YO HO HO and a Bottle of Rum!

Salmon fishing was a little slow this week, and since I didn't know when it would pick up, and since I had to catch my 902 pound quota of halibut, I figured I'd go ahead and load up the long line reel and get her done. I was fortunate enough to be able to enlist the services of Captain Marc  Miller of the Fishing Vessel Mickey V to come crew with me. There is no way I can do the halibut fishery by myself. The top picture shows three halibut of pretty substantial size. Two of them weighed 111 pounds each. The one in the center is supposed to be 129 pounds. Thats according to the tide book. In the back is a chart that gives the lengths and the corresponding live weight and net weight after the gills and guts are removed. I think the bigges one was about 67 inches long. It might have been longer I can't recall. I don't have a tide book with me at the moment to double check. The gross weight was like 176 pounds or some such thing. It was a struggle to get these big gals on board. The three fish pictured there were a total weight of 351 pounds. However, frankly I believe the big one weighed more. When we sold I went over my quota by 45 pounds. The bottom picture shows yet another 111 pound halibut. We also caught some grey cod, a Quillback Rockfish and a couple of  Rougheye Rockfish. Commercial fishermen are feeding the world!  I've never had three big ones of the same weight before. They're a real pain to handle, but they sure look good when you go in to sell, and each one brings in a nice price. Not bad for two old guys. Of course today I can hardly move- halibut wrestling should be an Olympic sport.The two middle pictures show Captain Marc. On my boat I get to be the captain and the crew is confined to the cockpit or the fish hold doing hard manual labor while I sit in my captains chair and sip hot toddy's and talk on the radio. Usually they only get stale bread and some dirty bilge water to drink at meal time, but if it's Saturday, I relinquish and they get a half pint of grog with a hard biscuit and a bite of moldy cheese. I can't understand why I have such a hard time getting crew hands. On a side note, I decided to look up grog and found out that it was a rum drink mixed with water and sometimes lemon and spices. It was named after a British admiral, Edward Vernon,  who was nicknamed Old Grog (alluding to his Grogram cloak). Apparently in 1740 he ordered the drink to be served to the sailors instead of pure spirits. The sailors may have said it was named after the cloak, but Old Grog was probably really alluding to something that shouldn't be printed in this blog, the true meaning  most probably would have gotten the sailors hung from the yard arm. It is kind of a raw deal to short change those poor sailors, but I guess if you  have muskets and sabres and cannons loose on the ship you don't want the sailors to be under the influence. Well shipmates, Ol' Captain Tom is going to stop writing and get on with some other business. I think I'll run to the tattoo shop and have a three masted schooner tattooed on my left forearm and an anchor with the name of the fine old fishing boat Bonnie J tattooed on the right. Aargh!