I launched Hooked under the grim over­sight of the Pacif­ic Northwest’s lin­ger­ing win­ter.  Between relent­less­ly gray days and our “off” season’s lux­u­ry of per­son­al time, it seemed the ide­al oppor­tu­ni­ty to start this long-pro­cras­ti­nat­ed con­ver­sa­tion.  To spend hours craft­ing thought­ful trib­utes to our unique indus­try, delib­er­ate over the per­fect pho­to to accom­pa­ny the text, and, when the words weren’t flow­ing, toss peanuts to the increas­ing­ly well-fed jays and squir­rels lurk­ing out­side my writ­ing win­dow… Add in the unex­pect­ed encour­age­ment of sup­port­ive read­ers, and this ven­ture has been even more reward­ing than I’d imag­ined it would be.  I’m thank­ful to you all for mak­ing it such a good time.

Bear keeps a close eye on the Bobs (our Stel­lar’s Jay collective)

As it turns out, my leisure­ly saunter-through-syn­tax approach doesn’t work so well in con­junc­tion with our “real” work­ing life.  I’ve learned there’s an ocean of dif­fer­ence between the posts I’d like to share with you, and the ones that actu­al­ly make it up. Hours spent scrap­ing hal­ibut bel­lies were sur­pris­ing­ly con­ducive to com­pos­ing sto­ries in my head, but the ensu­ing tasks – icing those fish, bait­ing up for the next set, scrub­bing the deck, unload­ing, a whirl­wind of shower/laundry/groceries before head­ing back out on the next trip – didn’t allow for much per­son­al reflec­tion. This busi­ness of actu­al­ly being a fish­er­man has made it tougher to write about what it means to be a fisherman.

The Char­i­ty cel­e­brat­ed a safe, suc­cess­ful long­line sea­son. Against our ini­tial pre­dic­tions, we were blessed with beau­ti­ful weath­er, rea­son­ably calm seas and sun­ny skies the whole way through.  Caught our hal­ibut and black cod quo­ta in two trips, a cou­ple weeks of long hours, good food and music, and much laugh­ter.  By the time we hauled all of the long­line gear off the boat and set her up for salmon trolling, the work’s phys­i­cal demands were a fast-fad­ing mem­o­ry, evi­denced only by some impres­sive bruis­es and accen­tu­at­ed biceps.  When Mar­tin hand­ed over my crew share, I mar­veled at get­ting paid to spend time with friends in the shad­ow of the fero­cious­ly glo­ri­ous Fair­weath­er Range, coast­line I’d nev­er have known with­out this pro­fes­sion. Tru­ly, our time could­n’t have gone any smoother or more enjoyably.

The top of a hal­ibut set, flag­pole bob­bing beneath the Fair­weath­er Range.

(Alas­ka Way­points is get­ting the exclu­sive dish on my hal­ibut sto­ries, but I’ll post them here 2 weeks after their ini­tial publication.)

I signed off from Team Char­i­ty a week ago.  Flew back to the con­crete chaos of Seat­tle, to clench­ing Joel’s Subaru’s “oh, shit” han­dle, because zoom­ing 70 miles per hour up I‑5 is ter­ri­fy­ing after a month of slid­ing through the scenery at 7 knots.

We didn’t waste any time in shift­ing over to Team Ner­ka. Up ear­ly on my first morn­ing back, we took her out for a sea tri­al with the diesel mechan­ic on board. That went well, and Cap’n J was obvi­ous­ly busy over the past month. There’s a strong new handrail on the port side of the cab­in, excess air’s been bled from the throt­tle and clutch, and the var­nished rails are shim­mer­ing.  The fuel truck came down to the dock, and 529 gal­lons lat­er, all four tanks are topped off. Made a quick run up to Cana­da, to pick up some hot hoochies and oth­er secret weapon gear from their fish­ing sup­ply stores. And with only a min­i­mal amount of fias­co that was most­ly due to a way-too-late lunchtime, we low­ered our trolling poles and attached all-new sta­bi­liz­er lines and chain, hope­ful­ly ensur­ing that the Ner­ka will have as smooth of a trip north as the Char­i­ty did 5 weeks earlier.

With an intend­ed depar­ture date of next Wednes­day, the remain­ing tasks are pret­ty slim. There’ll be some big gro­cery trips this week­end, hit­ting up Cost­co and Trad­er Joe’s.  Some final fam­i­ly vis­its, includ­ing mov­ing our house­plants to my mom’s for the next 4 months. (They do bet­ter under her care, any­way – this sea­son­al trans­fer is an extend­ed spa treat­ment for them.)  Bear’s been fol­low­ing the piles of salmon-scent­ed clothes, books, and gro­ceries going out the door with an increas­ing­ly sus­pi­cious gaze, and will know what’s up after Mon­day’s vis­it to the vet for a health cer­tifi­cate to trav­el through Canada.

The salmon sea­son brings a tremen­dous amount of pres­sure, as we try to make our year’s liveli­hood in 3 months, and Cap’n J and I are a pret­ty dri­ven team. If I’m hon­est with myself and you, I can already guar­an­tee that the inter­nal con­flict between those dream posts in my head and the sparse, spo­radic ones that will appear here will only increase over the sea­son. I won­der, what’s most valu­able to you, sweet read­er?  If Hooked updates are few­er and far­ther between, what would you most like to read about?  Any fishing/Alaska ques­tions you’d like addressed?  Let me know, and I’ll do my best to put them at the top of the list.

The sun set­ting on the Char­i­ty’s long­line sea­son, on our final run back into Sitka.