By Jim Field
Our Crew, notably, has posts dedicated to "Sportfishermen Terminology." Like most folks, we appreciate a good turn-of-phrase and clever tags applied to an aspect of fishing, or more generally, everyday life. After learning of Captain Phil's passing, I went to the Cornelia Marie's website and, lo and behold, discovered that they, too, have a section of content dedicated to "slang." I've copied it below--much too good to pass up. Perhaps we'll adopt some lingo for ourselves, making it our own. This would be one way to pay tribute to Phil, and keep him alive in some small way.
Note: My favorite term of theirs is "prop wash." In a similar vein, on subs we used to screw with new guys by sending them on missions to go find such things as "20 feet of shoreline" or a "sky hook." You gotta love sea jargon.
Okay, here we go:
Anchor watch: Time spent in the wheelhouse to
make sure the boat does not drag anchor and start to move.
Cabin or house: The living area on a working boat.
Chumming for fish: Vomiting over the side of the rail into the sea.
Climbing mountains: Climbing up waves that are the size of the boat or bigger.
In the trough: The space in between waves. The boat will naturally fall into a “trough” while drifting. When drifting in the “trough” the boat is parallel with the swell and will rock from side to side.
Jogging: When the boat engines are at lower rpm. Jogging is often used to hold the boat in a safe position during bad weather.
Lazy swell: Waves that are far apart with not much wind.
Making ice: When ocean spray from waves freezes on the boat.
Master Baiter: A name given to a greenhorn once they have mastered the art of filling bait jars or baiting halibut hooks.
On the crab: When fishing is great and the pots are full.
Prop Wash: An essential cleaning agent. If the ship is low on Prop Wash, it is the job of the greenhorn to go into town to buy more.
Radar Navigator: A fisherman who relies too heavily on the radar to navigate instead of his own knowledge of charts and other instruments.
Rollie Pollie: Middle size waves with a slight wind at the side of the boat.
Screamer: A captain who screams at his crew.
Skunked: Pulling up an empty pot.
Sloppy-choppy: Waves that have no real pattern and seem to be coming from different directions.
Variable to Terrible: Often when the forecast predicts “Variable Winds," it means the weather could get worse.
Posts
Thhank you for sharing
ReplyDelete