Fun­ny how the recent weeks shrank as the days length­ened. After a spring of Sit­ka deca­dence, June dashed by. Seem­ing­ly overnight, Cap’n J and I are on the cusp of our 2012 salmon sea­son. I want­ed to tell you what we’ve been up to as we pre­pare to leave the dock, but in truth, I could just repost last June’s “Chas­ing Kings” and none of us – me includ­ed – would know the dif­fer­ence. Con­trary to the non­stop dra­ma of com­mer­cial fish­ing real­i­ty shows, a “same shit, dif­fer­ent sea­son” monot­o­ny is more often our indus­try’s true foundation.

Every year, the sum­mer troll sea­son opens on July 1. As the har­bor buzz gets loud­er – sanders, grinders, and butt-rock whin­ing over the water – our fleet’s pecu­liar homo­gene­ity is evi­dent. We’re all fol­low­ing the same prepara­to­ry check­lists, while knot­ted in the same tan­gle of emo­tions. “23 sea­sons and every year I won­der what the next sea­son will bring,” anoth­er troller texted me yes­ter­day. “Ner­vous, excit­ed, dread, exhaust­ed, bore­dom, thank­ful, con­flat­ed. That about sums it up.”

Our sea­son begins with a care­ful­ly mon­i­tored king salmon open­ing. We’ll leave Sit­ka on the 27^th to get into posi­tion – a des­ti­na­tion yet to be decid­ed. Where will this year’s big smash be? With only an expect­ed 8 to 10 days for this high stakes open­ing, there’s no room for error. Cap’n J would be the first to tell you that he’s start­ing to freak out.

“I had my first king salmon dream last night,” he told me over cof­fee the oth­er day, a fever­ish glint in his eyes. “We had over 200 kings the first day. We always have over 200 kings the first day in my dreams.”

He’s got big dreams, my king salmon-crazed sweet­heart. For non-fish­ing friends, 200 kings in a day is a very, very good day. Dream-wor­thy, in fact. We trollers han­dle each fish one at a time. Hook and line caught, they’re indi­vid­u­al­ly land­ed, bled, cleaned, and hand­ed down to our ‑38 degree fish hold to blast-freeze. Two hun­dred black-gummed beau­ties? We’d nev­er stop mov­ing, nev­er leave the deck, and hope­ful­ly scarf a gra­nola bar break­fast some­time before noon. We’d fall into our bunk as adren­a­line-over­dosed zom­bies, and wake up four hours lat­er hop­ing to do it all again.

Like all fish­er­men, we labor to pre­pare for what’s in our con­trol, while brac­ing for inevitable sur­pris­es. (Last year it was weath­er. We made the best of it, turn­ing East­er­ly 25 into an epic Lituya Bay beach par­ty, as “From Fish-able to Fes­tiv­i­ty” shared.) Joel’s been tying gear until his fin­gers swell. I scrubbed the fish hold to a ster­ile shine, all set to receive open­ing day’s first load, and made a new door latch to keep the dorm-sized fridge from fly­ing open on a wave. We’ve dou­ble-checked our sur­vival gear and run both the engines, assur­ing our­selves that everything’s purring as it should be. I’ll fill the Nerka’s 250 gal­lon water tank right before we go, and we took fuel the oth­er day. (Next time you’re feel­ing pained at the gas sta­tion, imag­ine 846 gal­lons of diesel.)

I only touched up our cop­per bot­tom paint this year, result­ing in a two-toned patch­work that vis­i­bly pained the neigh­bor­ing skip­pers. Sor­ry, guys — $162/gallon!

I knew things were get­ting seri­ous when we sat down to make our gro­cery list. After fish­ing togeth­er for sev­en years, we’ve got a set meal rota­tion. Tofu pad thai on the first night out, before the bean sprouts go bad. Fake meat tacos. Lots of fish and rice. A cou­ple frozen lasag­nas for the nights we’re too busy to cook. Tuna casse­role on day 12, when we’re down to just canned stuff.

Din­ners were easy enough, but lunch had us stumped. We stared at each oth­er across the table. “What the hell do we eat for lunch?” Joel asked. “Why can’t we remember?”

I reached for the com­put­er. “I’ll ask the Face­books… See what oth­er folks do.”

A thread of good sug­ges­tions ensued – stew, loaded baked pota­toes, and the ever-pop­u­lar Stuff in Tor­tillas. Then a fish­er­man friend iden­ti­fied the root of our amne­sia. “Lunch? You don’t remem­ber because you don’t eat lunch when the kings are biting.”

Oh yeah…

A glo­ri­ous sun­set washed over the har­bor at 10:30 on sum­mer sol­stice, but our friend’s com­ment remind­ed me that our longest days of the year are still ahead, loom­ing on the calendar’s next page. When the Ner­ka exits the break­wa­ter, life will change. For the next three months, Cap’n J and I will embrace our most dri­ven, com­pul­sive selves. Up with the 3:00 dawn, to bed with the 11:00 twi­light. Stay­ing out until the hold is full, run­ning to town to deliv­er those fish, prac­tic­ing our best “turn and burns” – push­ing our­selves to get back out as quick­ly as possible.

Not a sched­ule that facil­i­tates very fre­quent – or elo­quent – posts. We’ve had some pow­er­ful con­ver­sa­tions here recent­ly (like this one, and this), but Hooked’s updates will like­ly be more post­card than lengthy let­ter for the com­ing months. I’ll stock­pile the sto­ries, keep you in my good thoughts, and look for­ward to being back in touch.

Be safe and be well, friends – thanks for being here.