By Jeff Buchanan
When I retired from the Army in 2019, I had a great opportunity to help in my transition. Having just spent the last 37 years in the Army (and much of that was in high pressure/high stress situations), I really needed to decompress. My childhood best buddy stepped up and gave me an opportunity to do just that. Greg Sutter captains a charter fishing boat operating out of Homer, Alaska, the halibut fishing capitol of the world. Greg has been a captain for more than 50 years and he is arguably the best skipper in Homer (captgreg.com). His deck hand was headed back to college in late summer, and Greg asked me to come and fill in. We’d take clients out on the ocean every day to fish for halibut and salmon, and as a real benefit to me, the cell phone did not work out on the water. I had a chance to decompress, learn some new skills, and have a great time all packaged together in one month-long transition period.
I had a lot to learn. I’ve always been skilled at eating fish, but not very good at catching them. I learned to prep and clean the boat, give a safety brief, tie knots, bait the hooks, and teach people how to catch the fish we were targeting. I taught our clients how to play a salmon without losing it and how to reel in a big halibut without breaking themselves. I’d help get big fish into the boat with a ga? or a net. I learned how to drive and maintain the boat and navigate using charts instead of maps. I can filet a salmon on the back of a moving boat in about 45 seconds. Halibut take a little longer, but I got to be pretty good with a knife and did not cut myself every day.
The biggest thing I needed to learn about was customer service. The only experience I had in business relationships was as a customer, and I had never invested much thought in providing quality service. I was clueless, to say the least. The best example I can give is related to hooking a halibut. The technique we used to hook these big fish was foreign to the experience of most of our clients. The hooks we use for halibut are called “circle hooks” and were developed by long-liners. Halibut are voracious predators and will eat octopus, salmon heads, and just about everything in between. If you want to catch a halibut on a circle hook, you need to “let the fish eat.” Given the chance to do so, most halibut will hook themselves. Our clients generally had experience fishing with “J hooks” for trout, bass, or catfish. When the fish bites, they would jerk the line to set the hook. If they did so with a circle hook and a halibut, they’d just jerk the bait out of the fish’s mouth. I taught our clients to be patient and wait until they felt the weight of the fish on the line. They could then start reeling it up to the boat, keeping tension in the line.
It seems like there is always one guy who knows better (and yes, it’s always a man). One afternoon I was getting frustrated with a client because he would not listen to me. A big fish would bite his bait, and he’d invariably jerk the bait out of his mouth. He kept losing a chance to land a 50- or 100-pound halibut because he would not let the fish eat and hook itself. I didn’t say anything but I’m sure that my body language communicated my frustration and impatience. Finally, Greg pulled me aside. He said: “You don’t get it. You’re still trying to knock down targets. They did not come here to kill fish; they’re paying us to have fun.” His admonition caused me to re-orient on the client experience, and it was a great lesson for me about customer service. People were paying us to have fun. My core job was to help them do so: if they just wanted to pay for meat they could do it at a supermarket.
I have gone back to help Greg out every summer since I retired. Sometimes I work as his deckhand and sometimes I am just there to help when needed. Last year, I mentored a new deck hand for a couple of weeks to help her learn the business. And I taught her about customer service.
If you are an outfitter and hire a new guide, you might want to discuss customer service. In fact, my cluelessness and subsequent lesson may help you regardless of your line of work. I have been a better deck hand since that admonition from Captain Greg. He still chews my ass every day we are out on the water, but it’s not about customer service and besides, that’s what buddies are for. I’ll be working for Greg the last couple of weeks of August this year. If you go out with us for a great day of fishing on the Tomahawk II, I will bait your hooks, ga? your fish, filet them for you, and we’ll get you back safely to the dock at the end of the day. And I will remember that you are paying us to have one of the best days of your life, not to kill fish.
Jeff Buchanan retired as a Lieutenant General from the Army in 2019. He had four combat deployments to Iraq and one to Afghanistan. He also led the military forces supporting FEMA in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria and commanded more than 6,000 troops on the Southwest border in support of CBP. He and his wife live on a small ranch outside of Patagonia, Arizona and he is one of five commissioners for the Arizona Game and Fish Department.
