Fisher Girl DeLise?

Fisher Girl DeLise?
The end of 2017 I quit my corporate job to go commercial salmon fishing in Alaska. I would join my partner Doug on FV (Fishing Vessel) Pacific Son, his 37’ troller. My friends and family were not exactly surprised as I love a good adventure but I am a greenhorn when it comes to commercial fishing. My dad was a bass fisherman so I’ve held a rod and even caught a few blue gills as a kid, but nothing anything like trolling for salmon in the waters of SE Alaska. I’m a newbie so please forgive my ignorance and lack of experience as I fumble thru the language, gear and experience of fishing.

I had spent a couple of summers in SE back in the early 90s and always wanted to come back to Alaska to see more of the state. Doug lived there for 15 years and spoke of coming back to fish when we first started dating in 2010. In fall of 2015 he started looking for a boat and found Pacific Son (PacSon for short) in Oregon. He and a sailing friend of ours, Kim, motored her up to SE in spring of 2016. Doug fished her solo the next 2 years, except for a few weeks in the summer when his daughter, Marirose, crewed for him. I stayed in Southern CA working and living on our 42’ sailboat, coming up to visit as often as I could. By the fall of 2017 we were extremely tired of the separation and decided it was time to sell the sailboat and have me come join Doug full time.

We drove up the ALCAN (Alaska Canadian) highway and arrived in Skagway Alaska in mid-April. Skagway is at the Northern most end of the Lynn Canal in SE. PacSon was out of the water (“on the hard”) there and we needed to paint her bottom before we could launch her. The weather was wet so we had to wait for long enough dry periods to get her painted. We were able to paint a little every day resulting in our staying in the yard for about a week.


My new office 
Once she was launched we headed to Haines, AK - PacSon’s “home port”. We have family and friends in Haines so it is the obvious home port for us even though it is not where we fish.  We spent the next 2 weeks there working on boat projects (Doug built a cover for the troll pit, new stays on the top of the wheel house, a new cap rail on the port side, etc.) and preparing for the spring king salmon season. The state announced limited openings beginning May 1st for 2 – 3 days a week. The closest to Haines was in Sitka (a 3 day boat ride away). We had to wait on a few boat parts (it is not easy to get parts up to SE Alaska – most come up on the weekly barge from Seattle) and the wicked wind in the canal was relentless for well over a week.

Comments

  1. AnonymousMay 27, 2018 at 9:59 PM

    Wow! My college roommate is famous!

    ReplyDelete

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