Chapter 7 San Diego Mother injured her back when I was fourteen. Dad arranged a driver’s license for me to help chauffeur her around and run errands. A driver’s licensed at fourteen was a two-edge sword. Kids my age were still on bicycles and in 1956; fourteen-year-old girls and boys were being chauffeured to movies and chaperoned at parties and school dances by parents. It widened my horizon, but placed me in a position above my peers. My small circle of friends shrunk even more. One of the best jobs I ever had was a cook on a cattleboat. I was fifteen, and whenever I could raise the fare, I would head to San Diego to fish with Sam, the skipper of a boat named the New Mascot. The Boat was a vintage 1920s converted fishing trawler, like its weathered captain it had seen much better days. Sam seldom left the bridge, he had a knack for finding fish, and fish count mattered to the charter office that posted the daily catch in the local newspaper. People wanted to catch fish, not go for a boat ride. Low fish counts meant slow days and fewer passengers. There are boats making long-range week-long trips today and there were private charters to the southern tip of Baja, but in 1957, public long-range charter boats left San Diego Harbor between 8-pm and 2-am and returned by eight the next evening. The New Mascot carried up to sixty passengers, but only had enough bunks for half. Those who could afford the extra two-dollars slept in stacked bunks below deck. Those of us who booked late, or fished on a budget propped ourselves against the aft cabin bulkhead to avoid the wind and salt spray, or on a bench in the galley, if we could find one. Sam owned the New Mascot; he fished Mexican waters south of San Diego as far south as Los Cabos for over thirty-years and had a knack for anticipating the migration patterns of fish. There were newer, bigger, faster corporate boats tied to the dock in San Diego skippered by young aggressive captains who started out as deckhands with skippers like Sam. When they graduated, seniority had little to do with it. Captains of boats that caught the most fish acquired the best ride. Corporate boats were more comfortable than the New Mascot, but they seldom matched Sam’s fish count per rod. The New Mascot was always the first to leave the dock and the last to return. Newer boats passed him heading south, their skippers guessing where the fish would be that day. Sam always smiled and waved. He would be on the school he left the day before while they were still searching for birds circling in the air. I booked my first trip with Sam over the phone based on fish count in the newspaper. I was fifteen. When I arrived, I paused on the dock to admire the new, sleek, 90-foot Prowler sporting a fresh coat of white paint over a fast steel hull with a flared bow. It was my first solo trip to Fisherman’s landing. The New Mascot moored at the far end of the dock, to me, not a good sign. When I crossed the weathered rails of the aging trawler, and then whiffed in the faint smell of decaying fish from blood soaked wood decks, I questioned my judgment. The Yellowtail catch at the Coronado Islands had dropped off since I booked the trip a week earlier. Yellow Fin Tuna and Albacore 100 miles south, and off the coast of Baja were the target of the trip. Sam’s wife called the passengers and told us to arrive by eight instead of ten, and to bring Tuna gear. John and the club introduced me to Albacore and Yellow Fin when I was twelve. To me, it’s the most exciting fishing there is on the planet. After seeing the boat, I debated going to the charter office to change my booking, but I had misjudged the time it took to make the trip from Covina to San Diego. One or two wouldn’t spoil the trip for sixty; Sam didn’t wait for late arrivals. I barely had time to board the boat before the deckhand dropped the bowline and the boat moved off into the channel. The boat left at eight-thirty, and then pulled up to the bait dock anchored in the channel to fill the live tank with shimmering Anchovies and hopefully, enough Sardines and Spanish Mackerel to go around. They did, and with the tank full, we crossed from the silence of the harbor past the roar of the surf into the oncoming eight-foot swells of the open ocean. The swells were a residual of a summer storm crossing the Baja Peninsula earlier in the week. They would diminish by morning as we moved further south. It was a windless night, and the forecast was for a blistering hot day. Some of the passengers gathered in the Galley for a poker game. The deckhand said he knew the men in the group; history indicated they would be there until dawn, or until Sam slowed the boat to a troll if fish started showing on his sonar. He also told me there were bunks if I was interested. I was, day was breaking in the eastern sky when the deckhand came through the cabin. “We’re five-miles from where we hit fish yesterday and the water temperature is seventy-two-degrees, there’s bait showing on sonar, Sam thinks the school is still around. The cook didn’t make it, but coffee and rolls are on the counter in the galley. Those who want to troll can move to the stern and set their gear.” Sam would troll until we found a school. I came prepared hoping to hook a monster Yellow Fin. I grabbed a cup of coffee and settled into a stern corner of the boat while most other passengers were still in the galley. Sam was searching for Albacore, which ran in schools according to size. Yesterday’s fish averaged 35-pounds with some going as high as sixty. There could be Yellow Fin below the schools of the smaller fish, some to three or four-hundred pounds. A shoulder harness attached to a rod wasn’t an option. If I hooked one, I would have to deal with a big fish while standing on the deck surrounded by anglers hooked to smaller fish. A standing man hooked directly to a pole with a big fish on the end of the line is a projectile waiting to go over the side. If one didn’t drown before he could cut loose there are packs of sharks trailing schools of Tuna like wolves follow caribou. Buckets of water are sloshed on decks to wash them down, spilling blood through the scuppers. It can become a feeding Frenzy when deckhands gaff, and then bleed Tuna. On that note, I’m going to divert for a moment and fast forward a few years before I come back to my first trip with Sam. It is unusual, but it happens. Anglers can end up in the water many ways. The summer of my freshman year in college, I was working for Sam as cook and second deckhand. We had a capacity boatload of passengers. I was standing on the edge of the bait tank chumming into a mile square school of churning albacore, stepping off to gaff and bleed a fish when someone yelled, “Color.” Albacore come in all sizes from ten to over one-hundred-twenty pounds. They usually run in schools of the same size and age. It was a school of big fish, fifty to sixty-pounds some to over eighty. The decks were awash in blood and slime. One of three fish coming on board was shark bit. My opinion, kids under twelve don’t belong on a cattleboat boat on a school of Tuna. When they were onboard it was a parents or guardian’s responsibility to watch their kids, but they can, and often do get separated in the excitement. We tried to keep an eye on them, but didn’t have much time for one-on-one. An 11-year-old boy hooked a big fish with too tight a drag. The fish was trying to take the pole away from him. He tried to manhandle the fish while backing away from the rail, but slipped on the deck and slid forward. He could have let go when he hit the rail, but he didn’t; he went over the side with the pole. The first deckhand was on the stern of the boat oblivious to the incident. The rail was three-feet high, seven-feet off the water. The gaff in the holder on the bait tank had an 18-foot shaft. It happened in a flash without hesitation. I knew if I didn’t get him before he was out of reach, he was gone. I breathed a sigh of relief when I hooked his jacket on the second pass as he was drifting out of reach, and again when two men helped me lift him over the rail to the deck. At first, I was deaf to the woman’s scream behind me, and blind to the blood pooling on the deck beneath the unconscious boy. Like him, I was in shock. I thought I had his shirt, but I hooked him under the right arm driving the gaff through his ribs. The yelling behind me brought Sam; a young Marine Corps medic elbowed his way through the crowd. The medic stopped the flow of blood, but there wasn’t much more he could do. We were a hundred-twenty-miles south of San Diego. A Coast Guard helicopter arrived within an hour and took the boy and his father to a hospital in San Diego. Sam’s license was at risk. It happened in Mexican waters; jurisdiction was an issue. There was a lot of finger pointing and what-ifs, and eventually, attorneys. What was he doing on the deck by himself? Where was his father? Why a gaff; why not a life ring? The father had landed three fish. He was tired and was in the galley drinking a beer. In those days, personal responsibility mattered. The beer settled the issue. The coast guard absolved Sam and the family’s attorneys dropped the case. Six months passed. He survived, but two ribs were sheered from his backbone and muscles were tore. The boy had been in and out of the hospital; there was little medical insurance back then. I tried to contact him, but couldn’t get past his family. They blamed me, and they convinced him. I was on the collage swim team and a trained lifeguard. There was a life ring hanging on the rail with fifty-feet of rope; why didn’t I throw it, or go in after him? The answer was clear to me and to the Coast Guard, but not everyone has witnessed a pack of sharks boiling on the blood next to a drifting charter fishing boat on a school of Tuna. Flash back to 1957 on the New Mascot, hoping for a big Yellow Fin. My choice of trolling outfits was an old Senator reel I found at a pawnshop with one-thousand-yards of hundred-pound test linin line on a stiff 7-foot Marlin stick with a roller tip guide, not much compared to today’s standards. They perfected monofilament after WW II. Most big game anglers prefer it to linin. However, mine was a flawless rig on a cattleboat where line tangles with amateurs were commonplace. Landing big fish on a cattleboat where tangles with fellow passengers is common is a matter of who is the best prepared. Linin line wrapped in a web with monofilament, and then free spooled to allow the fish to bolt cuts through monofilament line like a hot knife dropping through a cube of melting butter. We trolled for an hour. I winched in two albacore. Other anglers tolling from the back deck caught another half-dozen. Each time a fish was hooked Sam would slow the boat and baited hooks would rain down around the boat. The fish were stragglers running thirty to fifty-pounds. As soon as the deckhand gaffed a fish, if there were no other hookups Sam would resume course heading south. Bait anglers would have to wait until we found a school. After an hour catching fish trolling, impatient anglers with bait sticks loaded with thirty-pound test tied on jigs and crowded in to join the men with trolling rigs. A fifty-pound Albacore hooked on light gear could take an experienced fisherman an hour to bring to the boat. Lines would tangle when Sam had to slow the boat for the deckhand to gaff and bring a fish to the deck. Thirty-pound monofilament is no match for the man with fifty, or for me with one-hundred who would cut them off rather than lose expensive trolling lures or a fish. Albacore are skittish and when a fish is lost, it will sound, sometimes taking the school with it. Trolling with light gear is a waste of everyone’s time. Tempers flared when a man free spooled a running fish when a line wrapped his, and again when a deckhand resorted to a knife to clear a tangle in order to bring a fish to the gaff. We started trolling at daylight; it was almost eight o’clock. We had gone an hour without a fish and then hooked three at once. There was a big school on sonar. The deckhand told us to reel in and switch to our bait rods. They were going to circle and chum the school to the surface. I had other ideas. I let my jig settle below the boat while I waited for others to bring their fish to the gaff, and the deckhand to chum the school to the boat. Sam was creeping along closing the circle when fish began boiling on the chum. A half-dozen passenger yelled, “Fish on.” I cranked as fast as my arm could turn the reel hoping to entice a Yellow Fin that might be circling below the Albacore. Landing one is the icing on the cake. For me, the strike of a fish charging a lure, and then it realizing something is haywire and turning to head for the next continent or the abyss below, is the draw of the sport. Shock waves rattled my arms when the jig changed directions and headed south as if snagged on a passing submarine. It was hard to tell how big it was, but the distance he gained on his first run against the drag would give a good indication. I never fish a tight or a locked down drag. I lace a leather strap to the bar on the spool of the reel. When I apply pressure with my thumb, it acts as a second drag. I hooked it three-hundred feet down, but there was a thousand yards, and half the line on the spool was gone. If I couldn’t slow him soon, the boat would have to back down on him, or he would spool me and leave me with an empty reel. The deckhand was at my side as if reading my thoughts. “You knew better than that.” “What?” The fish was slowing, but still moving further and further from the boat. “Don’t fence with me, you knew damn well what you were doing, nobody brings a rig like that on an albacore boat. We have sixty passengers and we’re over a big school. That’s what this is about. We hook a stray Yellow Fin or Big Eye now and then, but we don’t target them because of their size. The big ones break off, or strip the reel. You could spend the day on one fish and still lose him. Sam is not going to back down on one fish and risk losing the school while the rest of the passengers twiddle their thumbs.” I applied all the pressure the reel would take. “He’s slowing down, how long do I have.” “From the way he’s acting he’s a monster, or he’s foul hooked in a fin or the tail. Either way we have twenty-fish on deck, and as many hooked up. The Prowler is south of us. This school of fish is five-miles long. We’re losing one in three to the sharks. We could be here until it’s time to go home, but if more sharks move in, Sam may move south to try to get away from them. You paid your nickel. From the way the rod shakes now and then, I think it’s foul hooked and you’re wasting your day on a medium size fish. If you can turn him, fight him as long as you like, but if you hear the engines rev, cut him off, or lose the pole.” The Prowler was having the same problem with sharks. It didn’t make sense to move out of one school of fish to find another. The sharks would follow the blood. Two of three were coming on deck whole, and half a fish was better than no fish. Sam stuck with the school. I regained two thirds of the line and had been on the fish for over an hour when it began a slow accent to the surface. The deckhand was right; the exhausted fish surfaced a hundred-yards out, tail pointing toward the stern of the boat. I managed to thread him through the maze of lines and feeding sharks to bring him to gaff. At one-hundred-twenty-pounds, it wasn’t a big fish by Yellow Fin standards, but it would win the jackpot and pay my expenses. The deckhand sunk the gaff in the fish and we lifted it aboard a little after 9:30, an hour-and-a-half after I hooked it in the tail. The deckhand bled the fish and put it on Ice. “It’s a nice fish. If you hooked him in the mouth, with that gear it would have taken a half-hour. However in the future, if you want to fish for monsters charted a sport fisher that is equipped to deal with them.” “Lesson learned. What time do we pull gear and head home?” “The school is heading north. It’s six-hours to the dock. We fish until 1:30. We will be on this school four more hours if it doesn’t sound. You have plenty of time to boat some Albacore.” I was bone weary, but exhilarated. “I’m hungry, is the galley open?” We’re short a cook today, but there are chicken salad sandwiches until they’re gone and coffee, complements of Sam. After that you can search the fridge and fend for yourself.” “Your cook won’t like that when he returns, I understand a cook buys the galley and pays for the food.” “It doesn’t matter. Cooks work with deckhands, when he did show up he wouldn’t leave the galley. This is the third Saturday in a row. Sam is fed up and looking for a new cook.” There was one sandwich left on a tray and some stale tepid coffee in the pot. I wolfed it down and returned to the deck. The school sounded while I was in the galley. The deckhand rinsed the slime and blood off the decks and was on the bait tank pitching chum while Sam held the boat in a tightening circle. The school was on sonar under the boat, it was just a matter of time. Cattleboats had different color spaces at the rail. Passengers drew for a place and rotated every hour. The bow was void of color in that it is the least desirable place to fish; if you wanted it, it was yours. I picked up my bait stick and headed for the bow, away from the crowded side rails and stern of the boat. There was a bait tank half-full of sloshing water, but void of live bait. I turned on the pump switch under the tank. Fresh seawater rinsed the scales and washed decomposing bait from the bottom of the tank. I walked back to the stern and took one of the bait scoops from the rack moving toward the deckhand straddling the tank. “Do you mind, we’re out of bait up front.” “We, you mean you. Everybody with any sense is on the back here working the chum line.” “I don’t like crowds and I can gaff my own fish; how about it?” “You fish cattleboats you get used to no bait in the bow. However, we have plenty and the receivers are full in San Diego. Help yourself.” “Any Sardines?” Smiling, “Boy, you want it all. How did a kid like you get so much gall?” “I’m not a kid, I’m fifteen, and I can fish as well as anyone.” “I believe that, but you have to learn life is not always about you. We have sixty passengers. My livelihood is this boat. Fish count and passenger satisfaction comes above it all. The pole average is four fish a day this past week. You have three. Help us out by putting a few more in your bag.” Fly lining is bait fishing without weight; the lighter the line, the further the distance of the cast. I used an open-faced level wind, or a spinning pole with twenty-five to forty-pound test line, a number-four hook, and live bait hooked through the nose or behind the dorsal fin. My bait preference when I can get it is a racehorse Sardine, one over eight-inches in length hooked behind the dorsal fin and guided to fish boiling on the surface. I fished live bait with a free spool, meaning no drag on the level wind and an open bail on a spinning reel. A fish hooked through the nose, unless there is a current, pretty much stays in one place. A fish hooked behind the dorsal fin will swim in a straight line away from the drag. An experienced angler can guide a Sardine, Herring, or Anchovy to fish boiling on bait, or to a lone fish finning on the surface. I learned the method from John Bowen. He carried two poles for Yellowtail or Albacore. A Spin Cutter, which is a lightweight one-piece 9-foot pole with a spinning reel filled with four-hundred-yards of 30-pound test, and a Super Cutter, which is a heavier 9-foot pole capable of casting heavy jigs without snapping off the tip of the pole. John preferred long poles because he was above the fray when fishing got hot and bait was flying in all directions. A novice can quickly master a spinning reel and some seasoned anglers prefer them. Fads come and go because they don’t always prove to be the most efficient way. When you’re in a school of Tuna, the only limit is your endurance. Long or stiff poles can mean aching arms, sore backs, and sometimes a short day. I followed John’s example. One trip when my kid brother, Danny, came along my new 9-foot pole wore me out after the second or third fish. He was a big, strong barrel of a kid who looked up, I conned him into a trade. My other brother was along; Roger told the story and chided me about it for a number of years; he was right, it was a chicken-shit thing to do, sorry Danny. It was about fish count and Tuna on deck and then in the can. I threw the long, stiff sticks away after that trip and graduated to limber seven-foot jig sticks and Penn Jig Master Reels, filled with four-hundred yards of 30-pound monofilament line for fish to one-hundred pounds. Casting a ten-inch, half-pound iron jig trailing a treble hook the size of a lime can be hazardous to your neighbors and to deckhands standing on the edge of the bait tank chumming to a boiling school of game fish. There are a variety of Jigs made for trolling, casting, or jigging up and down over the side of the boat. One must make the right choice. Casting jigs are too light to jig deep water; jigging jigs are too heavy for casting long distance. Distance depends on the diameter of the line and the weight of the Jig; the lighter the test, the longer the distance, but too light of line and a backlash will cause an expensive jig to snap the line. The back deck of the boat belongs to bait anglers. I measured it on a beach in Oregon one day when Oscar Dietch, a friend of mine bet me I couldn’t; he bought dinner and the drinks. Oscar died and went to heaven and isn’t here to back me up. However, as a deckhand in my prime, I could cast a balanced pole and 10-once jig 90 to 110-yards, landing it in a ten-foot circle of foam where a fish swirled on bait before the ripples in the water disappeared, which most always garnered a hit. However, for long casts it took a lead of line the length of my pole and a jig swaying with the pitching of the boat; I needed lots of room. Not many skippers will allow it, but you can cast a jig with a spinning pole with a short lead from most anywhere, so long as you don’t drag the lure through the lines of the bait anglers. However, in a school of big fish, I could hook and boat three to one against a spinning pole using a level wind on a limber jig stick. Most cattleboats ban Jig anglers using level wind reels to the bow, if they don’t, they should. However, it is the least desirable place to fish from when the deckhand is chumming from the back deck. Distance, accuracy, and retrieval speed are the keys to boating school-fish boiling on bait. Amberjack, Tuna, and Wahoo are speed freaks. A limber seven-foot rod and a Jig Master reel with multipliers attached to the handle to increase the speed of the retrieve became my weapon of choice. Back to basics; it was my first trip on the New Mascot. I moved to the bow and dumped the net of bait in the tank. Feather jigs, wooden plugs, spoons, and big Rebel plugs trolled at six to eight-knots will take Albacore in any sea where they swim. When the school is boiling on a ball of bait it doesn’t matter what it is, so long as it moves through the water and they can get it in their mouth. Experienced deckhands know how to pinch the eye of Anchovy causing it to swim in a circle near a drifting boat instead of it swimming off with the fish in chase. There was chum circling the boat and fish charging the chum. The deckhand said fish count mattered. I saw a movie where commercial Tuna boats used men on scaffolds hanging over the side with jack-poles, ten feet of line, and a shiny hook to lift fish from a milling school over their shoulders to the deck of the boat. The poles were tapered, but stiff, with twelve to fifteen-feet of clothesline thick cord tied to a large barbless hook, sometimes bare, sometimes bated with a chunk of Anchovy, or the tough silver hide of dried fish. I pondered on the thought and looked down. Fish were flashing by and boiling on bait within five-feet of the boat. I baited the hook with a listless Anchovy and dropped it to the surface testing the water. A forty-pound fish flashed from below breaking through the surface with the bait in its gullet and headed out to sea. It took me twenty-minutes to land it when I finally turned it with the light rod and thirty-pound gear, but not before the fish dragged me to the back of the boat and into the midst of a dozen or more hookups. I turned the fish and worked back toward the bow of the boat where I gaffed the fish myself. After I shook the fish from the gaff, I thought about what the deckhand said and put my bait pole in the rack. Walking back to the back deck I retrieved my Marlin-pole. “Where are you going with that?” I waved to the curious deckhand and moved toward the bow. “I’m going to experiment?” “You did that this morning. If you jig and hook a big Yellow Fin you’re on your own.” Somebody yelled, “Color,” which is the code for needing a gaff. The deckhand stepped off the bait tank with a gaff in hand. I moved to the bow, selected a large hook from my tackle box and crimped down the barb. I tied the hook to the two-hundred-pound leader on the Marlin pole, and after baiting the hook, cinched down the drag. The method is to move the bait through the water in a slow circle watching for an approaching flash of fish and then with the fish coming at you, lifting the pole at the instant the fish strikes. The theory is, direction and the momentum will allow the man on the jack pole to lift the fish over his shoulder and deposit it on the deck behind him. Tuna come in all sizes. Fish to forty-pounds were one pole fish. When working larger fish, two and sometimes three men on separate poles with multiple lines tied to a single hook would stand on scaffolds hung from the bulwarks and drag big fish to a gaff. Theory is theory, not always reality. Jack polling Albacore from the bow of a boat can be done, but you have to lift the fish as it comes at you using it’s own momentum to lift it over the rail, not wait until it takes the bait and goes the other way, but I didn’t have the proper gear. What I did have was a stiff pole, heavy line, and a winch like reel. A three hundred-pound Tuna or billfish would test my mettle from a sport boat backing down on the fish if I were in a fighting chair. Standing on the stationary deck, if the drag was too tight a big fish going the other way would rip the pole from my hands. With the pole braced against the rail, thirty to fifty-pound fish were a walk in the park. I had 14 fish on deck by the time Sam revved the engine signaling it was time to pull our gear. The deckhand came to the bow as I was bleeding the last fish. “I need a few more sacks.” “They’re a quarter a piece. You have three from this morning plus the Yellow Fin. What are you going to do with that many fish?” I had sixty-dollars coming for the jackpot and ten-dollars in my pocket for gas to get home. Trading them for canned fish was the only real option in those days, but it cost fifty-cents a pound, and counting the Yellow Fin, I had over six-hundred pounds. The deckhand had an answer. “I have a friend at the cannery. He’ll trade you straight across, one half-pound can for every two-pounds of fish. However, we have a couple of passengers who only have one fish; and one guy has been seasick all day and didn’t fish at all. Usually the deckhands catch a few and pass them out. We had a busy day short a deckhand. What do you say?” It was a slam dunk, “I want the Yellow Fin and four albacore. You can give the rest away.” “Thank you.” “You said four is average, how did I do.” “Your method is a little unorthodox, but we have over three-hundred fish on board, which is a five-pole average. The rest of the fleet is three or four. With the two you caught this morning plus the Yellow Fin and these you have eighteen. That gives you top pole in the fleet. If it makes a difference, you passed a test; Sam said if you gave up a few to the other passengers, to give you a free pass and invite you back next Saturday.” Fishing is finding and then enticing a fish to bite. After you find a school of feeding saltwater game fish, fishing changes to catching. Catching from the deck of a cattleboat in a big school of any species takes endurance. Half the hooked fish are lost to tangles and broken lines, or to packs of sharks following schools moving in on blood as soon as a deckhand gaffs the first fish. Big schools like the one we had been on all day meant lots of action and many lost fish. Most of the anglers had been on their feet all day, and five thirty-to-fifty-pound Tuna of any kind hooked on lightweight sport poles are a match for most men. There were people on board with physical ailments who came along for the ride and hopes of catching one, maybe two fish. I helped the deckhand move my fish to the stern. We had a quick lottery, drawing numbers out of a hat, and distributed the fish to less successful passengers. Pound for Pound, I consider any species of Tuna the strongest fish species on the planet. Tuna spend their entire life in the open ocean moving about the globe at a speed of four to eight-knots. . A ten-pound Tuna of any kind has the endurance and strength of a thirty-pound Salmon. There are a few Bluefin left in the north Atlantic near Nova Scotia to over one thousand pounds, and the waters south of San Diego and near Hawaii still yield Yellow Fin and Big Eye to four-hundred pounds. Their strength expands exponentially compared to the Salmon family, as the Tuna grows larger. I have hooked bigger, both in the Pacific Ocean and in the Red Sea and lost them; but my personal record is a Yellow Fin between 225 and 250 pounds I caught south of San Diego from a 21-foot open-deck boat while fishing with John Bowen. Back on the New Mascot, It was a six-hour ride to the dock in San Diego. Like me, most passengers had exhausted the groceries and drinks they brought in their ice chests. Many were in the galley munching on bags of chips and stale donuts the cook left on the counter. Mom thought a boy should learn to cook. By the time I was fifteen I knew my way around a kitchen. It has been a number of years, but the memory lingers. I wasn’t a bashful teenager and I was hungry. The deckhand told me the cook was gone and Sam was looking for a replacement. I stepped behind the counter and opened the refrigerator. There were a dozen or more graying hamburger patties, a couple pounds of Oscar Myer hot dogs that have the shelf life of an elephant and some softening tomatoes, oh, and two heads of wilting lettuce. There were also three-dozen eggs some with cracked shells, a couple pounds of bacon, also a little on the graying side, ham, butter, and open jars of mayonnaise and mustard. The cupboards yielded burger buns, bread in various stages of stale, flour tortillas, and a couple of onions sprouting green shoots. I ignited the propane under the grill and set the oven to 350-degrees. After scrapping a little green mold off a couple of burger buns and wrapping them in a moist towel I put them in the oven. Aged burger patties are a snap on a grill. A little salt and pepper, a flip or two with a spatula, they’re done. Buns softened in the steam of a towel; I buttered and laid them on the grill to brown. A little mayonnaise, mustard, and salt and pepper disguised the wilted lettuce, onions, and soft tomatoes. One deckhand was cleaning the deck. The other was on the bridge watching the radar. Sam put the boat on autopilot and came down to the galley searching for something to eat. He was sitting at the counter when I put the first burger together and set it on a plate. “What’s your name?” “Pat.” “Can you cook?” I moved the burger across the counter in front of the captain. “Who can’t cook a burger?” “You’d be surprised.” There were more patties in the refrigerator and a bun on the grill. I gave Sam the burger without a second thought and turned to make another. Sam was picking the crumbs off his plate by the time mine was ready. “You landed seventeen fish plus that Yellow Fin, and gaffed most of them yourself. Your methods are a little unorthodox, but it works, and fish count matters. You want a job?” “Doing what?” “Running my galley and helping on deck.” “What’s it pay?” “Your fare.” “That’s not much for a sixteen-hour day.” “There’s more, but it’s up to you. You buy the groceries, plan the menu and keep whatever you make.” “I’m here because like to fish.” “People come to fish; they think about food when the fish aren’t bighting. Close the galley when we’re on a school of fish; open it when the boats moving.” “School starts in three weeks.” “Works for me, I have a dependable regular cook, but he had an accident and will be laid up for a while. The replacement doesn’t always show up. When he does, he can’t hook a fish, or gaff one without cutting the line. I don’t have time to quibble: I have to get back to the bridge, you want the job, yes or no.” “Starting when?” “Now, the passengers who didn’t bring an ice chest are hungry, what’s in the refrigerator and cupboards is yours, consider it seed money.” The regular cook posted menu and prices above the grill. I didn’t have change, I rounded them to the nearest dollar and improvised on the trip home making burgers, hot dogs and bacon or ham and egg sandwiches until the supplies ran out. We got back to the dock at seven; we would leave at eight-thirty. I sold my fish to the cannery for fifty-cents a pound and restocked the galley. I called Mom and told her I would be staying on the boat and I would be home in time for school. “Mothers! She wanted Sam’s phone number. It panned out; for the next three weeks, I didn’t get much sleep, but I got enough. I flipped burgers and eggs when the fish weren’t biting, gaffed, bled and bagged fish when they were. We always had a few novice passengers who had never caught a fish. Fish count mattered. Hooking a fish has always been my thing; I earned extra tips when fishing was slow hooking fish and handing the pole off to passengers.
Posted on: Sat, 17 Aug 2013 19:00:53 +0000
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