Bill became part owner of the boat he normally skippered for a good friend, Loman Daury. When tragedy struck and Loman died unexpectedly, Bill partnered with another skipper friend, to buy the old Prince Rupert longliner, Zapora from the widow.
The Zapora was a haywire boat. Everything was wrong with her, but like the Grande Dame she was, she seemed to plug along with baling wire and a wad of chewing gum. That’s not the way Bill rolled however, and before the boat was taken out again, she was overhauled from stem to stern. There was no end to the problems, but finally the work was done. Or so we thought.
More than one “shake-down” trip was made, trying to rid the old girl of her deficiencies. On one of those fishing trips, we asked if Bob, another fisherman friend wanted to come with us to help.
“No, not really!” said Bob, wise man that he was. He knew the Zapora all too well and was legitimately leery. Finally, against his better judgment, Bob allowed himself to be suckered in, such were Mossman’s powers of persuasion.
To this day he still shakes his head over that decision, but the die was cast. We were three feet away from the dock when we discovered the first glitch. The reverse in the steering wouldn’t engage. I still hear Bob in my head, saying in his usual dry tone, This does not bode well!
That entire trip was filled with blown seals, busted gaskets, gears that refused to work, oil that spewed and engine parts rolling in the bilge. I’m still not sure how we caught any cod, but we did. Poor Bob was giddy when he finally crawled off the Zapora onto dry land. He still talks about it when prodded to do so, but like me, he is unable to remember details clearly. Like me, he just doesn’t want to. Bob got lucky. He never had to go back out on the Zapora again. I did.
Finally, after endless hours and a lot of money, the old Zapora worked the way Bill wanted her to work, within reason. Then it was halibut season, which occurred between November and March.
One of the first trips was made in February, when the snow flew horizontally across the deck. We used octopus to bait the hooks, which was bought in solid, frozen blocks from a commercial supply place in Port Hardy. It needed to be cut into chunks for baiting.
By the time the first dozen or so were chopped up, in spite of wearing gloves and liners, my fingers were as frozen as those poor octopi. With those same frozen fingers, I then had to bait the large circle hooks, which would later be attached at intervals, with a 30” lead, called a gangion, and snap, to the 2 mile length of long-line.
In the shot is (L to R) me, Bill at the rail and his partner Leo, cleaning a small halibut.
This setup made the complete string that would be played out behind the boat, to lie on the ocean floor, enticing the halibut to bite. Snapping the baited hooks and gangions onto the long-line as it rolled off the drum and into the water from the stern, was also one of my jobs.
Of all of the work I had to do, the easiest, and simultaneously the hardest, was baiting those hooks while the gear was being hauled back in, bringing the fish onboard. This was the real work, what we were out there for – catching those halibut. The line was brought in over the side, the gangion unsnapped from the mainline, the hook taken out of the fish’s mouth, the gangion then thrown over to me, standing over on the other side of the hatch, ready to re-bait and coil back into a tub for the next set.
It doesn’t sound that hard, does it? An experienced baiter could snatch the gangions being thrown at them, bait and coil with speed, and keep up. Unfortunately, I was not experienced. The hooks and gangions kept piling up in front of me, until I was slowed down even further because of the ensuing snarls! The inevitability of Bill starting to holler at me to speed up was … well … inevitable!
I was frustrated. And getting angrier by the minute. Other deckhands made it look so easy. Eventually, after repeated heated bellows and commands from my captain to speed up, my temper boiled over. I dropped the bait in my hand, picked up the snarled mess in front of me, and prepared to heave the entire lot over the side of the boat. I caught Bill’s eye.
“Don’t you dare!” He says. For a moment we stared at each other. I don’t know what he was thinking, but I was livid, and ready, in a fit of pure rage, to do something quite uncharacteristic for me .. then my common sense kicked back in. I remembered I was supposed to be in love with this man, and I really didn’t want to throw his gear over the side, so I dropped it back on the hatch, and continued to work as best I could.
Later, when both of us had calmed down, we hashed it out. Bill realized, I was not as experienced as other deckhands, and he really did expect a little too much from me. I promised to try and work as fast as I could. I never did get as speedy as those other guys, but damned if they could look as good in oilskins as I could.
My memory still conjures up a brew of circular hooks and snarled gangions, slimy yet frozen bait, wild storms, humongous halibut, dragging anchors, snapped lines, a roller coaster stern, an inundation of cold green Pacific water, and a makeshift replacement gasket involving my embroidery scissors and a piece of thin felt. I was never so glad as when I got back to the sedate business of trolling for salmon.
Elly Mossman
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