Fishing for harbor heritage

Members of Gig Harbor's original fishing families are still out there — they're just harder to find

Susan Schell

of the Gateway

Gig Harbor. The Maritime City. The sign beckons visitors down its steep hills into the harbor, yet when they get close, they realize there are very few places they can actually get near the water. But that’s not how it used to be. The Maritime City was once just that — a town whose livelihood not only existed near the sea, but depended on it.

When a landlubber casts a magnifying glass on the fishing industry, it turns out a few surprises. Fishermen do their business out on the waves, far away from prying eyes, cloaking the profession in mysticism thicker than the ocean fog itself.

Fortunately, Gig Harbor is one of those few formerly sleepy villages whose denizens still exist within its borders. Members of the original families, whose names adorn street signs and parks throughout the city, still walk about and are willing to tell their stories, opening the eyes of newcomers thirsty to learn what this beautiful city was like in a long-gone era.

Jane Dempsey is a member of the Stanich-Castelan clan, the Croatian family she describes as “the whole nucleus” of Gig Harbor at one time. They lived in wooden Victorian houses on Harborview Drive and lived on the sea’s bounty.

Dempsey’s father, John, was one of the many purse seiners in the harbor.

“When the net shed was too cold, he’d bring the nets in the house and would sew them in the basement,” Dempsey recalled. “They were still tanning their own nets in the 1950s. I remember my dad pulling down a chart map over his bunk bed in the boat’s pilothouse. They didn’t have GPS then.”

“Back then, it was all dead-reckoning,” said Mike Vlahovich, who fished in Washington, Alaska, California and Mexico. “You didn’t have a chart table, you’d use the galley table. You’d navigate by that chart using radar and a compass. You’d stay on course and navigate with lighthouses, buoys and channel markers.

“One of the nautical books, ‘Hansen’s Handbook,’ gives you all the compass courses. There were sections of that book that got used very well.”

Life at sea in the shadow of war

Jake Bujacich is one of the locals whose family name is emblazoned upon Gig Harbor’s maps. He answered the call of the fishing fleet when he was in high school.

“If I told you all the things I did in my life, you wouldn’t believe me,” he said without an ounce of boasting in his voice.

“I was a freshman when the war came along,” he said. “All the workers in the harbor were gone, so I had to go fishing so they had a crew. I was about 15. I went fishing and I stayed fishing. I didn’t go back to school.”

Bottom fishing was the “big thing” in the 1940s, Bujacich said.

“Traveling to Alaska was the big thing, and we’d trolley for sole,” he said. “Dogfish livers were big bucks. You looked for them, and then topped it off with food fish.”

The crew mostly fished during the summer in the San Juans and “just outside of Gig Harbor” in the fall. He also worked in the shipyard “because I was small,” he said.

“I could get underneath the ferries, scrape off the barnacles and paint,” Bujacich said.

In 1944, some of his close friends lied about their age and joined the Merchant Marines. He went to Catalina Island then set sail for South New Guinea.

In 1950, he worked for the police force, then was drafted and sent to Korea.

In 1953, he ran for city council and fished. Bujacich ran a restaurant called “Shortstop” that was “wiped out when they built the new highway,” he said.

In 1967, Bujacich became mayor of Gig Harbor when the acting mayor got sick. He served as mayor from 1967-78, then became a county commissioner.

One of his favorite fishing stories comes from 1954.

“I had my restaurant and my Uncle John, who was running the ‘Seacomber,’ asked if I could help out as a crew member,” Bujacich said. “I said, ‘Today we load the boat.’ They all laughed, because they thought there was no way we would load the boat because there was no fish. We went to Friday Harbor, and it was so foggy we couldn’t see. And that day we made a haul and loaded the boat.”

Baby-faced fishermen

Vlahovich was lured into fishing at a young age, becoming a full crew member at 15. He crewed on the “Frisco” run by Martin Skrivanich.

“My first real season was a three-month trip to Alaska,” he said. “I was thrilled about it. My ancestors had done it, so I really felt a part of it. You’re not away from land that much. If we were too far from land, the cannery boats would bring food and supplies.”

Vlahovich was the youngster on board, but he soon earned his sea legs by observing and learning the ropes from his elder crew members.

“That particular year, I was the youngest person by 45 years,” he said. “Everyone else was about 60 or older. One was nearly 80. Skrivanich was an old-fashioned Cracker Jack navigator. He taught me how to use a compass and read charts. They don’t work you too hard at that age.”

The young fisherman was assigned a lot of menial work until he got up to speed, but he wasn’t bothered by it.

“I had to do a lot of dirty work — clean the bilge, run errands, go to the lazarette and get the beer. I didn’t mind, though. I had, and still have, a lot of respect for my elders. I was excited about seeing the wilderness state of Alaska. I wasn’t disappointed.”

Vlahovich’s crew fished primarily for salmon, but they also pulled in anchovies, mackerel and tuna.

“You fished hard, and then you’d have a few days off,” he said. “In Alaska, there wasn’t too much dark, so you’d fish until midnight. Sometimes, you’d go to town — some of them were just built out on peers. The mountains come right down to the water.

“I was too young to go to bars, so sometimes I’d hike up a little creek and try to catch a trout. I didn’t stay out there too long, because there were bears all around.”

Some of the memories Vlahovich holds dearest are the nights spent hobnobbing with the boys around the galley table. It was during those times the youth gained respect for, and gained knowledge from, the crew members who had been there and knew a lot more than he did.

“You’d play cards, and that’s where you’d hear the stories — stories of your relatives,” he said. “It was intriguing to hear about your father or mother — to hear about your relatives. The stories were very powerful and generally humorous. Fishermen are pretty good-spirited and full of humor. They enjoy a good laugh and a good story.”

Vlahovich recalls those times with a sense of wistfulness.

He misses them.

“A lot of these people were immigrants but generally had been in the state quite a while,” he said. “They were not all well-educated, but they had their own way of speaking — and that alone was hilarious. The stories were so amazing, and so very little of this is written about.”

While the boys were away

During the summer, women and children ruled the fishing towns.

Theresa Malich’s grandparents settled in Gig Harbor in 1910. Malich said that, when the fishing fleet was gone, the days at the harbor were quiet and simple.

“There was no traffic,” Malich said. “The men were gone all summer, and the women ran the world. The summers were kind of carefree for the kids and mothers. Everybody stuck together, and we all grew vegetables in the garden.”

The children went swimming at Horseshoe Lake while the men were out at sea, fishing for salmon. They kept in contact with their families by sending letters and messages through a short-wave operator.

For Malich, the days of the fishing fleet in Gig Harbor were a wonderful time to be a child.

“It was very exciting,” she said. “I loved the comings and goings of the fleets. We loved our fathers getting ready to go out — we’d be mending the nets and piling things on the boat.”

“It was a big deal when the fishing fleet left,” she added. “The fleet would leave in big groups, and families would gather to watch them go. When the boats would leave the dock, all the people would climb in their cars and drive down to the sand spit. We would jump out and wave to them as they rounded the corner in their boats, blowing their horns.”

Dempsey also recalls those days with fondness.

“The fleets would go out in groups, and their families would gather on the spit,” she said. “The fishing boats all had different sounding horns. We knew a couple that lived in a beach house on the spit, and they’d come out and wave when they heard my father’s horn.”

Like Malich, Dempsey remembers the excitement of the fishing life and the peacefulness of summer.

“You either rode a bike or you walked,” she said. “All the kids in the neighborhood would take chalk and draw a giant hopscotch on the sidewalk. We liked to play ‘Kick the Can.’ That’s how we occupied ourselves in those days.”

Dempsey can stroll down Harborview Drive and point out one house after another, naming aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins who used to live there — and some still do.

“We owned all this land down to the water,” she said, pointing to a stretch of harborfront property, now clustered with homes. “This used to be an empty lot with weeds. My father and his crew would lay out and tar their nets there.”

The future of the industry

In some fishing families, the baton was not passed to current generations, but there isn’t a particular reason why. Each and every family has their own explanation for why the lure of the sea lost its luster.

Dempsey can remember the precise moment when her father walked away from lengthy fishing trips.

“When I was a little girl, he fished in Alaska,” she said. “He was gone for so long that I didn’t know who he was. When he came back, I ran to my uncle’s arms — I was afraid of him. Shortly after that, he stopped fishing in Alaska.”

Randy Babich is one of the remaining holdouts from the era who still makes his living fishing. His grandfather came to town in 1910, but Babich said the town’s lineage is older than that.

Many of the original families in Gig Harbor came from the same island in the Adriatic, the Island of Brac’ Sumartin. The reason a lot of people came to the harbor was due to a blight among the islanders’ wine-making grapes.

One of the original settlers, Sam Jerisich, married an Indian woman.

Babich did not originally intend to be a fisherman for life. He worked the boats as a means to put himself through college and got “addicted to the lifestyle.”

“It was a great summer job,” he said. “After college, I decided to run my own boat.”

Babich did ultimately wander away from the sea, becoming a dentist and earning a degree in psychology. But the salt water had a hold on him.

“I still wanted to fish,” he said. “It’s not for everyone, but I loved it. My brother didn’t like it, but to me, it had a romantic appeal. It was a lot more lucrative back then. It was a great way of making money without having to work the entire year.

“It was very exciting being at sea. Every day was different.”

Babich said those wanting to be career fishermen these days have a lot harder time than in years past.

“It has a whole different set of variables than working on land,” he said. “Not a lot of young people are taking it up as a profession any more. You have to diversify more now. For instance, you can’t just fish for salmon, you have to fish for squid, sardines and salmon. It takes more fisheries to round out the economics.”

One factor affecting the situation is the limited number of permits issued to fishermen.

“There’s a finite number of permits given out,” Babich said. “It’s not just open to free capitalism. In the ’20s and ’30s, most of the harbor was a fishing community, but that’s changed a great deal. Twenty-five years from now, you’ll probably be lucky to find a dozen fishermen here.”

Babich said that, starting in the early 1990s, the farming of salmon in Chile, Norway, Canada and other countries changed the economics quite a bit.

In the 1960s, traps were outlawed and many companies were allowed to lease exclusive sites.

“This consolidated the wealth and resources into too few hands,” he said.

The cost of fuel is also lending a hand to the demise of the interest in the fishing trade.

“Fuel is changing the game real quick,” he said. “The overhead is going up real quick.”

How quickly the game changes is anybody’s guess. Tiny fishing villages that dot the nation’s coast still cling to the lifestyle that has supported their families for generations. Others have been swallowed up by nearby metropolitan areas that continue to expand.

Gig Harbor is one city that sits on the precipice, still playing a balancing act between the new millennium and the ever-fading ghost of its past.

Reach reporter Susan Schell at 253-853-9240 or by e-mail at susan.schell@gateline.com.