I also grew up in a church setting, and as a boy learned of the sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and how that sin lead to God implementing weeds as a reminder to us all of that disobedience.
Genesis 3:17 and 18 tells me ; "Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; 3:18 "Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee..."
Weeds!
My move to the ocean had me all excited. I could work harvesting fish and not have to pull weeds! Oh how wrong I was.
The ocean is full of its own variety of weeds.
We are in our third season of El Nino water currents. Warm water, and with that comes big fat juicy jelly fish.
Starting slowly, the jelly numbers have increased until it is now hard to get bait to certain depths due to getting slimed by the jelly fish. One little strand of jelly on a bait and salmon or halibut will not touch it.
I troll two lines for salmon and one side will be catching and catching while the other just drags along doing nothing. I quickly run the dead side to find it totally engulfed in jelly fish. I have a brush on my fish cleaning tray just for that reason.
I grab the brush and scrub jelly fish all over the back of the boat, add fish attracting scent to the bait and send it back down on the down rigger hoping it will catch a fish before getting clogged with jelly again.
Running back and forth all day checking for jelly fish has a guide sweating just like pulling weeds in the garden back in the lower 48's.
Another weed in the salmon garden is the huge Sea Lion. A line will pop out of the down rigger and the client has a big salmon fighting grandly... all of a sudden line starts screaming off the reel and the pole is nearly dragged out of the clients hands. The "fish" rushes towards the surface even though they don't fight like that. A huge brown head will burst out of the water displaying the lovely salmon. "Sea Lion!" someone will shout. We all stand and watch helplessly as the massive beast shakes the fish in the air, breaking it into bite size pieces to be quickly consumed. One more fish lost to an ocean weed.
Every once in a while a big Salmon Shark will show up and bite salmon off the hook. There is not much tell other than a client reeling in a fish to the boat and have it show up as just a fish head, the body bitten neatly in half.
Halibut fishing brings a whole set of different ocean weeds. In August the ocean waters of South East Alaska reach its warmest temperatures and with those warm waters come Blue Sharks. Blues are the worst of the weeds to be fought. Any blood washed out the boat into the water will have Blues quickly circling the boat. A client will drop a nice fresh chunk of halibut bait and the waiting Blue will simply bite the whole thing off. You can reel back in, bait up, drop back down only to have the swarming Blues bite the bait off again and again. When you run out of hooks or lead weights your halibut fishing day is over. The Blue Shark "weeds" cost us guides a whole lot of money as well as mental stress.
Dog Fish. Spiny Dog fish is a little sand shark that is also a type of ocean weed. The dog fish lives near the bottom and bites like a halibut. Nibble, nibble, nibble then nothing for a while on the line. I have the client reel in to find a shiny bare hook. The little dog fish can eat bait off a hook in no time at all. It doesn't sound bad until it is you reeling up from nearly 600 feet deep to find another bare hook. In a short time all on board are hoping to get rid of the spiny dog fish weed!
The daily battle of weeds on the ocean is wind. Morning after morning all the guides are glued to computer screens trying to figure out wind and wave patterns.
I work with a group of guides and each morning we will gather and lay out our days game plans, it always centers around the wind.
"Windyty shows it might blow till noon then drop a bit," one guide will remark. "I checked Fishweather," another will comment, " it shows nice near shore with the blow coming later."
We will only know for sure by heading out to open ocean for a look. Monster waves smashing over the top of the boat means the wind is definitely blowing and a new "plan" followed.
Summer after summer I find myself battered and beaten by rough ocean. I have to go where I can catch the best fish for the clients. I don't want to be out in nasty ocean, but at times there is just no other way to produce. I do my best to be safe, to call it quits before the ocean turn too ugly, but it seems there are many times I find myself driving my boat through some very blowy heavy seas.
I am looking at about three more weeks of guiding left, my body is beat up I am so very tired... and mostly from dealing with all the silly ocean WEEDS!!!
Salmon Shark
Blue Shark
Rough Ocean
