Fishing out of Humboldt Bay, or Wigi in Wiyot, has no shortage of its ups and downs, literally and figuratively. From just rolling over the breakers near the jetties, to navigating a hard-to-predict regulatory environment, commercial fishing is not for the faint of heart.
This is a two-part series about commercial fishing on the north coast. For this first installment, Captain Harrison Ibach takes Keith Flamer of College of the Redwoods and Michael Spagna of Cal Poly aboard his 54-foot fishing boat.
”All through my life, I’ve just had a fascination for fishing”, says Ibach. After getting a degree in Native American Studies, he took that fishing fascination and turned pro. He now helms the Humboldt Fishermen's Marketing Association. ”More often than not, we’re out on a beautiful ocean, we’re fishing, and we’re incredibly grateful for the life we live.”
After working his way up through several fishing boats, we find Ibach’s current vessel, the F/V Haida Queen, docked at the Woodley Island Marina.
Transcript:
ANNCR: Today on Talk Humboldt….
IBACH: Those are the mornings where I'm like, what in the heck am I doing here today? I should have slept in.
ANNCR: Fishing out of Humboldt Bay has no shortage of its ups and downs—literally and figuratively. From just sailing past the breakers near the jetties to navigating a hard-to-predict regulatory environment, commercial fishing is not for the faint of heart.
This is a two-part series about commercial fishing on the North Coast, and today we board a fishing vessel.
FLAMER: Keith Flamer, nice to meet you!
IBACH: Chief Leonard Harrison Ibach. Nice to meet you.
ANNCR: For this first installment, Captain Harrison Ibach takes Keith Flamer of College of the Redwoods and Michael Spagna of Cal Poly Humboldt aboard his 54-foot fishing boat, which is docked at the Woodley Island Marina.
IBACH: Just want to make sure that everyone's extremely careful. So before you come on board, and as you come on board, you should know that there are sharp things, blunt objects, heavy objects—things you could get poked on. Any and all of the above.
I’ll show you a couple of the things that we have here on the boat. For example, this big silver block—this is our crab block. It swings over to this side. That’s how we get our crab pots up and down. It stays on the boat year-round because it also has applications for pulling other types of pots, like hagfish pots, if we decide to participate in that fishery.
There’s a lot of space below deck. The boat is designed to pack a lot of fish down there. We’re talking about the fish hold. This giant hatch cover—about six feet by six feet—comes off, and we insert a giant aluminum tank into the space.
It comes up to about here for crabs. Then we flood it with water and throw all the crabs we catch into the tank.
This here is a longline hauler. We deploy longlines—ropes with a series of hooks every three feet. It’s about a tenth of a mile of line per set. A lot of times, we deploy about four miles of baited line.
It depends on the target—Pacific halibut, sablefish, lingcod, or rockfish. That’s what we’re targeting all summer long with the longlines.
We might fish anywhere from 100 fathoms to 650 fathoms—that’s about a mile deep. When you’re retrieving gear from that depth, there’s a lot of tension.
SPAGNA: Naive question—are there different kinds of bait for different kinds of fish?
IBACH: Yes. For Pacific halibut, we’ll use mackerel and sardines. Halibut can co-mingle with sablefish and rockfish. If we’re just targeting halibut, we’ll go to 20 or 30 fathoms. But if we’re hoping to get halibut alongside other species, we might be out at 100 fathoms.
If we're just going for sablefish, we might fish anywhere from 100 to 600 fathoms and use squid or smaller pieces of bait. It all depends.
SPAGNA: So the strategy depends on what you’re targeting and how you’re going after it?
IBACH: Exactly.
SPAGNA: And you only have small windows of time to do this?
IBACH: Exactly.
A lot of times, like with halibut derbies—we call them derbies because they’re scheduled at set dates and times—it doesn’t matter what the weather’s like. If the weather’s horrendous, that’s still when you have to go. Derby fisheries are probably the most stressful fisheries that a fisherman deals with.
So, one last thing: we have the Dungeness crab block, the longline hauler, and then these poles—our trolling poles—on both the starboard and port sides. These poles go out and spread, and lines come off the springs at the tips.
Each of those lines has a lure. That’s how we troll for tuna—typically albacore in the summer months. If there’s a salmon fishery open, we can deploy salmon gear on those same lines. That usually involves a heavy lead at the bottom and multiple leaders coming off the line, each with a hook and lure.
So we have trolling poles for both salmon and tuna. We have the longline hauler, and the Dungeness crab pot block as well.
FLAMER: How big is the boat?
IBACH: It’s a 54-foot fishing vessel—Haida Queen.
SPAGNA: So when someone sees you on the water, the boat could be configured for totally different gear at different times?
FLAMER: It’s like the Swiss Army Knife of boats!
IBACH: Exactly. Our boat is kind of the Swiss Army knife of boats. It’s pretty close.
In order to stay busy year-round, we participate in many fisheries. We are the Swiss Army knife of commercial fishing.
FLAMER: Some days, I want your life!
IBACH: Sometimes on the morning commute to work, I scratch my head and think, what in the hell are we doing here?
It can be horrendous. It’s six miles from the harbor to the open ocean, so we travel down the bay and get to a spot they call Rock and Roll Alley. That’s where things really show up—a series of small, breaking waves—and you just watch boat after boat get tossed around.
That’s right past the Coast Guard station. Then we turn the corner and have to transit the bar.
Sometimes, there are 20 or even 30 boats lined up, waiting and watching for the right moment to cross through the waves.
And those are the mornings where I’m like, what am I doing out here? I should have stayed in bed.
FLAMER: But then you’re on the ocean and you think, “This is why I do it.”
That’s exactly it. More often than not, we’re out on a beautiful ocean, we’re fishing, and we’re incredibly grateful for the life we live.
ANNCR: From the Woodley Island Marina, you’ve been listening to commercial fisherman Harrison Ibach. He spoke with Keith Flamer and Michael Spagna.
In part two of this series, he details the environmental and regulatory landscape that affects everyone working in the North Coast seafood industry.
IBACH: A lot of the older generation is struggling with new regulations and hurdles. They’ve been part of a traditional fishery for such a long time that changes—especially more and more regulations—are hard for them to adapt to.
ANNCR:That’s next time on Talk Humboldt. To hear more episodes, subscribe to the podcast or visit KHSU.org.
