After all the preparations we are finally back at the coal face of the whole operation….hauling and setting long lines.
We got off to a pretty good start but were greeted by this large tangle on the second day of fishing. Caused by a combination of; Me setting in the wrong direction, strong currents with the full moon, ice pulling the floats out of position and probably several other reasons we’ll never know.
This tangle has just over 1 km of long line and about 1,000 hooks in a ball. It was pulled out of 1,600m of water and took an hour and a half just to get it up to the boat with the main hail hauler pressure up to 1.5 ton, then another hour to get it aboard safely and resume hauling the remaining 7 km of long line.
It is dangerous working in the hauling room, but these guys know exactly what to do in situations like this and they get plenty of practice when the full moon tides start running.
Start of the tangle, there were quite a few fish caught up in the middle of this one.
After and hour it finally comes aboard in one big lump.
Rgds: John B.
Tags: Colossal Squid, John Bennett, san aspiring
