Alan Haig-Brown caught up with Captain Josh Trosvig at the beginning of October as he was onboard his new longliner ‘Cerulean’, after leaving Alaska for fishing grounds in the Aleutian Island chain to the west of Dutch Harbor.
Captain Trosvig reported that everything is running fine, and particularly noted the smooth running of the main engine with the propeller that he had tuned at Kruger & Sons Propeller in Alaska.
It had been a long process of building and finally getting all the navigation and fishing related electronics set up and he was glad to be on his way. Construction of the new boat started in May 2012
Cerulean will be longlining black cod and halibut, but can also be rigged to pot fish Pacific cod.
The longline anchors are deployed from a table on top of the shelter deck. A curved pole is used to support the bird lines that keep sea birds from diving on the baited hooks.
The starboard mounted hauling station features beautifully laid out hydraulic lines and easy to manage controls to regulate the longline recovery speed.
Once over the bulwarks, the black cod or halibut will be dragged up a chute by a Nordic-style block from J K Fabrication, who also supplied the crucifier that will separate the fish from the hook so that they can flow onto the butchering table to be headed, gutted and dropped into the refrigerated hold for icing.
A Marco vertical slack-taker cleans the hooks and readies the longline to pass along in front of a crewmember, who inspects the hooks and untangles ganglions as required.
Cerulean will use #6 circle hooks for back cod and #5 circle hooks for halibut. Hooks are inspected and changed as required after each set, and all hooks are changed once a year.
