Personally I felt this trip was ill-omened, because instead of any kind of back-and-forth discussion between Arthur and me over when we would go next, Arthur simply imperiously announced, last night, “So we are going fishing tomorrow.” It’s just another example of his recent imperiousness in matters of communication, I guess. It meant I was grumpy, starting out.
Arthur got up quite early – around 5 AM, which is also when I normally get up. I found him already up when I went into the kitchen to get my oatmeal. But he futzed around with his anxiety with respect to a freezer malfunction and we only finally left at 6:30.
The weather was supposed to be light wind and no rain, and it cooperated in that respect. The swells at the open ocean felt quite substantial, but that was forecast too.
We drove the boat directly out to east side of Noyes Island just west of Siketi, where we’d caught the two coho on our last trip. We trolled through the channel and down along the east side of Noyes at Saint Nicholas Channel. We caught one quite small coho and one small black bass. We ventured into the open ocean south of the channel, but the swells made me uncomfortable and I could tell Arthur was struggling keeping his footing as he deployed the downriggers, though he’d never have admitted it.
We trolled back up alongside Noyes, back and forth over the spot where we’d had success the other day, until the low tide had come. Nothing more.
So we went to San Ignacio (which is on the way back, anyway). The commercial fleet was still there, as they’d been the previous few times. I theorized that it was because it was where they were being allowed to fish, and not necessarily because that’s where the fish were. The commercial boats are often restricted by regulation to smallish areas. Arthur said he hadn’t thought of that – his tone said that meant it wasn’t worth thinking of.
But I saw a lot of sonar fish (I’m never sure if they’re really fish, but their shape/size/movement on the under-boat sonar always make me think they’re fish). So maybe there were some fish here. We trolled all the way down the east side of San Ignacio to the southern end, and back up. We caught a tiny black bass. Finally, Arthur landed a fairly substantial coho at around 1:45, back up at the northeast corner of the island.
Because we needed to get fuel, we decided that despite that unexpected success, we should pull in and head back.
We had a stuttering engine problem – which we’ve had before, sporadically. I always feel like it seems like vapor lock or some kind of fuel supply problem. When we have it, it’s always much more likely when the tank on the boat is low. It was much worse this time. It was like the boat was running out of fuel. The indicator was at a quarter tank. But maybe that’s not very accurate? We had brought along the 5 gallon extra fuel, so we added that to the tank. We still had the stuttering problem, on the way in to the dock.
We got our fuel. The fuel dock was busy – the sports fishermen are out in force, COVID be damned. I feel a lot of anxiety about parking the boat at the fuel dock when there are other boats – I don’t feel like I have enough experience to be particularly competent, and I worry about offending the other boaters with my bad driving skills. It’s hard to slot yourself in to a spot at the dock when other boats are tied up there.
We got fuel and headed home. The engine ran smooth for about 20 minutes and we were feeling optimistic that the stuttering problem had been entirely an issue related to the tank being low. Perhaps the fuel pump had trouble getting fuel when it was low? But then the engine stuttered when we were within one mile. This is the most common place to experience the stuttering problem, in the past – enough so that Joe once called it our “Bermuda Triangle.”
It’s annoying, because neither Arthur nor I have any idea what causes the problem, and since it’s sporadic, it’s very hard to take it to a mechanic and have them diagnose it. Not to mention that taking the boat to the mechanic is a very major ordeal, requiring taking the boat out of the water and putting it on the trailer.
I left Arthur to butcher the fish and I went up to water the garden. I don’t like being around when he butchers the fish. When he was done, I walked back down to the dock and washed the boat. Arthur seemed surprised that I was going to wash the boat, despite the fact that I always wash the boat, and I had told him when we’d docked that I would come back down later to wash the boat.
Year-to-date totals:
- Coho: 6
- Halibut: 1
- Lingcod: 1
Coda
During this trip, I had resolved to not bother talking except when spoken to directly – because we spend most of our time in a communication no-man’s-land, between my spontaneous statements and his refusal to listen or care what I have to say. I mostly stuck to this resolve, so I was quite taciturn I suppose. Arthur didn’t seem to care. And the few times when my resolve failed and I did say something spontaneous… each and every time, they began with “what?” (because unless he himself has immediately asked me a question, he isn’t paying attention), and ended with a dispute about some factual aspect or another of what I was trying to say. Trivial things:
“That boat is towing something, a raft or skiff,” I said. I had been watching the boat for a while, and had seen the two from the side. It was evident to me.
“What?”
I repeated my exact words, more slowly. Then he said, “What boat?” He scanned the horizon for a while. “No. The black thing is in front of the boat.”
“I saw it earlier. It’s towing,” I explained.
“Maybe. If you say so.” An almost resentful tone.
The trip was exhausting: not physically, for me, but emotionally. Not because it’s a fishing trip, but because 10 continuous hours cooped up with Arthur in our communicative purgatory is taxing.
