Fizzlers

8:30 am, Sun July 17

Currently on the tail end of a five day trip up to Malina Bay. Pretty scratchy fishing. After a day or so in port last week, we did laundry, showers, and shopping; filled up with ice at the cannery; and drove out around 8pm.

That night took watch with the Skipper and drove north through Whale Pass and the Narrows to anchor up in a bay at the top end of the Narrows. Next day arrived in Malina to rolling and choppy seas. Made a couple sets before we anchored up to wait for the weather to come down.

Shitty sleep throughout this trip began that night; after the weather and a few sets, we anchored at the exposed mouth of the bay rather than drive in to one of the smaller coves. Rocked and rolled all blessed night. Woke up groggy to more scratch fishing. Tendered that night, then two more days grinding it out to today.

Yesterday actually showed some promise—a couple of 150+ fish hauls. But those dropped off pretty quick. We tendered again last night; the boat was called the Kendra D. The crew was more chummy with us than any of the other tender crews, and the guy running it chatted with us as we sorted fish up on the line. His name is Val and he owns a place called the Rendezvous a few miles past the airport. Skipper said it's a nice little tavern; hope to check it out some time.

Today is pretty meager like the others. We've been at it for about 5 hours. Misunderstood the Skipper and thought we'd be heading back to town today. Terrible fishing hasn't made that disappointed expectation any better.

11:00 pm, Sun July 17

Fishing didn't get any better, though we did pull in a bunch of kings, including one massive, beautiful 30 pounder (unfortunately, we don't get paid for kings, so most of these we field dress for personal use). We tried a different area of the bay in the afternoon though, and on the way over I caught about 20 minutes of bunk time that made me a brand new man. As the afternoon dragged on, the Skipper finally decided that 100 lb. hauls didn't justify missing the tide and our chance to get into town tonight, so we beat feet back to Kodiak, dumped the fish, picked up some ice for our Kings and tied up at the dock.

So it's back to the old moorage. Back to our charter boat neighbor on one side, and pungent wafts of ganja from the beer-slammers on the other. Back to cell service, fresh water in abundance, and cannery showers.

Home sweet...something.

Ronnie Dunn single we love to shout along with (don't knock it till you try it! ...And a couple 14 hour days and cans of American Flag Budweiser might help): Bleed Red

10:50pm, Tues July 19

Leaving from a two day town visit to go back out tonight or tomorrow. Hope some of the runs are picking up for the last mandatory opener here. We'd all really love to go out and catch a few boatloads of fish and see these rumors of a Biblical season come true. Especially after all that scratch fishing. Vamos a ver...

Four-Day Opener

10am, July 8

Just finished our second set in a six boat line. Left anchor at 4:30 am this morning and showed first at our spot. Yesterday was a good day: nearly 9,500 lbs of fish, and over 3,000 of those reds (which go for twice the price of the dog salmon that are also running right now). The first set today was respectable—probably about 300 fish (about 1,500 lbs). Second was just 184.

Spirits are good, but we're all pretty whipped. Only had about four hours for sleep last night, and that was spotty since our sleeping quarters are right next to the engine room. We had to go the whole night with the engine on to keep the circ. running (that's the circulation system for the Refrigerated Sea Water [RSW]). This last set also hit us pretty hard on deck: had to deal with a lot of kelp and some tangled lead lines.

We're about to finish a movie and hopefully get some solid naptime, as we've got nearly a two-hour wait before we can set again. Which brings us to....

Movie Deets!

Today we're talking about Outlaw Justice, an early 2000's film (?) featuring Travis Tritt, Willy Nelson, and some of the worst acting combined with the most self-indulgent "star" control I've seen. It may rival The Polar Bear King on the slop-scale, if you're at all familiar with that winner. Someone should've fired whatever flopped sitcom screenwriter they got to write this thing. Speaking of writers, here's...

Novel Opinions!

Finished a novel, Inherent Vice (2010), by Thomas Pynchon a few days back. Not a bad read, though there's plenty of drugs and sex. Set in L.A. in the early 70's, it's sort of a stoner-detective fiction novel, riffing on the hard-boiled genre. I think Pynchon—a fairly serious, and for many a very important writer—wanted to capture the 60's as a moment/era of possibility that is fading from the screen, to be followed by corruption (think Charles Manson, Richard Nixon & company...) in the present day of the novel.

Funny enough, as certain "evil" characters turned out to be just as much played as playing, and just as susceptible to forces like love and intimidation, the thing actually reminded me a hell of a lot of Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday, and I wonder if Pynchon had that in mind. That'd be a weird/interesting pairing.

Anyway, P.T. Anderson (dir. Boogie Nights, Magnolia) is supposed to be making it into a movie currently, which I'm stoked to have heard about from a friend, as I thoroughly dig what I've seen of his work.

Started yesterday on McCarthy's The Orchard Keeper (1965). So far so good, though—predictably—it's pretty grisly. The style is engaging and he seems to be working out his attention to scenery and seasons: Appalachian setting, bootlegging, a mysterious old man who guards some woods, a concrete cistern with a dead body inside it, events only half told. Interesting stuff. Maybe good source material for my buddy Bret's Thunder Road/moonshine movie script?

That's it for right now—time for crappy cinema. Here's some miscellany...

Quote of the day (so far):

Skipper (as he turns to a crew member, vegetable in hand, following the crew's delayed response to his request for a chips and salsa snack): "Good, I thought you had forgot; you almost made me eat a ****ing carrot."

Vid List (what the crew are currently telling each other they gotta see):

Leroy Jenkins Halo

Chronic of Narnia Rap

12:00pm, July 10

Yesterday we made our biggest set yet—potentially in the range of 6,000 lbs. Combined with our work on the 8^th we dropped off over 22,000 lbs at the tender last night. A steak dinner (courtesy of our 18 inch Cabela's propane grill) was a fitting end to a day that saw us haul in upwards of 12,000 lbs. of salmon, despite being in a seven boat line all day and making only four sets.

Today, the 10^th, has been strong, but doesn't seem to be of quite the same magnitude. We arrived first to our spot this morning and had a very nice first and second set. After our second set, the skip decided to go straight out and try one on the "outside."*

It was not a success.

We saw salmon jumping as we lay out and everything looked good, but the current seemed to push our cork line around, our leads were a little jumbled, and we had to stop repeatedly to pull kelp out of the net. Final count on the set: 3 fish.

At least one was a silver.

Spirits are still good though; it looked fishy and we gave it a shot. If the set had come in, the line would be moving faster (always two boats setting rather than one) and everyone would be catching more fish. We lost nothing but energy. Um, lots of energy...

Speaking of which, it's getting harder to get mobile in the mornings.

And while it is frustrating to have a boat line like ours, it can also be a mercy when you're rolling out of bed at 5am to pull the release cord on the skiff and clean the deck before you've had a chance to swallow down a gulp of coffee or cereal.

It's during these early sets that the boat line you loath, the line that ties your hands after you've just made a giant haul, the line of boats you wish would get sick of milling about so you don't have to wait so long to dip back into your honey hole, that two hour line becomes a godsend. Because that's two hours for odd jobs, necessaries like cooking and cleanup, and—most generously—sleep.

Just get on shoes and sweater so you can pull the release cord. Just clean and prep the deck. Just plunge a little. Just get your raingear on. Just plunge a little more. Just get the net stacked and hauled in. Just get through this set. Just do this and you can shuck off your neoprene exoskeleton, dry your face, crawl down the stairs and back into your bunk. You might even slip into unconsciousness before the skipper comes on to the PA and announces it's time to pick the anchor.

Mornings are tough, but we seem to fall into a rotating sleep schedule. One night we'll come in around 7:30pm. After dinner, clean-up, odd prep work for the next day, we slip into the bunks by 10:30 or so. Then it's up at 4:30am. Conditioned by repetition, you can make your body roll out of the bunk before you're even conscious enough to realize how silly the idea of "awake" is at this point. That night we might work later. Make one more set. Eat dinner at midnight. Get up again by five. Work through the day. By the third night, batteries drained, we'll sleep in; maybe miss the first turn and show up at our spot near 7:00. Then we're juiced up for another round.

Like the two-hour line, repetition is a mixed mercy. You may feel like a lead sack start to finish, but already, with less than a month of deck work, once the hands touch the net, the body starts working without asking questions.

*Most purse-seiners set with the boat or skiff along the shore of a bay or point and the other end of the net laid out to catch the fish as they school at the set spot. In the Kodiak fishery, the general rule lets a boat tow for half an hour to allow the fish to stack up. As the boat and skiff turn in toward each other to close the circle of the net, the next boat in line will lay out its own net, either in "front" of the closing net, or "behind" that set. With a long line, the fishermen might decide to follow this "inside" set along the shore with an "outside" set, just beyond the far end of the boat after them. Thus boat A sets inside, closes, boat B sets inside, boat A sets right after them, boat B closes, boat A closes and anchors up in line, boat C sets inside, boat B sets outside, etc... I know. Riveting. You can hardly wait for more details. If you're very (un)lucky, sometime I might explain to you how our diesel stove works...

How to Catch A Salmons

 July 4, 9am

  

Of course, there are at least as many ways to catch a fish as skin a cat. For instance, Paul is an accomplished sport fisher and I think it's especially strange for him to see so many and such beautiful fish running straight into our hold each set. We and the rest of the fleet do catch quite a few; however, since the state took over the fishery from the Japanese, the Alaska salmon industry has become one of the most well-managed sustainable agro-industries on the planet.

The basic concept behind our work is fairly simple: lay out a net, tow on it so the fish bunch up, haul in the net and dump the fish in the boat. However, the actual practice of the craft--the knowing of where and when to fish, of the dozen or so sub-trades necessary to keep a vessel functional (net-sewing, engine repair, carpentry, welding...), that actual practice is as full of challenge, complexity, and risk as any.

As I've mentioned, our boat is outfitted for a type of fishing called seining or purse-seining (as opposed to dragging, or gill netting with drift- or set-nets). The boat has a large stern deck that holds the net. One end of the net is connected to the boat; the other is connected to a smaller skiff. When we are ready to make a "set," our captain gives the word, we release the line tying the skiff to the stern, and our skiff driver pulls away in the opposite direction.  The skiff functions as a sort of mobile anchor, executing smaller maneuvers, and maintaining the shape of the set.

The net is stacked so as to easily roll off the back deck; the skipper lays it out, trying to achieve a long arc (usually off a point or at the mouth of a bay). Our net is 250 fathoms long (a fathom is about 6 feet) and contains four main elements: a floating cork line, a weighted lead line, the purse line, and the webbing itself. Between the corks and the leads, there are up to 20 fathoms of webbin. The leads stretch the web down towards the bottom. Since the lead line is shorter than the cork line, the bottom of the net automatically puckers a little.  

When we are towing the net, this creates a physical barrier and an area of higher pressure that work to push the fish back up toward the surface and the center of the set. Since we set against the direction the salmon are instinctively swimming, those that get spit back up in this manner generally turn to swim back into the net.

Once the net is laid out, we tow for 20-30 minutes. Eventually (as is actually happening now) the captain and the skiffman turn their vessels toward each other, turning the arc into a circle and closing the net. It's at this point that the purse line enters the process. The purse line actually runs through a series of steel rings that sit below the leads and are connected to them by shorter lines.

One end of the purse line is kept on deck from the beginning of the set; the other is spliced to the "king ring" at the opposite end of the net. Once we have hauled the king ring on deck, we begin tightening using a powerful deck winch (usually referred to by one of a variety of strictly non-PC terms, the tamest of which is "gypsy-head"). As we tighten the purse, the natural pucker in the bottom of the net is exaggerated to cinch the bottom of the net together.  At this point we've got something that resembles an upside-down purse. 

From here, John and I finish hauling in and stacking the net, the skipper makes some disparaging remarks about Paul*, and we hopefully dump a few thousand pounds of salmon into our fish hold.

Here's a fast-forward version of a set as seen from the deck. Though the boat in the video has a slightly different set up, they're using essentially the same method we do to Catch Salmon.

*In the skipper's (and Paul's) defense, I actually overheard the boss say that Paul has a pretty good touch with the skiff, which can be a difficult monster for a greenhorn to handle. In fact, despite all his barking, he is fond of saying that he has no complaints about any of us newbs or our work, other than the fact that we "can't keep his damn galley from looking like a ****in pigsty!" 

Freedom Fishing

7:00 pm, July 3

Left port yesterday late afternoon and arrived at Ruth Bay near 7pm. Whales all over the place so capt. decided not to set. Guys & I chilled and had a few beers. Watched The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence. Big surprise, John fell asleep within five. Paul stayed up till the end with me though. P-Dubs said it was one of the few John Wayne movies he hadn't seen; neither of us much impressed (A soundstage for a highway robbery? Really John Ford? You know you could have done better); even so, it was interesting to see Wayne and James Stewart playing together.

Woke up this morning at 4:10 am to the engine starting. As usual, John (on our boat—not Wayne) rolled out of his bunk cursing in eagerness to winch up the anchor before Paul or I were even coherent enough to realize how godforsaken early it was. I actually did pretty well this morning. Fell out of my own bunk and straight upstairs trading night shorts for the pants I've worn the last four days—and a shirt looks like I've been working in it the last four weeks. After pulling clothes and boots on, we generally sit around slack-faced pouring coffee down our faces and eating cereal. Today was pretty much the same—me slightly more energized by the thought and awe of Alaskan summer daybreak.

Sunrise was pretty enough that I snapped some pics during the first set; boats silhouetted against the horizon hauling in their nets and all that. Did pretty well on our first few sets. The fourth was possibly our largest yet. We estimated upwards of 400 fish (approx. 1800-2000 lbs).

Later in the day, a giant kelp monster assaulted us. For some reason there's all kinds of shit floating in the bay today. We threw one giant log and plenty of smaller drift logs over the net. But this kelp monster: we had already avoided two huger floating islands of the stuff, our Skipper dodging around them in our less-than-sporty 88,000 lb. trawler. But this thing managed to swamp into the net, costing us nearly an hour of exhaustion slamming around giant balls of slimy tentacle and tail before we could shuck it from the boat. For our pains, the monster shit behind it 64 fish onto the deck. Thanks a lot mother eff—uh, Mother Nature... Chalk it up to a coastal karmic return.

I said we made what was probably our largest haul this morning; ironically enough, our haul in on the kelp catastrophe was much heavier than that set.

Suffice it to say, three sets later we haven't seen a dramatic increase back to that othwer stellar set. It's getting late and we're pretty friggin exhausted. I'm finishing this entry while we tow on what will be our last set unless we have a large enough pay off to warrant one more go.

It occurs to me that words like "haul" "set" etc. might not make much sense yet since I haven't described the basic process of what we do as commercial salmon fishermen. I'll give a brief run-down of how the job works in the next entry.

Just made that "maybe final" set. 161 fish = here we go for another round. We've been at it for over 15 hours today, but a haul like that most def keeps you motivated.

5:45 am, July 4

Today I imagine a slightly modified Neil Sedaka hit as our morning anthem. Because "Waking up is Hard to do" ::groans from the audience::, even with the sound of a 400 lb. lunk of cast iron and 750 lb. chain chain screaming just over your head as John raises the anchor. This morning I actually covered my head with my arms as I heard the thing clanging up into its rest right above the foc'sole, simultaneously reflecting how useless those arms would be if the the anchor should somehow break through its housing and the steel deck to crash our sleeping quarters.  

Such morbid considerations only go so far towards getting me mobile in the morning (I have nearly as strong a tolerance for alarm clocks as the Dread Pirate Roberts had for iocane powder, ask my former roommates). It did help when the Skipper barked for someone to winch up the skiff (usually my chore). Paul beat me to that one. I got the Skipper's bagel and took first deck prep to feel like I was contributing to our little wake up routine.

Besides, I gave the guys a little serenade. Chasing cereal and coffee with my breakfast cocktail (multivitamin, ibuprofen for hand de-inflammation, adderall), I grabbed the iPod right before the first set. When all else fails, nothing beats a little Italian Opera  for getting the brain and bones moving. As a bonus, my machine shuffled out some ocean-appropriate Jack Johnson.

And before you know it, I'm humming along to a glaring Alaskan sunrise over Afognak Island, then I'm typing a mile a minute, then it's time to go out and haul in our first set...

Good morning Independence Day.

Memo: Good news on the crimped hands front! About ten days ago John and I were feeling the tendinitis through our wrists down to the elbow and all through our hands. In addition to the bald, not-let-you-sleep-more-than-a-couple-hours-at-a-stretch pain, there was the tingling and eventual numbness in most digits and through the palm to get excited about. Boss consoled us that it would go away in three or four years, that we were pansies anyway, but that a wrist brace might help (wrist brace: alternately referred to as a bowling sleeve—John says it's sort of inspired him to join a league when he gets back home).

Four days ago I realized I was waking up in the middle of the night more from the sound of the engine than from the ache. Two more days and I got really excited when I realized I could feel my pinkie and ring finger. Mostly it's all in the fingertips now: it's the little things.

Una notita

Just hit up the local biblioteca on the tail end of two hours of "personal time" the bossman gave us before we leave port this evening (For "personal time" see also, "sharing a few pitchers over a couple games of poorly played pool" and "our captain wants to get the hell away from us for a few hours").

Thought I would chime in with some memorable quotes from the day, though...

Paul (Crewmate): Hey, Bob just to remind you, I need to go to the post office to mail a package for my girlfriend--
Bob (i.e. the Skipper): You already told me that once; you think I f****in care?

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Bob: John! Are you keeping an eye on the lazarette like I told you?
John (Crewmate): Hey, there's a joint floating in the water?

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(from 2 weeks ago...)


Paul is working with the skipper in the tophouse. As his hand, recently lacerated, crosses the skipper's field of view...


Skipper: Ah! Get that away from me you aids-infested butt-pirate.

(sorry, but remember I offered warnings in the last post. As the journalists say, it's just my job to report the news....)


So that's all for today folks. Hopefully tomorrow will find us taking in massive hauls of red and dog salmon in Duck Bay. More likely, it will find my crewmates waking up in the bunk to my late night dreams (complete with yells) of stacking the net, repairing the boat, fixing the net after whale-events. You know, just the usual.