Once we’re dressed head-to-toe in rubber, it’s time to fish. How do we to it? Watch and learn:
Of course, we need a net.
Which we stack in a small rubber raft.
We pull the raft into the water and clip one end to a ring that’s tied to a rope that’s anchored to a buoy way out in the water.
At the precise moment (the Alaska Department of Fish and Game tells us exactly when we can and can’t fish), I pull the raft in toward shore, and the net slides out of the raft behind me. Once I’m to the shore, I tie the other end of the net to the rope so that it stretches for 100 yards from the shore.
When fish swim along and get caught in the net, I pull them out by hand and toss them into the little rubber raft.
When I get back to shore, I throw the fish into a big nylon bag called a brailer.
Every so often, guys come along with a big truck with a big crane on the back. The crane picks up our brailer, weighs our fish, and hands us a little pink slip that tells us how much we caught. At the end of the season, they pay us a certain price per pound of fish.
The funny thing is, we don’t even know what that price is going to be until the season is over. It’s strange and complicated. Go ask your parents about economic principles. If any of it makes sense, could you please explain it to me?
To see the whole process (with many more pictures and explanations), check out this post from the summer of 2007.