A buddy of mine called last night. One of his longtime deckhands has kidney stones and can't make the trip....
Approx pay of $7,500 for three weeks work starting 6-22-07 and ending approx 7-15-07.
He fishes Bristol Bay out of King Salmon.
Requests a non smoker/chewer who doesn't get seasick.
Captain is a very good friend of mine but is a tough SOB so this isn't for the feint of heart. Damn good cook though.
If you are interested send me a PM.

Spot has been filled. Thanks for the responses.

"Requests a non smoker/chewer who doesn't get seasick."

Damn. My Commercial Fisherman career has ended before it ever started.

Bummer.

MB

No kidding. Disqualled me to.
I figure there has to be a college kid or other guy between jobs who would love this opportunity. Good pay and a beautiful place. If it were me I'd stay another week and do some rec King fishing.
My bud has a Lund and I'm sure you could work something out. I'm still trying to figure out how I could pull this off myself but the chances are slim...hence the posting.

What sort of stuff will the deckhand be doing????

Workin and not sleepin much.
To be honest I don't know....I've never done the job.
Best guess is working with heavy equipment and throwing fish around.
I've known the captain for 6 years. We do elk camp together every year. What I know is he's successful at what he does but he yells a lot.

I'm off to college next year and $7500 is a damn good rake of cash for 3 and a half weeks...

FH07,

During sockeye season in Bristol Bay a deckhand hears two commands: "move your ass!" and "move it faster!!" You toss the net bouy in the water on command in a fast paced strategy to cork the other boats and not get corked yourself. Then at the end of the drift, which lasts a matter of minutes, you switch on the power roller to retrieve 150 fathoms (900 ft) of gillnet onto the deck. Then while running under power to make the next set, you strip sockeye from the gillnet as fast as possible and toss them into the fish box. If you haven't got all the salmon out of the net when it's time to make the next set (there could be 200-300 sockeye), you hear the second command, quite impatiently. This is basically your life during open periods. You can eat, sleep, take a shower, take a pee during closed periods. When it's open, you fish, and only fish, almost no exceptions. You might fish 72 hours straight. As Seastrike said, it ain't for the feight of heart.

Sg

I was a deckhand two summers ago for the Bristol Bay fishery and it's one of those things that I'm really glad I did, but would never do again. It's an experience of a lifetime and something I will always remember, but man it is definitely no fun while you're there. Some guys love it, but they are all veterans who I'm sure have forgotten what it was like to be a greenhorn. The work is hard, but not terribly grueling...the hardest part is being able to do the work on very little sleep (about 12-20 hours per week). You won't spend hardly any time awake that you are not working. On top of that, you'll need to be focused and learning new things everyday since it'll be your first year. You'd be on a 32 foot boat with only your captain and maybe another deckhand the whole time.

What would really make or break the season is how well you got along with the captain. I HATED mine, which is pretty normal, but miserable. He yelled and screamed at me the WHOLE time, which is also pretty normal. Getting yelled at is tolerable for a while, but 20+ hours per day for 5 weeks straight was a little grinding.

That being said, maybe my experience was soured because I hated the only person I had any contact with for 5 weeks. It's a great opportunity to make some money for a college kid, I was in college when I did it and the money I made lasted me a long time. This really is an excellent and rare chance to do something like this, these positions are actually very sought after and hard to find. Since you are just starting college, it is a great time go up for your first season. If you like it, you'll be able to find work up there the next four summers, and every year you do it gets easier and you make a larger percentage. The catch is (no pun intended) that you aren't guaranteed any money, it isn't that unusual to make less than your plane ticket on a bad year.