Commercial Fishing

[carpsniperg2]

Keep and travel safe.

[Skillet]

Mt Edgecumbe giving us a proper send-off tonight.  This taken from the top of my mast in Eliason.

[Whitpirate]

Sounds like a great way to end a long season, safe travels Sitka BT. 

Loaded with enough  gear, food, fuel, and bait for 15-ish days of prawn feezing mayem.  Heading out in the am, have a long run to the grounds we're starting on.

I'll be back with (hopefully) a couple thousand pounds of tails.  Very likely I'll be able to do a HuntWa group buy on those, among other frozen fish goodies, in early November.  Frozen product in November should be a much easier thing to deal with than fresh fish in 100 degree heat. Watch for a post on the Sponsor's Classifieds -

I’m in

[Dan-o]

Sounds like a great way to end a long season, safe travels Sitka BT. 

Loaded with enough  gear, food, fuel, and bait for 15-ish days of prawn feezing mayem.  Heading out in the am, have a long run to the grounds we're starting on.

I'll be back with (hopefully) a couple thousand pounds of tails.  Very likely I'll be able to do a HuntWa group buy on those, among other frozen fish goodies, in early November.  Frozen product in November should be a much easier thing to deal with than fresh fish in 100 degree heat. Watch for a post on the Sponsor's Classifieds -

I’m in

Me first.

And don't screw with me.  It's been 24 hours since I've had Whitpirate pork.     

[Wetwoodshunter]

Hey Skillet, were you loading pots today at the marina? I am in Sitka finishing up the AMSEA certified training course.

We were doing vessel abandonment drills out on one of Allen Marine's catamarans.

[Skillet]

I was at the Eliason work float for a short time to load buoys on. 

[h20hunter]

Sounds like a great way to end a long season, safe travels Sitka BT. 

Loaded with enough  gear, food, fuel, and bait for 15-ish days of prawn feezing mayem.  Heading out in the am, have a long run to the grounds we're starting on.

I'll be back with (hopefully) a couple thousand pounds of tails.  Very likely I'll be able to do a HuntWa group buy on those, among other frozen fish goodies, in early November.  Frozen product in November should be a much easier thing to deal with than fresh fish in 100 degree heat. Watch for a post on the Sponsor's Classifieds -

I’m in

Me first.

And don't screw with me.  It's been 24 hours since I've had Whitpirate pork.     

Uh Dan-o........this is a family friendly site.....not Tinder.

[Skillet]

Quick update-
Pulling into the thriving metropolis of Hydaburg on Prince of Wales island, we ran short on bait 

Anyway, fishing has been pretty decent. Doing about 240 pot lifts a day.
I will say I do like the pot fishing, and my boat is a natural pot boat.  Hmmm...

 I'll post up some pics when I get back to Sitka.  Hoping you guys are laying up the protien! 

[Boss .300 winmag]

Quick update-
Pulling into the thriving metropolis of Hydaburg on Prince of Wales island, we ran short on bait 

Anyway, fishing has been pretty decent. Doing about 240 pot lifts a day.
I will say I do like the pot fishing, and my boat is a natural pot boat.  Hmmm...

 I'll post up some pics when I get back to Sitka.  Hoping you guys are laying up the protien! 

Sure did, my freezer is full, had to buy a 7.1 cf for just the burger.😉

[Skillet]

Quick update-
Pulling into the thriving metropolis of Hydaburg on Prince of Wales island, we ran short on bait 

Anyway, fishing has been pretty decent. Doing about 240 pot lifts a day.
I will say I do like the pot fishing, and my boat is a natural pot boat.  Hmmm...

 I'll post up some pics when I get back to Sitka.  Hoping you guys are laying up the protien! 

Sure did, my freezer is full, had to buy a 7.1 cf for just the burger.😉

You draw an elephant permit??

[Skillet]

2018 Spot Prawns are a wrap.  Back in Sitka, got them all boxed up and offloaded into cold storage.  My crew is paid and back in WA by now, and I'm enjoying a few days of R&R during this weather we're having before I need to get out after the winter kings.

I've decided I really like pot fishing.  It's a great diversion from the standard trolling, lots more deck action and a boat running.  My boat has a very large amount of flat deck space with low bulwarks, and this makes it a natural for shrimping/crabbing. 

I took on a permit holder who owned all his own gear.  Basically, I brought the freezer boat rigged to haul pots to the party, he brought his permit card and gear.  We split the profits after we take out for food, fuel, bait and crew.  There was some learning involved on day one while we set the gear, but I got the hang of it fast as did he with working off of my boat.  Lots of good energy, and a good feeling about the season.

As I mentioned before, there is only 8 hours a day we can run gear.  On day 1, we set the gear out and were done with all 140 pots (14 strings of 10 pots each) by 10:30.  We covered water from 55 fa down to about 75 fa, over about 4 miles of shoreline.  Each string consisted of a 300 fa shot of line in a barrel.  We had it flagged at 100 fa intervals, so we had an idea of when the "bouy line" was out and the ground line began.  Some boats build a chute to launch pots out of the back with, but I decided we were going to save the hassle and launch from the side.  It was a great call, worked out well for us. 

We started by throwing the buoy out, running out 100 fa until we got to the flag.  That's when we started snapping on pots at regular intervals.  For a shallow set like 55 fa, we'd space them at 10 fa apart.  Ideally, our last pot was pretty close to the second flag.  We don't use anchors, just the weight of the pots to sink the string.  After the last pot, I'd throttle up and we'd run out the last 100 fa and throw the second buoy (each string end is marked by a buoy).

Here's a vid of our first set.  The line is pretty snarly coming out, as it was packed in those tubs and sitting since last October. 

[Skillet]

We found shrimping was much better deeper this year.  Most of our sets were most successful in the 80-95 fa range, with a few that paid at 100 fa (600 feet).  With that depth, it got pretty hard to land the string on the little edges I wanted to, as the pots sunk pretty slowly and there were some big tides we were working against.  I tried to schedule the deep drops during slack, but just running the most gear every day took precedence.  So, I'd end up planning the drift of the pots during my approach to the ledges I was fishing.  At one point,  I was trying to land a 95 fa string at the bottom of a very steep bank, and was setting them over the side of the boat in 60 fa of water knowing the outflow would take them over deeper water. 

When we were fishing that deep, we needed to also dedicate more of the 300 fa to buoy line and less to groundline.  So the pots got snapped on closer together, and ended up competing with each other a bit more.  A compromise we needed to make to fish the deep sets.

I didn't get any pics or vids of hauling gear, that was a lot of action on deck and no time for that kind of thing.  I do have some pics to share, of:

Shrimp in the livewell.  it was just a tote I kept on deck that I ran a 2" pump hose into and rigged a standpipe inside to manage water levels.  We kept the shrimp alive while we were running gear, and would start popping heads as soon as the last string of the day was reset.

[quadrafire]

Thanks for the ride Chris

[Skillet]

Here's a couple pics of the crew.
The permit holder surveying the set up right before launching, and my deckhand popping heads.  Man, it seemed like we were always popping heads...

[Skillet]

Once the shrimp were tailed and sorted (with eggs/no eggs), my stint in the freezer began.  I'd lay them out on sheets and freeze them solid.