As the line came up, white flashed below the surface of the water: a halibut. As we'd already caught our quota of these fine flat fish, Thane stopped the roller as soon as the 40 pound halibut was within his reach. He leaned over the side of the boat, slipped the gaff into the circle hook, and with a quick twist and pull removed the hook from the halibut's mouth. Slap! It hit the water, and with an undulating thrust of its muscular body it swam off down into the depths, headed for its home on the ocean floor.
Since I assume a few of you might not be familiar with longlining, I thought I'd give you a primer on this commercial fishery. Not surprisingly, longlining uses a long line studded with fish hooks to catch fish. We run skates, lengths of line, about 1,200 feet long that have a hook about every 6 feet. When we make a set, it usually consists of 10 skates hooked together, over two miles of line with at least 2,000 hooks on it. On the boat, all of that line is stored in tubs that are set in racks in the bait shed.
Before the line can be set, all of those hooks have to be baited - by hand. I normally spend at least 12 hours a day baiting when I'm on the boat - I can't say I missed it all that much this year! We typically use herring cut into 3 inch pieces for bait, each hook carefully buried in a chunk of herring so that the point doesn't poke out. This year, Thane also bought a few hundred pounds of squid, bait I forbid him to use anymore after my hands got ate up several years ago. Dede and I agreed, however, that our hand problems probably had more to do with not wearing gloves while baiting than the squid itself. She didn't have any trouble with it this year.
Finally, the gear is baited and it's time to start setting it. Ideally, all the gear is baited before we leave port so that we’re ready to fish as soon as we get to a likely area. Before we set, ten tubs of gear are set out on the deck, each one connected to the next with a C-link. First, however, a bright red buoy is thrown off the back of the boat, trailing behind it floating yellow line. Since we're fishing for halibut and black cod (sablefish), we set our gear deep. The buoy line is often 400 fathoms (2,400 feet) long. As the end of the buoy line is reached, a 40 pound anchor is thrown overboard to hold the buoy in place and to hold the ground line down on the bottom of the ocean. After a stretch of line without hooks, the skates start to go overboard. Another anchor, more buoy line, and a final buoy finish off the set. All of these lines are fed off the back of the boat through a chute as Thane idles the boat forward over the course he's set.
After about six to eight hours, we find the first buoy and start picking the gear. Depending on the number of fish we've caught, picking can take anywhere from two to four hours. The gear is pulled up by the longline hauler, and is coiled by hand back into the tubs. Coiling is a job I’ve never done. There’s just something about sitting hunched over on a tub with old bait and goo, not to mention hooks, flying at my head that just doesn’t excite me.
Thane’s job at this time is to make sure the fish we want end up on board, and that the fish we don’t want go back into the water. On this trip, we just needed a little halibut and a few thousand pounds of black cod. We were also able to sell a small amount of rockfish. In reality, we don’t really get a lot of bycatch, fish we don’t want – skates and arrowtooth flounder are the most common, with an occasional shark showing up. Thane spends a lot of time leaning over the side of the boat, working his magic with a gaff.
We were lucky this trip. Other than a few humpbacks in the distance, we didn’t see any whales. During the last two trips, between pods of orcas and a sperm whale, Thane didn’t get to bring many fish in. There’s little more depressing than to spend hours and hours baiting hooks, and then have no fish to show for it because the whales have picked the fish off the hooks as we pull them up. I have to admit, though, that I would have liked to have seen a sperm whale. This year is the first we’ve seen them in the sound, proof of an ever-changing ocean.
Once the fish are on board, they have to be taken care of. Black cod are easy: we just count them (in order to estimate how many pounds we’ve caught) and slide them into a hold filled with ice and sea water. Halibut have to be gutted and gilled before they go into the hold. Depending on the number and size of the halibut, this can be a hard job.
The work doesn’t end when the fish are in the hold. If our quota hasn’t been met yet, we start baiting the gear all over again (this actually starts as soon as the first skate is up, if we have at least three crew so that one can bait while the others coil line and gut fish). If it’s the last set of the season, the gear has to be gone through to remove old bait, replace broken or bent hooks, and make sure it’s ready for storage.
Thane made three trips this year, with this last being the shortest – we were only out about 60 hours. Nonetheless, after three weeks of hard work and long hours, the crew was ready for a break. They’ll get one…eventually. First, however, all the gear and the bait shed have to be cleaned up, taken off the boat, and put into storage. Gotta love this fishing stuff.
