Solo for Salmon

October 28-29, 2007 — The first week of chums was a resounding success. Both nights had real good fish, and I began the extension of my fish-selling network, although not nearly as successfully as I had hoped in the metropolitan areas. The guys who went to Hood Canal later in the week had caught fish, and I was looking forward to another week of good fishing in Seattle.

This week, because it was so much work to dress and clean a bunch of fish in the first place, I decided that if it was a good night fishing I was going to stick to catching, and not bother with the toil of dressing a bunch of fish for my public. I decided that, although I hold my idealistic principles in very high regard, it is not worth killing myself to walk the walk of the virtues of providing a local food supply. I am walking enough of the walk to make a difference, so I figured I’d just slip the dollars into the coffers this week in the corporate, old-school fashion.

Accompanying me on this night of fishing was none other than (and this is one of my favorite guests to take out fishing with me)… NOBODY. There are few things more peaceful than a night on the water with no distractions, just me and my thoughts (and hopefully a bunch of salmon!).

I left the island on the later ferry on Sunday, instead of my standard first-thing-in-the-morning routine. I did a straight shot down to the boat and was there in plenty of time to get things ready, even with all the bullshit sessions that cannot be avoided with the other fishermen on the dock. It was really nice to skip all the hassle of getting ice from someplace, which seemingly is never a convenient thing to do. Plus it was so easy to load my night’s supplies on the boat without having to worry about totes or ice chests. I brought everything down in one trip and started focusing on the night of fishing ahead.

I went to my standard spot north of the Bainbridge ferry lane and slapped the net out. And waddya know, I had another good opening set; 175 fish. I threw those puppies in the hatch and called it good; no dressing, scraping, or icing. After my net was in the water for my second set I kicked back in the cabin and had a snack. I could get used to this… it was EASY!!!

In my relaxed state, I reflected on the recent history of this fishery. With the processors paying $0.15 per pound, there was no way a guy could make a buck selling to the tenders, plus there were no tenders for the gillnetters because the whole fishery was geared toward the few seiners who were putting in huge volumes of fish at that garbage price. At 15 cents per pound the only way I could make a buck was to sell the fish myself. And I sold every one I caught, starting at $5 per fish. 

Now, at $0.85 per pound, I can sit in my cabin eating a sandwich and make more than I did when I was selling my whole catch years ago. And if I want to go through the effort of dressing, I command $15 per fish, which adds up a helluva lot quicker than $5. It was a good, foreign feeling to sit through an opening when I wasn’t dressing fish to sell to my public, but I knew I was relaxing this time because of all the work I had put in during the years before.

The fishing progressed as it had my previous two nights, maybe better. Perhaps I caught a few more fish because I was more attentive to my sets rather than just letting them soak in the water all fouled up as I dressed fish on the back deck. Whatever the reason, I wound up with just over 500 fish for the night, which makes for a great night’s fishing at $0.85 per pound. 

I could get used to this!

TO BE CONTINUED…

San Juan Salmon Selling

October 24-25, 2007 — After Uncle Rich went his merry way, I still had a long, long day of it on Wednesday, October 24, 2007. I had to deliver the salmon roe (eggs) from all the fish we cleaned to the processing plant in south Seattle, and then drive all the way back up to Anacortes so I could catch the 8:25 p.m. ferry to San Juan Island.

I didn’t finish cleaning up the boat until close to 4 p.m., and traffic was one big jam. When I finally made it to Seafreeze in south Seattle, the processing plant was running at 150 percent capacity, so it took a long time to get my business done there. By the time I was ready to hit the road, it was close to 6 p.m., and I didn’t have enough time to fight through traffic and make that last ferry. So I changed my plans and headed right on down to the Hotel Satisfaction, and slept like a rock until 4 a.m. when I had to get up to make the first ferry home.

I woke up and made my ferry without a hitch, and was at home by 8 a.m. Thursday. This gave me just a brief period of time to relax with the family before I had to be in town selling my fish at 10 a.m. that very morning.

As usual, I was just a few minutes late getting into town to sell fish at Printonyx, the print shop in town across from the post office. Sure enough, there was my public, waiting to buy my fresh fish from me — what a contrast from the Ballard Freeway where I could hardly buy a customer!

I pulled into the parking lot and scrambled to set up shop. I dropped my tailgate, whipped open the lid of the cooler so my customers may gaze upon the beauty of my freshly-caught 100 percent premium quality keta salmon, and then I proceeded to post my signs, ready my fish bags, and don my gloves.

There were about 10 people standing and waiting, and more arriving as I was setting up shop. They were all orderly and cordial, as there were plenty of fish to go around (unlike the near-riot with my 65 pink salmon sell-out). I had a full-sized insulated tote, and two Costco-sized coolers, all stuffed with fish for sale.

I love selling fish because everybody is so happy to buy them. They realize how fortunate they are to be on the receiving end of my efforts to bring these fish back to the island, since it really is so much easier to just sell them to the tender and forget about the locals. But I understand the importance of providing a local resource to the local people.

I also love swapping fish for cash, and there was a lot of that going on that morning. And the most exciting part about it was that since the grounds price was 50 percent higher (up from $0.55 last year to $0.85 this year), I had to raise my price as well; and lo and behold my public bought the fish just as enthusiastically this year at $15 per fish as they did at $10 last year. I prefer to charge just a little and sell a lot, but I had to charge more to justify the extra work of bringing the fish back to the island, and the people understood and happily paid the higher price without complaint.

The first hour was very busy. Shortly after I opened up shop, Maureen arrived with Lucy and the girls. Everyone helped in some way. Madeline handled the money, Sophie entertained Lucy, and Maureen talked the talk to the people. It was a lot of fun.

When things slowed down, Maureen and the girls slinked off to do a few town errands, but would pop back frequently to check on the fish sales. By noon over half the fish were gone, and approaching 3 p.m. I realized I would have to pull aside the fish for the people who couldn’t make it today but wanted me to hold fish out for them until tomorrow morning. I sold my very last fish at just after 4:30 p.m., and had more customers arriving as I was pulling down my signs and packing up my truck.

Needless to say, my first San Juan Island chum salmon sales event was a resounding success, and I was looking forward to doing it again soon — provided fishing wasn’t so damned good.

TO BE CONTINUED…

The Crane from Hell

Wednesday, October 24, 2007 — Around noontime on Wednesday, October 24, Uncle Rich and I were still exhausted from our previous night of non-stop salmon enslavement. We had before us the relatively simple task of off-loading 120 direct-market fish into my truck so I could sell them the next day on San Juan Island.

The fish were in the hatch suspended in a slushie slurpie of ice, water, and fish, all contained in a slush bag. The porous brailer bag within the slush bag allows the water to run off when the 2-ton crane lifts the bag of fish out of the slurpie solution. The problem we faced was that the crane had some major problem and couldn’t lift the bag of fish off the Satisfaction.

When Anthony and I off-loaded, the fish came off in three ice chests with less than 30 fish each, probably weighing in at around 300 pounds each, and the crane handled it just fine. This brailer, full of 120 fish plus the extra weight of trapped water and ice, was closer to 1,200 pounds.

Hence the wrath of the Crane from Hell began. At first Rich and I thought the problem was that the crane wasn’t pulling straight up and down, and was triggering the auto-stop safety mechanism, so we screwed around for a while trying to get a straight lift. After doing so we proved we had been wasting our time because that wasn’t the problem. So we tried pitching half the fish out of the brailer, but the crane still couldn’t lift the load. We pitched out half of those, and the crane lifted it.

At this point we had fish scattered all over the boat, but at least we knew they would be off and in the tote in three more loads. It was a lot of pitching that seemed to take forever, but we got through it. We probably handled each fish two or three extra times, which does nothing for quality, but at least we got them off the boat.

For insult to injury, the gal at the office wanted to charge over $100 for four hours of crane rental. I told her I was trying to decide on an appropriate dollar amount to put on my invoice to Shilshole Marina for wasting so much of my time with a crane that is supposed to lift 4,000 pounds but cannot lift even 400. In spite of my cleaver retort, she still tagged me with a bogus “wharfage” fee, which goes by pounds of freight moved, and came to about $20, thus earning that woman a big black spot in the sphere of cosmic karma surrounding those of us who go the extra mile to provide top quality fresh, local fish to the masses.

The consolation to the whole off-loading fiasco was Uncle Rich and his great attitude. As I was bitching and griping, he would just say, “Yea, but its alright…” and that positive, good-natured outlook made me realize how pointless it was for me to get worked up over a situation I could not anticipate happening, yet nonetheless was working through efficiently and with a good-natured helper.

I had never worked so hard in most any of my fishing experiences; and this is supposed to be my VACATION fishing! I declared that from this point forward I didn’t think I could take fish home on days of good fishing, and should only do it on days where I catch just a couple hundred fish at the most. Conversely, all Uncle Rich could talk about was how much fun he had and how glad he was he got to come, all the while thanking me profusely for inviting him. I LOVE Uncle Rich!

TO BE CONTINUED…

Good Fishing with Uncle Rich

October 22-24, 2007 — I got back to the Satisfaction around 5:30 p.m. on Monday, October 22, ate the remainder of the succulent barbecued Keta salmon Anthony and I shared the night before, and hit the rack hard. I turned off my alarm and slept from 6 p.m. all the way around the dial and beyond to 8 the next morning; a personal-record 14-hour snooze-a-rama. I guess I needed some sleep.

The day was Tuesday, October 23, and the second chum opening was set to start once again at 4 p.m. Accompanying me this evening would be my wife Maureen’s Uncle Rich, up visiting from Oregon. Rich is a retired schoolteacher, and takes one semester off each year to be retired, and works the other semester at far-reaching places that need a teacher, like Nome, Alaska. Well, on this evening he was going to get a taste of catching lots of chum salmon!

We left the dock at 3 p.m. and ran out to the exact same spot north of the Bainbridge Island ferry lanes. Rich was game for whatever came our way and was excited to be a part of the whole program (what a great crewguy!). We let the first set soak until after dark, and it looked like another night of good fishing with another set of 200-plus fish to kick off the evening.

Despite my slow sales day on the streets of Ballard, I had no intentions of taking any less than a full tote home to my customers on San Juan Island. I knew they would sell there, no problem. To allow for more rest time later, we cleaned the majority of our direct-sales fish from the first set so we could have some rest time later. This made for a long soak on our second set, which produced close to 150 fish! With the night half over we were on track for a great night, but the last two sets weren’t quite as good. But please don’t think I’m complaining because we had almost 450 fish for the night, which made me very happy indeed.

Even with the front-end-loading of fish dressing, we still weren’t finished dressing fish until after the third set, which again left us precious little time to relax and recuperate from the long night’s work. I was completely beat from working triple-time on Sunday night’s fishing; catching, cleaning, AND selling on the street extravaganza. I was totally beat, even if I did get 14 hours of sleep that night.

We came into Shilshole on the morning of Wednesday, October 24. We delivered our fish to the tender with the same amount of screwing around as the previous time, but both the tendermen and I were better prepared, so it went more smoothly.

What remained now was to offload our stash of 120 dressed fish, which were floating in the slurpie of fish, ice, and water contained by the slush-bag. This should have been fairly simple, but because of the faulty crane, it was a nightmare.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Salmon on the Street

Monday, October 22, 2007 — With Anthony on his way and all those fish soon to be paired with a worthy home, I was in a frenzied roil over the idea of selling these fish to the public. Come Thursday, I would be selling them to my own public on San Juan Island. But this was only Monday morning, and since we didn’t fish again until Tuesday afternoon I figured, even though I was delirious from lack of sleep, that it would be a good idea if I cleaned just a few of the fish I still had on my boat — like 30 or so — and set up shop on the streets of Ballard to get a jump-start on the Seattle “Fish List.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, or further thought about the project I was assigning to myself, I whipped out my butcher knife and started slicing. CHOP! The head dropped to the deck and spleeeeesh! the guts came out and squep! squep! squep! the bloodline was scraped clean. Just a quick rinse (I suppose that would make a squirt! sound), and those fish were in ice. By the time my turn was up at the tender, I had 30 fish cleaned, iced, and ready for the consumer!

The off-loading process wasn’t as smooth as I had hoped. My brailer system had a few shortcomings, so I wound up pitching quite a few fish one by one into the tender’s brailer, instead of having them lifted effortlessly off my boat in my own brailer bags, which is the system’s design. By 2 p.m. when I was all finished up, I was quite beat.

My bunk beckoned, but because of my previous moment of delirium, I had some fish to sell. My tote of 30 fish waited patiently for me to joist it up to the dock, load it into my truck, and then stand on the street corner and sell fish. After an hour of screwing around I had the fish into my truck and was ready to go to work.

I set up shop on Ballard Avenue, which, as I found out during my sales effort, is also known as “The Ballard Freeway” because there are no stop signs for quite a ways and people use it as a shortcut through town. I welcomed the focused short-cutters of The Ballard Freeway, knowing my signs would stop them. I had four signs, each with the perimeter emblazoned with fluorescent orange paint and measuring 4 feet high x 2.7 feet wide, which read in bold black letters on a white background, “FRESH SALMON ~Local! ~Wild!” How could anyone resist stopping for a fish after they saw those signs, Ballard Freeway or not?!?

I was situated in front of Salmon Bay Sand and Gravel Company, across the street from Kovich-Williams. I lined up my signs so they screamed at the drivers as they passed. They had plenty of room to slow down, stop, and park. I waved at them as they sped past. Some waved back. Most others simply had a blank stare. I whipped out my accordion to command even more attention. I played. More smiles, waves, and pleasantries than before, but nobody was stopping to buy fish. One guy stopped with exclamations of how “Ballard” it was to stand on the side of the road selling fish while playing the accordion. I didn’t appreciate that because it was almost like calling this Croatian a Norwegian.

Then Anthony called. He was all set up on the street corner at 30th and Union Avenue in Tacoma, but he had only sold one fish in a half an hour. I told him he needed to move to 30th and Stevens Street where there wasn’t so much traffic volume, but he was convinced he had a great spot because there was plenty of room to park and great visibility of his signs. I neglected to tell him my spot had the same attributes, but few sales as well.

It was a hard, slow sell on that Monday afternoon. Anthony sold only 20 fish when we both anticipated a sell-out. I sold only 10, but thankfully a friend of Fawn John’s came by and bought six, which really lightened my load. The highlight of the day was when a fish cop stopped and verified all my landing info. I passed with flying colors, and while he was there he drew in a couple of customers, maybe to see what was the commotion?

In retrospect, I would say I should have set up shop AWAY from Ballard, the heart of the fishing community, where a guy on the side of the road selling salmon and playing the accordion would actually be an anomaly. As for Anthony, I can’t figure out why he didn’t sell. He even had a gal-pal come down and hold up a giant chum while she was standing in the bed of the truck!

It was a bit of shock to the direct-sales model, but I was determined to stay the course because I used to sell them like hotcakes in Tacoma, and so should Anthony. Despite this slow start, there would be more fish in the future.

TO BE CONTINUED…