in port in Ketchikan

Normally I wouldn't post entries so close together, but last Wednesday was a day worth writing about.

Last Monday Fish and Game finally opened Jim's favorite fishing spot of the coast of Gravina Island, a spot of good news in what has otherwise been a fairly dismal run for the past couple weeks. "That's where I make my money, boys, where else can we go?"

So we headed south from Wrangell early Tuesday morning, arriving at Gravina that afternoon around 2pm. For the first time this season we saw jumpers all along the coastline, another reason to hold out hope for the following day, and turned in early after a meal of roast ham and potatoes au gratin. The engine roared to life shortly before 3.30am the next morning and we crawled out of our bunks to face what we hoped would be a decent fishing day. Instead up line up with the majority of other boats on the southern boundary of the fishing area Jim headed to the northern boundary, where he's had some great hauls in the past, and we staked out our spot.

No jumpers. "F*ck! Get out of fishing, kid, it stinks," Jim said. Swallowing the disappointment brought on by the mysteriously vanished salmon we got our gear ready fully anticipating yet another 20 hour day of scratch fishing.

Our first set we only had one jumper go in, so we were surprised to haul in around 3,000 pounds. Our second set we didn't have any jumps, but hauled in around 3,500. Things were beginning to look a little better, though we all hoped that the fish would throw us a bone and start jumping. We continued that way until noon, when all of sudden fish began popping up all over the place. We made a set off the beach, and for the first time since our good day in area 7 had the satisfaction of seeing the water boil as we hauled in a 10,000 pound set of fish. Success!

Then the throttle controls went out, meaning that Jim was unable to control our speed. As Jim screamed himself hoarse I stood in the stairwell between the wheelhouse and engine room, relaying commands to Harold and Tim, who were frantically scrambling to fix the system below. No use: we couldn't get the controls back. "We're f*cked! We are completely f*cked," Jim shouted over and over again. But the fish were jumping, and with Tim working the throttle manually from the engine room we made another set at low speed. After we had the net out my job was to stand in the engine room and switch the controls on and off again and again, waiting for the digital status panel to say something other than "error 62." After I had done this about 50 times Jim ran down into the engine room, and yanked on the cable shaft that connects the control box to the engine. They started working again! A couple minutes later, as I was standing on deck watching jumpers pour into the pen, Jim came out of the top house and started poking fun at himself for being such a hot case. The tension that had built up during the last 1/2 hour suddenly expressed itself in a deep, uncontrollable laughter that rocked my whole body, very nearly becoming a sob. It's bad enough to almost lose a day fishing: it's 10 times worse when you're doing well for the second time in bum season.

As we hauled that set in Jim started complaining about the winch (which brings in the purse line) making a clinking noise. Just as we finished bringing in the purse line the chain in the winch snapped. I was dumbstruck: how could it be that our luck was this bad? Every day I pray that God provides this boat with what we need to thrive financially and relationally, but the constant stream of misadventure was beginning to seem like a cynical, mocking rejoinder. Yet as if to remind us that we still had things to be thankful for, the winch only broke after the purse line was in, allowing us to keep the set. In the end, we succeeded in rolling another 10,000 bag.

By now we were excited: this was easily the best fishing we'd seen all season. Despite having a broken winch, Jim decided that we'd make the set and fix the winch while towing. If we didn't succeed in fixing it we'd have to back-haul the net, cut our losses and head to town. Harold and Tim went to work, and 35 minutes later, after inserting an additional half link into the chain, we had the winch working again. "I wish you boys could have seen it," Jim said after we starting hauling gear, "while you boys were working we must have had a hundred jumpers go in!" That set was the biggest I've ever seen--probably over 20,000 pounds of fish. As we tried to roll the bag over the rail the whole boat keeled over and the rigging groaned in protest. Then the bunt line, which lifts the bag onto the deck, started snapping. Just in time Tim unhitched the single from the ring bar, ran across the deck, and snapped it onto the bag. "This day is unreal," I said to myself, as fish poured over the rail, filling the hatch and stacking up on the deck.

We made one more haul and filled the boat. Beautiful. After offloading half our tank on a tender we went back out, caught a couple thousand more pounds, and called it a day at closing time. In spite of an exhausting day filled with near misses we caught 60,000 pounds of fish, by far our best day of the season. Having paid for fuel several weeks ago in area 7, this day went straight into our pockets.

It turned out that we were the high boat in the fleet on Wednesday, and word has gotten out: we'll probably have to fight harder for our sets this weekend, but the fish are arriving, and we know that we can catch them. Furthermore, after last Wednesday I know that there's almost nothing this crew can't handle. The season will probably run for another two to three weeks, so it looks like I'll be home in late August or early September.

I love fishing,
Aaron