Fishing is not always a money maker.

The risks we take are very real. Last Spring, Sierra witnessed this first hand when her boat was struck by another and then nearly capsized as an enormous school of herring died and almost took the F/V Shady Lady down with them.

My unfortunate luck had nothing to do with collisions or too many fish, rather, quite the opposite. What happens when no fish arrive?

Poor seasons are no anomaly to fishermen. We’ve all experienced them. But I have never been apart of a non-existent one.

You can imagine how disheartening it can be for a crewman to spend $600 one-way from Anchorage to Dutch Harbor (see our PenAir post to fully understand) only to wait for almost four weeks and no sign of any biomass of salmon anywhere.

For the past two summers I crew on my father’s boat in Dutch Harbor for the month of August after skippering my boat in Bristol Bay. In 2009 we had a fruitful season with enough fish to keep us happy and for the small fleet to work the bays and inlets hunting pink salmon (I included the photo album below).

It is naturally a small run, but there is just enough fish to keep the fleet moving and making money. The strangest part was the creeks and rivers were full of salmon to reproduce for the coming years. There just wasn’t any buildup, or extra, for the fishermen to catch.

I grew up on the Aleutians and there is truly no other place like it. Picture in your mind a cold Hawaii with little to no civilization. Waterfalls plummet thousands of feet upon endless green cliffs where my childhood mind pictures terradactyles swooping in and out. The beauty of this remarkable place did not change this summer, but my reason for being there did.

We waited. And waited.

More boats showed up because the pink salmon weren’t arriving elsewhere. It was terrible to hear the stories of boats in Prince William Sound that could ‘walk on fish’ because they were so thick. A boat cannot be registered to fish salmon in more than one area per year. We were committed.

Finally, a skipper and a boat need to cut there losses and move on to something else. The other crewmen and I left the Aleutians with a net loss of $1200 for our plane tickets and four less weeks of our precious summers not spent with girlfriends, families and warm summer BBQ’s.

A crewman can’t let his or her mindset go negative and it’s important to keep busy during the slow times and look at what was learned.

“You can’t catch yesterdays fish” they say.

I was living in last year’s mindset when I stopped fishing Bristol Bay and turned my attention to Dutch Harbor. Even though our season began to wind down, there was plenty of money to be made. They also say never to run away from fish, meaning, if you are already making good money then don’t go chase the kahuna. Sit there and grind. Live and learn. Why do cliches have to be so damn right?