Halibut Flipping

by John S. Mickman

Deck Hand

In 1972, during my final quarter at the U of M, I caught a bad case of Spring Fever and I had some personal problems that needed to be sorted out. Much to the disappointment of my folks, I quit school and hitchhiked to Alaska. This is a tale about my arrival in Kodiak, and my first job in the commercial fishing industry.

(My wife Wendy says I need to add that I returned to MN that fall and completed my Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration.)

The first time I hitchhiked to Alaska was in 1972, and I arrived on Kodiak Island with about $60 in my pocket out of the original $145 that I had when I left Minnsota. While some of this money was the last of my life savings to that point in my life, $100 of it was reimbursed to me from my Spring Quarter tuition – which in 1972 was about $300 per quarter!

My plan was to stay in a guy’s house that I had met on campus at a party one time; he didn't know I was coming. That part worked out OK, and Paul Anderson became one of my best buddies - even to this day.

The plan had been to hitchhike as far as I could, and where ever my money ran out, I would stop there and get a job. It was good fortune that I made it all the way to Kodiak, and on the final leg of my journey, as my current 'ride' drove past the commercial fishing harbor in Kodiak, I was in awe. "What are all those boats for?" I asked the guy.

 "That's the fishing harbor", he said. "All those boats go out fishing for various kinds of fish." Only having seen the ocean one time in Boston and New York, I really didn't have the concept of commercial fishing yet. "Boy those guys must really like to fish", I commented, thinking of the many camping trips Up North our family took to catch Northern’ s, Bass and the odd Walleye. "What kind of fish do they catch?", I asked in an innocent, Minnesota kind of way.

The guy looked back at me with a grin and told me that this was the commercial fishing harbor. There were different fleets of boats that would fish Salmon, Shrimp, Halibut, King Crab, Tanner Crab and Dungeness Crab, among others.

I was amazed; "Do you mean these guys go out, catch fish and get paid for it?" I asked. "Yeah", he replied. "And they make pretty good money too. This is a big commercial fishing port and the biggest industry on the Island."

Well, we talked for a few more minutes, and just before I got out of his pickup truck he asked me what kind of job I was going to look for while I was in Kodiak for the Summer. "I'm going to get a job on one of those boats down there and be a fisherman" I told him with all the confidence in the world.

The guy was very skeptical and wished me good luck, but said there were a hundred young guys with experience trying to get a job on one of those boats and not to get my hopes up too much. "Oh, I'll get on a boat", I told him. "It might take awhile but I'm going to be a commercial fisherman." He wished me good luck again and drove off; I never saw him again.

It took four hours in a heavy drizzle to finally find where Paul lived. Kodiak is a small town, but without an address it was hard to narrow down the exact house he lived in.   However, after finding his house, I become reacquainted with Paul and convinced his girlfriend Sam that I would make a fabulous roommate (even though I didn't have any money or a job). And then finally, after 7 days on the road, I rolled out my sleeping bag in my new room - a large walk-in closet. It was perfect, and nice to have a warm, dry, safe place to sleep in. This was going to work out OK; I was sure of it.

The next morning I went down to the harbor and started looking at boats and talking to fishermen. There was a lot to learn including a whole new lingo of terms; galley, wheelhouse, port & starboard, diesel engines, skates of halibut gear, gannon's, etc. These were hard working men all, and proud of what they did for a living. It was also dangerous work and everyone had to work as a team to maximize their catch and to preserve their well being. Even so, over a dozen fishermen lost their lives each year to the North Pacific and Bering Seas. This was really interesting stuff and these guys had some awesome stories! Of course as a 21 year old kid, I could never get hurt and certainly never die. No way...

One of the guys I met was Tony Jones who was crewing on an old wooden shrimp trawler named The Pacific Pearl. Tony was about my age and knew almost everyone in the fleet. We became good buddies and he introduced me around to many of the crewmen and some of the skippers in the that had boats tied up in the harbor.

One of the first things I learned was that it was too early in the year to fish salmon, too late to catch King orTanner Crab and the entire shrimp fleet was tied up waiting out a strike. The canneries were only offering 3½ cents/pound and the fishermen wanted 7 cents/pound - twice as much! It turned out to be a long strike. The only boats working were the Halibut boats, and this was the smallest fishery in Kodiak. Bummer!

But no matter, every single day I walked the docks, walked Cannery Row, hung around Sutliff's (the marine hardware store), went into the bars the fishermen frequented and met everyone I could. One problem I identified almost immediately was that I looked like a college student, not like a fisherman. Many of the guys wore hip boots turned down at the knee to the effect of looking kind of like wide bell-bottoms; cool. On a boat named The Robbie I befriended a deckhand named Marshall who was from Australia. He was tall good looking guy who introduced me to many new things including how shrimp trawls work and how to eat kiwi's and avocado's (two things I had never eaten in Minnesota) .

 Laying on the after deck atop a pile of refuse on The Robbie was an old pair of hip boots that looked pretty beat up. "What are you guys going to do with those old boots?", I asked Marshall. "I'm going to throw them in the dumpster along with all that other stuff when I get up the energy", he said.

Just as I thought! "How about this Marshall? I'll throw all that stuff in the dumpster for you if I can have those hip boots. Deal?"

 He laughed and said, "They're yours, but they won't do you any good; they have holes at the knee's. That's why I'm throwing them away." I really didn't care if they had holes or not, I just needed them to look more like a fisherman.

"That's OK Marshall. I don't need them to keep the water out", I replied. He gave me a funny look and told me to help myself. Those hip boots fit perfectly and I wore them every day for months. I put some tire patches on the rips at the fold in the knees and that fixed the leaks.

In next week’s, Part II, find out if I ever figured out if the patched pair of old hip boots were any help in getting me a job on a fish boat!