April 13-17, 2008 — We delivered at RBS in Seward on Sunday, April 13. Delivering in Seward is a cakewalk; the plant provides off-loaders and there is seldom a hitch in anything. We were pretty much done by noon.
While we were being off-loaded, George, Mike and Roald got wind of the weather forecast, which called for nice weather on Monday, fair weather on Tuesday, and a big mess of a storm blowing through on Wednesday and Thursday. With this knowledge, George suggested we turn around real quick, head right back out, fish a couple of days dressing fish (dressed fish can stay aboard the boat longer than round fish), drift through the storm days, then resume fishing after the storm subsides.
I’ve made stupid suggestions before, so I can’t be too critical here, but when I imagined us willingly going out into a shit-eatin’ storm with the intention of rolling around for a couple days, I thought George had slipped a disk in his brain. Maybe it was George’s abrupt introduction to his idea, but it died almost immediately, with little to no discussion. After that there was never mention about heading out again until after the storm had subsided.
The hard part about waiting through this weather was that the rest of Sunday and all of Monday were beautiful; and the forecast outside was for 10 to 15 knots variable. So we spent Sunday and Monday being teased by the beautiful weather, knowing we didn’t have time to turn around and get back out before the weather hit.
The gratitude came on Wednesday. We were grateful because it was downright shitty in Seward, and the outside weather reports were of 45 knots with heavy freezing spray. In anticipation of clearer skies on the horizon, we chopped bait in the morning as the freezing wind whipped around the deck, blowing the cardboard bait boxes and plastic liners all around.
After we were done chopping bait we took refuge in the somewhat less exposed bait house. We looked out as driving gusts shrieked through the boat harbor, shaking the bait house and moaning through boats’ rigging. We watched the marina staff running about, snugging up loose lines on boats that the wind had send rocking wildly.
They were powerful gusts — 60 knots at least. And all the while it was COLD. Instead of one guy bringing coffee out to the others, everyone opted to stand in the galley and relax as our limbs warmed up by the stove. Since I don’t drink coffee, I opted to make a sandwich that helped fuel my skinny body against the cold.
We were baiting with intent to head out on Thursday for the prediction of nice weather starting on Friday. We finished baiting on Thursday morning and headed out before noon. In fact, the whole fleet headed out that morning, as everyone was waiting for the same storm to pass.
TO BE CONTINUED…
April 7-12, 2008 — The run out on Monday, April 7, was really nice. We tried a spot farther south, closer to the Portlock Bank. We started setting our three strings of 20 skates around 7 a.m. on Tuesday and waited until 3 p.m. to haul the first string, which we reset and called it an easy day by 8 p.m.
Unfortunately, the fishing wasn’t so hot — we didn’t even have 1,500 pounds on the first one — so we decided to haul all the gear aboard and move to a different area. We started at 1 a.m. on Wednesday and hauled all three aboard. The weather was sloppy but not too bad (but enough to blow my feet out the sides of my slippers). We had all the gear aboard, rebaited, and ready to set by 4 p.m. Wednesday afternoon.
We ran three hours to the north. Fortunately, the weather was on our stern, and I slept like a baby on the way to our new spot. We moved to the same place we had fished during our last trip. We set out two strings of 25 skates and were all wrapped up for the night before 9 p.m.
We started in at a reasonable hour — 6 a.m. (well, that was when we had planned on starting, but George was antsy, so he fired us up at 5 a.m.) on Thursday. Fishing was good! George hauled in nearly 5,000 pounds, I had 4,000, and Brett finished it off with about 3,000. We were all happy, and acclaimed Roald as our hero.
Unfortunately, our happiness didn’t linger. Friday brought us fishing that was WORSE than where we left. We couldn’t figure it out. So we shuffled the gear around, and hoped for the best on the haulback, as it was our last shot before we had to head back to Seward and deliver.
On Friday evening, George went to work on the haulback schedule. He figured that if we started at 1 a.m., then we would be able to spool the gear in and make it to the bar in Seward before it closed on Saturday night. To work any schedule around going to the bar is about the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard, but it is par for the course around here.
George was up and ready at 1 a.m. I had prepared a curry sauce to cook pork chops in for our breakfast after the first string (which would probably be served at 4 or 5 a.m.), and I went to work browning the chops before I threw them into the pan.
I was about five minutes from being ready for the deck, but George was so eager to get the show on the road he woke up Mike, who George had insisted we should let sleep through the first string, so he could be out on deck and grab the flagpole when we came up to the gear. I could have stood on deck in my ripped-open slippers and done that job, and still finished my chops while the buoy line was being hauled aboard.
After the first string was in, everybody was hungry. When we started to take our gear off so we could go in and eat, George protested and wanted us to eat like goats and go in one at a time while we continued to haul the gear. I put a stop to that one. We all went in and ate a nice meal, then went back out on deck to finish up.
During the course of the next two strings, the wind picked up a bit: 25 knots from the northwest — not enough to be a problem fishing, but definitely enough to be a problem running back to Seward with it pretty much right in our face. We finished hauling around 10 a.m. and started bucking back to Seward.
Because of the weather, our 13-hour run took 16 hours, thereby thwarting George’s pipe dream of making it up to the bar on Saturday night; we tied up to the dock at 2 a.m. on Sunday, April 13.
George isn’t a drunk, and can easily live without the bar. Sometimes I think what he can’t live without is a reason to drive the schedule, just so he can foul up an otherwise enjoyable, leisurely haulback before we run to town.
TO BE CONTINUED…
March 31–April 7, 2008 — We headed out across the Gulf of Alaska in the early afternoon of Monday, March 31. I had dinner ready in the calm waters of Neva Strait on the way to the Salisbury Sound exit point into the gulf.
Once we were outside we started baiting the halibut gear. Since the boat was bucking into a fair amount of swell, it was an awfully twitchy ride back in the baithouse. I wasn’t into that, so I decided to bait my gear on the hatch cover, and I had a very peaceful time of it, enjoying not being whipped around by the Discovery’s twitchy roll.
We arrived at the halibut grounds on the evening of Wednesday, April 2, and set out one string of halibut gear. In the early hours of Thursday, April 3, still covered in darkness, we set two blackcod strings, then finished up by setting two halibut strings just after first light. We went right into hauling the halibut string with the long soak, then followed right up with the two we set at first light. We had about 12,000 pounds of flat ones, and were done really early, like 6 p.m.
I was hoping to haul a string of blackcod gear, but the bait was still too frozen to cut up so we wouldn’t be able to bait while we hauled. We waited until morning, which I’m sure was the plan the whole time. We started hauling at 3:00 on the morning of Friday, April 4.
Blackcod fishing was good, with close to 5,000 pounds our first string. But as we hauled, George ushered in a big debate on whether we should quit fishing because of the weather. I think George just wanted to go into Seward so we could go up to the bar on Saturday night. In any event, as we baited our second string of the day, the wind started to breeze up, and the tides were running strong, plus for some strange reason the last two strings brought us very few fish.
Result: George got his wish; we stopped baiting and just hauled back the two remaining strings for a total of around 8,000 pounds of blackcod for our abbreviated three-string trip. It was just as well we did stop because had we kept fishing another day we would have had a stiff north wind in our face and had a really shitty run into Seward, so maybe there is something to George’s ominous weather predictions.
We got into Seward at 3 a.m. on Saturday, April 5. I woke up to help tie the boat up, and then stayed up until 7 a.m. writing on my computer. I jumped into bed to make it look like I had slept because these guys already think my sleep schedule is totally out of whack, and woke up with the rest of the guys around 7:30 (I actually pulled off a 20-minute power snooze).
We baited our gear on Saturday, then delivered on Sunday morning, April 6. We started baiting on Monday with plans of taking ice on Tuesday afternoon and then leaving for fishing Tuesday night. We were supposedly in no rush to get out fishing because the tides were very strong, and we wanted to wait until they slacked off a bit.
But on Monday, April 7, just as we were baiting up our last skates, we got notice that the RBS plant wanted to give us ice right away. When this happened, I knew we were going to be gone soon, because with all the gear baited and the ice aboard, there was no way we were going to hang around town doing nothing.
Once we reached the RBS dock to get ice, I had only time to get groceries and we were outta there, looking to come back to Seward with a full trip of blackcod in the hatch.
TO BE CONTINUED…
March 25-31, 2008 — We flew into Sitka around 6 p.m. on Tuesday, March 25. Since we arrived right at dinnertime, we decided to try out the Channel Club restaurant — the newly rebuilt, highbrow steak joint — for dinner. We took up bait so it would be thawed the next morning, and we were on our way.
Crosby was in town hoping to land a job on a herring seiner, and was also kind of helping the PSG Film guys in any way he could, which wasn’t much I gathered, because he is more of a fish guy than a film guy. After dinner I met up with Crosby and we headed up town to talk about the upcoming Bristol Bay season. It was a Tuesday night, so the P-Bar was quite hospitable to having a private conversation (and the cigarette smoke content wasn’t bad, either!). I made it back to the boat by 3 a.m., with just enough time to soak up a power-snooze before we got up to bait.
We went right into baiting the next morning. It was going so quickly we decided to take out enough bait to do the rest of the gear, all in one day. Crosby arrived around noontime, volunteering his services to help us bait, saying he needed practice in baiting because he was hoping to land a job on a longliner (he was losing faith he would get a job on a herring seiner).
We left for fishing that night, Wednesday, March 26. We hauled 4 1/2 strings of halibut to land 5,200 pounds of flat ones on Thursday and Friday, catching my quota on the mark. Next we hauled four strings of blackcod for 22,000 pounds, and headed in on Saturday afternoon, March 29.
Crosby headed back down to the Lower 48 while we were out fishing, so I skipped the bar on Saturday night because I was on the telephone wrapped up with Bristol Bay planning stuff. It would have been a good time to go because the herring came in big time in one single bay, and the stories were flying at the bar.
Apparently just a few Kodiak boats wound up catching about three-quarters of the quota in that opening. There was a fair bit of whining from some of the fleet who got none, but as far as I could tell those Kodiak guys simply did a great job at catching a huge amount of fish. I think Fish and Game underestimated the amount of fish in that bay, or else they wouldn’t have opened that area because they really do not want to slug the processors with so much fish.
We delivered the next morning, on Sunday, March 30, then went right into baiting. We sort of took the morning off on Monday, March 31, which was good because I had to run my totes down to Northland and do a few errands, anyway. The Fish for Teeth pack was fully processed, stored in wetlock boxes, and scheduled for delivery to Bellingham. Mike reserved the morning for a Coast Guard volunteer safety inspection, which he was supposed to have completed and everything approved within 30 days of the Frederick Sound USCG boarding.
We took ice around 1 p.m. and headed out to cross the Gulf of Alaska with good weather. After we left I realized we had forgotten to load the one gray tote that we planned on bringing to Bellingham because I need a tote there to bring home the Fish for Teeth fish. Oh well, just another obstacle to overcome when I get home…
TO BE CONTINUED…
March 14-25, 2008 — We delivered our first trip of the season to the Seafood Producers Co-op on Friday morning, March 14. Prices ranged from $3.95 to $4.50 for halibut.
We made this first delivery before there was any sign of herring in Sitka Sound, so the SPC plant had time to fillet the over-limit rockfish for Fish for Teeth, the non-profit organization I started on San Juan Island that looks to fix kid’s teeth with money (or fish products) donated from the commercial fishing industry.
Another great thing I finally got a chance to do was swing by the Sitka Sound Seafood plant and buy some insulated fish totes for only $25 each! I’m not sure how much they cost new, but they’re not cheap. The totes they have for sale have some kind of damage on them somewhere, but so long as there are no holes in the inside walls of the tote, I am happy.
I bought two totes and Brett bought one, all of which shall be entered into service in the Puget Sound chum salmon fishery direct-marketing efforts. We wound up shipping them to Seattle with Northland shipping.
We went to the bar that night and had a great time. The next morning brought us news of the worst kind; Roald’s son had been killed in an industrial accident back at home. Judging from Roald’s reaction, this is something I hope nobody has to experience. But as Roald pointed out, it seems only to happen to somebody else, until it actually happens to you.
I booked Roald a flight home that morning; he flew out by noon on Saturday, March 15. We couldn’t get out until Monday morning, March 17 — maybe we should have flown independently on standby and it would have brought us all home sooner. I think spring break for Alaskan schools clogged all the flights up.
On Saturday after Roald left town I met up with the PSG film guys. They had come up to film the Sitka Sound herring sac roe purse seine fishery. They had come a bit early because you cannot predict what a herring will do.
I went for a spin around the harbor with them and the fish buyer they were working with, then we parted ways. I had hoped to have a few drinks with them at the bar, but they seem to repel from the idea of going to the bar, so that never happened.
I did cook them dinner on Saturday night, along with Crosby, who was there hoping to get a job in the fishery. He supposedly had one lined up through Keith, his TV-star crab skipper, who actually let Crosby off the crabber early and without penalty because he had the opportunity to be on TV; I have never heard of such an excuse for skippin’ out with the cream of the season, but I guess this is a new era for the fishing fleet?
Our time at home was well spent appreciating our loved ones, and of course attending the funeral of Paul Pedersen, Roald’s dearly departed son. It was a sad event, indeed.
We headed back up to pick up where we left off on Tuesday, March 25. Everyone agreed, including Roald, that returning to fishing was the best thing to take his mind off of this terrible loss that changed his life so unexpectedly.
TO BE CONTINUED…
Recent Comments