Excit­ing news, friends – Hooked’s guest writer Aman­da has com­plet­ed her first sea­son in the com­mer­cial fish­ing indus­try! New read­ers, I urge you to take the time to catch up on Aman­da’s jour­ney. From an April morn­ing when I over­heard a young woman  say she want­ed to go fish­ing, her pre-sea­son antic­i­pa­tion, the first chal­lenges and tri­umphs, a mid-sea­son strug­gle, to these con­clud­ing reflec­tions, she’s got a won­der­ful sto­ry and it’s been an hon­or to have her with us. A green deck­hand’s expe­ri­ence is nev­er easy; many new­com­ers don’t stick it out. Please join me in con­grat­u­lat­ing Aman­da on a suc­cess­ful first season!

*****

Dear Hooked,

My con­tract is offi­cial­ly over. The weath­er has turned and the salmon in Chatham Strait are few and far between. I am back to life as a land dweller, grate­ful for reg­u­lar access to news and local pro­duce. Ten­der life feels very dis­tant, espe­cial­ly being down in the Low­er 48. By the time I stepped off the Nichawak, I couldn’t wait to talk about some­thing oth­er fish­ing. Any­thing oth­er than fish­ing. Out on the water and tied up at the har­bor, it seemed that all talk was of fish­ing hot spots and the lat­est boat project.  Now, down South, I find myself look­ing for oppor­tu­ni­ties to talk about fish­ing and feel gid­dy when giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to explain the dif­fer­ence between sein­ing and gill­net­ting, or how to oper­ate the Nichawak’s hydraulic booms.

Some morn­ings I wake up with phan­tom pains in my thumbs, as if I’ve just spent a long day “slin­gin’ cohos.”  My hands are a bit more scarred and my cal­lus­es are rougher, as I had hoped they would be.  My upbring­ing in the sub­urbs is some­thing that I think is reflect­ed in the look and feel of my hands.  They are most­ly smooth and clean, a dead giveaway.

When I was a kid, my dad would assign me yard work chores. I spent more time com­plain­ing about them than actu­al­ly doing them. This truth, embar­rass­ing as it may be, brings me to one of the biggest chal­lenges that I faced this sum­mer: my attitude.

A week into the troll open­er in August, we were on our third straight day of work with­out sleep. In these three days we bought over 90,000 pounds of fish, Skip­per Sal, Ger­ald the deck­hand, and me.  I think it’s fair to say that these are dif­fi­cult work­ing con­di­tions.  That third morn­ing, I remem­ber the sun ris­ing, the sky must have been bright and beau­ti­ful.  But I don’t real­ly remem­ber that beau­ty.  Most­ly, I remem­ber being vague­ly aware of the col­ors around me and being pissed off.  I felt the scowl on my face and I heard myself snap at Ger­ald, “I’ve got this, back off!”

I was tired and sore, I was hun­gry and over­worked, and I had yet to real­ize that this did not enti­tle me to be grouchy, nor did it enti­tle me to snap at my crew. Times like these (yes, this hap­pened more than once) I had to tell myself, some­times even out loud, to change my atti­tude, relax the mus­cles in my brow, get rid of that snarl on my face and get over myself.

Suf­fice to say, in the begin­ning I had ide­al­ized this expe­ri­ence.  Parts of the dream were real­ized.  I watched whales breech 30 feet from the boat. I learned every­thing I could, from telling apart a coho and a sock­eye to oper­at­ing hydraulic cranes. I con­quered ratch­et straps, I tied clove hitch­es, I nav­i­gat­ed an 80-foot boat around Chatham Strait. I expe­ri­enced glo­ry and pride and accomplishment.

But there is no get­ting around it; parts of this expe­ri­ence were just shit­ty. They weren’t fun, they were hard. I learned a lot about myself this sum­mer and some of these things were dif­fi­cult to face, severe real­i­ties.  I let “grouchy” get the best of me. I have opin­ions and noth­ing to back them up. I have too much pride. 

Pride.  Such a stim­u­lant, such a bar­ri­er.  How did I get to be a per­son with so much pride? Why is it that I hat­ed ask­ing for help? Why did I balk so much at the idea of some­one cor­rect­ing or com­pen­sat­ing for my mis­takes? Why could I push myself to work hard­er and be bet­ter only to prove that I could? As busy as the ten­der life is, there was plen­ty of idle time to con­sid­er these ques­tions.  Yet I nev­er seemed to fig­ure it out: where does pride come from?

This win­ter I will work in the high desert of Wash­ing­ton State, tend­ing to hors­es and learn­ing about life as a ranch hand. As of now, I will return to the Nichawak, pos­si­bly work­ing for Sit­ka her­ring (the fish­ery where I first dis­cov­ered fish­ing!) and prob­a­bly for anoth­er sea­son as a South­east seine, gill­net, and troll tenderwoman.

I think about why I want to return. I try to remind myself that it is because of cer­tain priv­i­leges in my life that I even have an option. I have the priv­i­lege of being able to choose what I will do next and make a choice based on a desire for per­son­al growth.  For me, a bit of guilt is inher­ent in this fact, but I won’t be con­strained by this.

So, I think I will choose to go fish­ing again.  There is still self-reflec­tion to be done, there are skills left to learn, and then there’s good old fash­ioned pride, a nag­ging reminder that next year I can be better.

- Aman­da