Seaworthy by Linda Greenlaw Page A

stirred. The other guys were in the three-sided steel structure on the stern called the setting house, where they were working on gear. There was a satisfaction about their work, I thought. These guys seemed genuinely happy to be here. And now they took pleasure in doing something that had a direct correlation to catching fish. All the sweaty, dirty chores we did at the dock served no purpose other than getting the boat offshore. Of course, getting off the dock is necessary, but making gear is more pertinent to what we all had a passion for—catching fish. In the past I had to get on the crew a bit to be meticulous about how the gear went together, as they often hurried through the job and the results could be sloppy. With Timmy’s sportfishing experience, I knew that he would be anal about the gear—to a greater degree than even I was. As the greenhorn, Hiltzie would follow the lead set by the others. Dave Hiltz was bent on doing a good job, which was refreshing.
    Machado measured four-hundred-pound-test monofilament fishing line in two-fathom lengths and crimped a snap—a small clothespin-type gadget that functions to secure leaders to the main line—onto one end. Over and over he made the “tops” of leaders while Tim cut “tails”—three-fathom pieces of the same mono onto which he attached hooks using crimps. In this case they were D crimps, sized to fix this gauge of monofilament—half-inch sections of tube-shaped aluminum into which the newly cut ends of monofilament are shoved and mashed together with a tool called a crimper. The two sections of leaders are crimped together, joined by a small lead swivel. Hook-to-snap assemblies are called leaders, and the men would be busy making them until all three hook boxes were full—approximately three thousand leaders. It was enough work to keep them employed the entire length of the transit to our destination.
    While Machado and Tim made leaders, Dave Hiltz worked on ball drops. During fishing, the main line is suspended by flotation that keeps it relatively close to the surface of the ocean. The bullet-shaped Styrofoam floats—or dobs, as some fishermen refer to them—are attached to the main line using snaps, which are fixed to five-fathom pieces of monofilament that act to allow the main line to sink to that depth. The main line needs to be some depth below the surface to avoid some of the part-offs that are often encountered and the spin-ups that can occur when the gear is in the turbulence of waves. Spin-ups, which happen when the leaders and ball drops curl tightly around the main line rather than dangling freely from it, are a time-consuming nightmare. And a part-off, the breaking of the main line in midstring, occurs when the line is crossed by a ship that has a draft deeper than the line’s position beneath the surface of the water, or when a shark bites the line in two, or when it’s stretched beyond its tensile strength. A typical set is thirty to forty miles of thousand-pound-test monofilament main line, a thousand leaders, and three hundred floats. So if the gear is constantly spun up and parted off—severed by sharks, ships, or current—you’re in for a long, hellish day.
    Hiltz measured five-fathom ball drops, pulling mono from a spool hand over hand and stretching it at arm’s length, each stretch being six feet, or one fathom. Dave crimped a snap to one bitter end and tied a three-inch eye, or loop, in the other end, into which the floats themselves would be snapped when we set the gear out five days from now. Completed ball drops were cranked onto an aluminum spool, where they are stored when not in use. The main line was stored on its own drum, mounted to the deck just aft of the fo’c’sle and looking like a giant spool of thread with a hydraulic motor on one end. The line would free-spool off the drum when “setting out” (putting fishing gear into the water)