We ran a half an hour across Sumner Strait to make the next set. Driving again while setting the net, I worried Mikey would haul the set right back because of my wayward steering. But after we drifted off the end for a few minutes, all the little zigs I’d made got smoothed out. I wondered if gillnetting might be simpler than I’d thought.
Mikey didn’t critique my steering, he said, “It would be nice if you learned how to pick, but mostly I just need you around for safety.” He told a story about a guy who was fishing alone and woke up on deck in a pool of blood, level-wind askew, net out, miles from where he’d set. He must have lost hold of the level-wind when swinging it into place. When the eighty pounds of tubular aluminum and steel chain came down on his head it knocked him out for the better part of an hour.
Another guy fell overboard while his young daughter was aboard, but she couldn’t figure out how to get him back on the boat. She watched him die of hypothermia.
Only later did I wonder why he didn’t tell her to use the hydraulics to haul him aboard, either with a winch or the reel. Maybe the boat was dead in the water. Maybe fear kept them from thinking clearly.
Mikey led the next story by saying, “Cruise ships come around that point fast, and sometimes they don’t give a heads up on the radio.” In the story, a cruise ship ran over a gillnet. The ship snagged the net and dragged the gillnetter backwards, burying the stern beneath its own wake, then finally ripped the reel off the deck. I imagined the skipper and deckhand, going from sinking to standing and watching as the cruise ship carried away their net and their most expensive piece of deck gear. Shaking their heads and looking down at the jagged bolt holes in the deck, hydraulic lines torn and dangling, bleeding oil. Mikey expected me to strive to prevent a similar situation.
Having put the fear in me, he said, “I’m going to take a nap. Watch for cruise ships, shit rips, whales, and troopers.” He switched the radar on, handed me the binoculars. “Wake me up in 45 minutes,” he said.
My heart thwacked.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Fishing for a Reason to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.