The Fisher Queen

by Sylvia Taylor

  With trolled salmon, it’s not so much a disembowelling as it is a surgery. It is performed with as much skill and precision as a tossing deck will allow, because one false move costs you, literally. Any mark or cut or incorrect technique will downgrade the fish and you’ll get paid a lot less for it. And when you’re talking large red springs, the smileys, you’re talking big loss. Not that we got much for our fish. By the time consumers buy it at the supermarket, everybody has taken their cut, so to speak.

  Trolled salmon is the only fresh fish that is dressed before it’s sold. They are caught on individual hooks, treated very gently and hygienically and preserved carefully in crushed ice ’til sold at a fish camp. Only second-grade fish are frozen, as the meat gets mushier when thawed.

  Gillnet and seine boats catch their fish by net, and by the time the fish are dragged in and dumped on deck or in the hold, the fish are pretty beaten up by their own frantic thrashing and being dragged through water en masse, mashed together and thrown around. Those poor carcasses go to the canning market, and, in worst case, become fertilizer or pet food.

  The minute a troll-caught fish is pulled into the boat, it’s dropped into wooden bins in front of the cockpit in the stern where you stand to pull in the gear. Hold the thrashing tail and hit the fish hard with a gaff or club, hopefully just once, where its neck would be if it had one. It is merciful and necessary, especially if it’s a big spring. They are very strong and can create havoc, flinging other fish, gear and sometimes themselves in all directions, including overboard.

  Unless there’s a fish on every hook, which hasn’t happened since Christ was a cowboy, wait ’til all the gear has been pulled, then dress the whole works at once. Sometimes it’s a few, sometimes it’s none.

  After it is definitely dead (some people dress them when they’re still slightly twitchy—a foolish and barbaric practice that wracks up some very nasty karma and results in lots of dressing injuries), prop the fish on its back in the four-foot V-shaped metal or wooden trough with the tail pointing toward your knife hand.Then the surgery begins.

  Holding the head steady, with the thumb and forefinger of your other hand in the gills, insert the tip of the long, narrow, exceedingly sharp dressing-knife blade in the anus and make a smooth straight cut up to the throat, if it had one, stopping about an inch before the V-shaped patch where the bottom of the gills meets the throat. Reaching into the throat, cut away the membrane holding the entire gut ensemble.

  If it’s done right, you can grab the top of the membrane and pull out the whole business like opening a zipper and pitch it into a bucket. Pitching it overboard often costs you the dressing knife if you lose your grip. Undoubtedly there are a million pounds of stainless steel blades lying on the bottom of the ocean.

  Inspect and dissect the internal organs later for personal interest or to see what goodies the fish have been eating and try to match the gear accordingly. Hours of scientific fun.

  Next, cut the large blood vessel running along the spinal column and carefully scrape out all the congealed blood. Old blood is notorious for degrading the flesh. Then lift the gill flaps and with a circular motion cut through both sides at the same time if you’re good, and one side at a time if you’re not.

  Then wash-wash, rub-rub with seawater pumped through the deck hose and the dressed beauty is ready for its icy bed in the hold.

  The ice is snow cone textured and carried from the ice house through a large pipe containing a slowly turning auger. It’s like a giant screw, carrying the ice at a steep angle up to a support beam on the edge of the loading dock, where it cascades down a multi-jointed pipe straight into the boat’s hold. Someone had better be holding the end of it, directing the ice cascade into certain compartments. If not, you end up with a 2,000-pound snow cone in the middle of your hold that you can’t do a thing with. You just have to shovel it out and start over.

  If the ice is too chunky it won’t fill the salmon bellies smoothly, making lumps and indentations that downgrade the fish. If it’s too slushy, it’ll melt in a couple of days and won’t keep the fish fresh. You either end your trip early, losing money if the fishing is good, or take a risk and stay out, ending up with flattened funky fish that go for pet food.

  The fish are laid in rows, each layer a different direction to evenly distribute the weight. The bellies are stuffed with ice to keep the meat fresh and the bodies from flattening and then laid neatly on their sides. Ice is packed around each fish and between each layer. People who don’t bother with this step find the last couple of layers like salmon pancakes. The tricky thing is gauging how much ice to use on each layer so you don’t run out too soon and have to come in.

  The final layer is covered with an ice blanket made of some space age material. Imagine a multi-layered fish and ice cake.

  Sounds like any old fool could pull this off, right? Think again. It is truly an art and a science with a million variables that reveal themselves through hard experience. The more care you take, the more money you get.

  I wasn’t a rookie at gutting fish, but we were catching so few springs that Paul wouldn’t risk me messing up any of them while practising the exacting technique, especially when factoring in the pitching deck. We were into our fourth day of what we hoped would be a full 10-day trip since coming back from Port Hardy with the allegedly repaired alternator, trolling the Yankee Spot shelf from Goletas Channel across the whole top of Vancouver Island all the way to Fisherman Bay, which took a whole miserable day—13 or 14 hours of being thrown around in the pouring rain—then anchoring in Fisherman Bay or Shushartie Bay at the channel end, for two or three fish a day. At this rate, we were burning more fuel than we were earning to pay for it.

  While scrounging around the camp store in Bull Harbour one day, I drifted into conversation with a well-seasoned skipper. Commiserating over my frustration at our poor catches, he passed on the sage advice an old Haida fisherman had given him years before when asked to share the secret of his success:

  Be where the fish are.

  “We were pissed off.” He chuckled and shook his head over his youthful brashness. “We thought he would tell us about some hot fishing lures, but once we knew what was going on we realized that was true. For a good fisherman it’s an instinctive thing. It’s hard-wired somehow.”

  Instinct and a lot of knowledge, planning and good business sense—like any good entrepreneur. A highliner wasn’t just about dropping your hooks in the water where the salmon were just dying to snap them up. The ocean was full of delectable goodies, and the fisherman’s job was to figure out what would lure the fish in the right place at the right time to make that rubber and steel gizmo absolutely irresistible. Besides, it was a big ocean out there with lots of places to hide, and even when stocks were plentiful, they had particular habits and places to congregate for meals.

  Salmon are picky eaters who enjoy a certain ambience, like specific temperatures and times of day and currents and tides. They are particularly fond of feed balls: dense clumps of herring and other creatures that provide an all-you-can-eat buffet, usually around reefs or drop-offs, where lunch likes to hang around in rocks and holes for protection.

  Areas with a strong tidal flow are also great locations because baitfish are swept along with the current, making them an easy catch for the salmon. Salmon love breakfast and supper, so the morning and night bites are usually the most lucrative.

  The best time to travel is with the current, when the tide is running strongest, because you want to be trolling during the slack tides, which last about an hour, just before the tide reverses. The feed fish come off the bottom because they don’t have to fight the current, and when the salmon move in to feast, the troller makes most of his catch. Most of the time there are two fishable slack tides a day, but in summer there are occasionally days with three, which can really boost your catch.

  The best time for fishing is when the moon is half full and tides are at a minimum. Tides are biggest around the full moon and new moon be
cause they are affected by the moon’s gravitational pull. And since fish have to spend most of their energy fighting big tides, they rarely feed, which means poor fishing.

  You need to plan your tacks carefully so that you are on your hot spot at slack tide and do short tacks back and forth through the slack. A couple of miles off can make a huge difference, and if you overshoot your hot spot, or don’t know about it, it can take ages to get back trolling at two knots an hour. That would certainly help explain why boats can be trolling at the same time in the same general area and some get skunked and some do well. Then there’s the speed of the boat, the colour and shape and configuration of the gear, the motor sounds and vibrations, the astrological signs of the crew and some weird voodoo about the electrical current given off by the boat called the bonding system.

  Apparently, fish are attracted to and repulsed by electrical currents and fields, and since every fishing boat creates an underwater field generated by its metals, steps must be taken to create just the right current to please salmon.

  This is done by bonding or joining all metal components of a boat with a heavy electrical wire that is connected to underwater zinc bars attached to the boat’s hull. Different metal objects in water create different currents, but when those objects are bonded, the currents are neutralized and a positive electrical field is created around the boat, 0.4 to 0.5 of a volt. After the boat is properly bonded, a black box can be attached to the steel trolling wires, sending electricity through the wire between 0.15 and 0.3 of a volt, depending on the boat’s electrical field. The voltage can be adjusted to attract different species and sizes of fish. The bigger the school and the smaller the fish, the higher the voltage they like.

  We had zinced the hull but certainly didn’t have one of those Star Trek black boxes. The maddening thing was we attracted hordes of small cohos anyway, which we had to shake off the barbless hooks because the season wouldn’t open until July 1, just over a month away. And the only halibut or ling cod we could legally keep were dead on the line and destined for the fry pan. Originally, West Coast fishermen needed only one A licence to take any finned seafood, but in the ’70s the L licence was created for bottom and flat fish like halibut and lings, and the A was retained for salmon. We could never sell L fish, but we sure could eat them. And there is nothing on this earth more delicious and life-giving than halibut or red snapper steaks just an hour out of the water. In fact, most fishermen prefer them to salmon.

  It might have been thought easy enough to sneak a bunch on board, but the Coast Guard had collaborated with the Department of Fisheries in a new trolling fleet boarding program early that year whereby officials could legally inspect any boat for fishing infractions, even on the grounds, and if they found fish out of season or licence type, the boat would be escorted to the nearest town and the entire catch dumped, along with a hefty fine or even a tie-up period. We’d heard rumours that there had already been a couple of boardings and no one in their right mind would take a chance just in case a cutter came speeding up to their stern one day.

  I had wanted the real deal and I was getting it. My alarm clock was the engine that started up behind my head. Getting up in the cold and dark at 5 a.m. after a few hours of restless sleep tossing at anchor was like swimming up through viscous dark water. By the end of the second day out, Paul allowed me to set a few pieces of gear and bring them in, unless I thought there was a salmon on the hook. Then insisted he be the one to clip the line to the stern and pull it in the six feet to the stern, where he expertly hit it on the back of the head with the gaff so he could slip the gaff under its gill and pull it over the stern and into the checkers. I could practise on the dead cohos or small L fish that were no financial threat if I lost them or accidentally cut into the belly flesh while dressing them.

  I learned fast and never complained but yearned for a little tenderness and affection beyond the goodnight peck on the lips before descending to the fo’c’sle. We worked in silence most of the time and fell into our bunks exhausted at night, but I could feel every part of me building endurance and getting stronger with every day. So far, though, it seemed I was trading one set of worries and problems back home for another here. Despite all that, I loved being in this beautiful and perilous world and prayed the fishing would improve. Still, I daydreamed about having enough money to travel and go back to college for a nursing and counselling degree. I longed to see Paul’s matinee-idol face free of thunderclouds.

  Under the daily concerns that hit all the Big Buttons, like mortality and making a living, lurked the dark fear that my body couldn’t take all I demanded of it out here, and I demanded a lot, maybe more than I should have. The issue of being a female in this male domain was already proven wrong every season by the few women in the fleet. My insistence to do more, be the best, was my Excalibur, my weapon against the memories of terrible weakness and pain. My dreams were still haunted by the sound of tearing metal and broken glass, the orthopaedic surgeon telling me I would never be what I had been; that I would be crippled by arthritis by the time I was 50.

  I had ignored pain so long I had learned to almost deny its existence, but now I had to pay attention, because if something went really wrong, I was a long way from help. Sometimes I still let myself wonder if two years really was long enough for torn ligaments to reattach all along a spine, if it was all more than I could bear. I fought with bright bravado the fear, crouching dark and silent in the shadows, that I wouldn’t make it through this time. That even if my body held out, the anxiety over money for school, the viability of this relationship and the barrage of divorce issues would take me down.

  But no one who had watched that dark-eyed blondie stride around Hardy a couple of days earlier, taking photos of eagles prowling the mud flats, abandoned fishboats rotting in the shallows and silent First Nations women repairing nets, or chowing down in the town’s de rigueur Chinese restaurant, or whooping it up with her honey and their hometown fishing friends at the raunchy Seagate and the Thunderbird, would ever know she had a care in the world.

  Gaia’s Whale

  The mundane and the magical were such easy partners here. They slid in and out of the spotlight in perfect choreography, so smoothly I could hardly tell the difference, unless I was really paying attention. It was a little more work than dumbly plodding through the drama, but I never lost sight of how much magic was at work, and that more than made up for the effort. It suspended me above the brutishness and drudgery and terrors of this life. It was the kiss that made me smile in my sleep, the inner knowing that something so much greater was at play.

  Mother Nature had another tantrum this day, or maybe it was a headache or indigestion. She huffed and heaved and bellowed and sent her house into chaos. It started out well enough for the north end, but as the day wore on she just couldn’t resist having a hissy fit. Maybe sunny days made her cranky. By noon the winds were up to 20 knots and we were thrashing and grinding around the Yankee Spot with a few other hapless souls. We stayed because there was nowhere else to go. By all reports, everywhere else was just as windy and rough and fishless.

  Some people didn’t even bother to go out, figured they’d just end up spending more on fuel than what they took in and had themselves a harbour day. There was nothing more demoralizing than bashing around all day just to come back skunked, and there’d been an awful lot of that this season. But since we hadn’t got skunked yet, we went out at daybreak.

  The day before, I was so desperate not to come back to Bull Harbour empty-handed that I compulsively pulled my gear and swore I would not go back in until we caught something. Even Paul was relieved that we could finally run in when I pulled in a ratty little spring, a half-inch too short. Refusing defeat, I dressed the poor little thing, threw it on the deck and rolled on it like a dog, certain that would press the fish out to the minimum 16 inches for sale.

  We were going into Bull Harbour for the night because we were worn out from tossing at anchor all night—even the bays were rough with ha
rsh weather—and needed a decent sleep. And though I would never have asked to go in, I was relieved. As we ran down the channel from Nahwitti Bar I relaxed into the thought of a quiet night and peeled potatoes at the sink, watching for the harbour entry in the dense green shoreline. Suddenly the temperature gauge nearly blew off the dashboard and a horrible whine came up through the floor as we began losing power.

  “Jesus Christ! Get up here and keep us steering straight. The tide is running in hard and will run us aground if we go broadside.”

  I leaped to the wheel, heart pounding. Paul ripped up the carpet and floor cover and threw them on the day bunk. Choking steam belched up as the emergency lights and alarm turned the engine room into a scene from Dante’s inferno.

  “God, Paul, be careful,” I shouted above the din and my adrenaline.

  “Turn off the engine and turn on the radio telephone to the Bull Harbour frequency. If I can’t get restarted we’re going to need help.” He grabbed an extra extinguisher from the cabin wall and jumped down into the engine room.

  As I wrestled with the wheel to keep our rudder straight, I said my first prayer of the season through trembling lips and willed us away from the rocky shorelines that loomed on either side of this treacherous little channel. I gripped the wheel so hard my hands turned white. I flashed back to all the whitewater canoeing accidents I’d survived and reasoned that at least I was still in a boat and not in the icy water.

  For once I was relieved to hear Paul banging and swearing because I knew he was still alive down there, and I stopped myself from calling out to him, gauging our danger level by the intensity of the tirade. Come on, Paul, you can do it, you can do it, I murmured over and over. Suddenly he was in the wheelhouse, pouring sweat and gunk, and as he pulled me off the seat, he grabbed the wheel and turned the key on the dashboard. Click. Click. Click. Click. Then the most beautiful sound in the world: the roar of a diesel. I threw my arms around his waist and hugged him as he pulled the boat around to head back up the channel to harbour.