"We've got fish, we need

more markets"

Klas Stolpe

July 28, 2005.

“We’ve got fish,” F/V Outlook captain Aaron Miller said via cell phone. The sounds of the Petersburg fishermen’s engines pulling fathoms of net through the water towards his seine skiff, of lines tightening under stress, and waves breaking against the bow could be heard in the background.

“Now we need more markets. I couldn’t fish yesterday because I couldn’t sell my fish.”

The 30-year old Miller, selling to Ocean Beauty Seafoods, has been fishing since he was eight years old. This is his first season as a seining captain.

“We’re closing up now, got to go. It looks good.”

While Ocean Beauty had to back off on salmon catches last week, Petersburg’s two other major seafood processors Icicle and Norquest kept tenders moving in and out of town with regularity. With four-day on, one-day off openings, Icicle gives fishermen catch quotas of 60,000 pounds every two days.

“I’ve never quite seen anything like this,” F/V Janet G captain Kirby Green stated. “Everywhere you set the net you catch fish, luckily. So far the boat has been full every night. This sure seems like a different kind of year.”

Green, seining for Icicle Seafoods, has been fishing since he was nine. The 56-foot wooden seine boat Janet G was built in 1929 and packs 45,000 pounds.

“It’s nice for us little boats,” Green said of the two-day quotas. “It’s about all I can hold anyway.”

Fishing has been strongest on the northern end of southeast, towards Chatham Strait and beginning to push down into Frederick Sound.

“Catches on the south side have picked up considerably also,” Petersburg’s ADG&G fisheries biologist William Bergmann commented. “It looks like we are on the mid-point of the run judging by sex ratio sampling.”

Bergmann stated that 200 boats were fishing the districts, slightly more than last season.