Commercial Fishing Stories From When I Was a Little Kid

The first part is about going commercial fishing at the age of five. It was 1973 and I would ride with my mother from Montesano, Washington to the town of Westport to drop off my father at 4am. One day I was allowed to go fishing with the boat for a day. My first trip was only as a passenger for the day. I watched the fish being pulled on the boat all day. They would be cleaned, iced and stored in the hold. Wow, what a day for a little boy.

By the next year my father had a boat of his own to run. I would go with him for trips of three to five days. The ocean is so huge that at night we would drift around with no anchor to hold us. Every two or three hours we would wake up and check our position. Maybe we would need to start the engine to reposition ourselves. I didn't do much hard work. I mostly cleaned small salmon, which were ten pounds or so.

The next summer I was put in the cockpit and started bringing in some fish. I could barely reach the trolling wire to un clip my spread. The spread or fishing line was then clipped to a wire on the back of the boat. We pulled the line by hand and used a gaff hook to bring the fish up on to the deck. My main responsibility was keeping ice on the fish. Messy work but I got paid to help. I practiced all summer at bringing them in by hand. It is touchy and can tear a finger right off. The monofilament line is about twenty to thirty feet long and forty to sixty pound test with a plain plug or a combination flasher with something else. The fish is pulled by the boat at a steady pace until I start pulling on it, then it can get crazy. If you carefully hand over hand bring in the fish to the boat without disturbing it a gaff hook is easy. If it goes crazy then you will play it by hand until you can get it in a net. This is all done by hand. Oh and by the way, hurry up the boat is waiting for you before we can continue.

I was usually the one cleaning the fish and icing them. I learned that a fresh salmon heart will beat again if you jab it with a knife. I would let them sit and poke them until they quit moving. The seagulls always knew where to find us. Just as soon as I cut open a fish they would come from somewhere and feast and fight over the guts floating in the water. One funny story I can recall from then was a time I was putting a large salmon in the ice hold. A large salmon back then was fifty pounds or better. I pulled the fish slowly over and up to the opening for the ice hold. Just as I got the fish there the boat rocked, the fish slipped and pulled me right into the ice hold. Lots of good memories and I was not even ten years old yet.