Summer is but a distant memory up here in Alaska. Fall is kaput as well. Winter has arrived with a fury, as of today (11/10) Anchorage has had a record amount of snowfall for this early in the season. We had a couple of feet fall in the past three days. It has made life difficult for me and everyone else. It’s looking like we are going to have another super snowy winter. After the debacle of unplowed roads last year, supposedly city government has made essential changes to its plowing strategy. So far, the army of graders and private vehicles out on the roads have been somewhat keeping up with the snowfall. It wasn’t enough to allow the buses to operate the past couple days though, which screwed up my ability to get to and from work. Ubers cost an arm and a leg at times like these, but that’s the only option I have to get around. Times such as this really make me miss my truck.

I’ve been back from Bristol Bay since the end of July. It’s taken me a while to get around to writing about the experience. I’m not sure why, perhaps because I wanted some time to pass in order to really understand how I felt about the whole thing. I definitely wanted the perspective the passage of time would give me. It wasn’t something I particularly wanted to have to relive, but there was no way I couldn’t not write about it.

First and foremost, it was a king-hell adventure. So much happened in those seven and a half weeks, it felt like months of time had gone by out there. It helped for me to view my job as one of my expeditions rather than something I was doing for money. You expect to get pretty beaten up on an expedition, and let me tell ya’ll, I got beaten up pretty good. We all got beat down pretty good, hence the title of this post! I felt like fifty percent of the time things were tolerable, forty-five percent of the time things were intolerable, and five percent of the time there’s no place where you’d rather be. I was pushed beyond what I imagined I could tolerate both physically and mentally out there.

Overall, I’d have to say that the season was pretty much a disaster. We didn’t even break even. I would have made more money if I would have stayed at home working my regular job. The thing is that the fishing there has been really good for at least a decade. It’s common knowledge that even a greenhorn deckhand can go there and make ten thousand dollars in a season easy. I’ve been hearing this for years, so when the opportunity came for me to get on a boat to go fish there, I was all about it. I needed a solid grubstake from a season in the bay to get my life going up here. Last year’s catch was record-setting, and fishermen made bank. I wanted to get in on that action. Unfortunately, due to a combination of breakdowns, hit-or-miss fishing, miserable weather, and a record low salmon price, we barely made any money. With the economy being the way it is, people aren’t splurging on sockeye the way they used to. The cannery was still trying to sell their fish from last year, actually.

It all started out good enough. I made the short flight from Anchorage into King Salmon on June 6. At the airport I was greeted by Zach, one of my fellow deckhands. He drove us in a beat up Volvo back to the boatyard in Naknek, about fifteen miles to the west. We pulled up to the Nimbus, and I was really impressed! It was a really nice looking, big boat. When I arrived, I met the first mate/engineer Bruno. He and Zach were old friends, and were really cool guys. The skipper, Taylor, I knew from fishing with his dad last summer. As soon as I got there I was put to work. I took the car to the local hardware store to get some paint. The store didn’t have what I wanted, so I had to call skipper to tell him about the available options. As I did this, I noticed that even though I had plenty of signal, my calls wouldn’t go through. According to the store employees, the local system was overloaded that day and no one could get through to anybody. This was to become a regular occurrence during our time there. The local networks aren’t built for the massive increase in population that fishing season brings. When you’re out in the Alaskan bush, sometimes things don’t work the way they are supposed to.

That night we all had some drinks and I got to know everybody. We all seemed to get along pretty well. I had been concerned about personality conflicts, but I didn’t think there would be any problems. The next day I was shown around the boat and started to familiarize myself with everything onboard. We weren’t going to be launching for another couple of weeks, but we had a huge amount of work to do to get the vessel ready for the season. Taylor had just bought the boat, so it was new to him. It was new to all of us actually! In the past, he had ran his grandfather’s boat. That boat was a solid boat, but he had really wanted something bigger with jet propulsion. The guy Taylor bought the boat from had a reputation for running his equipment into the ground however. The more we started to get into the boat and its systems, the more we realized that so many things were broken or weren’t running right. As the days went on, we fixed a lot of things on our to-do list. Unfortunately, there were also many parts that we needed that were taking their sweet time arriving from civilization. We couldn’t complete some repairs/upgrades until we got those items.

The four of us worked 8-12 hours a day for over two weeks before the boat was ready to take to sea. During that time I got used to living in a boat environment with three other guys. It was really difficult for me at first to adjust to the lack of privacy. I knew it was going to be rough, but it drove me a bit nuts trying to exist with others in such a confined space. It got a bit easier as I got used to it, but on land I could always go for a walk. At sea I wouldn’t have that luxury, so I was dreading not being able to get away from people out there.

The first week and a half we were allowed to eat inside the cannery cafeteria, and I was blown away by the quality of the food! The chef was a really awesome fellow and he and his kitchen created some amazing meals for us. They really feed their workers well. At the end they threw a big barbecue and beer party for all us fishermen, which was really nice of them to do. After that day we were left to our own devices for preparing dinner, and we got used to making food on the boat.

Everyone on the boat had a specialized task, and I was assigned to taking care of all things related to cooking and food. Our main way to prepare food was through an Insta-Pot. The finished product we referred to as ‘boat slop’. Boat slop usually consisted of a pasta combined with a sauce, vegetables and meat. Taylor had stocked us with a whole bunch of moose meat, processed in different ways from a kill he made the previous winter. There were roasts, breakfast & link sausage, pastrami, Slim-Jims, ground meat, and T-bone steaks for us to incorporate into our meals. It was delicious however we had it! We also had a small butane stove for things that required cooking with a degree of control, such as salmon fillets. Our groceries were shipped into the boatyard via barge inside a couple of big storage containers. I was assigned the task of splitting everything into several boxes that would be stored there at the cannery. Then, as they were needed, the tender boats would bring them out to us. I organized dry boxes, drink boxes and frozen boxes by number and recorded the contents on a list. That way, if we needed a specific item I could request the box that it was in. It was a pretty good system.

Finally, after two weeks of laboring on the boat, we were reasonably seaworthy. The biggest delay involved getting some parts for the jet and welding it back together. There was really no way to know if everything worked until we got in the water to try everything out. We were beyond ready to start fishing though. Most of the boatyard had left before us and were out in the river at anchor. The season hadn’t officially started yet, but we were all anxious to get going. We were due to launch on a Wednesday and the season was due to start on that Saturday, so we needed to get our sea trials done by then. Before all that would occur, we needed to christen our vessel. Lacking any champagne, the skipper used the next best thing: a warm can of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer!

Right around the time we were to launch, we got word that what was suspected to be COVID was ravaging the boatyard and cannery. We found out the captain of the Lil’ Buddy right across from us in the yard had gotten sick and just died! They said he was healthy and in his mid 60’s, poor guy. It was heartbreaking seeing the boat sitting there in the middle of being outfitted. The captain would never take his boat out to sea ever again, it was really sad.

There was a big push on our part to get out to sea before the sickness got on to our boat. Unfortunately, we weren’t fast enough, as Bruno soon started to feel like shit. When our launch day arrived, the guy was miserably sick. There was nothing we could do about it, the show had to go on. We all believed that it was only a matter of time before we all got whatever he had, so we ate a lot of vitamins and hoped for the best. Bruno was sick as a dog, but he did everything he had to do. We couldn’t have done it without him, so I’m glad he managed to do his job somehow. Amazingly, none of the rest of us got sick, it was a miracle! Of all the places to be sick, being on a cramped fishing boat is the last place I’d want to be for sure. For around a week Bruno was horribly ill, but he did make a full recovery.

We made it to the water successfully, so that part of the launch went well. Unfortunately, as soon as we got in the water we experienced a leak in the engine compartment. Somebody had left out a plug, and as a result salt water sprayed all over the engine and everything else down there. It was pretty hairy for a bit as Bruno and Zach frantically looked everywhere for the needed plug. They soon found it and plugged the hole, but everyone was sort of shocked that things had gone wrong so fast. It seemed to be a bad sign and was to be the first of many freakout disasters on the Nimbus.

Now that we were finally out on the water, it was time to test out all the ship systems. This wasn’t anything I could contribute to, so I spent my time trying to repair the pump toilet on board. I had never encountered one of these in my life, but after consulting some YouTube videos I felt I knew how to go about fixing it. Taylor needed to go ashore to get some welding work done, so he said he would pick up a repair kit while he was back in the yard. He managed to get the parts I needed, and amazingly I fixed the thing. It was pretty gross and very annoying to work in the tiny space where the toilet was located, but I got it done. The crew was pretty stoked that it was working, they had always used the ‘ol five gallon bucket toilet on deck. I felt that having indoor facilities would definitely be appreciated during inclement weather and large seas. The Jabsco pump toilet is not the most intuitive setup to use, but it is easy once you get the hang of it.

We finally got to a point to where we were ready to head out to sea. The timing was perfect, as the season was just about ready to kick off. For our first voyage, we would be heading west a good distance out into the bay. Then we would swing north towards Dillingham. The actual village we were going to be fishing in the vicinity of was called Nushagak. Everyone referred to it as the ‘Nush’. From what I heard, this area had a reputation for strong currents, big seas and wild weather. We were all ready to get on some fish, as we’d been working on the boat for 3 weeks and were ready to start making money. It was 50-60 miles away from Naknek, about an 8 hour run. We left on a Friday evening and got to the ‘Nush a little before dawn the next morning.

The trip was uneventful besides hearing a loud pop from somewhere down in the engine compartment at the start of the run. There was a lot of worrying done about it, but everything checked out down there upon inspection. The theory was that it was some kind of relief plug that popped out under high pressure. We had running partners heading to the ‘Nush with us, so we felt ok about pushing on ahead.

The staging area for fishing in the ‘Nush was at an anchorage off of Clark’s Point. It was one of a handful of places where you could get cell reception in Bristol Bay, which was interesting since it was out in the middle of nowhere. The season started at 6 PM, so we had all day to get ourselves ready to go fishing. The weather was pretty foul, I think there was a small craft advisory that day. According to my crew, every day was a small craft advisory in Bristol Bay, and besides, the Nimbus wasn’t a small craft…so we were all good!

By the time 6 PM rolled around, we were poised and ready to go. Our first set was going to be right off the beach in about three feet of water. Since we had a jet boat we could fish insanely shallow. Right at 6, we tossed out our lines. The season had officially begun! Unfortunately, Zach and I had no idea of what we were doing and our first few sets were really rough. We did start bringing in salmon soon enough however! It felt good to see the first fish start to come in over the roller. By the end of our first fishing period, which was around 2 AM, we had a decent haul of reds. It was difficult off-loading in the rainy, dark, sloppy seas to our tender, but we managed to get it done without smashing anything. Our first day was done.

By the time we off-loaded, we had only around 3 hours to eat and sleep before the next 8 hour fishing period. That’s kind of how things went. We’d fish for 8 hours or so, spend 2-3 hours offloading, then have 2-4 hours to eat and sleep. By the third day doing this I finally felt like the crew was finally coming together. Everyone was really starting to work in sync. It was at this point disaster struck, as it seems like it always does when things are going a little too well.

So we had been continually fixing little things on the boat on a daily basis. We were constantly having problems with our coolant system, our hydraulic system, and particularly our RSW (refrigerated sea water, used to cool our catch) system. All these things we were able to keep somewhat operational. Our attentions were on these things, so it was a huge shock when suddenly Taylor couldn’t get the boat in gear. We were totally blindsided by this serious boat malfunction. We were several miles away from our anchorage at Clark’s Point, fishing with our running buddies on the Outlier at the time. The skipper tried everything to get us moving, but it started to dawn on us that we were totally dead in the water. Fortunately, the Outlier was able to get a line over to us and began to tow us back to the anchorage.

We were really lucky as the seas were relatively calm. Even so, towing such a big boat with fish in the hold wasn’t easy, as the tow rope snapped a couple of times. Finally a solid bridle was engineered and we made the slow journey back across the northern part of Bristol Bay. After about 3-4 hours of towing we made it back to the anchorage. There, we had a salty old mechanic come on board and see if there was any possible way to fix our broken tranny. A few minutes of inspection revealed that our transmission was completely fried, to our utter dismay. It was devastating news. Not only were we going to have to find some way to get towed back to our home port, we were going to have to be pulled from the water and put back up on blocks for starters. No one said it, but we all knew that this was going to put a stake in the heart of the season. Taylor estimated that it would cost him at least 10 grand to fix. He was furious at the guy who sold him the boat, the neglect of the transmission was the jewel in the crown of the previous owner’s incompetence.

The skipper got on the radio and found us a net barge we could tie up to, which we did after off-loading our catch. This just happened to be the day our 5th crew member showed up out there at the anchorage. Taylor’s good friend Chad was coming in from SoCal to help out for a couple weeks as our ‘peak season’ guy. Poor dude was expecting to be jumping into some solid fishing, not into a disabled boat with a disappointed crew. However, he was a really upbeat guy and took the bad news well. Chad soon had us feeling better about things, as his positive attitude was infectious. The Outlier dropped us off, and all we could do is wait for a ride back to Naknek.

The skipper had been on the radio asking around to see if anyone would be heading back to Naknek anytime soon. A crab boat named Notorious said they would be returning to port that evening, and they were down for us to hitch a ride with them. I was interested to see how this would play out. It was going to be a long tow, 55 miles or so. As it was getting dark, we got word on the radio that the Notorious was finishing loading up the day’s catch and would soon be swinging by the barge we were tied up to. When it showed up, I was really impressed by the vessel. It was a huge boat that dwarfed the Nimbus. We tied up alongside, and then we were on our way. Soon we were flying along at a good speed. We were moving almost twice as fast as we would have traveled under our own power! For such a huge boat, the Notorious could really move.

The captain of the Notorious was a super nice guy. He offered the use of his galley, showers and laundry room to us. We didn’t take him up on any of these things, but we did explore all over the vessel. As we had been at sea for a week, it was nice to walk on a steady deck. I was really impressed by how clean and shipshape everything was. The crew was a bunch of young green guys, but they seemed to be taking care of their vessel. It was a really cool experience being on my first crab boat. It would have been nice to experience it without the breakdown though! Eventually we got to a point where the captain of the Notorious felt it would be better if we were towed behind his boat. They tossed down a huge towing rope, and we attached it to our bridle up front. Soon, we were back under way. Someone needed to be watching the rope at all times, so we each took a 2 hour watch to do so. I was lucky enough to get the dawn watch, and to witness the most groovy sunrise of the whole season.

It was an uneventful trip back to Naknek. We managed to get hauled out and put back on blocks in the boatyard. It was odd being back in the yard with everyone gone, it was a ghost town with the fleet out at sea. As soon as we were set back up in our spot, we got to work. Every moment we delayed was a moment we weren’t making money, so it was a race to get the transmission out, fixed, and replaced as fast as possible. A hole had to be cut in the metal deck to accommodate the transmission removal, which also meant that we were going to have to track down a welder to repair it when we put the tranny back in. It was a hell of a job getting it decoupled from the engine, strapped up and lifted out by a SkyTrak. We managed to do it in around four hours, which was amazing for such a complicated task. I was really impressed by my crewmates’ mechanical abilities, that was quite a major boat surgery they successfully accomplished!

After the tranny was removed, Taylor took it to the boatyard mechanic. It was going to take a couple of days to fix, so in the meantime we took advantage of being out of the water to work on random boat problems that had popped up at sea. Everyone was in low spirits, as we knew this had the potential to ruin the entire season if we couldn’t get it fixed. To bring us back up, Taylor took us all out to dinner a couple of nights. There’s only a couple of places to eat in Naknek, but the quality of the food at both spots was amazing for an Alaskan bush town. We got really excellent pizza one night at this little pizzeria and delicious burgers at the local bar the next night. It was tasty grub compared to the slop we had been eating on the boat!

One interesting thing that happened during this time is that a bear broke into our storage container underneath the boat. Someone left the door unlatched one night and the next day some of our foodstuffs had been ripped open. We knew it was either bears or the dogs that roamed freely across the boatyard. We found out for sure that it was a bear when Zach ran across it coming back from the showers one night. He made a quick film of it and ran away. It was a brown bear, not particularly large, probably a youngster. It was still definitely big enough to eat you though! It’s crazy how these bears just roam around all over the place. It’s a cannery out in the middle of the tundra, it makes sense how bears are attracted to the place from miles around.   

True to their word, the mechanics had the transmission fixed in a couple of days. As soon as they had it repaired, it was sent over to our boat. We had the lift pick it up, extend it way up to the boat, and then guide it back into the hull. This was an incredibly difficult task. The hole that had been cut in the deck was just big enough to allow the tranny through, so it took a lot of tries to get the thing through there. Its substantial weight didn’t help matters. At long last, the tranny made it through the hole and was secured back in its mountings soon after. Some the pipes that carried water for the RSW got smashed in the process, so a bunch of PVC pipe had to be found to repair that damage. After this was done, we had to find a welder to weld a plate over the hole in the deck. As you can imagine, there aren’t many welders out there in the bush. The ones that are there are completely swamped with work, it could be a matter of days until we could get someone to do the job. There was one guy we could get to do it that probably was available, but we wanted to avoid this guy at all costs. Bruno had some negative dealings with him in the past. According to him, the guy charged an arm and a leg for mediocre work. He was also very abrasive and a was a real ‘Negative Nancy’ kind of person supposedly.

Unfortunately, after all the other local welders fell though, we wound up having to get this lame dude to weld our deck. He showed up and did a mediocre job as expected after much bitching and moaning. The guy charged a huge sum of money for the work as well. We had barely begun cleaning up after all this work when the yard crew showed up ready to re-launch us. I guess the skipper had made an appointment ahead of time and we had taken longer to get the tranny job done than expected. We got them to give us a few extra minutes and we scrambled like mad to get the boat ready to go back in the water. This done, we got towed back down to the river and launched for a second time. Hopefully we wouldn’t be coming back until the season was done!

Thankfully the new transmission performed perfectly, and we got back to fishing immediately. It seemed like we were launching into waters thick with salmon! Everyone was catching full nets of reds right outside the river mouth. We only had an hour to fish before the period was over, so we went at breakneck speed to get fish on the boat. We wound up with a couple thousand pounds in a hour, which was really good. It seemed like we were in the right part of the bay for fishing! The next period we crushed it. Full net after full net came up. Sometimes we would not pick the fish fast enough for the skipper’s liking, so he’d have us do a thing called ‘roundhauling’ at the end of certain sets. When you roundhaul, you pull in the net full of fish in by hand as fast as you can. You just make a big pile of net and salmon on the deck. By the end you’re usually flat on your back, covered in fish. It’s not a fun thing to have to do, as it makes it really hard to get all the fish out of the net since it’s tangled up all over the place. We did that a few times during this fishing period, it takes a lot out of you to do.

After a few hours of nonstop fishing, we were starting to get pretty tired. Seeing our fishing holds fill with salmon gave us an invigorating rush to keep going though! Eventually we ran out of space below deck so we had to bring out deck bags, which were soon filled. The fish kept coming and soon the entire deck was covered in a couple layers of fish. As the boat would wallow in the wave troughs, all the catch would roll from one side of the boat to the other. It was astonishing seeing such a massive haul. When the period was over, we made our way over to our tender to offload, and we had caught around 10,000 lbs. of reds. What a good day! If we had 20 periods like that, we’d be making good money at the end of the season.

Unfortunately, after this enormous haul, the fishing cooled off. Day after day we spent just scratching for whatever we could get. On the Fourth of July, I cooked a moose roast for the crew. Not my usual Independence Day fare, but it turned out really well cooked in gravy and served over rice. The day after, which was actually my mother’s birthday, we had some of the roughest seas of the entire season. It was so bad you couldn’t even pour a cup of coffee without spilling it everywhere. Speaking of coffee, this was the day our coffee maker died due to the conditions. A pot had been put on before we had gone out for the first set of the day. When I came back in, the coffee maker had flipped upside down and didn’t work any more. It had been secured with a bungie cord, but that didn’t stop it from moving around. This was a terrible loss, the rest of the season we would be forced to make coffee with one of those drip cup filter things. Hot coffee is pretty much a necessity for us fisherman, so it made our jobs a lot harder not to be able to brew up some easily.

The weather was horrible in addition to the big seas. It got really frustrating to deal with after a while, it’s so exhausting trying to stay on your feet in conditions like that. We were trying to make it work when suddenly gale-force winds came up and it got wild! We pulled in our net and called it a day. It took us a long time to get back to port, as we had to go into the weather. It was a white knuckle ride all the way. After we made our way back to our river anchorage, the skies cleared up a bit and the sunset was gorgeous. It was an intense day, I’d say that was probably the worst conditions I had ever been in out at sea.

Fishing continued to be hit-or-miss in the following days. Occasionally we would have good sets and we’d get hopeful that we would be on the fish again, but everything always fizzled out. By this point I felt like I was starting to get the hang of things. I had been having problems with sleeping at sea unfortunately, particularly when it was rough. My head was right at the bow waterline when I was in my bunk, the waves would sound like someone was pounding the hull with a sledgehammer right next to my ear. I did get used to it somewhat as time went by, however. The first couple of weeks was really hard on me for this reason. I felt every one of my 44 years of age out there!

I was really glad we had the extra hand on board, as did everyone else. However, Chad would soon be heading back to California and I needed to be able to up my game to make up for the loss in crew. Taylor tried to talk him into staying, but to no avail. A day before Chad left us, we had another insane fish period. We were in the same general area as the last big catch we had, to the west of the Naknek river mouth. This time we were able to fill our boat completely full to the point where it was impossible to walk on deck. When we offloaded we found that we had caught 16,000 pounds of reds, which was our biggest catch of the whole season. The captain bought us a 12 pack of Mountain Dew off our tender, which really hit the spot after such an intense day of fishing. That was the best Dew I have ever had!

After this crazy fishing day, the skipper doubled down on trying to keep Chad on the boat. He had the feeling that the fishing was going to stay really good and we would really be at a disadvantage if he were to leave. Chad could not be talked into staying and was ready to get back to civilization and his girlfriend however. I couldn’t blame him, it had been a real rough go of things while he had been on the boat. He certainly didn’t expect to have to deal with working on transmission issues for nearly a week of his two and a half weeks there.

When Chad finally left, we were all kind of bummed out. He was a cool dude, and was a great deckhand. He also had really good playlists that everyone could agree on to listen to out on deck. Taylor still wanted to get an extra hand on board, so he reached out to his mom to come out and join us for a few days. I had fished with Liz last year on Thor’s boat and she was a pro at picking fish out of the net. I was stoked to hear she would be coming out to lend a hand. If the fish were going to keep coming in the way they had, we’d need all the help we could get.

Liz jumped on a plane the next day, and we picked her up at the cannery dock. She was really happy to be on the boat. As a lifelong fisherlady, she’s fully in her element out on the ocean. After she got squared away, we set back out to sea. We were all ready to start filling our holds again with fish, but the salmon suddenly disappeared! One day there were schools of fish for miles, the next day there were only scattered fish here and there. There was no encouraging news over the radio, everyone in the fleet was coming up with empty nets. After a day of this, Taylor had a decision to make. He was thinking about totally leaving the Naknek area and heading far to the south to a place called Ugashik. Making the 70 mile run was a big decision, because if we went down there we would be committed to fishing there for a while. It was a gamble whatever he decided to do. The fish could be in either place, it would be terrible if we went all the way down there and the fishing blew up in Naknek.

All of us crew were in favor of trying out new waters. The fishing was just too hit-or-miss where we were at. After a lot of thinking and consulting with his fellow captains, the skipper decided we were going to go for it. He didn’t want to do it alone however, so we managed to convince a couple of our running partners to head down there with us. There was a weather window open that would ensure calm seas if we left that evening, so that’s what we did.

The cruise south was uneventful. When the sun came up, we found ourselves in thick fog. We couldn’t see anywhere past a couple hundred yards distance from the boat. According to the skipper, we were pretty close to where we wanted to be, so we did some test sets. We didn’t really catch much, so we continued on our way. Suddenly huge cliffs loomed out of the fog, and things cleared up enough for us to see a long, deserted beach. Multiple boats soon materialized all around us, and they were all fishing right off the beach. They did this by getting as shallow as they dared, then throwing out the net and pulling quickly away back out to sea. We started fishing the same way. It was a really intense and risky way to fish, but the strategy paid off. We started pulling in nets thick with fish!

We had to be really careful fishing this way to not let our net wash up on the beach. There were reports on the radio that a bear had gotten into someone’s net that had drifted ashore, so that was something to watch out for. There were snags up and down the shore that also threatened our net. Despite the hazards, we did really well that first day in the ‘Gash. We felt that our gamble had paid off, as we had our best day in a while. We had caught around 6000 lbs. of quality reds.

The next day however, the fish vanished once again. Liz needed to go back to civilization, so we dropped her off at a tender boat. Like Chad, she had expected to get into the fish while she was on the boat, but it was not to be. At least she got in on our one good day, so she wasn’t too disappointed. We decided to change fishing strategies and head inland in search of fish. Weather conditions had shifted and it was too rough and windy to fish outside of protective waters anyway. The Ugashik River heads inland through a maze of shallow water channels. At low tide a lot of the area is left high and dry, so it takes skill to navigate through there. There was a lot of bottom scraping and manual depth checking involved in this. The Nimbus has a very shallow draft, and being a jet boat means we could operate in a couple feet of water. It really blew my mind how such a big boat could operate in such skinny water.

The skipper had heard that there were lots of fish moving upriver, so we found a spot in about four feet of water and deployed our net. After letting the net soak for a bit, we pulled it in to find quite a few fish. They were on the small side for the most part however. There also was a bunch of sticks, mud and decaying salmon carcasses in the net due to fishing so shallow. As the net came up over the roller it sprayed all that garbage right in your face. Every set was like this fishing in the shallows. We spent that day and the next few days grinding out fish in the river. We would leave the net out for 2-3 hours at a time and let it soak up fish. It was probably the least exciting fishing we had done up to that point. The weather was really nasty during this period, the wind was relentless and would chill you to the bone on deck. You just couldn’t get warm no matter what you did.

We really gave Ugashik a chance, but after that first day we did poorly. I think Taylor was hoping that the fish would come back around, so that’s why we stuck it out as long as we did. On our last day fishing in the ‘Gash, we wound up running out of water when the tide moved out on us. We were stuck high and dry for around 4 hours. Our running partner tried to tow us back to deeper water, but we weren’t going anywhere. I’ve never been in a boat stranded by the falling tide before! It’s a helpless feeling, even when you know it’s only temporary. When the tide came back in we floated away as soon as we could get water in our intakes. No harm no foul, but we did lose a lot of fishing time. The next day, we decided enough was enough and plans were made to head back to Naknek.

We made our final offload and took on enough fuel to make the voyage back north. As we pulled away from the tender, the skipper noticed that the boat wasn’t running the way it should. When we checked below decks to see what was going on down there, we were shocked to discover that the hull was full of water! We were halfway sunk! Immediately we turned around and limped back to the tender. We appealed to the crew to help us out, and they let us borrow one of their pumps. Using that pump and our bilges, we soon got all the water pumped out. It had been a close call. If we would have discovered our leak in transit, miles away from help, we might not have been able to get all that water out in time. It shook us all up, in particular Bruno was freaked out pretty good. He had been on a crab boat that had sank out on the Bering Sea back in 2016 where a couple guys drowned. Seeing all that water in the boat brought back a lot of bad memories for him.

The culprit of the leak turned out to be from a small pipe that contained a filter. Bruno had taken out the filter to clean the day before and didn’t reinstall it correctly. It had been a tiny leak, but it had gone on all night unnoticed. It’s amazing such a tiny, insignificant thing had nearly wiped us out. You’ve always got to be on high alert when at sea due to things like this.

After this incident we were really ready to get out of there. On our way out, I noticed that we were passing right by some very familiar crab boats. To my delight, we cruised right past Cornelia Marie and Time Bandit from Deadliest Catch! In their off-season, it seems that crab boats make income by being salmon tenders. I had been watching these boats on that show for years. Seeing them was one of the highlights of the season for me! I was definitely star-struck.

It was extremely cool to see these legendary boats in person.

We had perfect transit weather for our voyage north back to Naknek. The sea was like glass and the skies were clear. After the horrible conditions we had been dealing with in Ugashik, it was almost like being on a pleasure cruise! By this point I think all of us were pretty much done with the season. There was talk of people already starting to pull their boats out of the water. Unless there was some last-minute burst of fish moving into Naknek, we knew we wouldn’t be adding many more fish to our total.

The nice weather decided to stick around, it seemed that summer had finally arrived to Bristol Bay. The fishing wasn’t anything special, although we had a few decent sets here and there in the last week. During this time, Taylor’s girlfriend Lani came out and joined us on the boat. She brought a lot of fruits and vegetables with her, which were really welcomed. Lani really seemed to enjoy herself out there, she seems like a real fisherwoman. She picked and filleted fish without hesitation, and made us some nice meals. We were real happy to have her join us. I think it was really nice for the skipper to have his lady around after such a horrendous season. Since we were pretty much done fishing, they got to spend a lot more time together than they had anticipated.

Taylor made an appointment with the dockyard to have us hauled out of the river. Since everyone in the fleet wanted out at the same time, we were going to have to wait a few days. While we waited, we got all of our boat cleaning taken care of. We did go out one final time to catch a few reds for personal consumption, but besides that we were completely done. On one hand we were overjoyed to just have the damned season over and done with. There was a profound relief in not having to deal with the daily disasters any more. On the other hand, it was a sinking feeling thinking about how poorly we had fared financially. Even the boats that caught good numbers of fish didn’t do well at all. In the end we caught 114,000 lbs. of salmon. It sounds like a lot, but at 50 cents a pound it doesn’t amount to much when you factor in all of the expenses.

The haul-out went well, and we got put back up on blocks. We had most of a week until our flight out, so the last few days were spent drinking, commiserating with other crews, and getting the boat ready for winter. It was a pretty wild scene there in the boatyard. There was a lot of partying and people blowing off steam from the disappointing season. We would always have people dropping by the boat to shoot the shit. People weren’t the only company we had over, however. It was during this time we had a close encounter of the bear kind!

It was around midnight and I was reading in my bunk at the time. Suddenly, I heard a sound from right outside the boat. It sounded like something was moaning and groaning out there. It could only be bears! I leapt up out of my bunk and ran out on deck. Bruno and Taylor were already out there listening to the beasts holler at each other. It was really dark, but I could just make out a dark shape on the ground right in front of the boat. Even though I could barely see the creature, I was blown away at just how big it was. It was like looking at something the size of a car! When the bear bellowed you could feel it in your chest, that’s how close it was. We were only about ten feet off of the ground, if that bear wanted to climb up after us there wasn’t much we could do about it.

We had a mama bear and a cub on our hands. The mama soon walked a short distance to a dumpster close to where our friend had been smoking some salmon. You could hear her banging around in the garbage. The cub stayed right underneath our boat and started to holler at his mother. I think she ditched him to get into some prime garbage and this upset the little fellow. You could tell by all the moaning, groaning and huffing that he was really letting her have it! It was really amazing getting to hear the vocalizations and I’m glad I got some audio recorded of them.

Around this time our friend Chris ran back to his boat, which was on blocks right next to us. He had been visiting another boat a couple rows over. He had been wanting to return for a while, but we had let him know that bears were prowling around and the coast wasn’t exactly clear. When they stopped the vocalizations and seemed to wander off back into the thicket, we gave Chris the all-clear to return. He was pretty wasted, and seemed to have dropped something on the dash back. Since the bears appeared to have left, he felt like it was safe to retrace his steps to search for the lost item. He left, but soon returned in a huge hurry. The guy was totally freaked out and was breathing hard.

So what had happened is that he had almost made it back to where he lost the item. Suddenly, he heard snuffling coming behind him. He turned to see the mama and baby bear charging him from behind! His first instinct was to run, but immediately he realized that he couldn’t outrun the bears. Acting on pure instinct, he turned around and hollered as loud as he could at the pair. I guess the shout freaked out mama bear and she broke off the charge. Dude really lucked out! I had been thinking that that the local bears were somewhat habituated to people and were less likely to bother us. This incident showed that they were always a threat that you shouldn’t ever underestimate.

Well, that’s about it. We got the boat all ready to face the brutal winter, and locked everything up. The last time we had fished, we had caught around 50 reds to process for personal use. It was a little bit of a chore getting those checked in and on the plane, but the whole process went smoothly. It was very disorienting returning to civilization. Dealing with all of the sights and sounds of the big city was very jarring after all the time spent away in the bush and at sea. It was beyond nice to return to my little apartment in the ghetto though. Having my own space, hot water, a kitchen and sleeping in my own bed was incredibly luxurious. I spent a lot of time on my bike when I got back going up and down the Coastal Trail. The weather was really great, and I enjoyed soaking up the sunshine pedaling around all over.

What little money I had made went into rent and bills immediately upon my return. I had hoped to take some time off and bring up my truck from the lower 48, but that wasn’t going to happen. I was going to have to start working again immediately. I tried to get in contact with my previous job, but they wouldn’t even return my calls! I had been told to give them a call when the season was over and they would have me back, but this was going to fall through as well. Eventually I found out that business was slow and they weren’t hiring anyone. Not only was the season a disaster, but it had cost me my job that I really liked as well. While I looked for another job, the rest of my fish money went to paying my bills. I put another couple of thousand dollars on my credit card in the process, which sickened me to have to do. I was supposed to be paying off debt after the season, not stacking more of it on!

I finally got another job doing what I did before thankfully. I make a bit more than I did with my previous employer, and my new company is a much better place to work. Everything turned out all right, but it took a couple months to get back financially solvent. Now I’m just trying to stabilize myself. I’m still not quite right in the head from all the massive disappointment however. I was planning on using that fishing money to get me out of this financial hole that I’m in. Instead, now I’m in a deeper hole with lingering pain still in my hands and feet. I really beat up my fingers in particular out there, and it affected my guitar-playing ability. I was worried that it might be a long-term thing, but fortunately my hands are slowly getting better.

Oh well. I think the take home lesson from this whole experience is that no matter your good intentions, sometimes things just blow up in your face. I’d say the greatest disappointment was feeling too old to do something for the first time in my life. I managed to get through the experience, but could just barely keep up with my younger crewmates. Age has never been a factor for me in doing anything before this. Also, I don’t heal well in those kinds of conditions and it seems that I’m really vulnerable to repetitive-motion injuries now. There’s a part of me that would like to try and roll the dice on another season, but the thought of getting all busted up to possibly make peanuts once again really dissuades me. It’s a huge bummer because I wanted to get experience working a job that I could always come back to in the summertime.

I did learn a lot though. I had to see what Bristol Bay fishing was all about. I just had the bad fortune to experience the Worst Year Ever as my introductory season. I felt like I was getting pretty good at my job there at the end though. Even though things went terribly, I’m still glad that I did it. I couldn’t have asked for better crewmates, and even though we had a lot of mechanical problems, it was good to be on a relatively spacious boat. All in all, we did the best we could with the situation that presented itself to us. There’s just so many things that have to go right to have a successful season. The crew has to be in sync, the boat has to be functional, the fish need to be where they are supposed to be, and the weather has to cooperate. After all that, your hard work can be for naught if the cannery doesn’t follow through with a good buy price.

I’m glad to finally get this done, I’m pretty impressed with how this post turned out. It’s the longest I’ve done so far on this blog. I hope ya’ll enjoyed it! To close this out, I’d like to include this little video I compiled from GoPro footage. I had plans to do a lot of filming and make a big project out of it, but my camera mount interfered with the hood on my rain gear. As I didn’t want to have a soggy head all the time, this discouraged me from filming. Also, most of the time things are really boring at sea. There’s only so many times you can watch people pick fish, for example. I’d have to be recording all the time with multiple cameras to really catch things going hayware as Deadliest Catch does. I decided to do a basic ‘day in the life’ short film after looking at what I had recorded at season’s end. I just wanted to give everyone a general idea of what it’s like to be on a gillnetter out in Bristol Bay. Thanks to all of ya’ll for reading this jumbo-sized edition of Tales of the Dogfish!