Thursday, July 10th, 2008
Well it has been quite a while since I updated. Valdez has been good; the run seems to be a bit bigger than forecast, although it is still well below last year’s. That was expected though, since the fish seem to come every other year. What it means is that next year should be another really good year while the one after that will resemble this year, and so on.
We have actually been doing pretty well so far though. We are a decent amount above the fleet average in terms of fish caught, so you can’t complain about that. One thing we can complain about, though, is that the price is only .25 per pound, which is robbery considering what the canneries sell the product for. Another thing to complain about is that during 2 out of the 4 openers we have gotten so far our buyer has ordered all of their nets out of the water because of capacity issues at the processors. It really sucks because those days we were doing really well and could have made a really good day out of it but had to stop. We did manage to have a 66000 pound day once, which was great. Anytime you make 1700 dollars in 14 hour period is a great thing. Out of the 4 days that we have fished, we have had 28000 pounds, 66000 pounds, 40000 pounds, and 32000 pounds, which puts us at 166000 for all of Valdez. Combined with our Chalmers earnings, we have already grossed over $100000, which means that I’ve already made $10000. I’m pretty excited about that because that is the number that I was aiming to have at the end of the season, and here I am sitting on it with 2 months of fishing left.
We haven’t had any major breakdowns thus far, although one is probably looming around the corner. There have been minor things of course, but nothing that we couldn’t fix easily or work around. Jonathan, on the other hand has had a breakdown every opener thus far. He actually has yet to fish the entire 14 hour period that defines an opener. It seems that the Cat-Bil-Lu is not quite the dream boat that he had in mind; it is actually kind of a worn out old boat. It doesn’t help that he worked the equipment hard in Chalmers, but it is definitely having more than its share of maintenance problems. His engine controls went out, he got web in the prop, and his skiff lost all of its towing power. In the few sets that he has managed to get in, he has only caught 50000 pounds so far. He’s pretty down about it all, but there is only so much you can do to prevent breakdowns on a boat that you don’t know. Bill could predict everything because he had worked on all of it, but Jonathan doesn’t have that luxury.
Monday, July 14, 2008
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Chalmers Update #2
Tuesday, June 24th, 2008
Oh man that skiff is going to be the death of us. Yesterday and today it has been overheating because of a coolant leak and a bad water pump on the engine. That and the electrical system seem to be getting screwier every day. At this point the skiff is working on a set-by-set basis, and after every set Jamel has to check the fluids to see what he has to do to make sure it will get through the next tow. It’s pretty bad.
Today was nice because we actually did nap for a bit. That doesn’t happen much on the Jonathan S, so when it does you have to take full advantage of it.
The good news is that Valdez is creeping up on us. We have probably a week until we head over there, maybe less if the chum run here in Chalmers dies. It is already showing signs of dying off, with the catch rate falling, the fish size increasing, and the fish showing signs of maturity. I actually won’t be too sad when we leave here, because we have done the same set here in Stockdale Harbor so many times now that we are all getting bored. Jamel and I estimate that we’ve set here about 200 times so far this year. That’s about as many, if not more than, the number of sets that we did all of last year. We probably have at least another 400 sets ahead of us before the season is out, so by the end of the season we should be really good at what we do. Either that or we will be so sick of it that we just don’t care anymore. Pink season will be really nice though, with the 12 hour openers and the days off. It gives the crew and equipment a day to recuperate, whereas here in Chalmers there is no such luxury. Every time you go to sleep here you do so knowing that in about 5 or 6 hours you will wake up and start fishing in the cold morning. You have no idea how long you will be fishing or when you will deliver or eat or sleep. It all just kind of happens with no planning ahead. Pink season has a structure to it that is very nice in comparison.
Sunday, June 29th, 2008
Well it seems to have come to an end. We got word today that Valdez is opening on Tuesday, so at most we will fish here tomorrow morning and then run to Valdez in the afternoon or night. I’m so excited that pink season is about to start; fishing here in Stockdale harbor for the past 32 days has made me a bit weary of it, and the really scary part is that we have already done a season’s worth of sets. We estimate that we have done somewhere between 200-250 sets already, which is more than I ever did last summer, and we still have the whole pink season ahead of us. That plus fishing every day has worn on all of us. I’m fairly sure that in the past month I haven’t slept more than 5-6 hours a night. So basically I have been tired for a month.
The last week has actually been really good fishing here in Chalmers. Yesterday we managed to get 12000 pounds, while we were getting around 4000 before that. With that delivery the boat’s gross exceeded 50000 dollars, which means that I’ve made $5000 already. Not bad, considering that the lucrative part of the season is just about to begin.
The Valdez run might be a bit bigger than expected this year. It is still anticipated to be well below last year’s but they are opening it a few days earlier than expected; the first opener is scheduled for the 1st of July, and we didn’t think that we would be fishing there until the 4th or later. It doesn’t seem like a huge difference, but it’s only opening 3 or 4 days later than it did on the big year last summer. The price has been posted as 27 cents per pound, which isn’t as high as we had been hearing but is still a good step up from last year. The only problem is that the price increase barely keeps up with fuel prices rising and inflation, if really it does at all.
So now we have to decide whether or not we are going to fish tomorrow or not. We could fish in the morning and early afternoon, then run to Valdez during the night and fish the opener, or we could simply leave for Valdez tomorrow and mend net after we get there, which is something that we really need to do because pinks can fit through a lot smaller holes than chums can. We shall see, but if I had to guess I’d think that we will mend our gear and run to Valdez, because if we fish some more then we have to deliver again. We shall see.
Monday, June 30th, 2008
Well, Chalmers is done. We fished this morning from 8:00 until about 2:30 in the afternoon and called it quits. The morning was really good actually; we got some pretty big sets because of the buildup overnight and the lack of boats in the area. It is amazing the difference that having little or no competition makes. It means that no one is fishing ahead of you and cutting you off and that you don’t have to sit in lines all day for a set.
In the afternoon the fish dropped off, however, so we decided to deliver, get fueled up and get a move on for Valdez. I can’t say that I’m very sad to see Chalmers disappear, although we did make a nice chunk of money while we were here. Our total poundage ended up at 106000 for our 35 days here, which at fifty-five cents a pound means that I made just under six grand; pretty nice pay for the beginning of the summer.
We might actually be coming back to Chalmers during Valdez closures and fishing if we feel up to it and if the money would be worth it. So while we are leaving for now, we could be back in a short amount of time. Either way, our extended stay here is over and I am saying goodbye to Stockdale harbor and chum salmon. Time for pinks!
Oh man that skiff is going to be the death of us. Yesterday and today it has been overheating because of a coolant leak and a bad water pump on the engine. That and the electrical system seem to be getting screwier every day. At this point the skiff is working on a set-by-set basis, and after every set Jamel has to check the fluids to see what he has to do to make sure it will get through the next tow. It’s pretty bad.
Today was nice because we actually did nap for a bit. That doesn’t happen much on the Jonathan S, so when it does you have to take full advantage of it.
The good news is that Valdez is creeping up on us. We have probably a week until we head over there, maybe less if the chum run here in Chalmers dies. It is already showing signs of dying off, with the catch rate falling, the fish size increasing, and the fish showing signs of maturity. I actually won’t be too sad when we leave here, because we have done the same set here in Stockdale Harbor so many times now that we are all getting bored. Jamel and I estimate that we’ve set here about 200 times so far this year. That’s about as many, if not more than, the number of sets that we did all of last year. We probably have at least another 400 sets ahead of us before the season is out, so by the end of the season we should be really good at what we do. Either that or we will be so sick of it that we just don’t care anymore. Pink season will be really nice though, with the 12 hour openers and the days off. It gives the crew and equipment a day to recuperate, whereas here in Chalmers there is no such luxury. Every time you go to sleep here you do so knowing that in about 5 or 6 hours you will wake up and start fishing in the cold morning. You have no idea how long you will be fishing or when you will deliver or eat or sleep. It all just kind of happens with no planning ahead. Pink season has a structure to it that is very nice in comparison.
Sunday, June 29th, 2008
Well it seems to have come to an end. We got word today that Valdez is opening on Tuesday, so at most we will fish here tomorrow morning and then run to Valdez in the afternoon or night. I’m so excited that pink season is about to start; fishing here in Stockdale harbor for the past 32 days has made me a bit weary of it, and the really scary part is that we have already done a season’s worth of sets. We estimate that we have done somewhere between 200-250 sets already, which is more than I ever did last summer, and we still have the whole pink season ahead of us. That plus fishing every day has worn on all of us. I’m fairly sure that in the past month I haven’t slept more than 5-6 hours a night. So basically I have been tired for a month.
The last week has actually been really good fishing here in Chalmers. Yesterday we managed to get 12000 pounds, while we were getting around 4000 before that. With that delivery the boat’s gross exceeded 50000 dollars, which means that I’ve made $5000 already. Not bad, considering that the lucrative part of the season is just about to begin.
The Valdez run might be a bit bigger than expected this year. It is still anticipated to be well below last year’s but they are opening it a few days earlier than expected; the first opener is scheduled for the 1st of July, and we didn’t think that we would be fishing there until the 4th or later. It doesn’t seem like a huge difference, but it’s only opening 3 or 4 days later than it did on the big year last summer. The price has been posted as 27 cents per pound, which isn’t as high as we had been hearing but is still a good step up from last year. The only problem is that the price increase barely keeps up with fuel prices rising and inflation, if really it does at all.
So now we have to decide whether or not we are going to fish tomorrow or not. We could fish in the morning and early afternoon, then run to Valdez during the night and fish the opener, or we could simply leave for Valdez tomorrow and mend net after we get there, which is something that we really need to do because pinks can fit through a lot smaller holes than chums can. We shall see, but if I had to guess I’d think that we will mend our gear and run to Valdez, because if we fish some more then we have to deliver again. We shall see.
Monday, June 30th, 2008
Well, Chalmers is done. We fished this morning from 8:00 until about 2:30 in the afternoon and called it quits. The morning was really good actually; we got some pretty big sets because of the buildup overnight and the lack of boats in the area. It is amazing the difference that having little or no competition makes. It means that no one is fishing ahead of you and cutting you off and that you don’t have to sit in lines all day for a set.
In the afternoon the fish dropped off, however, so we decided to deliver, get fueled up and get a move on for Valdez. I can’t say that I’m very sad to see Chalmers disappear, although we did make a nice chunk of money while we were here. Our total poundage ended up at 106000 for our 35 days here, which at fifty-five cents a pound means that I made just under six grand; pretty nice pay for the beginning of the summer.
We might actually be coming back to Chalmers during Valdez closures and fishing if we feel up to it and if the money would be worth it. So while we are leaving for now, we could be back in a short amount of time. Either way, our extended stay here is over and I am saying goodbye to Stockdale harbor and chum salmon. Time for pinks!
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Chalmers update
Monday, June 2, 2008
Well it’s our 6th day here is Chalmers, and man it has been an ordeal. All day every day there is something breaking or going wrong left and right. The first day, on the first set the skiff caught on fire. That wasn’t the end of it though; after 4 or 5 sets Jamel and I switched places on the deck and in the skiff, and that’s where it all really started to go wrong. In our haste to switch places, we forgot to disconnect the block line from the net and when I set out in the skiff, the block line got tight on the block and I accidentally towed the boat back into the net. Andrew had put the boat in neutral by this point, but it was too late; web was caught in the prop and we were pretty screwed. After deliberating over it for a while we decided to beach the boat nearby and then at low tide simply wade down and work the web off. The problem is that while we were maneuvering the boat on the beach, Jamel got web caught in the skiff’s jet intake. Now we were really in a tough spot, so we waited parked everything, went to bed and waited for low tide to evaluate the situation. At about 3 am we woke up to try and fix our mess. The water was pretty cold, but not as bad as expected; maybe somewhere around 45 degrees. It was still too high for boots so I was out there in my flip flops trying to unhook the net from our boat. Eventually we got the web off of the prop without tearing it too much, but the skiff was a different story. It wasn’t really propped up on anything so we couldn’t reach too far under it, and in the end we had to cut out all of the pinched web. As disappointed as I was to have to cut the net, I was still pretty excited to get out of that water. God it was cold. After all this was done we went back onboard the Jonathan S which was now tilted at about a 45 degree angle because of the beach. It was interesting to walk on the walls to get back to my bunk; fortunately I had the bunk that had me leaning against the wall. Anyways that was our first day, but that wouldn’t be the end of our problems. It really didn’t cause us too much trouble because we got Jonathan to mend the hole in the morning and we were good to fish again.
The next few days we basically just had a lot of net trouble and some early season kinks to work out. It wasn’t fishing properly and we ended up dumping a lot of fish over the corks every time we tried to pull up a bag of them. Part of it is the new net, and another reason for it is the fact that we don’t have Jonathan in the skiff anymore, which means that all of the tows aren’t perfect. It was frustrating.
Today was a real bomb though. During our first set the skiff overheated and we had to pick the net up over the stern, which means no fish. Throughout the day we were refilling the coolant tank with water to serve as a temporary fix until we can fix the leak in the coolant system. It seems that when Jonathan was plumping the keel cooler he used plastic parts to connect hoses, and those pipes got deformed and started to leak after being exposed to so much heat. After that we had two really good sets with nothing going wrong, and then a big cloud of freon gas blew out if the boat. The pressure had gotten too high and with the numerous other things that we had going on, Andrew forgot to check his gauges. So we had freon all inside the boat and in the engine room, which thankfully got shut off in time to prevent any serious damage. It meant that we couldn’t refrigerate the fish hold water anymore, which is a pretty big problem. After we got the cabin ventilated enough, Andrew, Jamel and I went in and changed the oil in the main engine twice to prevent further harm to it, and after we all calmed down went to deliver the fish that we had onboard to the tender and had dinner. We actually think that we can still operate the refrigeration without any problems and continue to fish. Hopefully we can get some freon sent out on the tender soon, but luckily it turned out to not be too much trouble. It could have totally fried the newly rebuilt engine and pretty much killed our season, leaving Jamel and I jobless. Thankfully it didn’t get that far and we will live to see another day of fishing.
I really can’t complain about the fishing though. So far the fish have been coming in very strong for this early in the season, and in the 6 days that we’ve been here I’ve already made about $500, which is great considering the chum run hasn’t really started yet. Even with all of the screwups we have still managed to out-fish Jonathan up to this point, and I don’t plan on letting him jump ahead at all this season. I’m sure that the competition between our boats (the Jonathan S and the Cat-Bil-Lu) will make all of us wealthy people by the end of the season.
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008
God I am getting sick of this weather that we have been having in Chalmers. For the past three days it has been blowing 30 knots, raining, and about 40-45 degrees. All of that combines to make it very cold outside and no fun at all to fish in. The silver lining is that we have done pretty well over the past few days, excluding today because all of a sudden the fish seem to have dried up. Everyone who was fishing around our spot today quit after a little bit, including us.
Instead of work we watched a couple movies and just relaxed all day, although I’m sure that it will not last for long. It is nice to get a day off to kind of recharge and refresh yourself when fishing everyday with no closures. Once pink season starts it will seem incredibly easy by comparison, with the openers being 12-14 hours with the waters being closed for at least a full day after that.
Friday, June 6th, 2008
God I hate that kid Jesse. He is the deckhand on Jonathan’s boat, and he really screwed us over bad. Yesterday, sometime around midday, Andrew decided to be nice and bring Jesse aboard to try and train him somewhat, because he has been struggling on Jonathan’s boat. So Jesse and I switched and I stacked corks for Jonathan one set (a lightning fast pickup I must say) and then watched as the Jonathan S took their turn. The tow was fine, but as they closed there was a confusion with the towline exchange between the crew because Jesse didn’t hand Jamel the line he needed as he gave Jesse the bunt end of the net. In his panic, Jesse dropped the towline that he got from Jamel and it fell overboard, straight into the prop. So there was the Jonathan S, with something stuck in the prop yet again. After evaluating the situation Andrew, Jamel and I decided that the only choice was to spend another night on the beach and to get the line out once low tide came around. So we positioned the boat on the beach, waited a few hours for the water to recede, wound the rope off without having to cut it, and got off around midnight. All in all, the beach part wasn’t bad. What really hurt was the fact that the fishing got really good about as soon as we got on the beach, and we could do nothing but watch. Jesse ended up costing the boat probably somewhere around $2000, in which case means that I personally lost $200. Jamel and I spent all night discussing what should do to him, but nothing we came up with seemed like it would be what he deserved; I’m sure we can think of something though.
On the plus side, the sun came out today for the first time in almost a week. The rain lasted for a good 6 straight days before the streak ended, and God are we glad to have a reprieve, however short it might end up being.
On a comical note, Jamel was remarked today and about how something smelled funny. It turned out that the odd smell was my clean shirt and deodorant. You know you have a good job when the smell of something clean is out of the ordinary.
Monday, June 9th, 2008
Christ yesterday was rough. We started at 4 am and by about noon the wind had picked up and the waves were about 3-5 feet where we were fishing. It was pretty hardcore with everything swinging around (including me) and the skiff bobbing up and down, and yet was still fun even though I was afraid that something was going to break the entire time. I did almost get hit a by the rings few times and Andrew almost dropped the leads on me, but thankfully I was able to avoid it all. Eventually we decided that the fish had gone away enough that it wasn’t worth trying to catch them and break something, so we sped off to deliver our fish. Our delivery put us over 21000 pounds for Chalmers, which at 55 cents a pound finally pays off my plane ticket up here and my ticket back. So from here out is pretty much all profit; if I had to I could cut ties right now and not lose any money.
I turned on my cell phone yesterday and by some sort of weird occurrence I had service and was able to call out, which I couldn’t even do in Cordova. I got to call Megan for a few minutes and find out what her plan was, and to learn that an apartment finally opened up at the place we’ve been looking at this spring, so I should have a place to live this fall when I make it out to Oregon. I’m pretty excited about that, because I was kind of worried about finding a place to stay if this apartment didn’t pan out. It should be a nice enough place to live; it’s right on the southern border of the OSU campus and which will allow me to walk to everything I have to do on or around campus, which will be really nice considering the way that the price of gas is going up. I’m really excited about it.
Today wasn’t bad because we kept up our poundage average without having to do a lot of sets. I think we started at 8 when it opened (the waters are closed here from 8 pm Sunday to Monday at 8 am) and did about 5 sets total. What sucks is that there are a lot of boats starting to show up and each set has about 6 boats on it all day now. So I think to kind of counteract this we are going to try and start fishing all night rather than all day, when there is little or no competition and we can just do set after set without a big wait in between. Hopefully it’ll allow us to catch more fish while also working more hours. It’s what Jonathan has been doing the past few days and so far it’s worked for him, so it should work for us to.
Tuesday, June 10th, 2008
Today was…unbelievable. We started around 10 am after fishing until around 3 am last night and got into the long line on our Stockdale harbor set. After several primary and second-out sets we decided that we’d do just one more and then go deliver. Unfortunately, during the one last set the refrigeration once again blew freon into the engine room. The difference between this time and the first time is that this time we had our net in the water and no way to haul it in without turning the engine on. So we sat there for a few minutes until another boat, the Tor, came and offered us assistance by pulling our net over their block and back onto our deck. It’s was such an awesome thing of them to do for us, people who they don’t know at all and aren’t even fishing for the same cannery. Some people are just nice like that I suppose. Anyways, once we got all of that done, we motored into the nearby bay quickly, shut the engine off and changed the oil. Then after the oil change we go to start the engine again so we can deliver the fish we had onboard…and the starter doesn’t engage. There we are with the anchor down, fish onboard, a boom that keeps walking to one side and no way to start the main diesel. Jamel and I ended up bringing in the anchor by hand, which was a chore to say the least. After that Jamel towed us into cell phone range with the skiff and after calls were made to arrange for a new starter he towed us over to the tender. We straightened out the boom by hand (another chore) and eventually delivered, which was interesting because we had no hydraulics at all and had to rely on the tender to manipulate the pump for us, which is never a great thing. I swear that these tender guys are so dumb that they make almost all of the bad crews from last year look good.
So now we are unable to fish for at least a couple days, until we get a new starter motor. At least we will have time to get the boat squared away on some of the little things that need to get done, but I really wish that we could be fishing instead. The fish are really starting to come in now, and we can’t catch them! At least Jonathan had to run to town for fixes of his own, so he can’t get ahead of us while we’re out of the game.
Wednesday, June 11th, 2008
Bored. I really wish the starter would come soon. There’s a chance that it might come tomorrow, but if not then the next day. Meanwhile, we’re losing thousands of dollars as we sit idly and do nothing while the fish are swimming.
Sunday, June 15th, 2008
Today was a good day. We got up later than usual (around 5:30), put the net in the water and got a great set to start the day. From then on we fished straight until it closed at 8 pm, with a few boats joining in every now and then. After it was all said and done, we ended up delivering around 8200 pounds today, giving me something like a $450 dollar day. That is absolutely sick for Chalmers; I didn’t expect to get that much on a single day here. One can only hope that it keeps up for a while, especially considering that today was probably the halfway mark for our stay in Chalmers this summer. Andrew predicts that Valdez won’t open until about the 4th of July, so we should have plenty of time to try and have a bigger day than today.
It is kind of scary that we are only at the halfway point for Chalmers though. Pinks are going to seem so easy by comparison, with the 12 hour openers and day-on day-off fishing. When you have a whole day to recover it’s not that hard to go super hardcore for 12 hours of fishing, but here when you expect 5-6 hours of sleep after going hardcore it can be harder to get into the right mindset sometimes. Speaking of pinks, we are starting to get a lot of them in our sets here. By a lot I mean around 10 per set, but for the middle of June that is fairly unheard of. Andrew thinks that it might be a sign of another big wild fish run, and I have to agree that it certainly points in that direction. We’re all pretty excited about that development, and we’ll have to watch over the next few weeks here how the situation develops
The other night we did something interesting and fished throughout it. We started around noon and sat in a line of about 6 boats until 7, and then everybody else quit and we cranked out sets until 3 am. It was creepy because the sky was actually getting brighter as we quit. There were points where seeing the skiff on the beach was difficult, but it never got to the point where we couldn’t see what was going on. This was all like 9 days before the longest day of the year, too! I can’t really remember what it was like when I was up here last year for the solstice, so I’m kind of excited to see how light it is at 1 am, which seems to be the darkest point of the day.
Andrew and I have been experimenting a lot amount on deck in terms of stacking the net. I think we have finally found an easy way to stack it without getting a lot of leadline flips. It seems that all of the new web that was hung into the net over the winter, it doesn’t stack quite the same as it used to, but I think that Andrew and I have solved that now. Our first experiment had me under the net as we brought the lead in, which I decided wouldn’t do at all once we start lots of jellies. So therefore I suggested our current method and it seems to work perfectly fine. Only time will tell where we end up.
Monday, June 16th, 2008
Well today sure had a good start. Jamel and I got up around 7, although Andrew had been up since 4, and had some breakfast before fishing opened. We were first on the set, which after a closure usually means a buildup of fish, even if the closure is only 12 hours long. So we were first in line for the buildup set and it was a great one; our best so far this year with 256 fish in it. I know that because I pitched every one of them from the deck into the fish hold. After that we kept getting 100+ fish sets until our final one, which ended up being about 15 fish. It ended up being a pretty easy day with only 6 sets.
We’re starting to get really organized and quick about picking up these days. The net is running in and out really smoothly every time, with a small exception at the end where we run out of purse line sometimes; that’s a fairly easy fix though, once we get some time to do it.
Tuesday, June 17th, 2008
Well today we got up around 4:30 am, did one set, and quit. We were a bit late getting started and as a consequence we missed the morning shot of fish. Then later on we were lazy and didn’t even go out for the afternoon. So we spent the day eating and sleeping with a movie thrown in. It was a nice break, but not a great way to make money.
Saturday, June 21st, 2008
Well crap. Maybe I’m just bad luck or something, but for the second year in a row we sunk the skiff. There are no pictures this time, but trust me it looked exactly the same as last year, with the skiff held up by our picking boom with the console and engine well underwater. Fortunately this time the engine wasn’t underwater for nearly as long, because it went down right next to a point where several limit sized boats were fishing, and one of them, the St. Zita, came and just picked it straight up out of the water. It made a really good case for getting a big boat.
So anyways we were on our way back to town anyways, because on our last set we actually broke the tiller on the skiff. That’s actually why it sunk, because when we were checking out the damage we removed an inspection hatch to look into the jet. However, in our frustration we forgot to put it back on, so once we started towing it back to town water started flowing through the hatch and it went down. The damage isn’t really too bad though; a lot better than last year. Water didn’t get too far into the engine, so besides the fried wiring it should work fine. We should be ready to go tonight and leaving again tomorrow morning, which is fine with me because I don’t get paid to be in town and every day we miss out there is another 200 or 300 bucks that I’m not getting. I’ve already made about $3000 so far, so this season is getting off to a pretty decent start.
We shouldn’t be out for too long this time though, because Valdez should be starting sometime around the 4th of July, if not a little earlier.
-Jack
Well it’s our 6th day here is Chalmers, and man it has been an ordeal. All day every day there is something breaking or going wrong left and right. The first day, on the first set the skiff caught on fire. That wasn’t the end of it though; after 4 or 5 sets Jamel and I switched places on the deck and in the skiff, and that’s where it all really started to go wrong. In our haste to switch places, we forgot to disconnect the block line from the net and when I set out in the skiff, the block line got tight on the block and I accidentally towed the boat back into the net. Andrew had put the boat in neutral by this point, but it was too late; web was caught in the prop and we were pretty screwed. After deliberating over it for a while we decided to beach the boat nearby and then at low tide simply wade down and work the web off. The problem is that while we were maneuvering the boat on the beach, Jamel got web caught in the skiff’s jet intake. Now we were really in a tough spot, so we waited parked everything, went to bed and waited for low tide to evaluate the situation. At about 3 am we woke up to try and fix our mess. The water was pretty cold, but not as bad as expected; maybe somewhere around 45 degrees. It was still too high for boots so I was out there in my flip flops trying to unhook the net from our boat. Eventually we got the web off of the prop without tearing it too much, but the skiff was a different story. It wasn’t really propped up on anything so we couldn’t reach too far under it, and in the end we had to cut out all of the pinched web. As disappointed as I was to have to cut the net, I was still pretty excited to get out of that water. God it was cold. After all this was done we went back onboard the Jonathan S which was now tilted at about a 45 degree angle because of the beach. It was interesting to walk on the walls to get back to my bunk; fortunately I had the bunk that had me leaning against the wall. Anyways that was our first day, but that wouldn’t be the end of our problems. It really didn’t cause us too much trouble because we got Jonathan to mend the hole in the morning and we were good to fish again.
The next few days we basically just had a lot of net trouble and some early season kinks to work out. It wasn’t fishing properly and we ended up dumping a lot of fish over the corks every time we tried to pull up a bag of them. Part of it is the new net, and another reason for it is the fact that we don’t have Jonathan in the skiff anymore, which means that all of the tows aren’t perfect. It was frustrating.
Today was a real bomb though. During our first set the skiff overheated and we had to pick the net up over the stern, which means no fish. Throughout the day we were refilling the coolant tank with water to serve as a temporary fix until we can fix the leak in the coolant system. It seems that when Jonathan was plumping the keel cooler he used plastic parts to connect hoses, and those pipes got deformed and started to leak after being exposed to so much heat. After that we had two really good sets with nothing going wrong, and then a big cloud of freon gas blew out if the boat. The pressure had gotten too high and with the numerous other things that we had going on, Andrew forgot to check his gauges. So we had freon all inside the boat and in the engine room, which thankfully got shut off in time to prevent any serious damage. It meant that we couldn’t refrigerate the fish hold water anymore, which is a pretty big problem. After we got the cabin ventilated enough, Andrew, Jamel and I went in and changed the oil in the main engine twice to prevent further harm to it, and after we all calmed down went to deliver the fish that we had onboard to the tender and had dinner. We actually think that we can still operate the refrigeration without any problems and continue to fish. Hopefully we can get some freon sent out on the tender soon, but luckily it turned out to not be too much trouble. It could have totally fried the newly rebuilt engine and pretty much killed our season, leaving Jamel and I jobless. Thankfully it didn’t get that far and we will live to see another day of fishing.
I really can’t complain about the fishing though. So far the fish have been coming in very strong for this early in the season, and in the 6 days that we’ve been here I’ve already made about $500, which is great considering the chum run hasn’t really started yet. Even with all of the screwups we have still managed to out-fish Jonathan up to this point, and I don’t plan on letting him jump ahead at all this season. I’m sure that the competition between our boats (the Jonathan S and the Cat-Bil-Lu) will make all of us wealthy people by the end of the season.
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008
God I am getting sick of this weather that we have been having in Chalmers. For the past three days it has been blowing 30 knots, raining, and about 40-45 degrees. All of that combines to make it very cold outside and no fun at all to fish in. The silver lining is that we have done pretty well over the past few days, excluding today because all of a sudden the fish seem to have dried up. Everyone who was fishing around our spot today quit after a little bit, including us.
Instead of work we watched a couple movies and just relaxed all day, although I’m sure that it will not last for long. It is nice to get a day off to kind of recharge and refresh yourself when fishing everyday with no closures. Once pink season starts it will seem incredibly easy by comparison, with the openers being 12-14 hours with the waters being closed for at least a full day after that.
Friday, June 6th, 2008
God I hate that kid Jesse. He is the deckhand on Jonathan’s boat, and he really screwed us over bad. Yesterday, sometime around midday, Andrew decided to be nice and bring Jesse aboard to try and train him somewhat, because he has been struggling on Jonathan’s boat. So Jesse and I switched and I stacked corks for Jonathan one set (a lightning fast pickup I must say) and then watched as the Jonathan S took their turn. The tow was fine, but as they closed there was a confusion with the towline exchange between the crew because Jesse didn’t hand Jamel the line he needed as he gave Jesse the bunt end of the net. In his panic, Jesse dropped the towline that he got from Jamel and it fell overboard, straight into the prop. So there was the Jonathan S, with something stuck in the prop yet again. After evaluating the situation Andrew, Jamel and I decided that the only choice was to spend another night on the beach and to get the line out once low tide came around. So we positioned the boat on the beach, waited a few hours for the water to recede, wound the rope off without having to cut it, and got off around midnight. All in all, the beach part wasn’t bad. What really hurt was the fact that the fishing got really good about as soon as we got on the beach, and we could do nothing but watch. Jesse ended up costing the boat probably somewhere around $2000, in which case means that I personally lost $200. Jamel and I spent all night discussing what should do to him, but nothing we came up with seemed like it would be what he deserved; I’m sure we can think of something though.
On the plus side, the sun came out today for the first time in almost a week. The rain lasted for a good 6 straight days before the streak ended, and God are we glad to have a reprieve, however short it might end up being.
On a comical note, Jamel was remarked today and about how something smelled funny. It turned out that the odd smell was my clean shirt and deodorant. You know you have a good job when the smell of something clean is out of the ordinary.
Monday, June 9th, 2008
Christ yesterday was rough. We started at 4 am and by about noon the wind had picked up and the waves were about 3-5 feet where we were fishing. It was pretty hardcore with everything swinging around (including me) and the skiff bobbing up and down, and yet was still fun even though I was afraid that something was going to break the entire time. I did almost get hit a by the rings few times and Andrew almost dropped the leads on me, but thankfully I was able to avoid it all. Eventually we decided that the fish had gone away enough that it wasn’t worth trying to catch them and break something, so we sped off to deliver our fish. Our delivery put us over 21000 pounds for Chalmers, which at 55 cents a pound finally pays off my plane ticket up here and my ticket back. So from here out is pretty much all profit; if I had to I could cut ties right now and not lose any money.
I turned on my cell phone yesterday and by some sort of weird occurrence I had service and was able to call out, which I couldn’t even do in Cordova. I got to call Megan for a few minutes and find out what her plan was, and to learn that an apartment finally opened up at the place we’ve been looking at this spring, so I should have a place to live this fall when I make it out to Oregon. I’m pretty excited about that, because I was kind of worried about finding a place to stay if this apartment didn’t pan out. It should be a nice enough place to live; it’s right on the southern border of the OSU campus and which will allow me to walk to everything I have to do on or around campus, which will be really nice considering the way that the price of gas is going up. I’m really excited about it.
Today wasn’t bad because we kept up our poundage average without having to do a lot of sets. I think we started at 8 when it opened (the waters are closed here from 8 pm Sunday to Monday at 8 am) and did about 5 sets total. What sucks is that there are a lot of boats starting to show up and each set has about 6 boats on it all day now. So I think to kind of counteract this we are going to try and start fishing all night rather than all day, when there is little or no competition and we can just do set after set without a big wait in between. Hopefully it’ll allow us to catch more fish while also working more hours. It’s what Jonathan has been doing the past few days and so far it’s worked for him, so it should work for us to.
Tuesday, June 10th, 2008
Today was…unbelievable. We started around 10 am after fishing until around 3 am last night and got into the long line on our Stockdale harbor set. After several primary and second-out sets we decided that we’d do just one more and then go deliver. Unfortunately, during the one last set the refrigeration once again blew freon into the engine room. The difference between this time and the first time is that this time we had our net in the water and no way to haul it in without turning the engine on. So we sat there for a few minutes until another boat, the Tor, came and offered us assistance by pulling our net over their block and back onto our deck. It’s was such an awesome thing of them to do for us, people who they don’t know at all and aren’t even fishing for the same cannery. Some people are just nice like that I suppose. Anyways, once we got all of that done, we motored into the nearby bay quickly, shut the engine off and changed the oil. Then after the oil change we go to start the engine again so we can deliver the fish we had onboard…and the starter doesn’t engage. There we are with the anchor down, fish onboard, a boom that keeps walking to one side and no way to start the main diesel. Jamel and I ended up bringing in the anchor by hand, which was a chore to say the least. After that Jamel towed us into cell phone range with the skiff and after calls were made to arrange for a new starter he towed us over to the tender. We straightened out the boom by hand (another chore) and eventually delivered, which was interesting because we had no hydraulics at all and had to rely on the tender to manipulate the pump for us, which is never a great thing. I swear that these tender guys are so dumb that they make almost all of the bad crews from last year look good.
So now we are unable to fish for at least a couple days, until we get a new starter motor. At least we will have time to get the boat squared away on some of the little things that need to get done, but I really wish that we could be fishing instead. The fish are really starting to come in now, and we can’t catch them! At least Jonathan had to run to town for fixes of his own, so he can’t get ahead of us while we’re out of the game.
Wednesday, June 11th, 2008
Bored. I really wish the starter would come soon. There’s a chance that it might come tomorrow, but if not then the next day. Meanwhile, we’re losing thousands of dollars as we sit idly and do nothing while the fish are swimming.
Sunday, June 15th, 2008
Today was a good day. We got up later than usual (around 5:30), put the net in the water and got a great set to start the day. From then on we fished straight until it closed at 8 pm, with a few boats joining in every now and then. After it was all said and done, we ended up delivering around 8200 pounds today, giving me something like a $450 dollar day. That is absolutely sick for Chalmers; I didn’t expect to get that much on a single day here. One can only hope that it keeps up for a while, especially considering that today was probably the halfway mark for our stay in Chalmers this summer. Andrew predicts that Valdez won’t open until about the 4th of July, so we should have plenty of time to try and have a bigger day than today.
It is kind of scary that we are only at the halfway point for Chalmers though. Pinks are going to seem so easy by comparison, with the 12 hour openers and day-on day-off fishing. When you have a whole day to recover it’s not that hard to go super hardcore for 12 hours of fishing, but here when you expect 5-6 hours of sleep after going hardcore it can be harder to get into the right mindset sometimes. Speaking of pinks, we are starting to get a lot of them in our sets here. By a lot I mean around 10 per set, but for the middle of June that is fairly unheard of. Andrew thinks that it might be a sign of another big wild fish run, and I have to agree that it certainly points in that direction. We’re all pretty excited about that development, and we’ll have to watch over the next few weeks here how the situation develops
The other night we did something interesting and fished throughout it. We started around noon and sat in a line of about 6 boats until 7, and then everybody else quit and we cranked out sets until 3 am. It was creepy because the sky was actually getting brighter as we quit. There were points where seeing the skiff on the beach was difficult, but it never got to the point where we couldn’t see what was going on. This was all like 9 days before the longest day of the year, too! I can’t really remember what it was like when I was up here last year for the solstice, so I’m kind of excited to see how light it is at 1 am, which seems to be the darkest point of the day.
Andrew and I have been experimenting a lot amount on deck in terms of stacking the net. I think we have finally found an easy way to stack it without getting a lot of leadline flips. It seems that all of the new web that was hung into the net over the winter, it doesn’t stack quite the same as it used to, but I think that Andrew and I have solved that now. Our first experiment had me under the net as we brought the lead in, which I decided wouldn’t do at all once we start lots of jellies. So therefore I suggested our current method and it seems to work perfectly fine. Only time will tell where we end up.
Monday, June 16th, 2008
Well today sure had a good start. Jamel and I got up around 7, although Andrew had been up since 4, and had some breakfast before fishing opened. We were first on the set, which after a closure usually means a buildup of fish, even if the closure is only 12 hours long. So we were first in line for the buildup set and it was a great one; our best so far this year with 256 fish in it. I know that because I pitched every one of them from the deck into the fish hold. After that we kept getting 100+ fish sets until our final one, which ended up being about 15 fish. It ended up being a pretty easy day with only 6 sets.
We’re starting to get really organized and quick about picking up these days. The net is running in and out really smoothly every time, with a small exception at the end where we run out of purse line sometimes; that’s a fairly easy fix though, once we get some time to do it.
Tuesday, June 17th, 2008
Well today we got up around 4:30 am, did one set, and quit. We were a bit late getting started and as a consequence we missed the morning shot of fish. Then later on we were lazy and didn’t even go out for the afternoon. So we spent the day eating and sleeping with a movie thrown in. It was a nice break, but not a great way to make money.
Saturday, June 21st, 2008
Well crap. Maybe I’m just bad luck or something, but for the second year in a row we sunk the skiff. There are no pictures this time, but trust me it looked exactly the same as last year, with the skiff held up by our picking boom with the console and engine well underwater. Fortunately this time the engine wasn’t underwater for nearly as long, because it went down right next to a point where several limit sized boats were fishing, and one of them, the St. Zita, came and just picked it straight up out of the water. It made a really good case for getting a big boat.
So anyways we were on our way back to town anyways, because on our last set we actually broke the tiller on the skiff. That’s actually why it sunk, because when we were checking out the damage we removed an inspection hatch to look into the jet. However, in our frustration we forgot to put it back on, so once we started towing it back to town water started flowing through the hatch and it went down. The damage isn’t really too bad though; a lot better than last year. Water didn’t get too far into the engine, so besides the fried wiring it should work fine. We should be ready to go tonight and leaving again tomorrow morning, which is fine with me because I don’t get paid to be in town and every day we miss out there is another 200 or 300 bucks that I’m not getting. I’ve already made about $3000 so far, so this season is getting off to a pretty decent start.
We shouldn’t be out for too long this time though, because Valdez should be starting sometime around the 4th of July, if not a little earlier.
-Jack
Monday, May 26, 2008
Off to Chalmers
Well tomorrow is the day. We are planning on leaving sometime in the afternoon and heading down to Chalmers for about a month. Today was actually the first day that it was open to fish there, but unfortunately we got stuck doing boat projects and are now late getting out fishing, although we are still way ahead of a lot of boats. Most of the boats in the fleet won't even start fishing until Valdez opens around the last few days of June. Hopefully by then we will already have made about $50000 scratching for chums in Chalmers and can taunt them to no end.
So anyways, this should be goodbye for a month and if it isn't that means we broke something, which we are going to try and avoid this year. I hope that when we return from Chalmers we are significantly richer and way ahead of Jonathan in fish totals.
-Jack
So anyways, this should be goodbye for a month and if it isn't that means we broke something, which we are going to try and avoid this year. I hope that when we return from Chalmers we are significantly richer and way ahead of Jonathan in fish totals.
-Jack
Sunday, May 18, 2008
And again
Well here I am again, spending the summer in Alaska. I got into town on Thursday the 15th of May, exactly a year after I got here the first time. I have to say that it is pretty weird to be back, because in some ways it almost feels like I never left. The town is still the same and everyone around here is still the same.
The real difference between this year and last year is going to be the fish. The salmon here tend to operate on a year-on, year-off cycle. Odd numbered years are the big ones lately, but since 2008 happens to be an even number, the fish are supposed to be much fewer this summer. However, there is great news because right now the price of pink salmon is projected to be somewhere around 30-35 cents per pound, a huge increase from the 19 cents per pound we were getting last season. It seems that a lot of the other supplies of pink salmon are getting hit drastically by disease or overfishing, so the Alaska supply is looking pretty good and becoming more in demand. This works great for us, because it means that there will be some decent money to be made this summer. Plus the price of chum (or dog) salmon that we will be fishing for a month before pinks is supposed to be at least 50 cents a pound, if not more than that. I've heard rumors up to 96 cents per pound, but that's a little hard to believe. What it means is that we will be heading out of town on the 25th to get to Chalmers and start fishing the day that it opens, because if we can somehow manage to average 4000 pounds a day, over 30 days that will end up being about 60000 dollars, which is a great way to start off a season, especially a down year.
Less fish might also mean that we could get fewer openers than a year ago, because the department that controls the fishing is worried about overfishing on a thin year. So instead of fishing every other day, we might end up fishing every once every three days or something like that. It's too early to really know what is going to happen, but this is what some people think might happen, and a lot of times those people are right.
Well I'm glad to be back and I'm excited about fishing starting soon. I really can't wait because the pre-season work is dreadful. It's actually making me sore and really tired at night, because I think it involves more physical work than fishing does sometimes. Only a week left! Thank God.
-Jack
The real difference between this year and last year is going to be the fish. The salmon here tend to operate on a year-on, year-off cycle. Odd numbered years are the big ones lately, but since 2008 happens to be an even number, the fish are supposed to be much fewer this summer. However, there is great news because right now the price of pink salmon is projected to be somewhere around 30-35 cents per pound, a huge increase from the 19 cents per pound we were getting last season. It seems that a lot of the other supplies of pink salmon are getting hit drastically by disease or overfishing, so the Alaska supply is looking pretty good and becoming more in demand. This works great for us, because it means that there will be some decent money to be made this summer. Plus the price of chum (or dog) salmon that we will be fishing for a month before pinks is supposed to be at least 50 cents a pound, if not more than that. I've heard rumors up to 96 cents per pound, but that's a little hard to believe. What it means is that we will be heading out of town on the 25th to get to Chalmers and start fishing the day that it opens, because if we can somehow manage to average 4000 pounds a day, over 30 days that will end up being about 60000 dollars, which is a great way to start off a season, especially a down year.
Less fish might also mean that we could get fewer openers than a year ago, because the department that controls the fishing is worried about overfishing on a thin year. So instead of fishing every other day, we might end up fishing every once every three days or something like that. It's too early to really know what is going to happen, but this is what some people think might happen, and a lot of times those people are right.
Well I'm glad to be back and I'm excited about fishing starting soon. I really can't wait because the pre-season work is dreadful. It's actually making me sore and really tired at night, because I think it involves more physical work than fishing does sometimes. Only a week left! Thank God.
-Jack
Thursday, September 27, 2007
The end
Well, I figure that it is time to give this blog a formal ending. The trip is over, so the log must end too.
I will be going back at some point. I don't know about this summer but maybe the summer of 2009. We'll see what kind of schedule school will dictate.
So to everyone who read this over the past 4 months or so, thank you for paying attention, and I hope you were at least mildly entertained.
-Jack
I will be going back at some point. I don't know about this summer but maybe the summer of 2009. We'll see what kind of schedule school will dictate.
So to everyone who read this over the past 4 months or so, thank you for paying attention, and I hope you were at least mildly entertained.
-Jack
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Almost time
Less then 8 hours left now until liftoff. Everything other than my computer is packed and ready to be hauled off to the Cordova airport. I'm really hoping I don't have to recheck my bags in Anchorage, because I am only scheduled to have an hour layover. Oh well, we'll see soon enough I suppose.
It sounds like Ensley will be picking me up from the airport in Jacksonville and take me back to Gainesville to begin spending all of my newfound money. The trip will be sponsored by the parents, so the plan is to eat at a restaurant for every possible meal. What would be really great is if Ensley could manage to get her hands on an extra ticket for the Gators football game on Saturday so that we could go.
Sunday night she will return me to Jacksonville where the boat should be docked at the Navy Marina, waiting for my return. It will be nice to be home.
-Jack
It sounds like Ensley will be picking me up from the airport in Jacksonville and take me back to Gainesville to begin spending all of my newfound money. The trip will be sponsored by the parents, so the plan is to eat at a restaurant for every possible meal. What would be really great is if Ensley could manage to get her hands on an extra ticket for the Gators football game on Saturday so that we could go.
Sunday night she will return me to Jacksonville where the boat should be docked at the Navy Marina, waiting for my return. It will be nice to be home.
-Jack
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
