Sitka and seagulls

March 25, 2011 — We just completed our first longline trip of the 2011 season. The season opened March 12, but the Discovery didn’t leave Port Townsend, Wash., until March 15.

We arrived Sitka, Alaska, on Sunday, March 20, took ice and bait, baited Sunday and Monday, then left for fishing that evening. The Sitka herring run was late this year; the seiners were just starting to show up; because of the Japan disaster the herring price was only $75 per ton.

We fished halibut the first day, then two days of blackcod. Halibut fishing was fair, but we caught our meager quota in one day. Blackcod was good, but the whales were eating our fish, so it slowed us down a bit. The price was phenomenal — $6 to $7 for halibut, and $6.50 to $8 for blackcod.

The seagulls were crazy this trip — I’ve never seen them so hungry. They were flying all around, swooping at any tiny bait scrap as it flew off the groundline, landing on the dressing table as we were cutting bait, and picking bait off the hook as we were hauling the gear aboard. And they were dropping bombs everywhere, of course — they speckled the entire house and painted the top of the wheelhouse.

Surprisingly, the hungry seagull behavior didn’t preempt a storm; it was beautiful all three days, and for the week prior as well.

We’re heading back out to clean up our Southeast quota on Saturday, March 26.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Running the Boat Home

January 1, 2011 — Friday Harbor, Wash., to Seattle and back in 12 hours

With the coming of the New Year, and the expiration of December’s moorage at Fishermen’s Terminal, it came time to run the Satisfaction back to Friday Harbor.

I planned on driving down, leaving my beater Volvo at the terminal, running the boat home, then retrieving the car whenever I had a chance. This plan changed at the Friday Harbor ferry terminal when I found the 1:55 p.m. ferry was full, and I couldn’t walk on because I needed to drive down to the boat. If I took a later ferry I would arrive in Seattle just in time to buck the tide all the way home.

My wife’s friend Linda was going to make the trip with me, simply because she loves going for a boat ride. Thinking fast, Linda and I scoured the ferry terminal, looking for somebody we knew, sitting in their car, waiting to load onto the ferry. Unfortunately, everyone we knew had a full car, as was the case with most other people — many cars full of people. But that didn’t stop us, we started cold-calling complete strangers, knocking on their windows and asking them for a ride to Seattle. It only took four tries before we got a “yes” from a couple of tourists with an empty backseat.

It turns out that on the ferry we saw some friends who could pack us in their car, and they gave us a ride directly to my boat without a single stop or detour. Once at the terminal I started up the Satisfaction, and five minutes later we were idling toward the Ballard Locks.

The trip home took seven hours with flat-calm seas and fair tide, and I wound up back at my house in less than 12 hours from the time I left for the ferry. It was a record round-trip, without the hassle of having to go down and get my car.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Mending my fall Puget Sound gillnet

December 7-10, 2010 — Fishermen’s Terminal net yard, Seattle

Now that the salmon season is over, I get to repair the net that caught the fish. I do this under the lights of the net yard at Fishermen’s Terminal so I can work all night long. This year it took three loooooooooong days.

The net was in pretty good shape, other than a rotten piece of 20-year-old-plus web in the middle. We swapped that out with a piece of 150-mesh-deep net I had at my house, of which we added mesh to make it 180 meshes deep like the rest of the net. This turned out to be no small task.

Jack, a longtime member of the Marinkovich fishing circle, helped out, but he simply can’t keep my hours. He knocked off around 10 or 11 p.m.; I kept working to 2 or 3 in the morning… hanging, lacing, and patching. I justify my odd hours by relating it to a fishing opening in which I make no money, which does happen.

Fawn John came to help on the third and final day, but we still didn’t finish until 10 p.m. As we stood in a downpour, sewing like maniacs, Eric, a former Puget Sound gillnetter from back in the day, pulled up with his wife. He was all jazzed up to buy back into Puget Sound gillnetting. No matter how hard I tried to convince him otherwise, standing exhausted in the dark like a drowned rat, he would not be swayed. He was convinced we were “living the dream!”

TO BE CONTINUED…

Gillnetting for chum salmon off Seattle

November 8-9, 2010 — Hours of opening: 4 p.m. Sunday to 8 a.m. Monday
 
This would be the last night of gillnetting Puget Sound for me. It was not expected to open the next week in areas 10 and 11 (Seattle area). I had to attend the Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association meeting the next week, and Fish Expo, so I would miss any openings, which would probably be only in Everett or Bellingham, Wash., anyway.
 
The weather was sort of crummy, but bearable. There were a few fish around; I sold more than 100 to my specialty market and brought about 60 back to San Juan Island to sell to my local fish eaters. I fished in my usual and accustomed spot off Alki Point. There wasn’t much shipping traffic, so I could leave the net in the water if it drifted into the shipping lanes.
 
Joining me on this night was Nelson, a 14-year-old kid from San Juan Island, who is interested in fishing in Alaska. Nelson was there mostly to observe, but he did a great job ripping the gills out of the keta salmon, to bleed them, as they came aboard. He hung in there just fine through a steady breeze from the south through the whole opening.
 
I told Nelson he could crash out any time, which he did by 11:00 p.m. But he was up for the last haul, then he ran the boat back across Elliot Bay toward the locks while I dressed a few fish and cleaned up the deck.
 
TO BE CONTINUED…