I have been a Commercial Fisherman since running out of money on a rock climbing trip in 1979.  I picked up a hitchhiker in Jackson, Wyoming to help pay for gas.  I told him I was a little broke, and he gave me the number of a guy with a fishing boat “up in Alaska somewhere” that needed a strong back and a weak mind, both of which I had at the time.  (I can no longer claim a strong back)  At a phone booth in Stanley, Idaho I scavenged enough coins from between the  seat cushions to call the number to “that guy up in Alaska somewhere”.

“When can you be up here?” he asked.

“Anytime after I get back tomorrow afternoon” I told him.

The next night I was on a flight to Dutch Harbor and I have not looked back since.   I have fished from a wheelhouse in the Bering Sea to a skiff in Ventura,  and the one constant is that I have loved almost every minute of it.

Currently I have scaled back my fishing to the summer months and the Sockeye Salmon fishery in Bristol Bay.  I harvest Sockeye aboard by Gillnet boat, the Kelley J, named after my lovely wife. I raised my two older son’s in the fishing lifestyle, and they grew up fishing on my vessel as crew members.  They have taken a huge leap of faith and at the tender ages of 22 and 19, bought a boat and permit together for the Bristol Bay Gillnet fishery.  I very much look forward to fishing alongside them as fishing partner’s for many years, and hope they will do almost as well as their Pops…