Fish #1: What's a Gaff? April 11, 2012

Undaunted by the fact that I know nothing about fishing, or even about fish, for that matter, until the stage at which I recognize them as steaks and filets in my fish monger's refrigerated case, I have accepted the responsibility for fishing aboard sv Mersoleil.

Growing up in a river town on the upper Mississippi did nothing for me in this regard. I suppose people there must have fished, but no one ever told me about it.

Raising my son in downtown Chicago I got as deeply involved in fishing as I have ever been before. We went to Morrie Mages or someplace and bought a couple of little fishing rods with wee little spools of green nylon line and tiny hooks already attached. Being the dutiful mother of a son, I marched out to the end of the North Avenue pier on half a dozen occasions where we threw our , no I think we cast our little hooks out into Lake Michigan and hauled in a few wriggling brown alewives. Which was ridiculous because the beach was littered with the very same fish, already dead, right there for the taking. But I didn't say anything. He seemed enthused about fishing for them the hard way.

Ten years later my son and I learned to SCUBA dive performing our certification dives in the stunning azure waters of Grand Cayman where fantastic yellow, black and blue tropical fish are varied and abundant. One afternoon as the dive boat returned us to shore he turned to me and said, "Mom, why would anyone ever go fishing when you can just go down there and take the one you want?"

Excellent point, I thought. Thus ended my fishing career. Until this passage.

Preparing myself to face the role of fish wife aboard Mersoleil, I prowled the aisles of Sea Mar several times over the year before our departure from Seattle. Seattle Marine and Fishing Supply Company is the definitive fisherman's resource in Seattle, right on the water at Salmon Bay, where all the serious fishing boats spend their off-duty time between trips to Alaska.

Sea Mar is where the Deadliest Catch boys shop. Not that I felt qualified to join them. But I knew that we would take seriously the opportunity, indeed the necessity, to provide our table with delicious fresh seafood while on long passages. I know what to do with the filet once I have it, but I've remained happily clueless of the steps up to the point at which I tell the man at Pike Place Market how much it should weigh and how thick each piece.

Sea Mar is a wonderful store! I first went there for a gaff. Our list of emergency equipment said we should have a gaff, that they are useful for catching fish from a liferaft not that I ever hope to try that. I was horrified when I saw what a gaff was. A wooden stick like a broomstick with a lethally sharp stainless steel hook screwed into one end making the entire tool look something like a letter J. What size did I want, I was asked by the lady who was assisting me. She looked like she would know what size gaff she needed, but I needed to view one first, and perhaps find out their intended purpose before I could specify a size. Oh my gosh! There were at least twenty different sizes of gaffs from which to choose, all identical but growing larger in minute increments as one walked past the display.

"I don't know, what do you suggest?"

She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Her look said 'you can't do anything for yourself, can you?' So I admitted knowing nothing and she explained that gaffs are used to help land a fish and haul it up onto the boat from the water or the net. You stick the sharp hooked end into the fish' gill and bring it up on board with a heave ho. Ew! Ultimately I selected a 26" gaff which we can't find at this moment but I know it's here somewhere. My selection criteria were two: 1, I probably don't need a gaff at all to lift a fish that would fit a smaller gaff. And 2,if I catch a fish so huge I'll need a gaff bigger than this one, I'm not going to be able to get that fishy up on deck at all. So, like Goldilocks chose her chair, I went for the gaff that seemed not too large, not too small.

My emergency equipment list included a few other fishing supplies. Hooks, monofilament line. But I needed to get this whole fishing thing under control or, at a minimum, I needed to collect a little kit of the essentials so that when eventually I got the urge to become involved in this art, I'd be prepared to engage in it. So I wandered the store and was mesmerized by the plastic lures in crazy bright colors and flashing metallics. And hooks of every size and description, numbered like knitting needles from small to large. Some of the hooks had just one simple sharp point. Others had two or three hooks each, and barbs on those points seemed to be another option whose purpose I felt quite sure I could guess. There were bins like in the hardware stores holding heavy little metal pellets of various shapes and weights, plastic beads that reminded me of the 'pop bead' necklaces I made as a little girl, even hooks named after the fish that would bite on them. How do they know which hook is for them? All very mysterious and new.

Fascinating, too. But I wasn't going to build my kit by staring at shelves full of unrecognizable doodads. I confessed my ignorance again to the lady in case she hadn't remembered, and told her our plans to cruise the world and gather our own food on passage.

"Oh!," she said, "You want to talk to Rob."

I knew it. She was unloading me on somebody else and was going to find herself a customer who would make his purchase without needing a college course in baiting a hook.

Rob Shiveley appeared and he did give me the college course! Or the Cliff Notes version anyway. An accomplished draughtsman, as he explained to me why I needed all these teeny parts, Rob sketched out how they were to be connected together, with what material, how long, how big, even the name of the knot to be used and the name of the fish I could catch with such a contraption!

Several visits to Sea Mar over the last year we were in Seattle and I had three Rob Shiveley originals, a collection of fishing equipment required to rig each of the assemblies he had drawn for me, a very vague concept of how I would use this stuff to catch a fish as we sailed across the ocean and a net bag into which I could stuff it all until the spirit moved me to go fish.

The spirit moved me the day after we sailed from Puerto Vallarta last week. Fishing is huge in Mexico. Mexico has a greater variety of fish and these in greater abundance than almost anyplace else in the world. And I heard someone say on more than one occasion, "You'll catch all the fish you're going to catch on this passage in the first 250 miles off the Mexican coast. The whole rest of the way to French Polynesia is open deep ocean and you won't catch another thing."

Finding the blue net bag of fishing gear was a trick. It was stuffed inconspicuously in the dark back corner of a lazarette. The Mexican government is so sure that visitors, most especially visitors in boats, have come to Mexico to fish that they demand high fees for their fishing licenses, around $400. And they insist that you buy the fishing license regardless of whether you've come to fish the Mexican waters. They claim that merely possessing fishing equipment is grounds for mandatory purchase of the fishing license and they interrogate arriving yachties about whether or not they have fishing gear on board. I did not come to Mexico to fish, stuffed the collection in that inky recess of the port lazarette, thrice denied that I was in possession of fishing paraphernalia and felt like St. Peter.

We did not, of course, fish in Mexican waters. We were too busy getting ready to jump the puddle, to sail to French Polynesia, and I was still disinclined to fool around with the accoutrements in the blue bag. Not to mention the dreaded gaff.

But once 100 nautical miles offshore and settled in for the passage, the obligation to fish while the fishing was good began to weigh heavily and I went in search of the Sea Mar stuff and Rob's artwork, original, autographed and including his email address. He wants a full report with pictures.

His drawings were actually terrific and I assembled two rigs exactly as illustrated. Hugely gratifying was the fact that the little knots I tied in the monofilament line actually stayed tied. I did not think myself capable of tying a good fisherman's knot. The tuna snubbers fitted nicely on aft cleats, one on each, and I ran the lines out the chocks and into the water.

How do you know if a fish has bitten? You can't tell a thing looking at the turbulent surface behind the boat. I hauled in the lines once or twice to check, but they weighed almost nothing and it was clear they had been unvisited. There was nothing live on the hooks so I left the lines running overnight. I admit a sense of disappointment, but knew I had no right to expect instant success. And, hey! I was still happy that the knots held and I didn't lose the little orange bobbing thing and the faux squid! Sometimes I can be so easily pleased.

Every now and again when the lines are out, I look over the stern to see if anything is trailing behind the boat aft of the orange thing Rob sold me which bobs up and down invitingly. On Wednesday afternoon, oh my gosh!, there was clearly a fish swimming along at the surface directly behind the orange thing! I was gleeful, partly simply because I had missed the part in which the fish fights a losing battle for its life. I didn't know what kind of fish was back there, probably would never know, but I'd captured my very first fish at sea and I was ecstatic.