurant style.

When I got back to the boat there was an eagle perched in the rigging of the boat, but he flew away when I neared the Discovery. When I jumped quickly over the rail and onto the back deck, I startled a raven, who nearly flew into me in his hastened exodus from under the shelter deck. I figured he was eating the bait off of the hook of our baited longline gear, but my findings were much worse, especially for me, the cook. The bastard had ripped open BOTH packages of corned beef I planned on cooking up for dinner and chewed a big corner out of each brisket.

I cursed and swore up and down at those damned birds. I considered washing them off and serving them anyway, but for some reason George had been talking about bird flu all season long, so I knew I shouldn’t dare cook it. I threw it overboard, and although the birds would eat no more, I’m sure the crab enjoyed it very much, which was good because shellfish aren’t susceptible to bird flu.

The next morning, Friday, April 14, I walked from where our boat was moored in the boat harbor up to Resurrection Bay Seafoods to check my e-mail and the written weather report, because I wasn’t so sure those guys were listening to the right thing, and I like to see things in writing before I believe it.

While I was there, my phone rang. I figured Roald wanted to know where his breakfast was, but instead it was George informing me that the boat had already left the boat harbor before they realized I was not aboard, and they wanted to go fishing because the weather observation was 12 knots at Middleton Island. I told him I checked the forecast and it was all 30 to 35 knots, but I’ll come right back to the boat anyway.

So I stopped what I was doing and literally ran, in my heavy coat and doubled-up sweat pants, all the way back to the boat. And do you know what? When I got there George, the prick, informs me he was just kidding! Ha ha ha, boy, that was really funny.

I guess there isn’t anything better to do while waiting for weather, but if it didn’t improve soon, our harmonic existence on the Discovery would hit a sour note.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Good Fishing, Bad Bets

April 8-12, 2006 — The run out to the grounds was flat calm when we traveled out of Resurrection Bay and beyond on the late morning/early afternoon of Saturday, April 8. But by the time dinner was served, the weather had fermented into a rancid buck, which really threw my galley into a loop.

We arrived on the blackcod grounds around 2 a.m. on Sunday, April 9, and promptly set out three 25-skate strings. We were behind schedule for getting a full day of fishing in on the first day because the gear needed time to soak, so we hauled only two strings the first day.

The second day we baited three full strings, but the weather had turned to easterly 35 knots, so Roald opted to stop baiting any more gear, and keep the third string aboard, even though it was baited. Fishing was pretty good, with strings of 2,000 to 4,500 pounds of round-weight blackcod, and absolutely zero whale harassment. We wrapped up the third day by starting at 4 a.m. and spooled up the final two strings before we headed for Seward around noon on Tuesday, April 11.

We were waiting at the Resurrection Bay Seafoods dock in Seward on Wednesday, April 12, for our 8 a.m. offload appointment. The offload and the landing went quickly, as they usually do with RBS, and I ran and got groceries while we were being offloaded. By 3:30 we had taken ice and were potentially ready to head out again. The weather forecast called for winds from 30 to 50 knots, so we opted to bait only one string of blackcod gear that day and wait to see what the forecast said in the morning.

I committed a betting error regarding how many fish we had on this delivery. I figured we had 24,200 pounds of blackcod according to my estimates from adding up my best guess at how many fish were in each string. George figured we had more than 28,000 pounds, and the numbers George tells Roald is what goes into the log book, so that’s what Roald figured.

I was so confident about my estimates, which were backed by Brett’s estimate of 21,800 pounds, which he derived from looking at how many fish were in the bins in the hatch when he iced them, that I offered Roald a $50 bet that my guess is closer than his. Roald personalized his guess to slightly less than George’s, and bet me with 26,000 pounds for his lucky number.

While we were delivering, I coaxed George into the bet, but he didn’t want to go in for $50, so I suggested we each go in for $20 and whoever is closest would win $20 from everybody. Brett was in with his number, and Mike picked a number somewhere in the middle, and Roald and I had our numbers, so it was a full-crew deal.

It turns out we had more than 30,000 pounds of halibut, which threw my and Brett’s estimation techniques out the window. It was acrid stomaching the fact that we had to pay George $20, but the worst part for me was that I had already made the bet with Roald, and since he was bumped by Georges higher guess, AND because we already had a sealed agreement that he never agreed to change, I had to pay Roald as well, so I was into this bet for $70! I should have kept my mouth shut.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Central Gulf Halibut and Blackcod

March 30-April 8, 2006 — We left Sitka around 5 p.m. on Thursday, March 30. The run across the gulf started out flat calm, but soon developed into the familiar Discovery roll. Luckily the swell was on our stern quarter so we weren’t bucking; but it was still a pain being tossed around the bait house when we were baiting up our halibut gear.

The plan was to start with 40 halibut skates, with hopes of catching half our halibut quota on the first trip, then shift our focus on blackcod, and then wrap it up with the remainder of the halibut for the run south. So we baited up the 40 halibut skates on the run across, but I kept asking when we were going to bait up the blackcod gear. The response seemed to be that I was asking silly questions, and I could never figure out why — if we had caught lots of halibut, everybody would be on deck dressing, and no one would be baiting any gear. So I didn’t see what was so silly about wanting to bait blackcod, but it’s not my decision so I just went along with the program.

We reached the halibut grounds at around 10 p.m. on Saturday, April 1, and we set one 12-skate string in deeper water, with 300 fathoms of buoy line on each end of the string. After day break on the morning of Sunday, April 2, we set another string of 12 skates, then right into hauling the first halibut string we set, which had pretty good fish — around 7,000 pounds!

We were all happy with that, so Roald, who was concerned there might not be too much in this spot, slapped out another 10-skate string. The strings varied between 4,000 pounds to 8,000 pounds. The weather was a bit rolly, but we didn’t care. We hauled five halibut stings total and left the halibut grounds on the morning of Sunday, April 2, and ran 40 miles northwest to Roald’s selected blackcod spot.

The weather on the run to the blackcod grounds was pretty shitty. We were taking it on the side and were rolling all over the place. The biggest bummer of the whole deal was that we had no blackcod gear baited, and it was an all-out bait-o-rama, which really sucked because of the weather and the rolling around. My eyes get squirmy when I spend too much time in the Discovery’s bait house when it is rolling around like it was.

When we finally reached the grounds, we had just over one string’s worth of gear baited. There was another boat fishing in Roald’s spot, so he had to run a few miles farther to open ground. We were close to two full strings baited when we arrived at the spot, so we set them a bit short, with 22 skates in each string. We set in the late evening of Monday, April 3.

We started right in on baiting the final string the next morning, Tuesday, April 4. We rose at 5 a.m. and had that final string in the water by 9 a.m. We only managed to haul two strings on the first day of blackcod fishing, one for 2,000 pounds and the other for 4,000 pounds. The next day we baited and reset the first string, then spooled in the remaining three strings. We were finished by 10 a.m. on Wednesday, April 5 and hauled a total of six strings in two days.

We arrived in Seward on Thursday, April 6, but didn’t deliver until 8 a.m. on Friday. Everything went as smooth as silk. Resurrection Bay Seafoods provides offloaders, so we baited gear as the fish was being pulled off our boat. We baited most of the gear that day, then took ice and bait the following morning on Saturday, April 8. We finished baiting the gear as we ran through the scenic waters of Resurrection Bay on a flat calm spring morning, headed out to make our second blackcod trip in gulf.

TO BE CONTINUED…

One-Day Wrap-Up

March 27-28, 2006 — With the bulk of our Southeast quota on the dock at the Seafood Producers Cooperative plant in Sitka, we wasted no time in turning around for another trip, as the nice weather continued with no end in sight. We were headed back out by noon on Monday, March 27, and seven hours later we were setting our blackcod gear, three strings of 25 skates each.

We started in at 2 the next morning. We hauled one blackcod string, then ran in and set out a 15-skate halibut string, then ran back to finish up the blackcod gear. Roald felt we needed to bait up one more short string of blackcod gear to make sure we caught our quota, so while we were hauling our second blackcod string, we baited 15 more skates and set them out immediately after we finished hauling.

From here on out there was nothing left to do but haul. We hauled the third blackcod string, then ran in and hauled the halibut string before it got dark, since sand fleas will eat the fish right off the hook if the gear is allowed to sit on the bottom after dark.

The string brought us just the right amount of halibut, then we ran back out to the blackcod grounds to haul our fourth and final blackcod string, which was the one we had set back. When that was aboard we were running for Sitka by 9 p.m.; we completed the second trip, catching more than 20,000 pounds of fish, in less than 19 hours of fishing.

The cannery was still backed up with herring, and there were a bunch of smaller longliners delivering who took advantage of the nice weather. We delivered late in the afternoon on Wednesday, March 29. We were too close for comfort to the legal limit on our halibut quota; 27 pounds under the maximum allowed (10 percent over the target number).

Had we caught one more medium-sized fish or two smalls, we would have been over, and there would have been all kinds of headaches. I have never been through that meat grinder, but judging from the sigh of relief by the guy writing up our landing, it is not a pretty procedure.

So that is all there is to the 2006 Southeast halibut and blackcod season. Now it is off to the Kodiak/Seward/Homer area of the Gulf of Alaska to catch more of the same!

TO BE CONTINUED…