handling rockfish for quality

Kittiwake

2012-11-26 09:07:47

Hello, Im new here and Im not a troller. I have been trying to figure out how to increase the quality of my jig caught rockfish and cod. Presently the plants are fine with tossing bled fish in a dry hold and applying enough ice on so that they are not rotten when you deliver them 3 days later. Or any kind of slush. The fish are offloaded by fish pump or a couple guys standing on the fish with gaff hooks and a brailer. They also dont pay us much. I am very interested in Increasing the quality of the fish and trying to get a better price.

I have an ample, uninsulated hold, The hatch is about 7x7, not big enough for 9 standard brailer bags, but slightly smaller custom ones could fit and would probably hold nearly 6000 lbs combined, which would be about right. Insulating the hold is on the to-do list but I cant see altering it further, as the boat needs to also participate in fisheries where you jam it with 20,000lbs of fish. I need to layer ice them dry, tanking the hold would take a whole lot of ice and I slow down about a knot. Would this work well? or would 9 full brailer bags jam together and be a mess to unload?

My second question concerns handling on deck. I usually catch the fish 30 to 100 at a time, I expect to bleed them in slush till they are chilled and then slide the dead, clean, cold fish into the bags and use minimal ice to maintain temperature. The hold will stay much cleaner than when I put 1000 rockfish in a hold and most are not dead yet. I have little experience with icing this way, am I on the right track? any ideas? Im imagining that giving the fish 20+ minutes in the slush would be good. Im also imagining that getting 50 rockfish out of a half-tote of slush is going to be unpleasant unless there is an intelligent method. Since I have to be prepared for up to 100 fish at a time, I think Ill need 2 half totes on deck with slush. This method would also be used with cod during the slow months but when the fishing gets good Ill have to slush the whole mess and have them pumped at the dock and get the same price everyone else gets. Cod milt in the spring is just like the eggs in your round salmon, its valuable and freezing ruins it.

Sorry if this was very long, also sorry about it being not about trolling or the typical target species. But from searching around on this site, Im pretty sure you folks are the experts in this part of the world on fish handling aboard the vessel. I have already searched the forums for everything I can think of. Thanks for any advice or ideas you can offer.

F/VNightingale

2012-11-26 21:59:40

Aluminum grates made to fit in the bottom of your half totes of cooling slush should make the retrieval of your rockfish a little less spiny of a task. Simply put a line on each end to enable hoisting. The grate will strain out the slush and only lift your fish off the bottom. If it's just half totes you should be able to lift it with no problems with the help of your deckhand. Better than fishing them out methinks. My 2 cents and I hope it helped.

khaos

2012-11-26 22:09:55

Welcome Kittiwake. Most of us are interested in other fisheries other than trolling, and we certainly can help each other out in terms of fish handling. Rockfish are a part of our fishery as well, though not on the scale you are talking about.

Have your buyers offered you a better price for better quality? If so, than I can understand what you are trying to do, but if not, you might find them reluctant to pay you more, even though you are bringing a superior product. A fellow troller just recently lamented that his perfectly handled/iced kings, caught only hours before - were just thrown in with all the other fish at the tender, even those that had been delivered after several days. His price was the same. Then there are June chum salmon, which are beautiful fish and worthy of any salmon market, all caught and handled individually - they pay us the same for them as tiger dogs delivered from gillnets. It's not right, but it seems to be the way it is for fisherman, unless you market your own. Most trollers take great pride and care in the way they handle their fish, but they rarely get much monetary reward for it.

We bleed each rockfish we catch and handle them much as we handle salmon, but we do not get a better price. Usually lower, from what I understand. I think tenders HAVE to take our rockfish bycatch, even though they often do not want to. Prices vary, but they usually just take the whole lot for $.35/lb or so.

I'm guessing you are fishing mostly for black rockfish, as DSR are open only from Nov - Feb, and you shouldn't have too much trouble keeping them cold during those months. Otherwise, brailer bags would surely be the way to go in my opinion. Rockfish are always spitting up shrimp/small fishes/throwing lots of scales, and they make a terrible mess in your holds, which is probably why you are looking at other ways to hold them. All of that would come out with the bags. Bleeding them in slush is a good idea, and I would get a short gaff to transfer them into bags. Rockfish spines go right through gloves, as I'm sure you know. (I got quilled by a dusky one time and the pain was very intense for 2 hours, then completely subsided)

Brailers would also be good for separating species, as I'm sure you get paid differently for various rockfish. The price for yelloweye vs. black rockfish for example would be $.60 or more per pound.

How do you get 30-100 fish at a time with jigging machines? Or do you mean, per stop?

One last thing that might help you get a better price is location. Fish prices jump up and down, depending on where you are unloading. Quillbacks might be $.30/lb in Juneau, $.80 in Sitka, yet $1.25/lb in Craig. That is a BIG difference. I'm sure you have your areas that you like to fish, but you might consider going where the market is. People on this forum can be helpful with the pricing in their areas.

Personally, I am glad to hear that you are fishing rockfish with hook/line and that you are able to make a living at it. They are an excellent food fish, highly underrated, and very underpriced. They are also very abundant in most areas, protected by the rugged terrain that they typically dwell in. Hope to hear more on how you are doing and if you find a solution.

Did not know that cod milt is valuable, does that mean you get a better price in spring? What is your cod season?

I am not equipped to handle the volume of fish that you are talking about, but there are many on this site that are, and I hope they can better shed a light on how to better improve your rockfish quality.

Good luck!

Abundance

2012-11-26 23:10:27

I think that you are on the right track with the idea of getting the fish bled and clean before putting them in bed for the rest of the trip. Keeping that water clean and free of bacteria is a big part of slushing fish down here. I think that khaos covered most of a trollers questions about your problem, but I do wonder what it is that you are trying to improve. Do you think that the fish are soft when you deliver them? Do you think that the fillets are coming out purple from blood retention? I know that one of the excuses I've heard from buyers down here for paying the minimum for pelagic rockfish is that the bottom fillet would turn purple from postmortem lividity, as the blood vessel walls break down and stain the flesh irreversibly and have a lower quality and shelve life. I immediately thought that was BS, but during that winter I experimented with a number of personal use rockfish, and did indeed find that the bottom fillet did have discoloration and a fishy flavor. Simply bleeding them by breaking a gill didn't do nearly what it does for a salmon. Rockfish have much lower blood pressure than other fish, and I found the only real way around it was to dress the fish like I would a salmon and pressure bleed them with a hose. Perfect creamy white flesh and no fishy taste, every time. It was very labor intensive though, and unless you where guaranteed a significantly better market, it might not be worth it. It's worth experimenting with though. Rockfish are primarily a bycatch fishery from the directed salmon and halibut fisheries down here, although there is a mostly ignored directed black rockfish quota and a small directed DSR fishery is opening up again now that the bycatch is down with the reduced halibut quota. It is a fact that our fleet would like to see a high value market for these fish get started.

Kittiwake

2012-11-26 23:25:42

Thanks so much for the input. I dont have a rock solid market for high quality rockfish yet but Im hopeful. If I can get just a dime more per lb, half a dozen brailer bags and another half tote would pay off in 15k lbs. One significant goal of mine it to carry less ice, handle it less and unload very quickly. Its possible that the slush/dry brailers could be easier than what I do now. I dont know how bad the fish that I have delivered in the past have been, processors never tell me a thing about quality, they dont pay enough to complain is what I think. But I wouldnt ever want to eat the ones from the bottom of the pile, or the ones that the offloaders walk on, or the ones that the fish pump folds in the middle. It is primarily Black rockfish and also typically a summertime fishery for me after the spring cod fishery (and our cod prices dont make much sense to me at all). Not many people participate because Its hard work and salmon jobs often pay much more. I might as well tell you that I fish out of Kodiak. I would have to catch the entire Kodiak Black rockfish quota myself to make more than some salmon seine crew I know.

I mean that I catch up to 100 fish in a drift, typically much less.

From what I have read about round chums in brailers, 800 lbs in a slushed brailer does not bruise the fish. Im expecting that since these rockfish will be cold going in, with minimal ice in the bags, the quality will be better than warm fish layer iced. Do you think this is true? Its also possible that I could fit 4 large insulated totes in my hold and still be able to pack enough fish. I dont really want to have to move 4 totes around and dont have a good place to store them.

F/V Nightingale, thats a great Idea about the bleeding tote, along the same lines, maybe a web liner would also work.

I use gaffs exclusively for handling rockfish from the deck to the hold, I never touch them, intentionally. I am very curious about what trollers have to say about gaffs, in the pacific there seems to be only the wesking gaffs, a yellow cedar baseball bat with a long hook on it. In europe there are a large variety of styles. I make my own, handles squareish in cross section with a shorter spike and no curve in the hook. This might be another topic though.

thanks alot everyone

Salty

2012-11-27 00:02:13

~~[attachment=0]~~Quillback.jpg[/attachment]
Troll caught quality rockfish.

khaos

2012-11-27 00:12:03

Quillbacks are my #3 favorite, after shortrakers (1) and yelloweye (2)

Kittiwake

2012-11-27 06:14:37

I catch very, very few quillbacks, very few yelloweye, no shortrakers yet. I did catch a tiger rockfish, which is rare here, and a few black rockfish that have significant orange coloring, I cant remember the proper name for that. I like to eat all of them.

Abundance

2012-11-27 07:59:27

Practically all of the directed rockfishing here targets quillback and yelloweye. Shortrakers are somewhat common, but much less so than the others. A few years back, we had a bloom of canary rockfish, which I don't personally remember as being very common. Now they are very thick in places. Dusky, green and black rockfish are abundant to the point of being nuisances on the open ocean. If I was to try to get a high quality market going, I would consider going for small volume and high quality. You have the fishery largely to yourself, it seems. I did once contact a Chinese buyer who was buying shellfish locally. He offered to take some rockfish back to Shanghai with him, but I ultimately was unwilling to tackle all of the NMSF nonsense to do my own groundfish landings. I shifted my fishing operations more to inside waters about that time, the glassy still water almost every day appealing to my lazy nature. Very few rockfish back in there. But a guy should check out the new buyers like that. They are looking for a way to find a break the same as us. I was going to sell the guy dressed, pressure bled rockfish after a couple of days in slush. I really do stress that those where the best quality rockfish you could imagine.

khaos

2012-11-27 15:41:42

I too, have found that rockfish do not bleed out like salmon do when their gills are clipped - likely do to their low pressure, as Garrett said. They would still be flopping two hours after being caught, so I'd recheck them and they were still breathing with 3 gills cut. Started cutting their throats, which is just as easy, but a lot more messy. The heart is right there and they bleed out quick. Presentationwise, it makes them look hacked, so I only do it if I am going to eat them myself - which is usually the case.

Heard rumors about this Chinese buyer before - still have a number? Seems like you could sell to him if he was buying in state - then he can deal with the nightmare of shipping it back.....?

Salty

2012-11-27 18:55:59

We usually do not catch much rockfish chumming, a few yellowtail and duskies, but last year we had an infestation of red stripes, mostly too small to sell, and small widow rock here in a small area of Sitka Sound where the chums popped up for a couple of days. Really compromised the trolling for chums. I started trying to figure out avoidance strategies. Took a day or so but we managed, they seemed to be pretty site and depth specific. Nice thing about trolling, we can adjust area, depth, speed, lures, voltage, etc. to be so much more species selective than other gear.

Abundance

2012-11-27 19:22:37

Widow rockfish have really become abundant around here to, particularly around Cape Pole. Redstripes are thick here by Trocadaro Bay. My main isuues with rockfish bycatch happen when I am king fishing. The kings are right in the middle of the rockfish patches as often as not. I also run into cod and pollock far more often king fishing than other wise, because of the depth. Interestingly, the Chinese buyer (he goes by John, as he finds Americans have trouble pronouncing his name) was interested in my cod and pollock catch even more than rockfish. He disappeared for a time after some legal issues, which doesn't exactly fill me with confidence. I hear that he is back though. I don't know his number, but he operates out of Ketchikan.

Salty

2012-11-28 00:59:05

I signed up with the ALFA program to use the 3D to reduce rockfish by-catch. Designed for longliners but they let me in because I already had so much data to share and my young partner set the program up for them. Helps a lot, you can avoid the structure, or the side of the structure they are on.

Salty

2012-11-28 01:06:19

~~[attachment=0]~~Computer 3 and 2 D screen.jpg[/attachment]

In this instance, for some reason, the rockfish were mostly on the Starboard side of the humps in the dark green depth.

The chums moved back and forth and up and down in the water column depending on the time of day, tide, etc. Avoiding the area and depth where the rockfish were, even when the chums were there, helped the production.

Salty

2012-11-28 01:09:44

I share the above so trollers and longliners can be aware that the technology is out there for minimizing by-catch of all kinds. Also why it is not such a good idea to follow me around.

khaos

2012-11-28 02:34:40

That is so cool Salty!

Interesting how you have found a great way to avoid rockfish, me - I see that and I see an incredible way to catch more!

When they start going for $3/lb.

Salty

2012-11-28 02:53:17

I have an old program and am too old to really understand and manipulate the new technologies. The modern technology shows you the fish over the structure and the bottom type. Sorry I can't afford that stuff to show you. I imagine it would really help catch halibut.

khaos

2012-11-28 17:20:20

Trolling a bit fast for chums, aren't you salty? 4.5? Have you been holding out on us?

Salty

2012-11-28 18:23:16

Somebody is paying attention. You don't think I would post an actual fishing spot on here do you? It is actually remarkably similar in structure to the place I was talking about. 4.5 knots is my running speed now because I can't afford the fuel costs to go 7 knots.

khaos

2012-12-01 20:39:10

We have the redstripes here too, but only when trolling very deep and only on the bottom sets. The only way I have found to avoid them is troll fast with plugs, otherwise you can almost bet there will be a redstripe spinning on the lead hook. Good eating, but too small to be worth selling. We fry up 5 or 6 for dinner.

Canaries are here, but only in small pockets, and I've never caught one trolling.

Get near the steep edges and I sometimes find huge midwater shoals of silvergrey rockfish, similar to boccacio. These get pretty big and I've found them to 15 lbs or so. Yellowtail will do the same thing, but I've never caught one over 6lbs.

Near the kelp we get some really nice coppers, along with quillbacks, blacks, and a lot of duskys. There is one reef where we catch bright and vibrant atka mackerel, which showed up a few years ago and have multiplied rapidly. Really a nice looking fish, but tastewise, the same as kelp greenling as far as I can tell. Nothing wrong with those either.

Widows are the rarest pelagic catch for me, and I've only seen a dozen at most. All were rather large however, around 5 lbs. Not my favorite rockfish to eat, for sure.

Regarding the Chinese gentleman wanting the pollock and cod..... I know what you mean. A few years ago, I was in Seattle at an Asian store called H Mart. They had small aweful- looking discolored pollock selling for $3 apiece. I doubt 3 of them would make a pound. They were selling them like crazy! If I remember right, they were not even gutted! These were the same pollock that plague us on the drags.

Kittiwake

2012-12-01 23:56:48

Yes, all those little odd fish that the processors wont buy from us would sell well in many markets around the world. I looked up the black rockfish quotas for southeast AK and I was surprised to see that only 10K or so pounds of over 300K lbs has been caught for 2012. Im surprised some poor guy with a boat like me hasnt been fishing those more. Why Is that?

These undervalued fish have me thinking about having them custom processed and sending them south myself. 500 lbs of wetlock boxes sent by alaska air from southeast AK to seattle or portland is 53 cents per lb. I thought it would be more. This would be far more trouble than just being done when I sign the fish ticket though.

One guy I have been selling to says there is a market for fish that will fit whole inside the pot that a family would cook dinner in. I think he said that was a korean market.

Salty

2012-12-02 05:16:38

Wow, informative post. The Atka Mackeral were Hereford one year. Ihave not seen them since. They are a greenling relative so that might explain the taste similarity.

akfisher78

2012-12-02 05:25:30

Salty I have been catching Atka Mackeral sportfishing in Chatham Strait as well as Frederick. Always at the same places. In Frederick they come from False Point Pybus near the Brothers Islands and in Chatham from a reef south of Red Bluff and a few near Deep Cove! We tried Smoking them and put in a Salad. Not my favorite much rather eat a Blacky!

Abundance

2012-12-02 08:52:54

I remember when Atka mackerel showed up thick here for a year, probably the same year they showed up in other places. I never got to eat one. We didn't have a clue what they were. We kept one out of curiosity, threw it in the freezer at the end of the trip, and identified it later. The next year, we caught only a couple. I've never seen one since. Silvergrey rockfish are by far the most common around here. It seems to me that there are less blacks around then there used to be, but I could be mistaken. I've caught a number of bocaccios. Copper, tiger and china rockfish are very scarce, and I have only picked up a few shortrakers, and then only when fishing deeper than fifty fathoms. I remember one time, I was about twenty mile offshore, fishing a sixty fathom flat for kings. Suddenly, the bottom started rising, and it came all of the way up to thirty fathoms. An uncharted hump, out in the middle of nowhere. I ended up losing the leads on my two heavies. I pulled up about a dozen of the biggest dang shortraker rockfish that you could imagine though. One of them I could hold out straight and its tail still touched the deck. I cannot imagine how old those things were. I think I read somewhere that shortrakers can make it to 150. I felt a bit bad killing them, They were nearly useless for eating, with meat full of crunchy calcium deposits and stringy muscles, but I ate every bite out of principle. I think that trying the market rockfish straight to the specialty stores is a good idea. I Really have no idea as to why people don't fish for them more down here, but I think that there is a definite problem with buyer apathy.

akfisher78

2012-12-02 23:13:04

I have fished south chatham and frederick for over a 100 days every year since 99 and had never seen an Atka Mackeral until 2009 now I catch up do 2 dozen every summer. I always catch them while Jigging Small Jigs for Black Rockfish! I wonder sometimes if certain species can take over an area. For example the Arrowtooth Flounder or I think some people call them Turbit. Areas where in years prior we only would catch them sometimes now you cant get a jig to the bottom and all the Halibut are gone. Certain areas in Stephens Passage are that way and a few places near Kake also!

Abundance

2012-12-03 01:03:56

The year that Atka mackerel showed up here on western PoW must have been in the early 00's/late 90's because I was still deckhanding. Funny you mentioned arrowtooth flounder. I cannot remember ever seeing one before about five years ago, and now catch a number every year. A fish really doesn't have any border but the line where food and favorable water temperatures end, so I guess they would move north or south as they see fit. Its probably not the first time Atka mackerel have been here, just the first we've been here to see. What Kittiwake said about miscellaneous fish and a market for pot sized fish reminded me of this last shrimp season. I took a small wolf eel, a tomcod and a Irish lord, headed and gutted, and the skin peeled off. I put them in an oven bag with garlic salt and butter and rosemary. I let them simmer in that all afternoon. I tell you, if you could get people to cook those odd fish like that, there wouldn't be anything you couldn't sell. Except arrowtooths. Those have to be the most... disappointing fish I ever tried eating.

akfisher78

2012-12-03 01:25:28

When I lived in Costa Rica my deckhand took home every eel we ever caught and his family loved them. Ofcourse they also ate Iguana, and Sea Tutle also. I have caught lots of Wolf Eel in the Deep Cove area of South Chatham but not one in Frederick. I dont know anyone who has liked the Arrow Tooth Flounder. Little Grease Balls. I really cant say I have eaten a Green Ling but next time you have a dead one fillet it and that pretty white meat is full of thousands of tiny little worms at least in the summer months maybe it is not as bad when the water cools back down

Abundance

2012-12-03 19:42:58

I've eaten greenling only once, and it was in January. I didn't care much for it. I've eaten pretty much everything around here myself, and would gladly eat a sea turtle or an iguana. They look like they would be better than wolf or otter, which tend to be a bit chewy. I think wolf eel is actually pretty good, myself. We catch them pretty regularly in our shrimp pots, and every so often we eat one instead of releasing it. One thing a lot of people like and I've never had much success with, is octopus. I'm thinking about grinding them into burger next time. That actually sounds good. I checked the black rockfish quota for the westward region, and it's a lot smaller than I would have guessed. Is there a lot of competition for the quota?

Kittiwake

2012-12-03 21:43:36

I have eaten quite a few Octopus, I gut them, cut the beaks out and gently boil them for about an hour. I peel the skin off and chop it up, very good in a white sauce. I tried once cutting it up raw, skin on and cooking it in a red sauce and it was terrible. I did grind cooked skinless octo once and it was very good. I often eat rock sole on the boat, the ones that I catch on hooks are usually fairly big and are worth filleting.

The black rockfish quota is conservative, fish & game is currently trying to accurately estimate populations. Participation is a bit sporadic. A boat is allowed to deliver 5000 lbs in a 5 day period. This doesnt slow me down, since I fish alone and the weather often keeps me in town anyways. With better salmon prices there are fewer people fishing black rockfish in the summertime. I only recently got into black rockfish. There are several ways I could make more money but I like to fish alone and without mountains of gear.

Im imagining that the reason most of the southeast black rockfish is unharvested has to do with proximity to buyers offering decent prices and Im guessing you have to roll around the outside capes like here to catch much. Im actually a little tempted to pick up a troll permit, glass in a troll pit etc, and head that way. Is jig gear allowed for cod in SE?

Drew

2012-12-03 21:45:37

Have you eaten those real toothy looking flatfish? I've heard people call them turbot, but that doesn't bring up a picture of what I'm talking about when I search that. Anyone know what those are called? They look like a halibut with the mouth of a ling cod.

Abundance

2012-12-03 22:21:34

Jigging for cod is very much allowed. I don't personally know anybody who does it, but I know hundreds of thousands of pounds of cod are caught each year. I think that longlining is more common. I dont know what price they fetch, but it cannot be much. You can actually catch a lot of black rockfish on the lee side of most of the capes, but the best fishing, for salmon or anything else, usually seems to be out in the slop. Salmon trolling is not that bad of a deal, for about $4-5000 dollars a year, you can get a state loan for the permit and have 12 months a year access to salmon fishing. But if your home is in Kodiak, even if you only fished the peak months, youd be away from June through September. It's a long run through open water too. Those toothy flatfish are arrowtooth flounders, Drew. Turbot is actually a misnomer. Im pretty sure real turbot tastes much better.

Salty

2012-12-04 00:33:33

There are gulf cod quotas for trawling, longline, and jig fisheries Garret has it right the "turbot" are actually arrow tooth flounders. They have an enzyme that turns their flesh mushy when cooked, thus no markets.

Kittiwake

2012-12-04 07:00:26

There is a market for arrowtooth, if your a dragger who can deliver 20% bycatch of other valuable species like cod, skates, and whatever else, except halibut & salmon, which gets forgotten. I dont know if arrowtooth get processed for food or if they just get ground into fishmeal with all the heads and guts.

Abundance

2012-12-04 09:44:00

Yeah, I heard they sell arrowtooth. I think I read in an article that they had the lowest per pound value of any fish sold in the state. Its too bad really, there are a lot of them around sometimes. I have nothing against the species, but they are just not fit to eat. I am surprised that the draggers can keep skates. I like them as food more than most people, but a commercial fishery has never been able to get up and running around here. I don't think that groundfish have the same importance here as they do elsewhere. As much as we may gripe about a trollers place in the ocean, the fishery does absorb the fishing time of around a thousand small to medium sized Alaskan boats. In a place where salmon are the property of big boys with nets, we would be scratching around for whatever odd fish we could get to bite. Many of us are definitely looking for a way to make a living through the winter, and we've often discussed on here about the possibility of turning to bottomfish. Do you ever catch salmon while jigging?

Kittiwake

2012-12-04 22:39:43

Salmon are very rarely caught jigging. I know some people who have caught a few and others who have never caught one in over a decade of fishing. Jigging is a relatively young fishery around here, I remember it started to take off in the 1990s. Though there have been years when participation was pretty low due to bad fishing and prices. Currently the price of cod is not expected to be good at all and with fuel prices and bait prices, there will be a few boats that wont be fishing this year.

Generally, you need to either find the areas where cod congregate to spawn or the areas where cod are chasing baitfish. It gets really difficult to fish deeper than about 45 fathoms. Engine noise often spooks cod, which is why hydraulic machines are not popular. I cant imagine why you couldnt catch them there. You do have to put in some real poundage to make money though.

Abundance

2012-12-04 23:44:48

The only real way we have to gauge cod stocks is from our troll bycatch, and I've only rarely found large numbers except when they gather in around the capes to spawn in late winter. There are places where I consistently have cod on my bottom lures every time I check, but they add up slowly and tend to be small. I suppose if we targeted them, we would quickly learn their habits and locations. Pollock are the real gear clutterers here. Sometimes we can't fish for miles, as every leader gets a pollock before it gets down to depth. Some of them get pretty big. It would be nice to treat them as something other than a pest. I don't think that they taste as good as a cod, but they have their uses. One issue that comes up with bottomfish around here is the difference between inside water stocks and outside water stocks. We have thousands of miles of fairly calm, isolated inside passages, some of which are loaded with cod and other bottomfish. However, there tends to be very limited migration of stocks between the ocean and inside waters. Biologists say that the Chatham Strait and Clarence Strait sablefish populations havent communicated with with the ocean stock in thousands of years. My father was in on the very beginning of the DSR fishery in southeast, when regulations where very lax, and he said they could take immense amounts of fish off of the ocean humps, and they would restock significantly by the next season. The inside humps, well, their only beginning to restock now, thirty years later. I'm just saying, I wouldn't like a hotshot seiner pulling into Kasaan Bay, which is many miles from open water, pulling in all the cod, and leaving nothing left for us smaller boats. Do people ever fish back in bays up north?

Kittiwake

2012-12-05 01:50:26

Im pretty sure instances of cod local depletion around here are temporary. Sometimes bays are good fishing for a while but Im my experience you have to spend alot of time outside of the capes. There are some differences in cod in relation to longitude, the further west you go the bigger the fish. Aleutian fish (from what I hear) easily double our average fish, which might be 7 lbs. the smaller the fish the less valuable the product. Personally I like the little ones to eat.

Pollock arent a bad fish, just not much flavor (some people prefer this). In the atlantic they jig what is probably a very similar fish. around here you arent allowed to target them and the price is bad anyways because the draggers catch huge quantities.

There was a similar situation here with black rockfish. I think in the 80s there were virtually no regulations or quotas and when someone started buying them there were several years of harvests that were certainly unsustainable before fish and game caught up and put reasonable limits on the fishery.

Abundance

2012-12-05 02:27:11

I bet Pacific cod are significantly more mobile then the other bottomfish. Still, the inside cod do tend to be smaller and a little different looking than the ocean cod, so they probably do have some genetic isolation. I think I read somewhere that each female cod produces millions of eggs each spawning season, so they probably replenish very fast. I rarely see cod much over five pounds, although I remember one time out on the ocean in late February by Roller Bay running into a massive school of huge spawners, eggs and milt all over the place. I think that ADF&G, despite their many failings, is getting much better at managing fisheries. I remember pot shrimping in the nineties, what a mess. The quota was obscenely high, about three times what it is now, and we obliterated them. We knew what was happening before our eyes, and we couldnt do anything about it. Each year, the quota got harder and harder to fill. The shrimp size dropped by over fifty percent. Massive trawlers came from all over, ignoring what feeble laws their were, and fished until they plugged their big boats. after the crash, they started to take more accurate surveys, and now monitor the catches closely. They are experimenting with new management techniques, such as by by age and sex ratio. I think that if people actually started to catch the SE black rockfish quota, they would have to crack down on it. I don't see how they could catch that many for very long. I've found the managers and biologists down here to be very easy to work with and talk to. Are the managers fairly aloof up there? I hear that there is a small shrimp fishery around Kodiak. Do people do alright at it?

Kittiwake

2012-12-05 04:44:26

F&G management is usually quite good here and I cant think of any major criticisms of their methods. The feds and IPHC get much more intertwined with politics. The only valid complaints I have heard concern management of salmon between seiners and setnetters. There are open seasons for spot shrimp and areas to trawl for the other species, but currently no one is trying. Its a very marginal fishery. I have prospected with pots a bit and its very scratchy. Years ago someone was beam trawling and selling shrimp on the dock but they didnt stick with it. In the 70s trawling pink shrimp was a very big fishery.

There have been quite a few tagged cod recovered in the gulf and It apparent to me that they wander alot. I dont think black rockfish travel more than a few miles in their lives. Here is a site describing atlantic cods regional traits, http://www.fao.org/wairdocs/tan/x5942e/x5942e01.htm#Introduction

I find it interesting that there is a tanner crab ring net permit that is not limited entry for SE. No such thing here. According to the cfec no one is getting rich at it but I wonder who is participating. I can imagine that a boat around 40' with a real fast block could pull 20 rings 2 times a day easily, maybe 3 times. You might have to use 1500 pounds of fish racks per day for bait. I think you could make money doing this here if it were allowed.

Abundance

2012-12-05 05:44:46

The whole tanner crab fishery has puzzled me as well. I've never heard a word about the ring nets, but I think that the pot fishery is closed. It might be worth checking out. It seems to me that the description of Atlantic cods flesh and lifestyle that they are very similar to ours. That was an interesting article, thanks. Since managers have to split the salmon about five ways down here (sport, subsistence, troll, gillnet and seine), we inevitably get into tussles as well. With fisheries being one of the chief sources of revenue in the state, and employing a major part of the population, the state has a lot invested in us. Most of the managers and troopers I know have fish slime on their hand or a hunting rifle on their back half the time. even when I don't like what they tell me, I can usually see where they are coming from. They are fellow Alaskans, even the bad ones. The feds and the IPHC, well they seem to be from a different world. If all fisheries in the nation ceased, I don't think that a single part of DC would be affected. Pink shrimp trawling collapsed here too somewhat more recently, when the only pink shrimp buyer in SE closed down. Beam trawling for sidestripes holds on, but doesn't seem to get anywhere. Outside of a grandfathered in flounder fishery, trawling for fish is prohibited in southeast, and we work at keeping it that way. As much as we dislike trawlers in SE, I have been tempted to get a beam trawl permit, as they are pretty darn cheap. They may not get much for their product at the plant, but it would be nice to get a little specialty market set up, like many of us do for pot spots. I would like to know more about their bycatch rates before I tried that though. Dungeness crabbing has never been as good here as on the west coast, but seems to be alright for the people willing to accept what they can get. SE king crabbing seems to pay out really well, on the odd occasions that it is open. Another one thats become mighty big down here is the dive fisheries for geoduck clams and sea cucumbers. That went from a starvation fishery to bonanza boom in a hurry. To cold and dangerous for me though. Salmon prices here are starting to creep up high enough that I might have to postpone my winter boat work, untie and give it a try soon.

Salty

2012-12-05 06:09:57

Wow,

What an interesting discussion. Years ago, when I was working for the Alaska Marine Conservation Council, I had an opportunity to work with Kodiak fish & game personnel on our campaign to reduce bottom trawling. Very good people who were both knowledgeable and concerned for the future of the resource. I also had the opportunity to meet with Ted Case who was a pioneer in Maine in claiming there were different sub-stocks of cod in their area.

I personally believe there are all kinds of sub-populations of all kinds of fish. We know and manage for discreet stocks of salmon and herring who happen to spawn in our streams and beaches where we can easily mark and track them. We have just recently learned, for example, that there are probably at least two species of Orca swimming around out here who have different languages, diets, and have not cross-bred in hundreds of thousands of years. We recently learned from National Park Service tagging in and around Glacier Bay that not all the halibut migrate off shore to spawn.

I suspect there are discrete stocks of both halibut and cod in SE in addition to rockfish, salmon, and herring. When I interviewed Nels Otness, who has probably caught more halibut in the inside waters of SE Alaska than any other person, he said he could see the difference between the "travelers" and the "homesteaders". When I brought this up with halibut commission staff they always deny the possibility. Oh, well, the IPHC must be re-thinking a lot of their theories about now.

Kittiwake

2012-12-05 07:54:27

Good luck Garrett, I have some bait that I should use up, so I might be rolling around out there soon as well if the weather moderates. I think Id rather be catching kings though. You may see me out there trolling someday. Id just need to extend my poles and maybe bolt on an aluminum trolling pit to my stern.

I can understand NMFS and the IPHCs resistance of to more complicated ideas. Its so much easier to manage the entire GOA halibut in such GIANT chunks of the gulf. I am losing faith fast in the management of our halibut, its too bad because I really do love longlining for them.

Did you know that pelagic (pollock) trawls spend their fair share of time on the bottom? Some boats dont even switch nets for pollock since they are on the bottom so often. Strictly pelagic trawling is a myth. There are some upstanding and exemplary skippers of trawlers around here but the destructive potential of the gear type is frightening.

salmon4u

2012-12-05 08:49:17

interesting, It's logical that fish sub populations would evolve to adapt to certain areas and conditions. I think I've seen that myself also.

Abundance

2012-12-05 09:10:47

I'm not really sure where I stand on the halibut issues. I haven't longlined commercially for halibut since I was a little kid, when my dad sold his IFQs. They appear to be switching gears so fast, and making such sweeping alterations, I'm not sure if they are finally getting their act together or completely losing their marbles. I am sometimes surprised by how little we actually know about the life histories of fish. They live much more complex lives than we used to think. Just getting a rough estimate of the the biomass doesn't always cut it. For SE shrimp, they have very large sectors that have one quota for dozens of bays and capes. Each bay has an almost completely different genetic stock of shrimp. A very experienced shrimper can tell shrimp from one bay apart from another. The same two or three bays with the best fishing ground produce the entire quota for a district, every year. The smaller bays never get fished. I can certainly tell when the genetic stock of king salmon changes, although I cannot tell one river apart from another. I can usually tell a Bradfield Canal king from the others. Those are mighty weird looking kings. Fat, stubby, flat headed things. I've heard from some old timers about a time when trawlers experimented out off of PoW, and they said that ground wasn't worth fishing for a long time after that. I know that trawlers are fellow fisherman, and some of them have to be good people, but that's just not a way of fishing that I want to happen anywhere near my grounds. I honestly cannot think of a way to catch enough pollock to make anything on them though. I know what you mean about bait. We have about a ton of salted salmon carcasses the hatchery was throwing out in storage in our yard. Then the buyers decided that they didn't want to buy shrimp if we were the only ones who where going to sell to them. Too low volume. Ah, I probably won't go fishing quite yet. I tore up my engine room, chasing down the abandoned hoses and pipes that the previous owner cut off and left half hooked up all over the place. Maybe I will go hunting. There is only a few week left in the deer season, and I had better get some if want something other than canned salmon to eat this winter. It hasn't gotten cold enough to snow yet, so their probably back in the brush a ways. I often see them walking the beaches after the snow falls. Do you guys fish close enough to the shore to see the wildlife? One of the pleasures of being a near shore troller is watching the bears and deer and other creatures go about their business.

Abundance

2012-12-05 17:55:43

Apparently the rockfish buyers in Kodiak lost their legal case. Sounds like the price might go up, if they are to be believed.

khaos

2012-12-05 18:19:45

About rockfish quality.....

Nearly 20 years ago, I answered an ad that claimed a good fish cutter could make $22/hr, based upon production. Me and about 15 other suckers applied, and we would be filleting sole, rockfish, flounder and lingcod. The foreman brought in his top filleter and we watched him fillet each species with incredible smooth strokes, maybe 3 or 4 to a fish. I was impressed, and realized that my skills would need some honing, and I would have to learn these new techniques. The foreman instructed us that we would make $6/hr. until our production began to average higher than that. I agreed to give it a try, both to try for the high pay and also to see all the fish - many of which I had never seen before. Our production pay was $.08/lb for black, blue, canary, and yellowtail rockfish, $.07 for pacific cod, $.17 for petrale, dover, rock, and rex sole, $.05 for lingcod, and amazingly $.02/lb for arrowtooth flounder. The best money was in the flounder, even though the pennies were few, they were large and easy to fillet. The small sole were the worst, and dovers are REALLY slimy! Canaries were the hardest to fillet due to their strong spines/scales, plus a larger rib structure to go around. I liked lingcod the best, they were big and very easy to fillet.

Anyway, much as I was thrilled to see all these fish, I was very disturbed to see how poor the quality was. The sole were squashed, the rockfish had milky eyes and were not even bled, cod were bent and twisted with backbones dislocated and smelling terrible - also not bled. They would come in huge totes with ice, probably trawled from Washington coast, and we were selling them as fresh fillets! We would box the fillets into boxes and label them fresh sole/rockfish. No way any of those fish had been in totes less than 2 weeks. The fillets were discolored and hardly firm. An automatic skinner worked ok on the rocks, but often made rags out of sole fillets.

The ace filleter helped me out and gave me one of his knives and showed me how to keep it honed on a paper wheel. That helped a lot, and I was way ahead of the other guys right away. Determined to make the top pay by the end of the week, I kept cutting through my breaks and lunch, thinking that with this crazy pace I should be at least be able to come close to some good money. After one week of 12/hr days, I asked the foreman to check my numbers, as I felt that I was at least half as good as his lead man. At the end of the day, the foreman said I still was not making minimum wage by production. I asked him if he was sure? He said I should stick with it and I was his best prospect. At this point, I said the $20+/hr was misleading and impossible. Quit then and there, but I did learn a lot about filleting groundfish/flatfish. Could not believe they were selling arrowtooths to China as fillets, but they were.

I once met a Japenese buyer that was interested in Arrowtooth flounder. I said I could catch a lot, but he wanted tonnage and knew that he wouldn't have to pay much for it. Just crazy that he wanted it at all.

I've tried eating them every way you can imagine, but never found a good recipe. It is a shame because they get very large (I've seen them close to 20lbs) and they are incredibly abundant in Icy Straits, Lynn Canal and probably everywhere else too. The flesh just falls apart. I heard they make fish cakes out of them in Japan. Add some egg and flour to hold it all together, then roll it into a ball. Pretty bland taste though. I think the way I liked it best (and I still don't want any more) was raw as sashimi. It was the only way the flesh stayed somewhat firm. At a seafood banquet in Juneau, one of the experiment dishes was arrowtooth flounder. People liked it, but I preferred the pollock.

One fish I have never caught, but was impressed with on the line - was petrale sole. Rock sole are good eating, but petrale had a nice fillet on them. Anybody ever catch one?

Sorry I'm so long winded, not much fishing to be had lately...... I really enjoy all the posts from fellow trollers. My story was posted to emphasize that quality rockfish is something that buyers do not have much access to in many areas. The bulk of it is probably processed the same way as I witnessed. That must be why the prices are so depressed. If taken care of, these are among the best tasting fish readily available.

Abundance

2012-12-05 18:59:55

Good for you, keeping us on topic. Back when salmon where worth nothing, and the internet was just becoming a thing, we tried to direct market salmon fillets through a website. We where already equipped with rickety old blast freezer for shrimping, and my job was to fillet salmon as they came aboard. We got a four thousand dollar commercial grade vacuum packer, and made a summer out of it. I got so I could fillets a fish almost as fast as I could gut them, but it was backbreaking work. One problem I find with cod, is that they do go soft after a few days. If I was going to try to market them, I would consider frozen at sea. Thats obviously impractical for most of us, me included, but that would give the best quality. Those frozen at sea, vacuum packed fillets lasted for years. I have caught a lot of petrale and rock sole, but never trolling. Just jigging off of the boat or dock. I only ate them once, and the recipe was a disaster. I think I might have to give another try though. There are some mighty big flounder hanging around the sewer outfalls in Port St Nocholas, for some reason. Big old dungies too.

Kittiwake

2012-12-05 20:04:24

Yes, the processors lost the case. Their claim to to quota was that they were actually fishermen too. There was a time period when draggers had to deliver to a certain processor, and of course they paid a pitiful price. Since then I think the prices have doubled at least. Its scary enough that many of the Processors own draggers, who can go fishing and lose money for a bad price because they'll make their money on the fish later. From my point of view, this is a scam, and very bad for the community.

Its possible Ill just go hunting too, I have to take the boat out to get some deer. When Im fishing in the summertime I get to see some deer, bear etc. In the winter and spring Its just too dark. Some of my favorite places to anchor I had spent weeks in before I ever saw the place in daylight. typically Im fishing too far from shore to see much.

Salty

2012-12-05 21:41:58

~~[attachment=0]~~Four Deer in Kakul Narrows.jpg[/attachment]

Yeah, we occasionally see some wildlife.

Kittiwake

2012-12-05 22:49:12

Im jealous, you southeast folks get to fish for exceptionally handsome fish, sell them for more than just a couple bucks a piece, and you can spend a fair amount of time inshore. That last one sounds especially nice to me since I often get violently seasick on the first day of a trip. I catch myself thinking about bolting on a trolling pit pretty often. If it was just a bolted on appendage, it wouldnt count as documented boat length and I would still be under 12 meters for CG regs. and 40' for the new observer program should I longline or jig halibut. It would be pretty hard to pull up my roots here, though the only thing I own is a boat. Very off topic I know.

Abundance

2012-12-05 23:56:42

This forum has to be, by now, the largest and most comprehensive trolling database in the world. Take a meander through the past discussions, you will learn a lot about the pros and cons of trolling. I do like the ability to decide if I want to get beat up on the ocean or not. If a person wants to spend twelve months a year fishing the capes, they are welcome to it. I spent almost all of my deckhand years, and the first five years of my independent career, fishing the open sea. That wild and rugged way of doing things appeals to a lot of people. I personally know several people ho cannot stand fishing the flat calm water for long. It lacks excitement, and when the fish aren't biting, they get fidgety and jumpy without something to fight. I quickly fell in love with the more peaceful way of doing things a few years ago. The ocean boats tend to make a lot more money, although some of that can be attributed to their hardcore attitude. I know that one season a few years back, I fished every day on the open ocean all year, daylight to dark, no matter the weather. By myself, layer icing up to four hundred salmon a day. It was my best season by far, but I got physically ill from exhaustion by the end of September. But I bought the boat that I have now with that money, so I can't complain. A few years back, I went back inside about fifty or sixty miles from the open ocean to visit a friend. I ended up spending several months there. I saw dozens of bears, explored numerous fjords and river mouths, had barbecues on the beach, and caught a respectable number of fish. And I never saw a wave over several inches high. Last year I decided to take the risk and spend almost my entire season inside. in nearly three hundred days on the water, I only fished three on the open ocean. Two in March, one in July. I slept an extra hour or two when I felt like it, cooked substantial meals, and took time off to explore a number of areas that I always wanted to see. I did not make as much money as I could have, but I am surviving and enjoyed this last season more than I ever enjoyed one before. I have several more spots on my chart that I am planning to explore next summer. I wouldn't think that bolted on cockpit would count against your length, but they can always seem to raise a fuss if they want to. By the way, how do feel about the new observer program? Do you think its better than a camera? We were discussing this earlier.

Kittiwake

2012-12-06 00:56:51

I have been searching the forums and scrolling through old posts quite a bit lately. "never saw a wave over several inches high", this sounds like a fairy tale. Theres nothing I love more than calm water. I understand the allure of rough weather. All that energy is awesome. My objection to rough weather is mostly seasickness but its also just no fun to go pounding around a cape (or two) at 3.5 knots, everything in the galley rolling around the cabin floor, and then to have to anchor and work for 12 hours in it. I do well enough for a mostly fair weather fisherman, but only because Im not paying off loans and I dont spend much money myself.

The new observer program is a joke. Draggers need 100% observer coverage. What we got was sporadic coverage for small longliners and pot cod boats. And I understand that now halibut longliners will end up paying a disproportionate share for the coverage. If I was forced to take an observer I might reconsider my chosen profession. As far as cameras, Id let NMFS video tape whatever they want if they would just mandate 100% observer coverage for draggers. I dont like the idea of cameras, but if nmfs wants to watch me releasing sculpins and the occasional halibut, I really think its insignificant. Many observers themselves are a joke, some dont do their job and it really is ripping off the fishermen, but its all we have to work with.

Salty

2012-12-06 00:59:33

~~[attachment=0]~~Morgan, September, 2012, stay minimized.jpg[/attachment]
Fishing off Cape Edgecumbe this September

Abundance

2012-12-06 01:25:55

Fishing in Ernest Sound, practically the same day as the previous photo. I'm sure I didn't catch as many fish, but don't really regret missing that!

Abundance

2012-12-06 01:36:56

By the way, your view on cameras versus observers mirrors mine. I don't want either on my troller, but I would like some kind of monitoring on our shrimping. To many guys are breaking the rules there for my taste. Also, I don't mean to imply that the inside waters are always calm. All three times that I thought I might capsize occurred inside. The incredible winds that come off of the mainland mountains and the powerful tidal currents going through the straits combine for a sharp, steep chop, particularly in southern Clarence Strait. Vile place in a southerly, northerly or easterly. The ocean lump doesn't exist back inside though. Nine days out of ten, the water is still. By, the way, I hardly caught my fuel bill where the above picture as taken, so don't think that I just accidentally revealed my hot spot. Several other nice pictures aren't going on here.

Kittiwake

2012-12-06 01:54:43

Barf. Actually after a few days I get my sea legs. Garretts photo is more to my liking. If I managed to attach a photo, this what I like best, though about 5 hours later I pretty much surfed out of there in my old little boat, currents opposing wind and all.

~~[attachment=0]~~calm halibut fishing.jpg[/attachment]

Abundance

2012-12-06 02:03:36

Just the way I like it. Not that the ocean is always bad.

Kittiwake

2012-12-06 07:58:01

~~[attachment=0]~~heading out.JPG[/attachment]Heres one about 2 miles offshore, looking towards you guys in southeast. These days are rare.

Abundance

2012-12-06 08:12:47

Well, here's one looking due northwest towards you, at Coronation Island.

Kittiwake

2012-12-06 10:06:26

Heres one that had everyone puzzled for a while. ~~[attachment=0]~~orange black.JPG[/attachment]

khaos

2012-12-06 15:48:52

Northern? Though I've never seen the orange blotching like that before.

Abundance

2012-12-06 17:18:40

Now that is a weird looking critter. Did the processors even take it?

Kittiwake

2012-12-06 19:57:33

They bought it but they spent a while looking at it and Im not sure which tote it ended up in.

Turns out it was a Black rockfish with unusual coloring. I caught another one later that month with about 50% as much orange.

Salty

2012-12-06 22:14:12

Wow, Cool, I have never seen a black rockfish with that coloration.

I love the pictures. Particularly the gold one. I will post a couple in the pictures section that I have that are golden.

Abundance

2012-12-08 05:44:01

Well, I went out hunting the last few days. Got a couple, one real nice one. It finally got cold enough to snow here, so I didn't have to go to far back in the woods in the bays I went to. Sorry if this is a stupid question, but are there many deer on Kodiak? There are generally quite a few here. Do people usually go out by boat or by car? Here in SE its almost exclusively by boat, visiting pretty much any one of the 1100 islands islands that fill our coastline or visiting the mainland coastline itself, and hiking 2500-4000 feet into the alpine from the beach in August through mid-October, and in the lower muskegs and forests from around then until the snow starts building, and on the beach level after that. I suppose a person could charter an airplane to drop them off at a remote location, although it baffles me how a person could afford that for a deer. Another is that Prince of Wales Island, my home island, has several thousand miles of road, which creates some attraction for people who like to hunt from wheels, but as far as I know, large scale road systems are exclusive to PoW. This is just curiosity on my part, with furry creatures on my mind. Growing up among all of these islands, you gain an appreciation for how each one of them is different. For example, for big animals PoW has sitka blacktail deer, black bear and a variety of gray wolf exclusive to SE called Alexander Archipelago wolf. For small mammals, we have only semi aquatic animals like beaver and mink, with the exception of marten and an endemic species of flying squirrel. No real game birds except migratory waterfowl, although a relic population of grouse and ptarmigan, if you search hard enough, can be found. You travel a few miles east, and you have islands which add red squirrel and porcupine. If you head north, the wolves and black bears disappear, replaced by brown bears. Other islands have all three. Etolin Island has all the animals I mentioned, plus elk and moose. Forester Island has no mammals period, only birds. What creatures do you see when you anchor up and go for a hike?

Kittiwake

2012-12-08 07:38:50

Your deer situation is almost identical to ours, though last winter seems to have killed most of them here. Theres a small road system. the season around the road ends oct. 31st. The rest of the island is open through december. I think the main difference is that the southern part of the kodiak archipelago is not forested, and much of it only has low bushes. The only native land mammals are ermine, brown bear, red fox, river otter, tundra vole, and little brown bats. Sitka blacktails, rosevelt elk (Afognak & rasberry islands), snowshoe hares, mountain goats, beaver, muskrat, red squirrel, and arctic ground squirrels (introduced by native peoples in pre-russian times) have been introduced and have huntable populations. We have quite a few waterfowl, wintering and migrating. Emperor geese, common eiders and stellers eiders are some of the notable ones that winter here. Willow and rock ptarmigan are always around but hunting them is definitely a sport, its not a reliable way to get dinner. Snowshoe hare populations cycle quite a bit but they usually provide a reliable quarry fall, winter and spring. I have always liked to hunt but I never have gone after bears or even elk and goats. One or two deer per year is perfect.

I have never heard about the flying squirrels you mentioned. Where is state subsistence fishing allowed is SE? Its allowed in kodiak, but only because people have fought for it. It doesnt add up to a tremendous amount of fish, but it feeds alot of us around here.

I found the picture of your troll cockpit on this forum, brilliant! If I ever troll thats what Id have to do with my boat, Its got a big flat transom so it would be a fairly easy appendage to bolt on. I would probably have to beg for measurements from people who know what they are doing since I dont, and it sure would be nice to get it right the first time. I may start a topic in the getting started page about that. Next will be how to talk my girlfriend into moving to another small remote town.

Abundance

2012-12-08 08:15:39

Winter swings are common around SE to, but because of the relatively warm winters normal to western PoW, not so much in my country. That information about the arctic ground squirrel is news to me. I know that an old native once told my Dad that there was a type of flightless bird on Forester Island when they handtrolled there in the teens and twenties, but not for long. I've been there before, and its a fascinating place. The island is covered in guano, and burrowed out nests. A flock of dozens of crows (no ravens) suroounded me and tried to chase me off. I found eagles eating seagulls, and trying to chase me away from their kill, no fear at all. Its actually a fairly creepy place. You never see birds like that. Migratory waterfowl are much less common on PoW than on more inshore islands, but still quite numerous at times. The wintering population of geese appears to be growing. I've only seen swans a couple of times, and sandhill cranes only once. They did introduce elk to Etolin and Zarembo Islands, and they have spread to most of southern southeast, but good luck finding them. I did go elk hunting on Etolin a few years back. Got a nice one, but it took me nine days of clawing through brush to get the poor thing, and I found it on the beach while getting back to my boat. I get a bear on rare occasions. I have a personal policy against killing anything I wont eat, which doesn't actually protect much. Bears can be good eating, but it takes skill to get them to come out right. I got a brown bear in late April about five years ago on eastern Baranof Island. I took care of it just right, and it was actually pretty good eating. I'm actually considering going after one again. I don't consider myself a hunter, more of a person who hunts. The subsistence fishing around PoW is liberal, in my opinion. Being a troller, I generally have more salmon dinners on my hands than I know what to do with, so I haven't actually looked into the river fishing regs in a long time. For subsistence fisherman, bait restrictions are waved, netting for sockeye is approved, and size limits for steelhead are abolished. Thats pretty much all I know. A resident of PoW is also allowed one more deer than other hunters, and it may be a doe, as long as its taken on the PoW mainland, according to subsistence regs. My troll cockpit was the work of a few days desperation. I'm actually surprised that it's worked out for me as well as it has. Are there any trollers around there doing local fisheries? You can model off of their rear hatch. I really don't see how you could do it without a firsthand reference model, although it sounds like you have an easier hull to work with than I do.

Kittiwake

2012-12-08 08:42:19

Subsistence fishing here is mostly just 50 fathom gillnets for reds and some silvers. There are a few trollers in town, a few have vestigal poles and pits. I think that the makers of my boat actually had a troll pit in mind since there is space between the fuel tanks in the laz. and the transom. But it seems like I could add 3 feet of aluminum on the stern easier than chopping a big hole in a perfectly good deck. hopefully it wouldnt slam too bad in seas. I have got some time to study that before this could come to fruition. Maybe its just a pipe dream. It would sure be nice if my profession didnt involve nausea and barfing though.

Abundance

2012-12-09 01:26:27

I don't know, longlining Westward was the pipe dream around here not so many years ago. It used to be that's what fisherman graduated to doing after practice fishing in SE. During a a brief period of financial positivism in the eighties, my Dad went halibut fishing all around that area. He has surprisingly few stories that tells about it, although I have heard the one about loosing a deckhand overboard while halibut fishing in twenty foot seas. They got her back, but it was close. Also, caribou hunting around the Alaska Peninsula. Do many people get over to the Alaska Peninsula? I've been poring over charts of its shoreline, and it looks fascinating. Several communities too. Lots and lots of bays, lakes and rivers. Speaking as a lifelong SE resident, That is one area that nobody down here seems to know anything about. My Dad said that he wished he could have trolled there when he was looking for halibut. It looked very good, with lots of herring and birds. About building a troll hatch, One of my worries when I was building mine was that seas would tear it off. I built it somewhat higher than necessary because of that concern. Look for how high the waves come on the back of your boat. They shouldn't hit the hatch if its any higher than that, or at least only hit it softly. I built my first one out of fiberglass over plywood, instead of metal. It seemed easier to cut and work with, and less heartbreaking to pitch out and redo if I made a bad mistake. I'm planning on building an expanded and improved aluminum one this winter.