April 12, 2019 — Someone once told me that no one was ever hired after responding to a help wanted ad in a newspaper. But that didn’t stop me, in the spring of 1997, from applying to become senior editor at National Fisherman.
In addition to 10 years’ newspaper experience, including five at the Boston Globe (“The 13th largest paper in the country!” they liked to say on the night desk), I had, going back to childhood, 20-plus years’ experience as a commercial fisherman, including as skipper and owner. I would be a lead-pipe cinch for the job!
And indeed, I was, after their first choice turned it down. I am eternally gratefully for having been the second choice, and for the ensuing opportunities.
Editing National Fisherman was a job with many benefits, the greatest of which has been meeting fishermen from around the country and in quite a few instances making trips.
Among the most memorable of these was aboard the 272-foot factory trawler American Dynasty in 1998. Capt. Jim Susol, a throwback who welcomed me aboard saying, “Smoke anywhere” (I don’t happen to), could not have been more gracious. For someone who came of age on lobster boats and side trawlers, the idea of a fishing vessel with air conditioning, flush toilets, and five main courses at mealtime was eye opening, to say the least – as was a 45-minute tow that yielded 88 tons of pollock.
Another large vessel I got out on, a few years later, was the 145-foot Retriever, skippered by Franz Morris, which was midwater trawling for herring off Rockland, Maine.