January 2011 - The season begins

We have a phrase in fishing that has many applications. "That's fishing." It applies to when the running line breaks because someone ran over it when the tide was running fast and high, causing us to lose not only that set, but the opportunity to work the other sites while we're fixing this one. That's fishing. It's actually part of the fun of it. I think of it as being in a giant train switching yard, standing on the tracks. We don't know where that train will be coming from, but we know it'll come and probably run us over. It'll be up to us to get back up, repair the damage, and get back to it. That's fishing.

I don't think it's safe to think that we got it out of the way early, but we did get a start on it.

The nets we fish with are 12' (2 fathom) deep and 50 fathom long. A 1/2" line threaded with corks is tied to what becomes the top of the net and another line filled with leads is tied to what becomes the bottom of the net. When we are allowed to fish, we attach the corkline to a buoy that is anchored to a "deadman" (we use a special anchor with a 10" blade on a 1" metal bar that is turned about 5' into the mud) and head toward the other buoy about 300' away where we attach the other end. Sometimes we run a line between the two buoy (hence a "running line") and tie the second end of the net to the that line. When the tide covers it, it lifts the corks out of the water, while the leads pull the other side of the net down creating a curtain that intercepts the salmon swimming by. Our job after setting the nets is to work them - carefully and quickly removing the salmon and delivering them to the buyer right up until the last minute when we are required by Fish and Game to pull our nets in so that another spurt of salmon can get up the river to spawn. In recent years, the fish have been so thick that despite round the clock fishing, too many salmon still made it up the river to spawn, creating some waste of the resource (though the bears and other fauna, not to mention the flora, probably didn't consider it a waste), but creating a promise of a good return 3-6 years hence.

The process of assembling the net is called "hanging" the net and it is an exacting and crucial process (at which I have failed each time I have tried). Because of the way we fish, we use very heavy leads (at least 200 lbs per 50 fathom) and the nets are hung "even." That means that the web is neither bunched up to permit more web per 50 fathom length, nor stretched out. Bunched up, the net is "fishier" and harder/slower to pick; stretched out, it's faster to pick. Often fishermen hang the corkline even and the leadline "out" like a skirt so that the leadline is heavier yet and if there is cause to tow it, it won't wrap and twist.

We tie our leadlines down, so we want the leadline and corkline to be the same length, both even. I've decided that the best thing for our fishing is to have it hung by a professional. We ship the corkline and leadline to Seattle, buy the web there and take it to the net hanger to have it assembled, and then ship it back north.

I went to the warehouse (finally) to pick up the lines and... they weren't there. No matter how many times we looked, they weren't there. Uh oh. The first freight train. The shipper concluded that it must have not made it onto the barge and they assured me that as long as I shipped the web north so it was there by late April when the buyer would start waking up their camp, they would use their influence in town to have it hung. OK, not much else to do but agree to that one.

But thinking about it for a while, I just couldn't bring myself to head into the season without nets to fish. Like entering a horse race without a horse. So I invested in another set of lines, corks, and web to have it hung in Seattle and shipped with the idea that it's not a bad idea to have a second set. We can always count on tearing up our gear during the season and it's never a bad idea to be able to switch out the gear. And so the season began...