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Off the Reel Deep End (My deep sea fishing adventure) August 4th
2007 Our adventure started ~ 1:30 PM as Jim and I hopped into
Dave’s car and we began our journey to Parking at the docks was a pain in the keester, there was nothing at the facility, nor at the overflow. We had to walk up to a couple of hotels in the area and ask their overnight parking rates in order to be comfortable Dave’s vehicle wouldn’t be towed. $10 and some vehicle information later and we were parked and walking to the docks where the waiting began. A few minutes later Dave and I meet up with Jim whom earlier met up with his soon to be brother-in-law Carlos to get the poles and tackle. We carried all the gear to the registration area where we registered. When Carlos was don’t parking we all had a round of Yellowtail Pale Ale at the snack shack just off the docks and headed down toward our boat. This was a very tasty beer by the way. I don’t recall being fond of Pale Ales in the past, but I will need to give them another chance, I hate to be missing out on a whole style of goodness like that. Our charter was through H&M Landing, and our ride was the Cherokee Geisha. http://www.hmlanding.com/boats/cherokee.htm
We waited on the dock next to the boat for a long, long time. It gave us a chance to chat and get better acquainted with Carlos. Personally I had only met him once before, and it was more of a hand shake and exchanging a couple words at Cristina’s Graduation Party after getting her PHD a few months back. But the conversation got old because we were tired of standing on the dock and sucking the diesel fumes pumping out of the boat. After a while the diesel fumes got excessively foul as it became apparent that they were fixing some problems with the head. After what seemed an eternity of tired legs, bad smells and very dry beer bottles we were finally allowed on the boat. We ran onto the boat and got our bunks. We lucked out pretty good. several people ahead of us spent more time dealing with the ideal location for their tackle, or heading down the wrong bunk stairway and we were able to get what I felt to be prime bunks. Right next to the stairs with a little spot in the hallway to kick off our shoes when we turned in. We claimed our bunks by throwing down a small bag and then went back up to the main deck to deal the tackle and to get the lines ready for the next days adventures. Carlos setup all the rigs for us. Putting on a special sized hook based on the Sardines in the bait tank. He gave us a crash coarse on the processes, and the reels that I will explain better below. But basically he tied up the hooks and got our poles ready. He didn’t go deep into the somewhat complicated knot that he was tying, but it impressed several bystanders that came up and asked. It looked very similar to the knot my dad taught me to use, but I recall using more twists and a different loop through. However it has been somewhere between 6-10 years since I have touched a fishing rod, and significantly longer since I have tied any knots with the line so I could be mistaken. I believe that Carlos identified his handiwork as an improved Clinch Knot. I went online and found a description on how to tie. This looks about right except he would double the line he fed through the hook and then tie the knot with the double line.
In case we got in a case where there was sheer mayhem on board (due to a hot spot full of biting fish and nobody able to help with our knots) he showed us a very simple knot that we can use if a re-tie was necessary.
After the rigs were set we went inside and checked in. Due to Homeland Security they had to check ID and everything .but once we had checked in we got a number and could now have a tab at the galley, we ordered a couple rounds of beer and conversed outside on the back of the boat as we left the harbor and loaded up with shrimp. After a while we all turned in. Dave seemed a little uneasy getting climbing over the sleeping people to get into his top bunk, so I traded him for my bottom bunk. I hopped on up no problem. Climbing has never been much of an issue for me, sometimes I think I must be part monkey. I remember a lot of time spent as a child climbing the tree in the back yard, as well as the trees at Elliott’s house and especially on the rope swing at Elliott’s. It didn’t take much to fall asleep in the bunk. Not that it was luxurious or all that comfortable. It was probably a 3’x6’ bay that was probably 2.5’ tall with a mattress, pillow and blanket. But once you laid down there was something very soothing about the gentle rocking of the boat helped you drift away. That didn’t keep me away, I frequently woke up throughout the night/morning, but it was always easy to drift back. August 4th
2007 I thought I was being sneaky and getting up early. But hey, when mother nature call’s, you don’t put her on hold. Turns out pretty much everybody else was already up an they were serving breakfast and had started the first trolling patrol. I put my order in and eventually got some breakfast burrito goodness in me. Sea Fishing 101 Here is the low down on how operations should work, based on my recollections of Carlos’s instructions. There are 2 parts to fishing, trolling off the back of the boat, or casting into the wind. They are both done separately and there is a method to the madness. Trolling is sued find a school of hungry fish. The skipper drives the boat around with the lures in the water until somebody gets a bite. And at that time the madness beings. Once a trollelr gets a bite, we know we are at a school of fish that are eating. So that troller works on setting the hook and reeling in his catch. It is very important for that first fish to be caught because if it is spooked and darts away, the rest of the school will follow and nobody gets fish. When the ship hands yell “Hook On” that is when it gets crazy and everything happens at once. Any trollers with a fish on will reel them in, and the remaining trollers will reel in as fast as possible and get their bait rods in ASAP. The Skipper will bring the boat to a halt and hold the position as everybody grabs their bait and drops therir lines in the water with high hopes. We were using live bait to catch Tuna. Sardines and Anchovies were the options. We would run the hook through the nostrils and then stand facing into the wind and drop our line in the water. The fish would then swim with the current towards the school of hungry Tuna. When somebody had a fish they would reel them in and get them in the water really close to the edge of the boat. The deck hand would then reach down with a gaff (a large pole with a hook on the end) and hook the fish with the gaff pole and bring them on the deck for everybody to oooh and aaahh at. Simple enough right? Well not really. I intentionally tried to portray a harmonious balance with which to contrast the cold hard reality of it. What really
happened The trolling thing was hit or miss for everybody. Unfortunately their trolling patrol system was messed up and we were all pretty much in the same group. Which means that we only got a fraction of time back there. Jim’s group had a bit right away so he got almost no time. The rest of us hit a dry spell and we trolled forever with nothing. It was uneventful and boring. But that was just our group, there were several people that got nice fish while trolling. Bringing the fish on board was tough. They were strong and swam in weird circles that went under the boat, it took a while to reel them in up to the range of the gaff. Then once the hooked the fish the basically tagged it with the fisherman’s id number and let if flop on deck suffocating and leaking blood. Some of them bled a lot more then others, and some of them flopped violently for a long time. it was funny to see the fish flop it’s way to the side of the boat where people were casting out trying to catch more. the deckhands would grab another gaff and bring the fish back to where it was supposed to be. After they died the dropped the fish into some compartment below. I found the reel and rods to be very intimidating. They looked more complex then what I was used to, and I knew they were very expensive. I was a bit paranoid of breaking or dropping something into the depths of the ocean. The first complexity was catching the bait. It was very important to get a lively fish because Tuna aren’t likely to eat a dead or twitching sardine, they want a healthy looking fish. We didn’t have very many of those in our tank. At any given time there were tons of fish floating belly up, or dragging on the bottom of the vat. And Most of the ones you could catch had really red noses (which is bad). Once I caught a bait fish I had the next issue of hooking it properly. Ideally you want to hook it though the bridge of it’s nose, through the nostrils. Basically it is like a nose ring that lets it move about it’s way and swim to the school of hungry Tuna that are none the wiser. But this was difficult to do. Dave’s fist try missed and he ended up hooking it through the eye balls. That fish just dropped in the water and did nothing. My first try hooked though alright, but ripped completely though once I pushed the barb through. We eventually went to a smaller hook to better handle all the anchovies (we started out with more of a sardine sized hook). There were only a couple of times that I actually hooked the fish properly and it swam away. That was just the problems that Jim, Dave and I had with the bait. I mentioned that there was a lot of dead bait and the crew was constantly throwing them overboard. He would net a bunch and just toss them over people. Bits of scale would flake off and go all over the place. Everybody had bits of fish scale in their hair, on their shoulders, all over the place. Also lots of fish jumped out of the tank, or were dropped and stepped on. so where were lots of dead bait fish on the deck of the boat. Now when it came to your bait being in the water there were a whole other set of issues. Carlos’s instructions were rather simple to put in words, but not so easy to follow. 1) Always stand with the wind in your face. 2) Always keep you r line straight in front of you. Squeeze by others if you need to. 3) Always keep your thumb on the spindle, otherwise a rats nest forms. The fist one was a little tough, only because there wasn’t much of a breeze, but they skipper told you each time we stopped which side to cast off. Step 2 was a little tougher because that required keen eyesight and judgment weather to duck over or under the person next to you. It was complicated by morons even more clueless then I in this that let their line go all over the place. And was further complicated with the lame bate that just flopped around or swam under the boat. As Carlos mentioned, people were cool about the whole cutting in front of them as long as you warned them you were coming in. they realized that you were just trying to keep you lines from tangling and were happy to let you through. Step 3 was particularly hard for me. Not that I forgot to do this step, but that I couldn’t seem to do it right. no matter what I did, I always had the awkward tangles. 3 or 4 times I had to just pull a bunch of line out and re-spin the it tighter. Other events As crazy as it sounds, it was a blast and I cant wait to give it another go. Sure I did terrible, but I wasn’t so good the first time I picked up a pool cue either. The fish count was pretty low for the boat. We caught 10 – 12 Albacore and 5 – 6 Yellowtale. The numbers were so bad that our boat didn’t even turn in numbers to the office. I am told that there were several things against us on this trip. 1) The bait fish were terrible, several other ships were complaining about that too. 2) The fish just weren’t bighting. They had enough natural fish to feed from at the deeper levels that they weren’t surfacing much to the range where our bait was getting. I guess that is a little less then several, but those are the only 2 I can think of right now. Carlos was the only one in our crew to catch a fish, but he gave it us since he already has a freezer full of fish. I cant wait to try it. The cook was hilarious. She was extremely friendly and tried to learn everybody’s names. It was a riot to hear her squack at the things people wrote on their orders, and asking people to translate for her. I am not sure if she had bad eyesight, of the lighting was just wrong for her. If she was so ADD that she couldn’t focus long enough to read. Not sure, but the food was rather tasty. Even though it took FOREVER for her to cook things one at a time. We say a few other tings too. Next to one of the kelp patties we saw a shark. Not sure if it was a blue or a mako shark, but we got a decent look at it. it was a tiny thing, maybe 3’ long. Jim and I saw a flying fish. At first we though it was a bird flying really low. It was like a humming bird flying a few inches over the water, but then it flew by us and we could tell it was a fish. It flew for ever before diving back into the water. I was taking a nap when the say the whales, but I guess they saw some blue whales. On the way in we saw a bunch of dolphins. Several people on the boat referred to them as porpoises, but I think they are technically incorrect. I wasn’t quite sure the difference until I looked them up on Wikipedia, but the pictures I see for Dolphins look like what was swimming by us, more so then the porpoise pictures. They had a blast jumping around us and ducking under the boat. There was one time when a bunch of the guys in the cabin thought those were Tuna jumping and they wanted us to stop the boat. We were a bit late getting back to the docks. The
advertised time was 6:00, but we floated in more like 8:40. After a quick
stop at Arby’s and a lot of tunes from my iPod we rolled in to |
