How I Caught 140 Salmon in 2 Days

–by ARLO

“You’re a young feller now, and I’m expecting 50 hauls a night out of you, and I don’t want to have to beat you, ya hear me?” said Gary, our Alutiiq friend who had taken me purse seining that evening. Gary, his wife Jill, his nephew Fred, and friend Peter were all from the beautiful native community of Ouzinkie, on Kodiak island.

 

 

Gary was a comedian, always calling people by nicknames. He called me Little Buddy, his adult nephew Fred, “Fatty Baby,” and he just called his wife Jill, “Wife.” He would always be getting into playful arguments with her, and she kept him down to earth. Fred was funny as well, because he would catch thousands of fish every year, but did not eat a single one! He, Jill, Peter and Gary were all out purse seining Red (Sockeye) and Pink (Humpback) salmon to give to the elders of the community who could no longer get their own fish. People from the community put in requests for fish and they would catch it, clean it, can or freeze it till everyone had the fish they needed for the winter. They did this for free as a service to their community.

Purse seining is an interesting type of fishing, and it has many applications on many scales, ranging from big tuna purse seiners to mad-sized salmon purse seiners to Boston whalers with a couple hundred foot long net, which is what we were using. We started off with the two boats tied together, drifting, looking for salmon jumping. When we saw a jumper we would motor over, and Gary would say, “Wife, you circle round the fish by Sandy Beach,” and the two boats would split, the other boat pulling the net out from the bin on the bow of my boat. Fred and Peter would be hitting the water with giant metal plungers to scare the fish back into the net. When the two boats were together again, Gary and I pulled in the lead line that ran along the bottom of the net, and he would give me instructions such as “easy now, easy” and “pull like hell!” Once we had that aboard, we pulled in the corks (floats) along the top of the net. Then we started stacking the net back in the bin. I stacked leads, and Gary stacked corks, and we pulled the net in as we went, with the bottom of the skiff slowly filling up with salmon. After we stored and counted the fish (usually 25-40 per set), we started looking for more jumpers. It was a lot of fun.

Maybe Gary was kidding when he told me that he expected 50 hauls a night, but I would have done it happily if he had asked because I enjoyed it, I learned so much about an important part of life in a small Kodiak community, and I made a lot of great connections. I don’t know how likely that it is that I will make it back to Ouzinkie, but maybe someday I will end up working on a seiner out of Kodiak and come back and visit Fred, Jill and Gary.