CONCORD, NH — August 6, 2012 — When he was a senior at Winnacunnet Regional High School, Daniel Goethel wrote essays about fishing with his dad. He wrote about the time his jacket got caught in the rigging and he almost got thrown out to sea with the fishing nets. He wrote about bad weather, hard work and long hours – and how much he loved it all.
What he didn't write about: a desire to take over his father's boat someday.
It's a small part of the bigger picture his father, David Goethel, sees. Young people don't want or can't afford to start fishing, and the older folk – his generation and especially fishermen from New Hampshire – are being squeezed out by layers of federal regulations he sees as unnecessary, redundant and only getting worse.
David Goethel, 58, has been fishing professionally for more than 40 years, but first fell in love when he was 13. He spent every summer as a mate on a party boat, untangling lines for amateurs who rented the boat to look for mackerel and drink beer on the open water.
"My wife takes this the wrong way sometimes, but I just don't like being on land," he said. "I'm not comfortable there. I love my wife, I like my family, but land is unnatural to me. I just like the ocean better. It's different every hour, it's different every minute."
He went to college to be a biologist, but when he realized the market was flooded he returned to fishing, where he found the sweet spot between doing something he loved and making a comfortable living.
"You could make money fishing then, because you could work as much as you wanted. There were no limits, no rules, no restraints. If you wanted to fish 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you could go for it. You could buy your slice of the American dream," he said.
And he did. Since 1983, Goethel has been running a day boat out of Hampton, seeking hundreds of pounds of ground fish, cod, flounder, haddock, pollock and 10 other species, each time he drops his nets.
The first day he owned his own day boat, he had $35 to his name. The rest had gone into a house and the boat Ellen Diane, named for his wife. Since then, he's left home before 4 a.m., every day he's allowed, so he can be on the open water by 5.
Read the full story at the Concord Monitor