Mon Dec 17 2007 | 838 | 6:40 | 14:15 | F | 12-12-07 | 49-50-02 | 197-197-05 | |
Mon Dec 17 2007 | 876 | 16:55 | 8:22 | F | 10-04-04 | 45-30-03 | 198-199-00 |
Bill and Robin got a phone call from Adam in Cambodia last evening 11/26 .We look forward to a new post from Adam the travler.
tommy
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Semi-disaster number one, delt with, we pull what little net went off back into the boat and set up again. Soon after Johna hollers "Let 'r Goooo." I yank the release, it makes a metal on metal sound when it pops open, and Jacobs off, he spins the skiff 180 degrees and guns it. The net gets off the boat just fine. The hand off, when the skiff passes his end of the net back to the boat, was a little spooky as a wave almost threw the skiff right onto the deck, but we got both ends of the net, and started the hual. Jacob cruised around to the other side of the Voyager and hands off his tow line, I hook him in and he takes off, towing us off the net. So the Tuna, Jacob at the helm, is roaring, dipping out of sight between the waves, trying to beat the wind and waves, which are pushing the Voyager into our net. The voyager's got a heavy roll going and all the sudden, snap, the two inch braided tow line breakes. Way out on the skiff end of the tow line Jaocb hears a small explosion next to his ear as the line lets go. Now the wind is blowing the Voyager into the net, Greg and Johna are yelling and screaming for Jacob to go get the end of the line and tie it back onto the skiff. Jacob gets his Pike pole and hangs out over the edge of the skiff and scoops up the line, gets it tied off and starts towing again,
he tows till the boat is safely downwind of the net. The rest of the haul goes smoothly, we pulled up forty tones of sardines, skiffman keeps our bow into the swell while we are pumping. An hour later and I'm on the very back of the boat trying to get the skiff hooked back up. In order to do this, the skiff cruises up behind us, with a line wedged up on its nose where I can grab it. When it gets within an arms reach I grab his line, pull it through a small hole in the stern and hook it up to a hydraulic winch, and tighten it up till the skiff is pegged into our stern. The Elk Tuna was literally surfing down huge waves at this point and at times pointing right into the back of the Voyager, it was intense, but we nailed it. Jacob was pale, Greg says that seining is controlled chaos, and that chaos almost got the best of us.. On the run back to town, I hung out on the back deck and smoked two cigarrets with Jacob, and I normaly don't smoke. The next morning while we were taking ice, our ice man hollered down " you guys hear about the Papa George?" The Papa
It was really strange, my sense of safety was completely lost, even though the weather came back down over night... The final set we made before I came home was also pretty exciting, but thankfully for other reasons. We wrapped up a huge school of sardines, and about halfway into our haul we realized we'd wrapped up a little more than that. First I'll mention that its a huge relief when the fish show in the net, because sometimes we don't catch anything, and making a set is a lot of work for no fish. But this set the fish show...everywhere, and in numbers. They do this thing when they're really thick, it's like the wave at a sports game. Thousands of fish will hit the surface in a spot, all at once, jumping, going crazy and form that spot a wave of fish do the same thing rushing out in a particular direction. Its wild to see, sometimes I just hear it like an intense downpour or hailstorm ripping across the water. So on this set, the fish are doing "the wave" when in the middle of it a big old tail flops up...a whale. So imagine the feeling like, yes! there's enough fish in there! were done, heading in for the day, and it's so early too! (it's a really good feeling), then imagine the..Oh no, that's definitely a whale in the net, terrible, make it go away, we're going to have to let all the fish go to get that beast out of there feeling, sort of like your car just ran out of gas in the middle of nowhere feeling.
That was the roller coaster we were ridding, just before we let the whole thing go, the whale charged the net and broke strait through. Now we have a whole the size of a volkswagen bus out there that the fish could easily escape from so we start hauling gear like mad trying to get that hole back on board before the fish find the hole. A couple of minutes later and the hole is coming over the roller, we pull it out so we can mend it later. I can still hear the occasional burst of fish out in the net, so there's some left in there anyways. We get close to all dried up, the waters boiling, like it does when there's a ton of sardines in there (not literally boiling, but the fish swimming in the net move enough water to make the surface look sort of like it's boiling) and then the corks go down, just disappear below the surface, the fish dove, dragging the net and corks down with them. An untold amount of fish are spilling out of the net now, Greg is wheeling the net onboard as fast as his block will allow. The corks were down for probably 30 seconds or so before returning to the surface with what appears to be an incredible amount of fish still in the net. Sure enough there were enough fish in that set to plug us, and the Bainbridge. 
Greg called the Bainbridge over the radio, told them we had enough for both of us, so they pulled up, dropped their pump into our net and loaded up, all told, between the two boats a little over 220 thousand pounds of sardines were landed from that one set. When I left Westport, our boat's total catch was closing in on two million pounds caught and delivered. P.S. thats a picture of the thresher shark we caught, it was huge! probably 10' long from tail to nose.
of fish that got caught up in the web start spilling out over the block, I'm thinking how do we get these into the hatch? But we don't, that hundred pounds or so is nothing compared to the sixty thousand odd pounds still in the net. "Unbelievable" says Johna, he couldn't believe we were into the fish on the first set of the season. We got the net all "dried up" mean all the net is back on board except for the very end "the bunt" where are the fish concentrate in a thick frenzy. We lift a large pump into the netted up fish sitting along side of the boat and start pumping them into our hatch. Everyone's stoked, Greg can't believe it, Ross and I don't know quite what to make of it, except we both like what we were seeing. At one point, Ross, staring into the net, looking at the 35 tons of squirming sardines along side, chew in lip, says "I wonder what it would feel like to be in there...naked." I busted up laughing, what an honest thought. Well the next two sets were for nothing, and on the fourth we filled up the boat then ran back into Westport. Then the waiting game, we waited in line to pump out from 9:00 pm till 1:00 am. Greg took off for a walk, the three of us crew were on the boat when the stove started making some crazy noises, Johna cracked open the front and flames burst out. The fire was contained in the stove, but was much larger than the usual flame that heats it. Not sure what to do we watched it for a while, but there was quite a bit of flame and smoke, we thought there might be a stack fire. The stove stack started glowing and when Jonah peeked inside again a flame burst out right back at him, he grabbed
a fire extinguisher and let at it. We were all exhausted, couldn't find Greg anywhere, and weren't really sure what to do. The flame was contained in the stove, but the dry chem fire extiguishers would only put out the flame long enough for it it re-egnite. The galley filled up with acrid diesle smoke. Jonah had turnd off the fuel to the stove when we first figured something was up so we though it would burn out. Eventually it did, sort of a strange episode, I don't think there was a serious threat of the fire getting out of the stove, but it got us a little riled up. One in the morning, and we finally got the go ahead to pull up to the pump. At around four-thirty, we were done pumping and tied up in position to ice up in the morning. P.S. we caught a couple of these gorgeous King Salmon early in the season.
fishing polls in hand. He gave us the go ahead and our jiggs drop, seconds latter four of my six hooks are consumed by sardines. We found em, they wern't the big ones that fetch the best price, but they were sardines. Greg positioned us right off a large school and we made ready to set. One small problem, the hydraulics were sucking air, why? because there wasn't enough hydraulic oil in the tank. Small oversight that no one checked it before departure. So we bagged the set and ran for Westport. I found it ironic that with this massive net on the boat we were using herring jigs to sample the fish.
