I was warned that I would be sea sick for the first few days. I didn’t expect I would get sea sick on the dock. Luckily, I was able to get over it in a couple of days. Now I can say that I’m an Alaskan commercial fisherman, or a greenhorn as they refer to the newbies.
Kodiak is beautiful and fishing is a combination of down time and intense work. It’s taken me a little while to get the hang of my role on the boat, but slowly I’m picking up the techniques as well as the fisherman lingo. Stacking leads on the starboard side was definitely something I hadn’t done until now.
Oh, you’re probably wondering about humpies. We’re fishing pink salmon, and as they make their way from salt water to fresh water to the spawning grounds, their faces change and the get a big hump on their back. Thus, humpies. Fishing humpies is all about the numbers as there are a lot of them coming though, but the quality of the meat isn’t the greatest. We’ve gone out for a couple of days of fishing and have caught about 18,000 pounds so far. We’re shooting for about 1,000,000 pounds, so we have a lot of work left. Hopefully it’ll start to pick up pretty soon and we’ll be well on our way.
That’s it for now. Battling a bad internet connection here at the dock, but I’ll be sure to put some stories up soon as the fishing progresses.
Oh, and due to all the votes, I’ll be growing a mustache. I was thinking of the bell bottom mustache, but if you have any other suggestions, let me know. It’ll be mustache 2.0.
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