The Fisher Queen by Sylvia Taylor Page B

would be my side. By then Paul had swung us into our westward tack and I watched the sullen, low shore slip by. Offshore there was an odd, dark density that seemed too low for clouds and too close for horizon.
    I was grateful it had been so lovely the day before but sincerely hoped this bipolar spring weather would settle down soon. I had yet to learn that the North Coast never settled down and was as quixotic as the people were courageous.
    â€œOkay, let’s hope the pilot holds out. Jesus, you’re in no danger of falling out.” Paul laughed and took the lid off the wooden gearbox running along the back of the checkers. “You’re up to your armpits in here. This is what you can do—get the gear ready for me. Remember how we stowed each rolled-up line of Perlon and lures and clipped it together with the snap? I want you to carefully unroll them by holding the snap and gently throwing the rest behind the boat to trail in the water, then snap it to the wire nailed across the cap rail. You have to make sure it’s clipped on tight or you’ll lose it and that’s 5 or 10 bucks down the tubes. Line a few up and I’ll start setting the gear.”
    â€œIf I watch you set your side, can I set mine?”
    â€œNo, not today. You’re always in such a rush to do things. Take it easy.”
    I knew it was pointless to insist. We worked together in concentrated silence as he explained how BC boats could drag six steel lines through the water, three on each side, weighted down with a lead cannonball weighing between 25 and 70 pounds. Ours were 40 pounds and stored in cup-shaped metal holders bolted to the side cap rail, a long reach from the cockpit when setting gear. Each 1/16-inch steel line of up to 150 fathoms (six feet to the fathom) was held on a hydraulic drum called a gurdy, three to a side, which played out one line to a system of bells and triggers spaced along the pole. The lines were submerged and set with gear one at a time, starting with the bowline, then the midline, then the pig line, so named because of the two-by-three-foot rectangular Styrofoam float attached at the line’s midpoint, which caused it to swing out and keep the lines apart in the water.
    As Paul slowly played out each steel line from the gurdy, its cannonball descended to a depth calculated by the number of sets of two metal beads fixed to the wire at one to three fathoms along the line. Each piece of gear was clipped between the two beads by its snap and gently trailed in the water, one after the other. When fully set, a troller resembled a butterfly above the water, while below, set 5 to 10 fathoms above bottom, it trailed scores of twirling lures that mimicked herring and the colourful, squidlike hoochies that were the spring salmon’s dinner. The depth sounder in our cabin continuously flashed numbers that could mean bottom, fish, sunken wreck, reef, pinnacle or anything else its signal hit on the way down.
    Bells on the stabilizer poles’ rigging could signal a smiley , slang for a spring salmon over 12 pounds. But sometimes the bells didn’t work and your fish got beat up by being dragged, or were eaten by seals, or if they weren’t in season, died before you could shake them off. A good fisherman kept the gear moving up and down all day to simulate a school of feed, or feed ball moving in all directions, instead of just swimming in a straight line.
    You pulled in the gear one line at a time so the other tow line kept fishing and to avoid a gear-tangling catastrophe. Normally, an experienced fisherman could go through all the gear, both sides, in a half-hour or so, but this session was a two-hour slow-mo’ event as I absorbed every piece of action and instruction. The latest installment of Gear Setting 101 came rapid-fire but sequentially, and I vowed to myself that I would learn faster and more accurately than any other deckhand he’d had. I watched and nodded in profound,