Done with DIPAC (Douglas Island Pink and Chum) Hatchery

Praise the lord.....

We finished up with our hatchery contract two days ago. Yesterday was my first official day off in over a month!
Working for the hatchery feels like a blessing and a curse all wrapped into one. For one, the contract usually produces great profit for our pockets. My first year fishing for DIPAC, we netted over 7 1/2 million pounds. The fishery takes place inside Gastineau Channel, making it basically located in Downtown Juneau. Every night we come back to our stall and tie up. For crew living in Juneau, it's awesome. They get to go back home and sleep in there bed's. Yet despite the great location and profits of the fishery, fishing for DIPAC gets real old quickly. We work everyday from 6am until around 8 or 9pm. Every single day for a month. Days start to blur into one and pretty soon I have no bearings as to the time, day of the week, or even the date. I shouldn't complain about this because hard work is what fishing's all about. The one thing I will gripe about is fishing in front of the hatchery. What a hell hole. I basically feel like a garbage man up there. A public sport fishing dock and a construction barge terminal sandwich the DIPAC building. Fishing hooks, scrap pieces of metal, car bumpers, and assorted rusted building material litter the sea floor. In addition to pulling up these gems in the net, we get covered with this horribly foul smelling mud that accumulates on the bottom. We pull up eel looking snake fish, sea slugs, and other unpleasent bottom feeders all the time. Basically fishing in right of DIPAC is fun!! WOOHOO!!
As far as fishing goes, this year the fish never really accumulated. We ended up catching around 3 million pounds. Sounds like a lot but compared to 6 or 7, it aint much.

We pick up a new crew member tomorrow whose flying down from Bristol Bay. Then we start our new adventure of fishing with the rest of the fleet. These next two weeks will be a breeze considering I leave on the 15th of August.

One more thing, I pulled a big ol salmon out of a creek yesterday using my bare hands. I was so excited, but then I realized there was one around me to share my glory and I began to feel bad for that poor salmon. I wouldn't want to be riding my bike around and have some giant hand shoot down from the sky and grab me off my bike. Sorry Mr. Dog salmon, my bad.