Skipper Otto's Community Supported Fishery

The final openings

Sonia Strobel — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 03:30:41 +0000

Otto and Shaun are fishing over night tonight after a day of rest today. Tomorrow afternoon, they’ll begin heading south. If the holds are not full of fish yet, they’ll fish in the southern Johnstone Straight near Campbell River to fill the holds with fish to bring down for our final fresh fish pick up of the year. This will likely be on Saturday August 4th and it will also be the welcome home party for our fishermen. More details to follow!

Another hectic night

Sonia Strobel — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 23:58:23 +0000

The sun is up now on the Johnstone Strait and Gordon (Sonia’s dad) is helping Otto pick up the morning set. We gave him a crazy introduction to gillnetting when we made a dark-set to close to Blackney Pass. The tide got us and we got pulled, net and all. through the pass. We were half spun around in whirlpools and finally spit out into Blackfish Sound, several miles from where we started. We caught fish though. 250 or so overnight. Fish were jumping all around just day was breaking, riled up by at least a dozen orcas swimming right by the boat and diving under our net.
All in all another good night.
Shaun

(Written by Shaun early this morning but re-posted by Sonia when I realized it didn’t post to the blog!)

Sleepless Nights

Sonia Strobel — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 16:43:39 +0000

Sleepless Nights is actually the name of our friend and fellow independent fisher Sasha’s boat. He’s about a half mile away from us and a big pod of orcas just ambled slowly between our nets. Most looked like juveniles but one was huge!
Sleepless nights are also the order of business in the upper Johnstone Straits. Fishing is often very slow during the day but can be excellent at night. Otto picked me up in Telegraph Cove this afternoon so I could take over some of the actual work of catching fish. With some relief he just drank a beer and crawled into his bunk for the first time in 48 hours! So I am sitting at the helm watching the net, the cruise ships, and the Orcas and waiting for it to get dark along with all the other gillnetters. I am really hoping not to screw anything up so I can let the skipper sleep through at least half the night.
Shaun (2 nautical miles NW of Robson Bight)

(Shaun attempted to post this last night at about 8:30pm but it didn’t work so I am posting it now on his behalf! – Sonia)

High Price of Cheap Fish

Skipper Otto — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 16:41:34 +0000

Now as salmon returns are the best in years the fish companies are dropping prices to half of 1980s levels while fuel remains at 4 times the price of that era. Independent fishers who find their own customers are force to sell some of their fish to packers at minimal prices in order to get ice. Costco Canada, which normally sells large volumes of farmed salmon, is purchasing wild sockeye through a Delta based fish company at about $1.50 per lb. This not only requires company fishermen to work extremely hard to make a living, but puts a huge price squeeze on independents trying to sell at a reasonable but non-fluctuating price. Thankfully many conscientious consumers are becoming aware of the importance of paying food prices that reflect the cost of producing food in sustainable ways year in and year out. Thank you for continuing to support independent food producers everywhere!

Net in the prop

Sonia Strobel — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 17:56:21 +0000

Otto had a great first 24 hours of fishing and pulled in over 300 sockeye. Unfortunately, he also caught the net in the prop. Thankfully, long-time friend and commercial diver Mike Collier volunteered to drive up from Nanaimo to help Otto. He solved the net problem at around 2am and he and Otto have fished a couple more sets with about a hundred more sockeye. One draw back of such a long, multi-day opening is that Otto had to sell off some of his fish to a local buyer because the holds were full and he was out on the fishing grounds with no way to get the fish to us here in Vancouver! We should still have plenty of lovely fish for members and we’ll let you know when pick-ups will be as soon as we can. There will be a pick-up for sure at the Burnaby Farmer’s Market on Saturday from 9am-2pm, though we don’t know yet if the fresh fish will make it down in time for that pick up. Stay tuned!

10,000 sockeye..

Sonia Strobel — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 00:43:29 +0000

Otto is fishing tonight from 6pm to 2pm tomorrow and hoping for a great catch. One seiner in the area today had a single set of 10,000 fish, the majority of which he released live because he was so far over quota! We’ll keep the members posted but there should be a good fresh-fish pick up towards the end of the week!

Sent on the TELUS Mobility network with BlackBerry

Father & son prepare for 6am opening

Sonia Strobel — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 04:34:29 +0000

Otto drove up to Port McNiel today and joined his dad, Otto, on board Eldorado. They are anchored in Growler Cove and will head to the fishing grounds just west of Robson Bight at 4am tomorrow. They are targeting the tail end of the chilco river run. They’ll clean whatever they catch tomorrow evening and Shaun will head back to Vancouver on the first Nanaimo-Horseshoe Bay ferry on Saturday morning heading straight for the Burnaby Farmers’ Market. Now that’s fresh fish!

400 Northern Fish On Their Way In Time for Long Weekend BBQ’s!

Sonia Strobel — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 02:58:30 +0000

After 10 days of waiting for an opening, Otto and Terry were back fishing for Skeena River sockeye today. Otto was within phone range this evening and called while running the net to report that he and Terry had already caught about 300 sockeye and 100 pinks which they will send down when they reach port, likely tomorrow. Although the seas were rough and the weather was nasty, the fisherman were glad to finally have some more substantial numbers of fish in the net! Skeena fish tend to run a bit larger than some other sockeye runs so there will be some good sized sockeye for pick up this week. We’ll announce the exact pick-up times once we know when the fish will arrive!

Skeena opening Monday

Sonia Strobel — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 04:07:35 +0000

Otto had to sit it out this week as there were no northern openings. But Fisheries just announced an opening for the Skeena run on Monday, so Otto is happy that he’ll get out fishing again! Meanwhile, Barkley Sound continues to come in strong — Rod brought in 400 sockeye in one day! So these beautiful, fresh sockeye will be available for member pick up tomorrow night as well as Saturday at the Burnaby Farmer’s Market. In addition, we have sockeye fillets — both sides and half-side portions — maple smoked nuggets, and pepper-smoked salmon straight from the smoke house this week!

Main Street Farmer’s Market Today

Sonia Strobel — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 22:02:59 +0000

We are at the Main Street Farmer’s Market this afternoon 3-7pm. Members are always welcome to pick-up parts of their share at our Farmer’s Markets. Unfortunately, we are not permitted to sell or distribute whole fresh fish at Vancouver Farmer’s Markets, but we have plenty of fillets (both sides and smaller portions) as well as some delicious maple glazed nuggets and pepper smoked salmon sticks! We’ll send out an update about this weekend’s pick-ups as soon as we here from Rod about the Barkley fishery. There was no opening in the North this week.