Club Demijohn

Club Demijohn, by Chris Carole

Lost in a fog of sleep, I was jolted awake by the distant rumbling of the big diesel firing up. Everything was pitch black. Disoriented, my mind tried to unscramble events. We’d left town the day before, cruising down the outer coast, anchoring up in a no-name bay just as the long summer day was ending. Evening’s light had softened everything, turning the sky reddish pastel color. The skipper, Paul, came up from the galley carrying a cocktail in each hand, tinkling the ice before setting them down on the large, polished table. The ice cubes said it all.

“Cheers. Welcome aboard Club Demijohn.”

Tinkle, tinkle, tinkle.

After two seasons fishing for a hard-charging young skipper, drifting offshore every night and having to wedge myself in the bunk in order to keep from getting tossed out at night, being anchored up like this in a calm harbor and sipping cocktails felt like deckhand Valhalla to me. Working on the yacht, Demijohn, with gentleman troller Paul; this was going to be a completely different experience. After dinner and several drinks later, I glanced at the galley clock. It was 10:45p. Darkness and drowsiness overcame me. I stumbled off to my bunk in the forepeak.

Thinking it must be a bad dream, I drifted back to sleep, only to be awakened again by the banging of the heavy anchor chain being raised overhead, shaking me awake for good.

Clang, clang, clang.

Rolling out of my bunk in the dark, a hangover pounding in my head, the true meaning of the term Club Demijohn slowly dawned upon me.

Bam, bam, bam.

Walking through the stateroom and into the galley, I looked up with bleary eyes at my skipper at the wheel, the faint green light of the radar casting an eerie glow upon his face. I climbed the two steps and plopped myself down upon the settee. It was dark outside. We were cruising along at half speed. The friendly banter of last evening had given way to a grim silence. Unsure exactly what the battle plan was, I knew enough to keep my mouth shut. Paul changed course a few times, eventually coming about and heading back towards our anchorage. He turned his head in the direction of my darkened silhouette as if he had just noticed me sitting there.

“Submarine drill,” he confided in me.

“oh…”

“Minesweeping,” he said, peering back into the radar as if that explained it all.

“Ok.”

He nodded toward the fo’c’sle. “Hit the bunk. I’ll get you up in a while.

Good idea, I thought to myself. This is above my pay grade.

A few hours later, I stood in the open cockpit, hugging my coffee mug against the chilly morning breeze, a steel gray down emerging. We were charging out to the fishing grounds. Paul stuck his head out the galley door. You can bait up a few of those hooks there,” he said, ducking back inside.

A small bunch of leaders was draped over a tub of salted herring. I found the herring needle and started splitting tails and running the leaders through them. Lining them up in rows, I carefully pinched their heads with the tiny steel clips, trying to get the correct angle that wouuld make the bait “swim” behind the flasher without spinning. More art than science, this was one of those small yet crucial details in trolling for king salmon that made the fishery so maddening; a subtle shade to a cuttlefish, a particular length to the leader, a specific fractional line voltage to the wire; grown men playing with colored beads, and weighing various hooks by the gram. It was enough to drive a guy crazy.

Just as the engine throttled down to trolling speed, I wiped the salt from my cold fingers, admiring my work'; two dozen herring neatly stacked in the bait tray, homemade reloads ready to fire.

Paul climbed into the pit with me, putting out the starboard lines while I deployed the port side. Gear out, the skipper retreated to the wheelhouse to better spy on his competition. There were several other boats fishing this drag, and Paul peered at them through the glasses as he maneuvered the Demijohn into positions for a swipe at the sweet spot, a twelve-fathom shoal where the big kings lurked.

Meanwhile, I stood in the pit gawking at the unsurpassed scenery before me, searching the seas for whales and birds, imagining myself climbing the distant mountains, or paddling the kelp-strewn, myriad islets of the wild outer coast. For me, fishing was mostly a means to an end, an opportunity to glimpse firsthand the wonders of nature. Or, as one skipper described my often distracted countenance, ‘counting the bumps on clouds.” I was the typical young deckhand with absolutely nothing at stake.

Paul stuck his head out the door.

“Russell just pulled two kings…” he shouted back at me, sounding vaguely like it was somehow my fault.

Nearly and hour passed and Paul had rubbed the edge tight, but our lines remained undisturbed. He followed his nemesis, Russell, watching him pull four more kings right in front of us. This brought the skipper out of the wheelhouse forthwith. He jumped down into the pit next to me.

“What the hell is going on back here?” he demanded, inspecting the baited hooks.

“All this bait is poison. Strip the hooks. Go down in the hold and bring up another ten dozen herring out of the ice, and salt them down.” A man obsessed he scrambled back into the wheelhouse lest he missed Russell bringing aboard any more fish.

I stood alone in the pit looking at the baited hooks and contemplating Paul’s order. Suddenly, the starboard heavy sprang to life. Seconds later the port wing began to jerk wildly.

“Starboard heavy!” Paul shouted. Engaging the clutch, I slowly wound in the stainless wire, unsnapping each leader and coiling them neatly into the gearbox. I managed to conk and pull in two big kings on the bottom two spreads. Both were on bait.

“They took the bait, Paul!” I yelled up to the wheelhouse.

The port side had a triple header, all on biat.

“All on the bait Paul!” I shouted again, rebaiting the lines with the poisoned herring.

The clatter seemed to have a calming effect on him. He said nothing more about digging out fresh bait, remained at the helm while I cleaned the salmon, lowered them afterward carefully into the fish hold, and laying them on ice.

The fishing was steady through the flood, and we were working on 25 kings by early afternoon. Paul came out and ran a few lines, but mostly he let me run the show while he trolled as close to a rock wall as he dared, snagging a couple of sea cucumbers along the way.

By mid-afternoon, the fishing slowed to the occasional king salmon. At one point I lost a beautiful, tail-dancing king stretched the snubber taut before spitting out the hook and disappearing like a ghost. I stood looking sternward, a sinking feeling in my gut. Damn, I thought, that was a nice fish.

Almost immediately the port heavy started pounding. Before I could reach the gurdy handle, Paul jumped into the pit.

“OK, get out of the way.” We slid by each other. I watched him bring in the line. “First of all, take off those damned gloves. You need to be able to feel the line. Secondly, don’t “grandmother” these fish. You have to bring them to the boat right away.”

We were only dragging 20 fathoms of wire. The kings were averaging over 20 pounds, and coming up lively. He lectured me while coiling down the top spreads. I watched the incoming wire as it was pulled back like a bowstring, quivering with life. Before long Paul got to the bottom spread, a 40-pounder launched itself skyward behind the boat like a Trident missile, a six-inch yellow plug dangling colorfully alongside its massive head. Lecture over, he focused his attention on the problem at hand.

The rubber snubber attached to the wire was stretched out double its length, and it took two hands and all of his strength for Paul to unsnap it from the wire and reattach it to and even longer “super snubber” A battle of wills now, Paul grabbed the long gaff and made a heroic effort at appearing to be the one in control.

“Sometimes, you only get one crack at them".” Before he could finish the sentence the king careened directly for the boat at such a great velocity that Paul could only watch, holding the gaff poised over his head like a batter watching a fastball go by. The fish swam inside the stabilizer line until it came to the end of its leash up along the bow of the boat. Holding on again with both hands, he was pulled halfway out of the pit by the force of the king flipping ass over tea kettle, the big number 11 hook embedded in its jaw.

Now the big fish reversed course, shooting directly along the side of the boat again as Paul made a desperate swing at his target. The gaff made a great splash, drenching his face with water. We both watched as the tormented king once again reached the end of its line, about thirty feet behind the boat. This time it shook the hook, and the plastic, cigar-shaped lure shot back toward us like it was fired from a gun. Instinctively, I ducked in to the pit as the plug slammed into the stern rail and disintegrated. Paul stood staring at where the king salmon had disappeared, saltwater dripping off his nose. After a moment, he turned, dropped the gaff into the checker, and climbed back out of the pit.

“Well,” he managed to say casually as he headed back toward the wheelhouse. “You can’t get them all.”

They say trolling is a good career choice for social misfits. Guys who would otherwise end up on the dole or institutionalized can actually become upstanding, tax-paying citizens. As it turned out, I ended up buying my own troller several years later. Who would’ve guessed it? Another grown man playing with coloered beads, mentoring indifferent deckhands, and, after a few season, rendering myself unqualified for any other kind of employment except going around in circles on the ocean. I was soon caught up in that manic cycle of coming into town with a good load of fish on one ocassion, strutting down the boardwalk like a puffed-up highliner, only to come slinking into town another time to sell a mediocre trip, castigating myself as the lowest of creatures, a troller who couldn’t catch a fish.

It has been a great lifestyle, and Captain Paul played a big role in encouraging me to pursue it. He must have seen the potential in me. Thanks for everything, captain. It’s been real.