Commercial Fishing

[Skillet]

So with the halibut fiasco behind us, I decided to get back on the coho grounds and try to salvage the season.  Man, it was slow.  Really slow.  After the halibut deal, and continued slow coho fishing, we decided to take a weather day and go exploring along what is known as the "otter trail" between Khaz Bay and Portlock Harbor.  We found a cabin in there that is open to travelers.  It is on an old mining claim, and was a bunkhouse for the miners of yesteryear.  It's pretty rough, but they keep a small stack of wood by the barrel stove and some basic dry food in the cupboards. I don't have any pics of the inside, but you get the idea.

Coho was just barely paying the fuel bill until second king season was upon us. My records showed I had only caught about 1/4 as many coho to date as I had the year before, and the folks back in WA I was chatting with throughout the season were probably starting to hear the uneasiness in my voice.  If the coho didn't show up, I'd need a killer second king season to just keep my nose above water.  Crew was getting antsy, as he was only making McDonald's wages at best and his wife was having a hard time with him being away from home.  I had a lot riding on this upcoming second king season.

[Skyvalhunter]

This is a great thread!! Best one on Hunt wa by far!! Keep feeding us Skillet

[Taco280AI]

I like the updates 

[Caseyd]

Can’t wait to hear how the rest of the season went.

[Skillet]

Thanks for the kind words fellas. 

We had a forced 8 day coho closure before the king season.  Nothing to do but work on the boat, get things ready.  Normally with that kind of break I like to touch up the paint, but the weather up here this summer was very cold and wet.  We set a few "days of rain in a row" records up here this summer.  I think I had maybe a handful of days over 70 degrees, and not very many over 65.  60-62 was a "warm day" high, low 50's were the lows. 

So instead of getting spruced up on the outside, the Diamond Lil got a new water heater that had bit the dust during first king season (runs off of both 110V AC when plugged into shore power and has a heat exchanger that pulls heat off of the engine coolant when engines are running).  Of course, pulling out a 30 year old installation in an old boat like mine means lots of scraping and sanding and painting before the new one can go in.  Got to have her done in Bristol fashion!  (Ignore the wiring mess hanging down, that's just another project to do that's pretty far down on my list right now.  One of hundreds  )

[h20hunter]

Pretty epic.  Having been on the boat I feel like I got a tiny whiff, not a full taste.....just a wee wiff.....of what you all do. Amazing that you can grind one day and zero out, then bang it and haves riches and glory knowing that a 1700 footer or bear is right around the corner to remind you that really we are meer specs. 

[Skillet]

For the second summer king troll season, due to start on Aug 15, they announced we had 50,100 fish to catch.  That's a good bit higher than the remaining 36,000 we should have had.  What happened?  Well, they shut us down too early on the first opener, and we only caught 71,000 kings in those 5 days instead of the 84,000 we were supposed to have caught.  I should have had at least one more day on that fantastic fishing out on the grounds!     

Oh well, that's water under the keel.  We now had an opportunity to fish a little longer in the second season.  The thing about second season kings is that they can be hard to find and stay on.  The main biomass has already moved inside towards the rivers or moved south of the Canadian border on their way to Canadian and US rivers. The quota that is left can be a tricky thing to catch.

My "Deckhandy" Scott was contracted to fish through the second king season, then he needed to get back to his family in Montana.  To transition, I took on a troll greenhorn for second kings, Hanna, who Scott was to train and get ready for the rest of the season.  Hanna had fished Bristol Bay that summer and tendered troll salmon before, but never trolled herself.  I really liked her attitude and she came with a solid recommendation, so I took her on. After second kings, Scott would leave and Hanna would stay on to finish coho, then fish Spot Prawns with me in October.

So crewed up and with a good quota of kings to catch, we headed out of town on the morning of the 13th to start looking for kings.  This time, I headed south.

[Angry Perch]

Keep it coming, Skillet. This is right up there with Hirshey's stories, and that's saying something. I hope you are keeping some sort of memoirs (maybe this is it?!). There should be enough for a book or two in the future.

[storyteller]

I would buy a book, I am hoping a book will be written by hirshey someday.   Love to read this stuff

[Skillet]

Pretty epic.  Having been on the boat I feel like I got a tiny whiff, not a full taste.....just a wee wiff.....of what you all do. Amazing that you can grind one day and zero out, then bang it and haves riches and glory knowing that a 1700 footer or bear is right around the corner to remind you that really we are meer specs.

Don't be modest man, you got drug out into some big November swells, and long runs here an yon.  Hauling gear in the dark with 5'ers slapping the side of the boat, dragging deer back to the skiff while always looking over your shoulder to see if Mr. Bad Attitude Brown Bear was gonna steal it like it was your lunch money. 

You got more than a whiff, buddy 

[Skillet]

Keep it coming, Skillet. This is right up there with Hirshey's stories, and that's saying something. I hope you are keeping some sort of memoirs (maybe this is it?!). There should be enough for a book or two in the future.

I would buy a book, I am hoping a book will be written by hirshey someday.   Love to read this stuff

Thanks guys, that's high praise.  I too really enjoy Hirshey's stuff, and glad I can add to the body of work here on huntwa!

[Angry Perch]

Hell, maybe you'll find an old guitar on the free bench, and write some tunes!

[Skillet]

A generally held notion is that the northern shores that are so good the first of July are less productive in mid-August.  The general belief seems to be that the fish are generally migrating south, and the southern shores are where you'll find the biomass.  The weather looked decent enough, and a lot of boats I knew were going to try all the way down around Forrester Island - basically the last offshore reef the migrating fish will hit on their way to Canada.  It's about 140 miles (we measure everything in Nautical Miles of 6000 feet instead of you lubbers and your little 5280 foot mile  ) from Sitka, and I wasn't going that far South on a hunch.  If you head down there and it's dead, you've got a lot of running to do to get back north...

So I started really looking hard on the South Baranof shore, from Crawfish Bay down to Cape Ommaney.  I thought that would be a good place to find some kings and if I needed to jump either south or back up to Edgecumbe I could do that. Everything was pretty fishy looking along the shore, but when I got into about 40 fathoms off of Whale Bay south to Ommaney it looked really good.  My pard decided he was going to grind out the first few days at Edgecumbe and decide what to do from there.   We had a few friends that went south to Forrester Island, so I felt like we would have a good idea of where the fish were within a day or two. 

I anchored up in a little cove the night before the opener and got some sleep, dreaming of big August kings.

[Dhoey07]

Great writing Chris! Thanks for letting us follow along 

[Skillet]

Hell, maybe you'll find an old guitar on the free bench, and write some tunes!

I've got a Martin travel guitar on the boat, and over the years I've got a few tales of fish the size of whales I've put to some basic chords