This is my post for #freewriters Saturday prompt temperature hosted by @marinaaewest
People think oh, you fish for a living, what a fun job but not everything about it is fun, there is a lot of work involved. Every two days crab traps need to be run to get the crabs to put in the pigfish traps so I can run 30 pigfish traps to get the bait to fish with.
Each day this is what has to happen. I drive to the fish house to get the ice that I will need for the day. Then drive to the boat ramp and put the boat in the water. Run to the dock where I keep my bait and put the bait in my live well.
I always have an idea of where I what to fish, but once there, if it does not look good I have to run the river until I find a place that looks like there might be fish to catch, catching the fish, (that is the fun part), but then I have to run back to the dock where I keep my holding pen it is always very rough and all I can do is go slow against the wind while being soaked with salt spray, once at the dock, I can start putting away the leftover bait and feeding it, trying not to sink while water is coming over my stern because of the way I have to tie up. After the bait is in the pen I go to the ramp to pull the boat out and drive to the fish house. At the fish house, I have to get the fish out of the boat and into baskets then drag them into the fish house where I take them out of the baskets and put them on the scale to be weighed. I get a tote and put ice in it and put the fish in the tote and drag it into the cold room then lift it onto a pallet and put ice on top of them.
When I get home, there is no going inside and resting. I have to bleach all of the coolers with the temperature in the 90s and not a breath of wind in the yard, I know there is a breeze but we are surrounded by trees so we do not feel it. I have to pour my gas up for the next day of fishing and put the battery charger on the battery so I will have the power to run the pumps that keep the bait alive.
This is an added thing that I have to do every day since I bought new slickers, I started wearing pants over them so I do not get holes in my new slickers. They are nasty with fish slime and blood when I get home I put them in a bucket of soapy bleach water, then scrub them.
Once a week when I take a day off, I have to scrub and bleach my boat, it amazes me how dirty a boat can get in a week. There is an old saying, a clean boat does not catch fish.
Doesn't this sound like fun?
All photos are mine
