Fox Trott to test Alaskan waters this summer

Puget Island resident George Trott has been going to Bristol Bay, Alaska since he was 3 years old and has been fishing there during the summer since the fourth grade. At the age of 22, he had a boat built for him and "has fished it ever since." With the boat getting up in age and having to weather the Alaskan waters year after year, Trott had a new boat, engineered, designed, cut, bent, marked and then had its parts shipped to him on a semi truck. Ever since, the Puget Island native has been putting together his Fox Trott vessel with the intent on fishing Bristol Bay with it starting in June. His new boat coming with upgrades and improvements, including skid-proof surfaces, two-way radios, bunks, a kitchen, and an overhead camera,Trott took a decades-long learning curve and transformed it to his floating labor of love.

Explaining some of the improvements, Trott said, "We put a large refrigerated seawater system to chill the fish in... I tried to make everything user friendly so I could control stuff in the wheelhouse or the crew could control it from the back of the boat. If they need hydraulics, they can turn those on and they don't have to holler at me to do it. Most all boats just have one set of controls for the hydraulics in the cabin. This one's got it in the back deck so they can access it."

His new, custom engines providing an increase in speed from 12 miles an hour to 35, Trott's "brainchild" also accounts for the vast spectrum mother nature provides in Alaska. "The weather changes so rapidly up there...We have 24 feet of tide from minus low water to high water. You have this massive amount of water coming in there or it's going out and what was 20 feet deep is now a sandbar. You have to deal with a lot of tides and the weather. "The weather changes so rapidly up there," he said. "We have 24 feet of tide from minus low water to high water. You have this massive amount of water coming in there or it's going out and what was 20 feet deep is now a sandbar. You have to deal with a lot of tides and the weather."

The Fox Trott contains 16 fish holds. According to Game and Fish regulations, each hold is allowed to have a nylon bag with up to 800 pounds worth of fish. The bags are then picked up by a crane and weighed. With sockeye salmon being the fish of record, Trott's four-man crew are at the mercy of the market each summer. "You never know the fish price," said Trott's girlfriend and honorary crew member Susan Hickey. "Last year was the first time they gave us a price before we fished. We didn't usually find out what we were getting paid until the end of the season. The last few days the cannery was open, they'd tell us what they were paying us. I think that's just crazy because fishing up there, you don't know what you'll get paid. One year, we got 50 cents a pound. It was horrible. Fishermen can't survive on that."

Trott noted a fishing boat like the Fox Trott would probably cost somebody $1.3 million to buy, but he has spent "less than half" putting it together. The life-long fisherman plans on testing the Fox Trott on the local waters in the next couple of weeks and then, when June comes around, he will send it from Astoria to Alaska for "the first season" for sockeye salmon fishermen. "Once the fish come in, they just trickle," said Hickey. "Then that season is over and then the canneries quit buying so they shut down. When they shut down and don't buy the fish, then we go home."