Best job in the world! Me and the love of my life on the ocean, working together from 3:45am to 11:00pm. Northern lights and sounds of humpback whales as we fell asleep with one eye on the depth sounder and one ear on the wind. Coffee, lots of coffee in the morning. Sharpening our hooks as the engine fired and the anchor was hauled. Then off, to troll the waters of southeast. Dropping our gear and watching the lines pull away to fish the kings of the ocean. Feeling the boat shiver with the first hard strike! Then cranking up the line and gaffing the salmon. It all pretty much blew my mind. Killing it and cleaning, icing it and “putting it to bed” as my husband would say.
It was the greatest adventure of my life. All day everyday over and over, it never got old to me. Sometimes we would fight over who had the job of sitting and steering the boat. I usually lost that argument, being the one with no experience on a fishing boat. At least I got to pick the music and where we went. Very slowly we would troll, so slow you could keep with our boat on foot. That was fine with me. Carving the coast, watching all the birds. They would dive down deep and come up like a rocket. Eagles swimming to shore with a salmon in their claws and Golden eyes fumbling around watching us, watch them. Every now and then we would take an afternoon off to sleep and dream of big waves rolling and crashing while we napped in a calm bay. Then the sun would shine, a raven would call and we were off to our next adventure!
I left that life unfinished and I will return someday to live the rest of it.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS Feed