Judy says: For 25 years on the EZ1, Harvey and I began our season each spring off the Pacific Coast. We’d leave Ilwaco, Washington and head out the Columbia River. We usually fished around a hundred miles off the coast but sometimes ended up as far as north of Midway Island … about halfway across the North Pacific. Our longest trip was two months.

After selling the EZ1 we fished the smaller Koko for four years, and did not go as far or stay out as long. I guess you’d call us ‘semi-retired.’ The fish didn’t care about the size of our boat, however. We still had to find the water temperatures albacore like – in low ’60s – and travel until we found it.

We’d fish from dawn to dark, about 16 hours in the middle of summer, fitting in meals when we could. We’d stay at sea until we had a boatload of albacore or needed food or fuel. The summer weather is usually pretty nice, although we’d been bounced around by plenty of storms. I keep trying to get impressive pictures of waves coming over the bow, but it never looked as wet and wild as it felt at the time.

When I think of albacore fishing, I think of how cut up my hands would get. Harvey would cut up rubber from old motorcycle inner tubes and make us ‘gloves’ that helped a lot. I also think of the occasional tuna we’d catch that was bitten in two by the sharks following our boat. What scared me even more than sharks were the massive container ships that would steam through our little fishing fleet with no changes in course or speed.

We troll (drag behind the boat) 12 barbless hooks called jigs. Each jig has colorful material around the hook to attract the fish. When an albacore grabs a hook, we tug the line into a slot in our ‘pinch puller.’ The pinch puller is like the reel you use on your fishing pole to reel in trout, with a couple of differences. Our puller is about 10 inches in diameter, mounted on the back railing of the boat, and hydraulically powered.

When a fish strikes the jig, a bell attached to that line’s pole jingles, letting us know we have a fish on. We turn on the puller and it reel the fish within a few yards of the back of the boat. Then we take the line and pull it by hand, dragging the fish closer and finally lifting it over the rail. We don’t let the reel bring the fish too close to the back of the boat, because we can adjust the tension of the line better by hand as the boat lifts and drops on the swell. That’s where our motorcycle rubber comes in handy. Harvey gets teased a lot about being old-fashioned because he won’t use store-bought gloves. But what do those young ‘uns know anyway? Even with our ‘gloves’, we always have multiple cuts and calluses within a few weeks. And of course there are hooks and fish teeth. We use disinfectant (bleachy hand wash) every evening to prevent problems.

An albacore’s internal temperature is very high, much higher than ambient air or water temperature, so we quickly bleed the fish and place them in the shade under a spray of sea water to cool for awhile. Then we hang each fish by its tail in the -40 degree fish hold, where it freezes quickly. Later, we take them down and stack them.

We’re often asked if albacore and abalone are the same thing. Nope. Abalone live along the shore, clinging to rocks with their muscular feet. Their shells make beautiful jewelry, and they are extremely tasty. Unfortunately, abalone is facing some challenges of its own as more and more are being picked out of the sea.

The inside of an abalone looks like this:

We are not going to show you what the inside of an albacore looks like.

Albacore is one type of tuna. ‘Tuna’ is the common name for a variety of fish in the Scombridae (tuna and mackerel) family. There are several types of tuna in the mackerel family. To see the list, go to Regulatory Fish Encyclopedia and scroll down to the link about tuna. The links on the right will take you to more information. We REALLY would like articles about ‘tuna’ to discriminate between the different types. There are significant differences in methods of catching, sustainability, and the product itself.

This is what an albacore looks like:

Trolling is the kind of fishing we do. We take 12 hooks, tie them onto 12 lines, and throw them over the side of the boat. Each hook has a jig – some brightly colored material that lures the fish. These hooks are dragged behind the boat at a staggered distance of 4 to 21 fathoms (a fathom = 6 feet). When a fish hits the hook it pulls on the line and a bell on the back deck rings. Before the ring from the bell has faded from our ears, someone (usually Harvey, he’s the fastest) is on the back deck pulling up the line. He pulls it in with a powered reel called a pinch puller, then brings the fish aboard by hand. The fish is killed and bled immediately then sent to the front deck to cool under a steady stream of seawater. After it’s cooled, it is hung by its tail to freeze in the -40 degree fish hold. Later, it is brought down and stacked.

In short, trolling for albacore means that:

• The albacore we can for you goes from alive to frozen as quickly as possible.

• The hooks we throw into the water seldom attract other kinds of fish

It’s easy! Just look at the nutrition label for the fat content. Troll-caught albacore has much more fat (approx. 5g per 2 oz serving) than the long-lined fish (approx 1g fat per 2 oz serving).

We think the Western Fishboat Owners Association (WFOA) website is the best for overall information about albacore. The WFOA is the ALBACORE tuna fishermen’s association.

• American Fishermen’s Research Foundation (AFRF)

• American Fisheries Society: Scientists studying and making recommendations about fishery issues.

• Southwest Fisheries Science Center headquartered in La Jolla, California.

• Fishery Department of Food and Agriculture Organization(FAO) of the United Nations Fishery Department

• National Marine Fisheries (NMFS)

• National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA)

• National Ocean Service (NOS)

• University of California, Davis — seafood information

• Online Fishermen’s News

• Marine Yellow Pages

Stephanie says: We are at a transition point in our family. My folks fished for over 50 years. A couple of years ago they started looking beyond the back deck and thinking about retirement. Dad had just turned 82 and Mom had turned 80.

“It’s not like I can’t keep fishing. I like fishing,” Dad said. “But I am getting tired of always fixing on the refrigeration, the engines, the computers…”

So retirement it was. Almost a year into retirement they bought a 41′ pleasure craft for dad to renovate. “No room to put a fish hold,” Mom said. “So he can’t turn it into a fishboat.”

The big question was: if they aren’t fishing, where is our albacore coming from? We had a couple of years worth of fish in the big super-freezer down at cold storage. That gave us time to figure out what to do.

Luckily Mom and Dad had worked with another fishing family to start a cannery for fishermen who wanted to do custom canning. As the years went by the number of west coast fishermen who wanted to have their catch custom-canned increased. Most of these boats are ones my folks fished with for years. So dad’s job now is to buy fish from his former running partners, choosing boats who treat their fish as well as we did.

It’s not as much fun as catching our own, but it’s a good solution to the retirement dilemma, and it also means that my folks actually make it to my summer-time birthday!