Deep Sea Fishing

I remember going on a deep sea fishing trip out of Monterrey, CA, when I was a teenager.  I know lots of men and boys from our ward went, but I can't remember if it was a scout activity or what.  I remember we piled onto a fishing boat and headed out to sea.  The boat was fairly big.  It had a deck all around the outside with a guard rail and it had a spot below deck where people could sit inside and eat and talk.  The seas were calm at the beginning, but as we headed further out to the west they started to get pretty wavy.  I remember the boat would sink to the bottom of a swale and we could see the next wave ahead higher than the whole boat.  The boat would then rise to the top of that wave and then sink down.  The boat was tossing and turning and giving us a fun ride.  I started to notice that many of the people on board were hanging their heads over the guard rail.  When I got closer I could see that they were all throwing up into the ocean.  I guess the bumpy ride was making many of us sea sick.  I was lucky.  I didn't get see sick during this part of the ride.  I remember there was one guy on the boat who had been in the navy and wasn't the least bit sea sick.  He was walking around with a sandwich in his hand and whenever he sat by someone and took a bite, it just made them all the more sea sick.

I think the boat captain had a fish finding device, because at one point we got the word that it was time to fish.  The idea was to catch as many fish as possible while we passed over a school.  The trip was fairly expensive and some on board were hoping to catch enough fish to supply meat for their families for the whole next year.  We used these stout deep sea fishing poles and dropped the line straight down the outside of the boat.  A large weight was at the very end of the line and three treble hooks with fake squids for bait were located up the line toward the end of the rod.  We just dropped the weight until it stopped and then waited a minute and then reeled the line back in.  On the end there would be one to three large fish (maybe 2 feet long) hooked.  There was no fight like when you catch a trout; they just hung there.  The fish were pulled up over the guard rail, unhooked and left laying around on the deck.  The line was immediately dropped back into the water to catch more fish.  Only after the run across the top of the school was over did we put the fish in the large sacks for collection.  I think we made several different runs over the school until everyone had full sacks.  I only started to feel sea sick during this fishing part.  Something about looking over the edge and down at the waves made me nauseous.  But I never threw up :)

When we got back to shore it was interesting to watch the fish getting prepared to take home.  Most of the fish we caught were cod.  I guess only the thick slab of meat on either side of the fish is good to eat.  This part is called the fillet.  Men on the pier with knifes would cut off the outer skin and then slice off the thick fillet and put that in a bag that was on ice.  Then they would turn the fish over and repeat the same maneuver.  Most of the fish (maybe 75%) wasn't usable and was just discarded.  I sort of remember that they just threw this back into the water as waste, but I may be wrong.  I do remember there were lots of sea gulls around trying to get a free meal from the waste.  I don't remember how much fish I finally ended up with.  Some families that were hoping to provide food for the rest of the year ended up with quit a lot.  Deep sea fishing was great fun.