3:39pm Kenai, AK
I look like the walking dead. A whopping 3 1/2 hrs of sleep. But it was awesome last night.
I went up to the office for some reason and Bobbie was saying that they were going to get slammed out on the dock last night because they had 17 boats coming in. AND they were also going to get slammed on the beach pad and were short handed. Drift fishing closed at 7pm and set net fishing closed at 11pm. She told me that if i wanted to pitch fish - last night was the night. 'heck yeah. I came 4000 miles for this.' So i finished all of the stuff i needed to get done, suited up and headed out to the dock. As i was getting ready my hands were shaking, I was nervous. I've been waiting so long to pitch fish and now that it was finally here i didn't want to mess up. "How can i help?" Dale had me start by helping him sort fish. I learned how to tell the difference between reds, silvers, chums and pinks. It's really how to tell which ones aren't reds - they are the money makers. Silvers have lots of silver on their tales and smaller pupils. Chums have some silver on their tales, larger pupils, and some "spots" or darker lines on their scales. Pinks have small scales and dark spots on their tales - they tend to be smaller. Chums and Silvers are very close "when in doubt - look at their pupils," according to Dale.
Even though fishing ended at 7pm we had boats starting to line up before then. At 7pm Charlie sent me down to pitch The Eagle. I climbed down the yellow ladder and boarded their boat. There is a 5 cent/lb brailer bag bonus for the fishermen to come with their fish already in the brailer bag. If the fish are not in the bag that is when we go down and pitch them. There is also a 5 cent/lb icing bonus (it's nicer to pitch them when they are iced. they are a little firmer and easier to grip :) ) The fish sit in the hull of the boat, so we board the boat and climb down into the hole where the fish are - the deck of the boat is about up to your waist or chest - you just hop right in with the fish...they slip out of the way. The boats weren't full up to the deck maybe 1' - 2' deep in most cases - roughly 3-4 thousand pounds on the lighter end of the spectrum. The access holes are roughly 6'X6' square and depending on the boat the crane lowers the empty brailer bag down into the hull so that we can pitch the fish into it (we had to pitch one boat where the bag sat on the boat deck and that was just obnoxious. the reach to get the fish into the bag is rough enough when you are kneeling but to have to bend, pick up fish, stand, pitch and repeat... it gets old) The bag is about 3' tall and has a 3' diameter. It is attached to a round frame that helps it keep its shape. So you have the bag and one or two sometimes even three crew in the boat trying to get the fish from the bottom of the boat into the bag. And there is fish slime and blood everywhere...all over you, flying through the air, just craziness. I looked down at my hands at one point and i looked like i had webbed fingers they were so slime laden. Charlie and Dale could get one fish in each hand. For me i was quicker doing one fish two hands. Later on in the night i got the two fish two hands thing down. The easiest way to pick the fish up in one hand is to cup your hand on over their head and squeeze them in their gills. If you try to squeeze them from under their head they slip out. And sometimes when you squeeze them by the gills, as opposed to picking them up one hand around the tail one around the head, blood squirts out. The proper way to carry a fish is through the gill and into the mouth but this would take too long when pitching. And i found out the hard way that fish have sharp little teeth. I have loads of shallow little cuts all over my hands - it doesn't matter if you have gloves on - and it's the shallow cuts that hurt the worst...like lots of little paper cuts. After the first boat i had blood and scales all over my arms. And when the scales dry on you it hurts to peel them off...imagine being covered in band-aids with lots of adhesive. When we were done i headed back up the ladder to sort the fish i had just pitched. (Dale says we gently "pitch" fish, we don't throw them or sling them for that matter.)
Next the crane lifts the full brailer bags, pauses so that the crane operator can read the scale attached to the hook, then brings the bag so that it is over the hopper. Then someone goes up and releases the ropes holding the bottom of the bag closed and all of the fish slip down and await further release. When we are ready we pull a handle on the hopper and fish spew out onto the conveyor where we proceed to sort them into pre-iced totes. The reds go into the totes at the end of the conveyor because those are the ones that we have the most of. The pinks and silvers get pitched into totes that sit on big scales - the chums go in different tote which, on our dock, was not on a scale (we had two docks running and the beach pad was seeing lots of action too.) After each different boat we count the silvers, pinks and chums weigh them and then zero the scales for the next boat. I pitched two boats and then we had a long string of boats with the fish already in the brailer bags. For those we just lower the crane hook and the fishermen attach the ropes to their bags and they get raised up and we do it all over again.
I wound up pitching 4 or 5 boats last night. We received about a half a million pounds of fish last night - this put us over the 1million pound mark so far for the season. I got on the dock at 6:45pm and didn't leave until i was forced to at 2am- i probably touched a quarter of those fish between pitching and sorting. I was getting really tired by 11pm (not sleepy but tired) since i had been on the clock since 6:45am but i was determined to finish the boats. I was pitching the last pitch boat - the shady lady :) - and i had about 10 fish left when i was told i had to go to bed. They let me finish and then i went back up on the dock. John had started calling me Lizzie Borden earlier in the night because i had dried blood and fish slime all over me - in my ears, in my hair, all over my face and arms even on my underwear - apparently i looked like i had just gone on a killing spree. There was only one boat left as i was leaving so i felt pretty good about the amount i did plus I was getting sore. It was fun to be a guest pitcher - there to give relief to the crew that do it on a regular basis. If i thought i wouldn't have regretted it in the morning and probably for the rest of the summer i would have just gone straight to bed. But in a better act of judgement i went to my room peeled off my layers of slime laden clothes and went and took a shower. It took five solid minutes to get all of the blood and scales off before i could actually start to wash myself. After my shower i decided to take my clothes straight to the laundry...i can do this because i have the key. I would have cried if my room reeked of fish for the rest of the summer. Then i got to sleep for 3 1/2hrs just to wake up and start my day all over again. I have been tired all day but it was great and i would totally do it again. And i am probably the only person to ever pitch fish in diamonds and Tiffany jewelry.