{"id":2534,"date":"2018-09-28T15:05:46","date_gmt":"2018-09-28T15:05:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lelandhale.com\/wordpress\/?p=2534"},"modified":"2018-09-28T15:05:46","modified_gmt":"2018-09-28T15:05:46","slug":"leland-e-hale-poses-commercial-fisherman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lelandhale.com\/wordpress\/leland-e-hale-poses-commercial-fisherman\/","title":{"rendered":"Leland E. Hale Poses as a Commercial Fisherman"},"content":{"rendered":"

Research, research, research. That’s my mantra. And if you want to write about what it’s like to be a commerical fisherman… you have to become a commercial fisherman, if only for a little while. I readily admit that I didn’t get to this realization in a straight line. There was, in fact, a hole\u00a0in my process.<\/p>\n

I couldn’t avoid admitting that\u00a0when, in\u00a01994, a friend gently admonished me. “How can you write about murder on a seine boat,” she wondered, “if you’ve never worked on a purse seiner?”<\/p>\n

Fair enough, I said. “But I don’t happen to have a purse seiner handy.”<\/p>\n

“I do,” she said. “My brother-in-law has a purse seiner in Alaska and he’s going fishing in two weeks.”<\/p>\n

“Can you arrange it?”<\/p>\n

“He asked me if I wanted to work this season,” she said. “You’ll have to work, too. What can you do?”<\/p>\n

“I can cook?”<\/p>\n

\n

In a whirlwind of arrangements — buying airline tickets for the flight north; finding\u00a0the right clothes, including a hat for the fishing grounds, so I wouldn’t get slimed by jelly-fish; grabbing\u00a0a duffle bag to carry my purposefully sparse belongings; and cooking a crew menu for an audience of one (my friend) — I was off to Cordova, Alaska. As a cook on a purse seiner. It was only a two-week commitment. Little did I know how much would be crammed into those 300 plus hours.<\/p>\n

After a short, mandatory stop in Yakutat — where we spotted eagles in the trees just off the runway — we landed at Merle K. “Mudhole” Smith<\/a> airport in Cordova. If you don’t have a truck, the airport is about as far as you can drive in Cordova. The paved road ends at the runway, 11 miles out of town.<\/p>\n

\"fisherman\"
\nCordova, Alaska<\/strong> (summer)<\/p>\n

As a sign of my dumb-shit status, I assumed we’d go fishing right away. That wasn’t the case. First, there was prep work to be done. We rendezvoused with\u00a0skipper Earling Carlson and\u00a0the F\/V Three Sisters\u00a0<\/em>at the Cordova docks. Our trusty vessel\u00a0needed some spring cleaning before we went anywhere near the fishing grounds.<\/p>\n

After scrubbing\u00a0her stem-to-stern, at high tide we motored over to what Earling called “the grid,” which I learned was a clever substitute for a dry dock. After tying up the Three Sisters<\/em>, we waited for low tide, when she’d be high-and-dry. It was then that we scrambled like ants; we needed to scrape and paint her hull before the next tide came in.<\/p>\n

My friend grumbled that this should have been done the previous season, when Three Sisters<\/em> was put in for the winter. I didn’t care. I was there to learn. Earling Carlson was going to make sure I did. I wasn’t ever going to be a professional fisherman, but I sure as hell would discover what it took to be one.<\/p>\n

\"fisherman\"
\nLongliner on a grid in B.C.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Copyright Leland E. Hale (2018). All rights reserved.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Craig\"<\/p>\n

Order “What Happened In Craig<\/strong>,” HERE<\/strong><\/a> and HERE<\/strong><\/a>, true crime from Epicenter Press about Alaska’s Worst Unsolved Mass Murder<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Research, research, research. That’s my mantra. And if you want to write about what it’s like to be a commerical…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8,14,16,17,18],"tags":[22,35,52,57,77,86],"class_list":["post-2534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alaskas-worst-unsolved-mass-murder","category-craig-alaska","category-mass-murder","category-the-investor","category-true-crime","category-what-happened-in-craig","tag-alaskas-worst-unsolved-mass-murder","tag-cordova-alaska","tag-leland-e-hale","tag-mass-murder","tag-three-sisters","tag-what-happened-in-craig"],"yoast_head":"\nLeland E. Hale Poses as a Commercial Fisherman - Leland E. Hale<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"To learn what it takes to be a commercial fisherman, I went fishing on a purse seiner in Southeast Alaska. 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