Free The Fisher Queen by Sylvia Taylor Page A

Besides, it was a big ocean out there with lots of places to hide, and even when stocks were plentiful, they had particular habits and places to congregate for meals.
    Salmon are picky eaters who enjoy a certain ambience, like specific temperatures and times of day and currents and tides. They are particularly fond of feed balls: dense clumps of herring and other creatures that provide an all-you-can-eat buffet, usually around reefs or drop-offs, where lunch likes to hang around in rocks and holes for protection.
    Areas with a strong tidal flow are also great locations because baitfish are swept along with the current, making them an easy catch for the salmon. Salmon love breakfast and supper, so the morning and night bites are usually the most lucrative.
    The best time to travel is with the current, when the tide is running strongest, because you want to be trolling during the slack tides, which last about an hour, just before the tide reverses. The feed fish come off the bottom because they don’t have to fight the current, and when the salmon move in to feast, the troller makes most of his catch. Most of the time there are two fishable slack tides a day, but in summer there are occasionally days with three, which can really boost your catch.
    The best time for fishing is when the moon is half full and tides are at a minimum. Tides are biggest around the full moon and new moon because they are affected by the moon’s gravitational pull. And since fish have to spend most of their energy fighting big tides, they rarely feed, which means poor fishing.
    You need to plan your tacks carefully so that you are on your hot spot at slack tide and do short tacks back and forth through the slack. A couple of miles off can make a huge difference, and if you overshoot your hot spot, or don’t know about it, it can take ages to get back trolling at two knots an hour. That would certainly help explain why boats can be trolling at the same time in the same general area and some get skunked and some do well. Then there’s the speed of the boat, the colour and shape and configuration of the gear, the motor sounds and vibrations, the astrological signs of the crew and some weird voodoo about the electrical current given off by the boat called the bonding system .
    Apparently, fish are attracted to and repulsed by electrical currents and fields, and since every fishing boat creates an underwater field generated by its metals, steps must be taken to create just the right current to please salmon.
    This is done by bonding or joining all metal components of a boat with a heavy electrical wire that is connected to underwater zinc bars attached to the boat’s hull. Different metal objects in water create different currents, but when those objects are bonded, the currents are neutralized and a positive electrical field is created around the boat, 0.4 to 0.5 of a volt. After the boat is properly bonded, a black box can be attached to the steel trolling wires, sending electricity through the wire between 0.15 and 0.3 of a volt, depending on the boat’s electrical field. The voltage can be adjusted to attract different species and sizes of fish. The bigger the school and the smaller the fish, the higher the voltage they like.
    We had zinced the hull but certainly didn’t have one of those Star Trek black boxes. The maddening thing was we attracted hordes of small cohos anyway, which we had to shake off the barbless hooks because the season wouldn’t open until July 1, just over a month away. And the only halibut or ling cod we could legally keep were dead on the line and destined for the fry pan. Originally, West Coast fishermen needed only one A licence to take any finned seafood, but in the ’70s the L licence was created for bottom and flat fish like halibut and lings, and the A was retained for salmon. We could never sell L fish, but we sure could eat them. And there is nothing on this earth more delicious and