For the Love of Fishing

For the Love of Fishing

Thirty years of commercial fishing in Alaska, and the fisheman catches some good stories along with the fish. These are the stories of one man's adventures - some amusing, some amazing, all filled with scenes of life on, under, and around the sea. The author, Jack Ranweiler, became addicted to fishing as a boy growing up in Minnesota, land of 10,000 lakes. He moved to Alaska in the late 60's, and being able to fish for a living was a dream come true. Over the next thirty years he fished Alaskan waters mostly for salmon, black cod and halibut, occasionally for crab, herring and shrimp, and dove for abalone and sea cucumbers. The life of a commercial fisherman can be perilous, and Jack had several close encounters with danger in those years. One of those happened on the night he lost his boat in a shipwreck. The story of how he and his three crew members were not all lost at sea is truly miraculous. Jack has now retired from all but one fishery for black cod. He, his wife Linda, and their dog Clementina spend their summers in Homer, Alaska and their winters in a small Mexican village. From Chapter 12 ("Shipwrecked") About this time, we noticed something floating on the horizon. It was still night with lots of cloud cover, but we could make out a shape that appeared to be coming our way. Soon we could tell that it was the stern of the boat. It caused us a lot of consternation, as we thought we were drifting back to where the breakers were. All three of us tried to swim, pushing the hatch cover ahead of us. We were swimming as hard as we could for at least 30 minutes, when someone said, "Look, it's catching us." We turned to look and, sure enough, the stern of the boat, minus the bait shed and minus the fishing gear, was drifting with the current right by us. We decided to crawl up on the stern, as we were all extremely tired and also had hypothermia. The three of us huddled together on the stern. We were all shaking from the cold. No one had much to talk about - we were in a state of shock from the beating we had taken in the breakers. Used Book in Good Condition