Tele Aadsen

writer - fisherman - listener

A close friend was raised on a troller, fish­ing with his dad. One of my favorite end-of-sea­son sto­ries is from him:

It was a beau­ti­ful day at the Cape, flat calm, sun­ny, in ear­ly Sep­tem­ber. My dad looked over at me and said, “Let’s quit.” 

A teenag­er at the time, my friend was flab­ber­gast­ed. They were catch­ing, the weath­er was great; why in the world would they quit right then?

My dad ges­tured around us and said, “I want to remem­ber the sea­son just like this.”

And with that – a great fore­cast, big coho bit­ing, and sev­er­al weeks remain­ing of the sea­son – they hauled their hooks aboard for the last time that summer.

Sun­rise over She­likof Bay

*****

Our last day of the sea­son was not that kind of day.

After sev­er­al days of calm water, good fishin’, stun­ning sun­ris­es and sun­sets, we missed the chance to close a chal­leng­ing sea­son on that pos­i­tive note. By 9:00, our hooks had been drag­ging for almost 3 hours and we’d caught only 11 coho. Not a good ratio.  Gust­ing 30, the wind threw rain at the boat in sheets as we bucked up and down the 9‑foot chop. Fish-able, cer­tain­ly, but mis­er­able all the same.

On anoth­er boat, this might be called “deck­hand weath­er” – the kind of day where the cap­tain stays warm and dry inside, send­ing the crew out to run the gear, clean the fish, and han­dle the deck work. But the captain/crew line on this boat is blurred gos­samer-fine, and Joel is not a jack­ass. We shiv­ered side by side in the cock­pit, heads ducked low against the pel­lets of rain, as we cleaned the few coho on deck.

This is how we’re going out, huh?” Joel hollered at our sur­round­ings. In answer, the next gust shoved us hard starboard.

Long skeins of snot hung from my nose. Clad head to fin­ger to toe in raingear, there wasn’t a dry, wipe-able sur­face in sight. If there’s any test for a rela­tion­ship, it’s this – shar­ing weeks on 43-feet of liv­ing space, always with­in arms’ reach of one another’s filth­i­est, stinki­est, sor­est, most exhaust­ed, least attrac­tive selves. As I con­tin­ued scrap­ing kid­ney from the coho before me, the wind grabbed the threads and flung them long.

Rain­coat on and smile gone; one of the days that our job actu­al­ly feels like a job.

****

I’d been nurs­ing a cup of cof­fee in the Back­door sev­er­al weeks ear­li­er when a local teacher said, “Read­ing your posts, I think trolling sounds pret­ty good.”  I’d smiled at the famil­iar tone, the envy with which non-fish­er­men some­times view our pro­fes­sion. Be your own boss and work only half the year, prac­ti­cal­ly a wildlife cruise, any­way, with the sights you see. Frit­ter the rest of the year away, frol­ick­ing about while the rest of soci­ety endures a rigid work week in exchange for a week or two of vaca­tion — if they’re lucky.

But as we fre­quent­ly remind our­selves, “If it was easy, every­one would do it.”  With the coho cleaned and hand­ed down to blast-freeze in the ‑38 degree fish hold, we rushed back into the warm cab­in and grabbed tow­els to dry our sop­ping faces. Joel turned to the cal­cu­la­tor and began punch­ing num­bers again.

If we quit today, how much would we be giv­ing up?” he asked. Our pre­mi­um frozen-at-sea mar­ket meant that one day of scratch­ing up 90 of these coho could mean $2000 for the boat. After expens­es, Joel and I see sig­nif­i­cant­ly less, but ear­ly child­hood indoc­tri­na­tion con­tin­u­al­ly loops through my mind. Every fish counts!

I recalled my friend’s sto­ry, how I admired his dad’s deci­sion to end the sea­son with a per­son­al val­ue, rather than a finan­cial one. But Joel and I sat sur­round­ed by sheets of num­bers: lists of antic­i­pat­ed win­ter expens­es, bal­ances of fish already sold, con­ser­v­a­tive esti­mates of what we could expect to yet be paid. When you’re young, self-employed in an unpre­dictable indus­try and look­ing at a long, uncer­tain off-sea­son, the deci­sion to quit a few days ear­ly could mean the cost of sev­er­al months’ mort­gage, car repairs, or a long-over­due trip to the dentist.

Still, I won­dered, how much is enough?

A bin full of king salmon: Enough?

****

Dur­ing the August coho clo­sure, Joel and I had helped a friend who was replac­ing part of his engine. He came to fish­ing by way of upstate New York over 15 years ago, when he vis­it­ed South­east Alas­ka and nev­er left. As he squeezed his grease-stained self beside the engine, guid­ing her 1000 pound bulk back onto her mounts, he mut­tered with his lin­ger­ing East Coast edge, “We do it ‘cause we love it, that’s the fuckin’ pisser.”

Beyond finan­cial wor­ries, it’s this love that makes it tough to say good­bye. After much debate and not a small amount of sad­ness, we pulled our hooks aboard for the last time that after­noon. By then the rain had let up and the seas had come down, and we hugged each oth­er close, tac­tile thanks for the months of team­work. Cap’n J revved up the Jim­my for our final run back to Sit­ka, and I cranked up the music for my inten­sive end-of-year deck scrub.

Mix­ing the bleach-heavy solu­tion, I thought about the traits that make a good fish­er­man. Endurance, obser­va­tion, cre­ativ­i­ty. Patience. The abil­i­ty to jug­gle pru­dence with nec­es­sary risk. Some degree of obses­sion. To be inde­pen­dent­ly wealthy would be okay, too.

But per­haps our great­est qual­i­ty is the gift of selec­tive mem­o­ry. With­in a month, the day we called our last won’t mat­ter. We’ll for­get all of this season’s chal­lenges and remem­ber only the good. Those mas­sive hogs of the sec­ond king salmon open­ing. The spec­tac­u­lar sun­ris­es of ear­ly Sep­tem­ber. The joys of com­mu­ni­ty with­in the fleet this sea­son, boat par­ties that crossed code group lines and rang with laugh­ter. If there’s one thing fish­er­men know, it’s that suf­fer­ing is tem­po­rary, but the pride in our work and gifts of our expe­ri­ences are lasting.

From us to you, with grat­i­tude for our cus­tomers. Thanks to all for mak­ing this life pos­si­ble for us.