• Home
  • About
  • Advertise
  • Consulting
  • Contact Me
  • Guest Posts
  • Links
  • Photo Gallery
    • North America
      • Alaska
      • Rafting the Grand Canyon
      • Taos Timber Frame
    • Central America
      • Belize
      • Costa Rica
      • El Salvador
      • Guatemala
      • Honduras
      • Mexico
      • Nicaragua
      • Panama

freewheelings.com

Life, Travel and Technology for the Unconventionalist

  • Life
  • Travel
  • Technology

Fishing in Alaska – Life on a Salmon Tender part 2

By Brandon Edward

Share
Tweet
Pin
Share

If you’re just arriving you should check out Salmon Tender Life part 1 and the basics:  Salmon 101.

Just before mid season Chums, Reds, Silvers and Kings start to run simultaneously.  The openers jump from 12 hours to 48 or 72 hours.  The fishing grounds move in from an 8 hour ride from the dock to a two hour ride from the dock.  We still pack the fish in totes at this point and they’re coming salmon tenderto the tune of 3-5000 lbs per boat, per delivery.  The days change from reasonable and manageable to an all out war with yourself to keep moving.  On a good day you get 3 ½ minutes to yourself for lunch, uninterrupted.  On a bad day you woof your lunch between shovels full of ice and hope a flying bag of salmon doesn’t leak fish juice on your turkey sandwich.

You sleep an hour and a half each day if you’re lucky.  You get 45 minutes on the ride to the fishing grounds and 45 minutes on the way back to the dock.  That’s about it.  During the first peak of the salmon run this schedule repeats itself 25 or 30 days on end.  You’re always tired, always wet, always cold and you start to legitimately lose track of where one day ends and the other begins.  The only relief is that it’s light 23 hours a day.   The body and mind seem to take that into consideration when assessing its current energy levels.  The light helps you keep going when you might otherwise give up.  By the end of the first peak you’re as good as the walking dead.  Everything comes out, your mind no longer has the wherewithal to seal it lips when it should.  An average day looks something like this.

We’ll call the start of the day leaving the dock at around 5am.  Keep in mind that this particular day started just after you spent three or four hours ice bergsunloading the previous days catch between about 1am and 4am.  So the day starts with your 45 minute nap.  You actually have about an hour and a half to and hour and forty five minutes on the ride to the fishing grounds but most of it is eaten up getting out of your raingear, changing into dry clothes, shoving some food down your gullet, using the bathroom and just slowing down for a few minutes.  The remainder is spent sleeping if you can.  On more than one occasion I’ve seen one of the guys walk into the galley still in his raingear, stretch out in a downward dog like position on the floor and fall asleep.  There’s only so far you can go sometimes.

From 7am to 7pm you buy fish, thousands upon thousands of pounds of fish.  It’s nonstop action and remember, most of the time it’s pouring down rain.  Everything on deck is slippery.  There are thousand pound bags of fish flying in every which direction over your head.  Every bag gets, weighed, reported, separated by species and dumped in a tote and iced.  This goes on for 12 solid hours, non stop.

Once all of our totes are full we clean up the deck and rendezvous with all the other salmon tenders in the fleet.  There are three of them not includingsalmon tender american beautyourselves.  It’s now about 8pm.  Our boat is the designated run boat so we tie up to our other tenders one at a time and unload their fish totes to our boat.  Every tote has to be strapped, stacked, moved and unstrapped.  Sometimes totes are stacked as many as five high on our deck.  It’s about and hour per boat to unload and by 11pm we’re on our way back to the dock.  We strip our raingear and take care of business, grab our 45 minute nap and we’re tying up at the dock to unload.

It takes on average 3-4 hours to unload up to 140,000 lbs of salmon.  By the time we’re done it’s 5am and we can get ready to start our next day.  There’s a faint glimmer of hope for sunshine tomorrow.

 

salmontendercrane

Carry on, Fishing in Alaska – Life on a Salmon Tender part 3

Share
Tweet
Pin
Share

Filed Under: Fishing in Alaska, Travel, Workin' on the Road Tagged With: Alaska, fishing, prince william sound, Working on the Road

About Brandon Edward

Greetings, I am the bar keep of this fine establishment. In the tradition of a good bar keep I want to know what you think about the article you've just read and the service we're providing here at freewheelings. Can't find your particular brand of scotch? Maybe we have it in the back, just ask. Use the comments section below.

Comments

  1. saltysteve says

    May 4, 2011 at 7:47 am

    WOW,
    It all sounds so scary and strenuos….how ever do you do it??? You must be some kind of superhuman to do all those things and still have time to roll your own, and make fresh pressed coffee!!!! HA HA HA HA!!!!! How much for an autograph stud?
    How are you doin’ pard? Are you going back this year, or is that a stupid question? Hey man, stay in touch, or at least drop me a line. Glad you survived last year. Take care.
    Salty

    Reply
  2. Nellie says

    January 16, 2015 at 11:58 pm

    I’m tendering out of Kodiak this summer. Can I ask u some questions?

    Reply
    • Brandon Edward says

      January 18, 2015 at 1:12 pm

      Of course, I’ll do my best to answer them. If you don’t mind just use the comments page to that others can see the questions and answers in the future.

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

A Little Love?

Stalk Me

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • RSS
  • Tumblr
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Never Miss a Post


The Best of Freewheelings.com

  • Finding Into the Wild's Magic Bus
  • Motorcycle to South America
  • Alaska Highway by Volkswagen Bus
  • Salmon Fishing in Alaska
  • Hitchhiking Tales
  • Dog Sled Alaska
  • Tales From Mother India

You check out my sponsers and I get to eat, pretty neat right?

Popular Posts

By Tag

Alaska alaska highway alaska marine highway system ALCAN alternative energy Asia Beaches Belize biogas digesters blogsherpa Border C Border Crossings cordova Delhi Denali Digital Nomad Digital Nomad WordPress El Salvador fairbanks Fiji fishing Food and Drink freewheelings5 goldstream kennel Guatemala hitchhiking Honduras india into the wild Japan Languages magic bus Marine Highway Mayan Ruins Mexico Motorcycle New Zealand Nicaragua Panama prince william sound Rafting Sled Dogs usa volkswagen Working on the Road

Connect

  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

Contact

  • Email
  • Work With Us

  • Guest Posts
  • Advertising
  • Services

  • Consulting
  • Dive In

  • Life
  • Travel
  • Technology
  • Search Me

    © Copyright 2015 Freewheelings Enterprises, LLC · All Rights Reserved