About

About my Commercial Fishing Family:

My name is Jennifer Karuza Schile, and I am a lifelong resident of the Pacific NW. I live with my husband, George, and two children, Eva (our toddler) and Vincent (our baby). We also have two dogs: Mandy, a tri-colored border collie, and Toby, a pit bull.

I grew up in Bellingham, WA, as part of the fifth generation of a Croatian-descendant fishing family (from the island of Vis in the former Yugoslavia).  Because my husband, George, is a commercial fisherman and we are blessed to have Eva and Vincent, I am now the proud wife and mother of my very own fishing family.

My sisters, Cassandra and Stephanie, and I spent much of our childhood at Squalicum Harbor in Bellingham, swinging on buoys hung from rafters at Dad’s web locker, watching as he and his crew readied the seine net for the Alaska salmon season. Several times a year, we’d stand with our mother, Peggy, along the sawtooth dock and wave goodbye to Dad (Jack) as our family boat departed for the Alaska black cod, halibut, salmon, and crab seasons.

We visited Dad in Ketchikan each summer aboard his purse seiner, F/V Devotion. When we were older, my sisters and I joined the crew of his brand-new, custom-built combination vessel, F/V Vis, to work on the back deck and pay for our college tuition. I spent several summers piling leads and web in the stern during the salmon openers, and running around Ketchikan with my sisters and our friends in the fleet on the closures.

After graduating from Western Washington University with an English degree, I worked at our family seafood market, Vis Seafoods (check out the link on my blogroll!). The next couple of years are a long story, but—cutting to the chase—I was lucky to become a correspondent for National Fisherman magazine, and spent the next few years traveling up and down the Oregon and Washington coasts and north to Alaska writing feature and cover stories.

I met my husband several years ago while on assignment for National Fisherman:  George and his partners were having a fishing vessel built at Fred Wahl Marine Construction in Reedsport, OR, and George was the 33-year-old –and single—partner I interviewed for the story.

George was a Bering Sea fisherman when I met him and had spent over a decade working for the Alaskan Leader, Bristol Leader, and Shemya partnerships in varying capacities. He spent several seasons as the first mate on the Bristol Leader and then as an owner/operator of the vessel Shemya. After we were married, George became owner/operator of our family’s fishing vessel, Vis.  He now catches Dungeness crab on the Washington Coast during the fall and winter, and spends his springs in Alaska catching our halibut and black cod quota.