On a bright April morning, most of the tourists at San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf were gravitating toward the Wax Museum and the T-shirt shops. But aboard the small fleet of fishing boats tied up here, authentic local color was in no short supply. Clouds of blue invective billowed from the wheelhouse of a boat called the Autumn Gale, where a thick-necked, walrus-mustached fisherman named Larry Collins lit up one cigarette after another and held forth on the dismal recent history of salmon fishing.
“When I’m fishing, I make 5,000 decisions a day,” says Collins, who is 52 and the vice president of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations (PCFFA). “And every decision you make, it makes or breaks you: You drown; you go bankrupt; you come in with the glory and a hold full of fish. It’s all on you.”
Read more here, in a story from the May 24 issue of High Country News.