Valor II

Troller Rocket at sea off Tillamook Rock

 Late summer of seventy my wife and I found ourselves camping in our Corvair 95 utility van along with a sweet little brown dog named Briged.  Parked for a couple weeks outside the shipping container office of the La Push Fish Company, close to the mouth of the Quileute River.  We were at the start of an adventure in the salmon trolling business.


The previous fall, a high school buddy came back from a job up north full of stories about hippie salmon trollers he met out in Yakutat.  Beautiful boats, carefree lifestyle; Roger set about finding himself a boat of his own.

For an investment roughly equivalent to a new pickup truck, he put together a working operation and by July he brought in decent money day fishing between La Push and Neah Bay.   I came home from Big Creek at the end of July, bought a Corvair Utility van that made a very snug little camper car.  Hopped the fairy out of town and by sundown we rolled into the dusty lot at LaPush Fish Company.

Fish house and shipping container office sat at the western end of the village a few yards from the inshore end of the jetty.  Covered wood barge lay on pilings in the river where boats offloaded their catch, a few of them laying overnight on a short log and plank float lashed between the upriver end of the barge and pilings fifty feet further along.  Din of cow bells on the poles and the squeak of car tire bumpers when boat wakes churned up the river.  We found our friend Roger sitting at the wheel of his troller, the Dad's Dream.

"I've gone fishin'"   If he had a shower during the previous month it was not evident.  Great shock of red hair in dreads from neglect. Loosely rolled joint in one hand, bottle of  beer in his other. Relaxing after unloading the day's catch of fat Coho salmon he had scratched up along the forty fathom line out to the west-northwest of the river.  For the rest of the evening, he regaled us with stories from the summers adventures.

The next morning I lay half way out the narrow cabin door, heaving convulsively onto the deck as that round bottom boat turned every way but over on her way out of town. A few fish on deck later brought me around in short order.  Long days in the ocean wind chasing salmon with the cloud of troll gear spread out in the water behind the boat brought on a new kind of rush that was impossible to resist.  The rush  turned out to be the upside of some kind of bipolar disorder that may have devastated lives later, but all that is fodder for other stores.

August felt magic out there on the beach. At that time of life, a couple weeks is forever.  Guitars hammering out  chorus after chorus from Stones Gemme Shelter, group of strangers and friends singing together around evening beach fires. Split salmon roasting, tinfoil potatoes and beer.


Only wanted the happier memories in this story, but have to mention that , we lost our sweet little Briged on that trip.   Still feel bad, her fall could have been avoided if I had taken better care for her safety.

Fell deeply in love with an especially beautiful boat out there.  The Valor II.  An old timer named Inor owned the boat, and he usually got in  just ahead of us every afternoon, and we ended up laying alongside for the night.  I never got a photograph of Valor II, but there is a photo the PYX, an exact sister that came to us from Rich and Johnna, who have preserved a cash of photos from those days.

The PIX, sister to Valor II

To my eye, these boats represented the peak of beauty.  Form following function.  Gentle sweep of sheer, perfectly proportion deck house to boat size, tidy little galley below the fore deck, fish hold that seemed cavernous compared to little Dad's Dream, that was only slightly smaller in overall measurement.  By mid-September I had a passion to have a boat like this of my own that has never been duplicated throughout the rest of my life.

The following May I lay half way out the wheel house door barfing onto the sea water washed deck in my own little double ended trolling boat.  The first ocean swells west of  Port Angeles, hit my stomach hard.  The combination of stark terror at what I had gotten myself into, along with inner ear disturbance that brings on mal de mer.  I was in it now, better or worse we were on our way out to try our luck in the salmon trolling trade.

Photo credits, Richard Crow