Fishing about and about fishing
M. Ben-Yami Column WORLD FISHING AND AQUACULTURE April 2015
Book reviews
DEAD RECKONING
In the old times when I was still fishing, which is 40-70 years ago, we often used dead reckoning (DR) to estimate our position. Starting with our last known position, we drew a line on the map representing our magnetic course (corrected by deviation and variation, if known). On this line we measured the distance passed, according to our speed, measured using a log; ooops! It just came to me that not all of my readers of the GPS generation might know what a ship's log was. I checked in Wikipedia – they didn't either; had to go to my 40-years old Oxford to find a partial explanation, the 35-years old Webster was better updated. Anyway, our log was about a foot long, torpedo-like device, though which was threaded a logline shackled to a propeller designed to revolve according to the boat's speed through water. The logline, long enough to keep the log out of the vessel's wake turbulence, and rotated by the prop led to a mechanical indicator on board that translated its rpm to speed in knots. Anyway, our positions calculated by dead reckoning remained virtual, until we arrived to a point where we could re-establish our true position by means of astronomic, coastal, or radio-navigation (if equipped with a radio-direction-finder and sailing within reach of rafdio beacons), correct the course and start DR again. extension
The author, Dave Atcheson, a writer and a journalist, is a former herring fishermen and the Dept. of Fish and Game employee, a recreational fisherman and fly-fishing instructor and also an active environmentalist. The book's very title: DEAD RECKONING: Navigating a Life on the Last Frontier, Courting Tragedy on Its High Seas, (www.skyhorsepublishing.com) conveys in full what it is about. For about a half of the book, told in parallel lines, Dave's first greenhorn encounter with purse seining for salmon off Alaska under a half-crazy skipper, and his return there, thirteen years later, as an experienced skiff operator to purse seine for roe herring, make a good, sometimes thrilling reading, which keeps you stuck to the book. The reading is easy, and you soon get used to the two interchanging parallel narratives, a couple of pages here and now, and another couple there and later, which goes on for the first half of the book, You find yourself drawn into the life on board a small fishing vessel, the focs'l talk, and the perpetual rubbing shoulders with three others, mostly deadly tired, but sticking to it since you can't go off when at sea, and you keep coming back from a spell on the land, because of the good earnings.
The author describes the erstwhile 24-hrs fishing "seasons" with the resulting bonanza-style fishing, before some years later other management methods were introduced, the marathon working hours, the "Oh, shit" moments, and the close encounters with disasters he survived. I'd suggest the uninitiated readers to arm themselves with a good map of S.Alaska, do some googling for "Alaska fisheries" and read the book by all means.
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THE FISH THAT CHANGED AMERICA
I don't know how many recreational, freshwater anglers are among the readers of this column. I'd guess that not many. No fishing can be farther off my experience than angling with lures for a largemouth bass or, for that matter, for any other fish in freshwater lakes, rivers and reservoirs, which is what this book is about. Well I did hook many fish using trolling lines for young tunas, bonitos, barracudas, and other fast swimmers and high jumpers, mainly on the way to and from marine fishing grounds, towing simultaneously anything between 2 and 7 troll-lines, each with its own rubber "shock absorber" a perfect tool for tiring the fish caught on artificial lures. Hardly sporty, but efficient. I also caught quite a few sharks, 1.5-2.5 m long, on large hooks baited usually with small sharks with bellies cut open for better attraction, with bite-proof chain or steel-wire leaders, whenever they had been raging in frenzy about the hauled codends, preying on spilling small fish during hauling. Hardly sporty, either. In my tens of years of fishing in four seas and a few lakes, I never caught a fish for the fun of it. Nevertheless, I do respect anglers, whether they eat or sell the fish they caught, or release them back in water, for I can appreciate their capturing and hauling on board sometimes heavy, struggling fish, using their thin synthetic lines and unbelievably elastic rods, and, nonetheless, the business they bring about. This book is about a trade in which some specialize to a very high degree of proficiency and around which has developed a whole social/cultural system of behaviour and relations.
Steve Price produced the 300-pp THE FISH THAT CHANGED AMERICA (same publisher as above) with great love to both, the fish and the people involved. The fish largemouth bass – Micropterus salmoides - which in fact is not a bass, but a member of the sunfish family Centarchidae, was portrayed by a 19th century enthusiast "the gamest fish that swims". The formerly commercially caught fish has become since a main game fishing target and one around which prestigious tournaments are held. While the book's title may sound a tiny-little-bit exaggerated, according to the author: "No species has ever received as much public attention, created such a nationwide economic impact, or changed the American lifestyle as dramatically as has this individual species". He claims that the economic impact of largemouth-centered recreational fishing industry exceed annually US$40 billion, while in Texas alone sport fishermen spend over US$3 billion/year.
Largemouth bass - Micropterus salmoides
And all the years I thought that no fishes were more important in America than cod and salmon…
