F/V Icky Thump: Season I

The fishing season wrapped up last week for my small-scale skiff longlining operation. This is indeed a very small-scale operation as Alaskan commericial fishing standards (or most any standards) go, as setting and hauling of longline gear for halibut is done entirely by hand, with no mechanical hauler. For those unaccustomed to longlining, I basically string a thick line (the groundline), between two anchors along the bottom, and also attached to each of these anchors is line (riser line), to the other end of which a buoy is tied. Along the groundline, as the groundline is playing out off the stern of the boat, I attach a hook/leader (gangion)/snap assembly at intervals of roughly 20'. Longliners use a unit of measure called a skate to measure groundline; a skate of gear is 1800' of line. With my skiff, space and muscle limitations limit me to a total of 5 skates, usually split between two sets.

Longlining out of a skiff, at least out of my skiff, is questionable profitable and questionably intelligent. Others have done this out of Homer, and the fishing methods used on my 22' open skiff, the F/V Icky Thump, were basically copied from my friend Kyle, who has longlined out of his skiff for several years now. He in turn learned a few tricks of the trade from others in town who had fished out of skiffs and then wisely shifted away from it, after realizing that hand pulling gear takes a good toll on certain parts of the body.

Renn Tolman, a legendary Homer boatbuilder, originally built my boat back in 1984. His ability to design and build great skiffs out of common, inexpensive materials is surpassed only by his skill at artfully linking cuss words. You can check out a bunch of Renn's boats, and boats built according to his specs, at www.fishyfish.com.

This season the first time wearing the boots of what you could very loosely call a skipper. This meant that I took all credit for catching fish and did my best at blaming others/inanimate objects for any hangups, break-downs, or lack of fish. Fishing out of the skiff is a two person operation, and the friends I suckered into coming out deserve the real credit for the boat bringing in any halibut to market. Mistakes were made and lessons (hopefully) learned, and a few thousand pounds of feisty halibut were proudly delivered to the market. You couldn't get much fresher fish.

Lessons learned:
1. Setting in kelp beds makes for lots of extra work.
2. Skates (think manta rays, ancient cartilagenous fish) are heavy, especially coming up from over 300'.
3. Dogfish are indeed a schooling fish, meaning that when you catch one, you often catch hundreds.
4. It really doesn't make sense to fight against tides or weather. These are massive forces, and unsentimental ones.
5. Straddling a lively 100 lb. halibut may have painful consequences.
6. Nasty weather is a relative term, and nasty can come quickly for a flat-bottomed plywood skiff in Alaskan waters.
7. Sometimes, if you ignore outboard problems but wish good thoughts to the outboard, the problems fix themselves miraculously. But don't try this too often.

Thanks again to the valiant crew, the folks who let me lease their halibut quota, and those who came and fished their quota with me. I'm looking forward to next season when the Icky Thump once again licks the waters of Kachemak Bay.