hello from ak

[makena]

I am new to the site,  I live and fish in cordova ak I have a gill nett operation that I fish in prince william sound and the copper river flats and a siene operation for prince william sound. I have set-netted, longlined for halibut and black cod and tanner crabbed in alaska. As well is gill-netting sword fish and squid seining in CA. and dungie fishing in WA. I saw that some people had some questions about salmon fishing and gill-nett haulers. I might be able to answer some questions about that. Any way I'm going to be in dutch harbor and then adak for a month but then I'll be back to get ready for salmon after salmon I'll take another boat down to soulth east and fish spot sprawn, tanner crab, brown king crab and tender for herring any way if anyone has any questions I'll try to help

[dancingetard]

Hey Mackena, This is Kevin & I actually was curious about Rapp marine haulers especially the smallest one they make. I guess they are from Norway but have a distributor in AK. We primarily use Crosley net lifters for our gillnet operations, old school deep water haulers of various sizes but harder to find since the owner is retiring, & couldnt find anyone to sell his businesss to. Some guys use Spencer Carter haulers but parts availability for them is equally as hard. Our east coast gillnet fleet is usually from 45'-60' & some smaller boats around down in the mid atlantic region. We just got hit with 12" of snow here in New Bedford so I gotta make my way down to the boat to go clamming but will talk to you later. Have a safe trip on the freezer boat.

[makena]

Hey there kevin I'm not quite sure what you mean by gill-nett hauler. we use reels up here and reel the net on a drum. some boats like mine also have a hydrolic roller (aka power roller). our nets are 150 fathoms long and anywhere between 15 to 60 feet deep. All our equipment is made specifically for this fishery by either webber marine here in cordova or petrazelka marine in wa state. If you need equipment for larger nets you might look at the sword fish fleet in california. the nets we use there are about a mile long and 50 fathoms deep with heavy mesh. I think the nets usually weigh about 7000lbs. I think if you needed somthing specific you could proballly custom order just about anything from Bill webber at webber marine. If he has time he loves new challenges any way I hope that helps.

[dancingetard]

I have seen pics of the boats out there & always wondered where you put all the nets? We use a netlifter that come in two different styles of the old school crosley that is a round hauler type lifter with a a series of hammers that grips the net/line by opening & closing at a cetain point. The nets are brought aboard & slid aft to be picked,flaked & stored either below deck in fishholds,net lockers or on deck in piles or in vats. I think we may carry much more nets than your boats & have multiple mesh sizes depending on what we are targeting. There are some boats down south that use small net reels but carry few nets. These are deep water fast hauling machines that are loud & arent exactly easy on the catch or mesh. There is also a newer style of net lifters made by Rapp Marine & Spencer Carter. Here are some links with pics of the net lifters we use. http://www.scrutonmarine.com/FE2030.htm http://www.rappmarine.com/category.php?categoryID=386 http://www.spencercarter.com/products/nethaulers.html

[makena]

Hey there kevin I checked out those web sites and I have to say I've never seen anything like those on the west coast. We fish surface gill-netts for our salmon fisheries and usually put them on a drum in some fisheries they only use power rollers but there alot simpler than those because our nets must be much lighter.Even fishing sword fish with mid water gill-netts we use a very large reel. Any was sorry I couldn't be of more help. One question I had is wether or not they use gill-netts to harvest cod over there and if they do what kind of boats they use?

[Willapa]

dancingetard, how many fathoms long is a typical net?

[makena]

150 for salmon and 1000 fathoms for sword fish

[Willapa]

I was wondering how long the east coast nets are actually.

[dancingetard]

The same groundfish gillnet boats that I was refering too who also catch monkfish,skate,pollock, & some lobsters too. The cod when they are ound is 1000 per day I think. The groundfish draggers have simmilar days at sea sytem & per day amounts. Its too bad that there arent more cod around like the old days.