all nice,” he said. “Especially the big ones. I’ll cruise us back at three or four knots.”
“Fine. Let me know if we pick up any top hats.” A top hat was our term for a fish that showed on the paper sounder as a large circumflex accent. It indicated a large salmon. Since we both spoke French, which uses that accent frequently, it was an obvious way of describing the mark on the paper. When I returned to the cleaning tray, both Chuck and Jake were holding cans of beer and staring at the salmon in the tray. “Ears on or ears off?” I asked Jake.
“Ears on,” he said with a smile. “They look prettier that way.” “Ears on” means the fish is eviscerated, its gills removed as well as any lice clinging to the vent area. The head and pectoral fins are left on, which makes the fish look as though it has been mounted.
Chuck was watching with a wry expression. “Damn,” he said. “Back in Texas we use fish that size for bait.”
“Damn,” I echoed back at him. “You don’t have any salmon in Texas.”
We all laughed. Chuck and Jake smiled at each other and had a sip of beer. It was all good-natured. Chuck was playing on his image as a Texan, and the fact that he was at least six foot six and wore a grubby and mashed-up ten-gallon hat added to the stereotype.
“Seriously,” Chuck said, “are you telling me this is what you guys call a fish?”
There was a crinkling around his eyes and he winked at Jake so I knew the remarks were meant for me. I also knew I was in for a protracted leg pulling. It was all right—it was their charter and he was a guest. “Maybe the next one will look like a fish to you,” I said.
“It’ll have to be able to swallow this one,” he retorted.
This is turning into lots of fun, I thought.
I cleaned the fish using our stainless steel knife, which had a large yellow handle and a spoon attached to it with electrical tape. I unzipped the fish from vent to chin before cutting out the vent, leaving it attached to the rest of the intestines. When I separated the intestines from the salmon with a neat cut to the throat, out came a handful of guts in one clean package. I cut out the gills followed by the kidney, which was scooped from the base of the spine using the spoon attached to the knife handle. Next, to see what it had been eating, I cut open the stomach, which was packed with herring the size of those we were using at the end of our flasher. I threw the handful of guts over the stern railing to a small flock of seagulls that had started to follow us as soon as the fish was in the cleaning tray.
Good start, I thought. The first one’s always the hardest to catch.
By the time I had the fish ready to stow in the chest with crushed ice, we had cruised quietly back to our starting point and turned into the flooding tide. I washed my hands in a bucket of salt water, dried them and prepared to reset the lines. One of Jake’s friends, a foggy-looking fellow who introduced himself as Mason and was wearing clothes that were obviously too small for him, asked if he could help set the gear.
“Have you ever set lines using a downrigger?” I asked.
When he said he had not, I suggested he stand back and watch how it was done. He looked so disappointed that I changed my mind and talked him through the procedure, which added an extra ten minutes to the line set. I let him do everything except attach the line to the downrigger, a procedure that is an acquired skill. Too much pressure and the fish is unable to disengage the line from the downrigger cable; too little pressure and it will pop free with the slightest change of current.
After we’d set the downriggers, I asked, “Who takes the next strike?”
A general conversation broke out, everyone suggesting someone else when each person really wanted to be next.
This wasn’t getting us anywhere so I stepped in. “The local resident is going home with a salmon, so now we have to send our guests away with a one. Chuck, that means you or your missus. Who is it to be?”
“Blue Eyes,” Chuck said to his wife, “I’d like you to be next.”
Sometimes we didn’t learn guests’ names until we were setting lines later in the charter. I wasn’t about to call her Blue Eyes, and she avoided any awkwardness by saying, “Please call me Jeannie. Mrs. Jeanne Arnold, the recent Mrs. Jeanne Arnold.” Her speech was very Southern, softer than Chuck’s but just as nasal.
“Congratulations,” I said, a bit surprised. “Does this mean you two are newlyweds on your honeymoon?”
Chuck stepped from behind her and draped his arm over her shoulder. She took his hand and held it in both of hers.
She’s so short and he’s so tall, I thought. They were radiating love. Their pleasure splashed onto everyone in the group, and I found myself grinning along with everyone else.
“We’ve been married just four days,” Chuck said. They continued beaming at each other in such a happy, transparent manner that it was infectious. I reached out to Chuck and shook his oversized hand. I could feel it was a hand that had done some practical labour, and I wondered if he had a ranch and rode horses. Instead of shaking Jeannie’s hand I gave her a hug, which brought a round of applause from everyone. It had all been so spontaneous I felt a bit silly.
“So are you going to be next, Jeannie?”
She looked up at Chuck with real pleading in her eyes. “I don’t think I can, honey,” she said, “I mean, Albert had a tough time with his fish and it wasn’t even so big. I don’t think I could hold onto the rod.” She looked anxious and Chuck seemed unsure of what to do.
I didn’t want to get into a discussion about an eighteen-pound salmon being small. Instead I said, “How about if we run the same routine we did with the last one? I’ll pick the rod out of the holder and strike the fish. If I think it’s over ten pounds, I’ll hand it to Chuck, and if I think it’s under ten, I’ll hand it to Jeannie. Does that sound okay?”
Some mumbling and murmuring ensued as they all looked at one another and tried to decide what to say. Finally, Jake agreed with a nod of his head. “Okay, let’s do it that way.”
I glanced up at Sten but he was staring ahead, so I made my way up the companionway to the helm and had a look at the paper sounder. There was lots of feed and we were on the edge of a large haystack that started at around two fathoms and went down to six. Six feet to a fathom meant thirty-six feet to the bottom of the haystack. Salmon usually lurk just below the feed.
“I’m going to drop the starboard line down to sixty feet,” I said.
“Good idea.” He kept his eyes focused ahead.
“Anything up front?”
“Kelp.”
“Much?”
“Enough.”
“Let me know if it’s going to be a problem.”
“No problem yet.”
I went to the stern of the boat and checked the tension on the reels. It is important to have the drag set tight enough to set the hook when the fish strikes, but not so tight that the fish cannot run. A light breeze was blowing and I could smell the herring and the kelp in the air. When the ocean has an abundance of feed, the air around you starts to smell of fish oil. While it is not a strong smell, there’s nothing better to make a fisherman feel optimistic. Kelp, with its smell of iodine, is always welcome.
Sten was moving the boat forward slowly on a zigzag course, partly to avoid the islands of kelp floating toward us on the flood tide, and partly to alter the movement of the bait and flashers at the end of the downriggers. When kelp is around it’s important to check your lines frequently to be sure you are not trailing some of it from your lure.
For the next while I worked the lines. The whirl of the downriggers became commonplace to the guests, who had spread throughout the boat and no longer stood around as I brought up the