We've been fishing

We've been fishing, too bad we haven't been catching.

The fishing has been quite poor, and we are never in the right place at the right time. When we try to move to see if it's any better some other place, the place where we just left always seems to get a big run. *sigh* Oh, well… It's hard to believe that I only have 3 more weeks of fishing. We better catch some more fishing soon, if I going to make some money, hopefully seining will be profitable.

The weather has been beautiful! Sunshine and in the low 60's, high 50's. I've been skipping the sweatshirts while fishing normally. I've been just wearing a T-shirt and my rain gear, when I take off my rain gear then I have to put on a sweatshirt or something, because it's too cold for just a T-shirt, even for me. :P Last year I usually wore a lot more clothes: a T-shirt, a long sleeved shirt, a sweat shirt, and a hooded sweat shirt.
So, I've been enjoying the nice weather while we have it.

We went seining a couple days ago. It was only a 24 hour opening, from 8 p.m. July 3rd, to 8 p.m. July 4th. There weren't many fish, but we knew that there wouldn't be very many. We had a lot of learning to do, because this is the first year Rick has had his seiner. So, he's never been the captain of a seiner before, and none of his crew had ever seined before. So, we're all rather new to this.
Seining is quite a bit more complicated than the gill netting that we've been doing. There are more lines, and more shackles and releases, it's a lot to grasp. It's also exhausting. And we need all 4 of us to run the boat, so every man has to be working at the same time, so we can't take shifts. My job is stacking the lead line. (That's my main job, I do other things to like run around hooking up lines and hooks here and there and attaching other things and such.) Rick told me (the day after we did our seining) that stacking leads is the hardest job one the boat. Maybe not the most difficult, but it is the most physically demanding. Anyway, we fishing from 8 p.m. until 1 a.m. then, we got 3 hours of sleep and were back at it at 4 a.m. and we didn't stop until 7:50 p.m. that night, with breakfast and lunch thrown in there in the little bits of time we could spare. By the time we finished I was fully, totally, completely, and utterly exhausted. It was in the 50's and I was only wearing a T-shirt and my rain gear, and I was completely soaked with sweat, head to toe. Often, while working, my glasses would fog up from the sweat evaporating off my face. After a huge dinner, (I was starving too) I took a lukewarm shower, (I'm so thankful that we have a shower on this boat, even though the thermostat is broken and it only gets slightly warm.) and then rolled into bed, and thought about how good of shape I'll be in by the end of the season. :P
By noon I was so tired, that as I was pulling in the lead line I was praying, asking God for strength and endurance. Just praying and stacking as fast as I could. And the Lord gave me the strength to keep up until the very end. It was one of the longest 24 hours in my life. 24 hours, that I don't think I will ever forget. Next week we are supposed to start seining all the time, no more gill netting for the rest of the season. I know that it's going to be hard, but I'm looking forward to it. :) God will provide, like He always does, because He is faithful.

I've been doing pretty well, I don't feel discouraged or lonely like I did about a month ago. The Lord has definitely been at work. Thank you all for your prayers.


Anchor Man Tim