Fourth of July

A massive heap of fish overflowed the four brailer bags between the bow and the stern of our twenty-four foot wooden skiff. We had just picked them from the two nets we had finished going through only minutes ago. One of them lay stacked on the floor of the bow, where I was reaching out to the other skiff as my Dad motored us up to it.
I tied the bow’s anchor line to the buoy the other skiff was tied to, at the outside end of one of our twenty-five fathom nets. I hopped into the other skiff as my dad cut the motor. As soon as he got in and started this skiff’s motor, I untied us from the buoy. We needed the capacity of our second skiff for what we had left to do.
We bounced over the waves to the next site where we had our two remaining nets. As we pulled up to it, I could see more and more heads, fins, and tails sticking out of the water, some still frantically splashing in their hopeless struggle. The net was full. My Dad and I could barely lift it up over the bow. There were less than two hours until our nets had to be out of the water when the opening was over. Fish and Game choppers would soon be swooping over the shore, like seagulls, looking for any fathom of net still in the water so they could confiscate some gear and give out some hefty fines.
With me pulling the cork line and my dad on the lead line, we heaved the net across the bow, picking through it as quick as we could, not saying anything to each other besides a few grunts. My pores were spitting out sweat, soaking my hooded sweatshirt. I couldn’t take the time to remove my stocking cap because the instant I picked one fish’s gills out from the web around it, there were more and more waiting for me. Without time to pick up the fish dropping to our feet as they came pouring in over the port side, our legs were buried.
The tide was already getting low. When we reached the inside end of the net, the buoy at that end was already in the mud instead of floating on the surface of the water. I hopped out into the water, my feet sinking into the mud, to hold the skiff out from getting dry on the beach as my dad untied from the buoy. We both got back in and started pulling the net into the skiff, working our way back out to the outside buoy, stacking it neatly like usual. We had to pick a few lively, kicking fish out of it that had managed to get caught in the last few minutes.
My Dad pulled back the sleeve of his raincoat and his sweatshirt underneath it. “7:03,” he said. The opening was over at 8 and we still had two other nets in the water after this one, probably still filling up with fish.
We both knew what that meant.
“Roundhaul?” I asked.
He nodded.
After untying from the buoy, we heaved the net in, glob of fish by glob of fish, not bothering to take the time to pick them out. When it’s time to roundhaul, there is no time to pick them out and there is no time to think. It all came pouring into the skiff as a big mess of fish, web, corks, and lead line. We had to make sure to step out of it after every pull to make sure not to be buried. My back and arms felt like they were going to give out at any moment and my lungs were on the verge of exploding.
After that was over, the motor wouldn’t start. My Dad switched tanks faster than a starving Ethiopian would reach for a sandwich. He tugged on the pull cord, but nothing happened. He tugged again, this time harder. The motor gave no sign of life.
I realized that the skiff was steadily drifting in towards the beach that was getting bigger every second as the water level lowered and I was struggling to untie the buoy from the net. The knot was rock hard and too tight for even my fingers, strong and callused from picking fish, to pull apart.
I didn’t know how to bring myself to tell my Dad I needed his pliers as he was still yanking furiously at the motor’s pull cord, putting swear words together in ways that didn’t make sense.
“Can you get it?” He looked up to me. “NO? Fuck!”
“Sorry!” There really was nothing I could do.
“Ok. Fine! I’m not mad at you,” he said through clenched teeth, trying to speak softer. Then he yelled, “I’m mad at the damn motor!”
He ran back to the stern and frantically opened the plastic orange tool box from behind the bulkhead. When he ran up to the knot with his pliers, I hopped out, splashing myself in the face with the thick, brown water. I stood knee-deep in it and pushed on the skiff as he pulled on the knot. My feet sank into the mud and I was fearful that the bottom of the skiff was too. I was right. It wasn’t moving.
Uh oh. Shots of memory from when I was eleven years old hit me like bullets through my brain.
“Never let the skiff go dry,” my Dad had said. “If that happens, we’ll be stuck for a very long time. From high tide to the next high tide is twelve hours.”
With my back against it, I pushed on the skiff with my legs as hard as I could, using my stuck feet as a brace.
“Is it dry?” my Dad asked.
I looked at him but couldn’t bring myself to give him an answer.
“Yes!” he yelled. “I can tell by the look on your fucking face!”
I kept pushing as he worked away at the knot. He got it undone, dropped the pliers on the floor and hopped out into the water, splashing me in the face. It would have been cool and refreshing if I had the second to enjoy it.
He got out and we pushed and pushed. After some loud grunts from both of us, we barely managed to shove it back out so it was floating. I continued to push it out into deeper water as he reefed on the motor some more. Whatever leaks I had in my chest waders, I found them as the water level crept up on me.
“Come on!” he yelled as he yanked on the cord. “Son of a bitch!”
“Goddamnit!” He pulled, his arms probably about to fly from their sockets.
“Stupid fucking piece of shit!” He tugged so hard that he flew backward and tripped over the bulkhead.
All I could do was keep the skiff off the mud and whisper. “Come on. Come on.”
He stood up and frantically pulled and pulled over and over again. Then he stopped. That’s when I saw something I had never seen. His face was red and his eyes were shining with tears. The expression on his face was so helpless and vulnerable, like what I always thought I must have looked like in my earlier fishing days when I didn’t know what to do.
He looked to the sky and begged. “Come on, motor, start!” I couldn’t believe the crackle in his voice. He was on the verge of crying! A chill swept through my body like a cold gust of wind blowing in from the ocean. Time seemed to sit still.
Then the familiar expression of determination returned to his face. It would start, because it had to start. There was no other option. He pulled again. He pulled it again and again. It made a small groan like someone poked at in their sleep. “Yes!” he breathed. The next pull, it started. It was purring. He turned the throttle and the motor roared.
We drove down and roundhauled the other two nets just like the last one. I pulled in the last one myself as my Dad gave it some slack by driving forwards. We had to do that because the boat kept drifting over it with the tide. I did my best to pull some of the bulk of the fish mess towards the stern, to keep the weight balanced.
In the end, the skiff was so full of the mass of fish and net that my ankles were at the top of the skiff’s height. If I lost my balance, I could have fallen into the water and been swept away by the current. Only a few inches of the skiff’s purple paint were exposed out of the water. Any single wave would swamp us.
As my Dad drove us slowly and steadily through the water, that had fortunately calmed down, I picked out any fish that I could from the web, saving us as much time as I could from when we would sort through it all. I was so focused on picking the fish that I didn’t even pay attention to the sound of a motor behind us gradually growing louder.
An aluminum skiff sped past us and then I saw our problem. Its wake was inevitably heading straight for us. My Dad slowed the motor and I watched helplessly as the wave dumped itself into the bow.
“Uh oh,” he said. More water poured into it and our skiff began its descent into the water.
“Uh oh,” he said again.
I leapt away from the water pouring towards me and landed in the stern. Never did I think I was capable of jumping so far.
“We’re fine,” my Dad said. I looked to see that he was right. The bow had made its way back to the surface. “Go bail that out.”
I crawled up to the bow and stood waist-deep in the water, tossing bucket after bucket out into the river until we made it to the other skiff. Until then, I did not stop.
We tied up to the other skiff and moved two of our tangled nets full of fish into it. Then we drove our two-boat fleet to the Porpoise, the gigantic black and yellow tender anchored in the channel of the river. Of course my dad easily pulled up alongside of it, ran up to the bow, and tie on.
I, on the other hand, was having a hard time pulling up to it because of my lack of experience with driving. My dad was getting impatient. He kept throwing his hands up in the air as I’d turn around and try again.
I was trying to be careful not to ram into it and shatter the fragile wooden skiff. It took me at least three times before I was able to pull up and tie on. I was going way too slow for the current, as Dad told me later.
The Porpoise’s crew craned all four bags from that skiff into their holding tanks, but then they sent us over to the Puffin for our second load. They had just gotten orders to not take another load of fish because they were getting too heavy. I went aboard on both tenders to deliver the fish. As the skipper stamped the imprint of my card onto the ticket for me to sign, I was just realizing that my dad never forgets his permit card, but not as much as I was realizing how tired, cold, and hungry I was. When I feel those three things, I know that I have been fishing hard. And the poundage showed that it was a good Fourth of July.