When much of the West Coast blackcod fleet switched from longlining with hooks to slinky pots, their old hauling systems were not quite working out for them. They needed just a little more power to their hauler without the expense of completely changing the vessel’s hydraulic system. Washington-based Integrity Machining had the answer for them.

Integrity Sales Engineer Brad Tibbs said in some cases his team simply doubled the amount of oil in the hydraulic system.

“For example, most boats have 20 gallons for oil, and you have to put 40 gallons of oil in. That allows us to quadruple the amount of power that longline puller has,” Tibbs said.

Tibbs added this can be too much power if skippers want to switch back to hooks, noting that it can snap lines if skippers turn their heads. But the engineers at Integrity had a solution for that as well.

“We added an additional pressure relief valve to limit the amount of power that the hauler had, so when someone is fishing with hooks, they can dial it way back down to around 1,100 PSI, and that is perfect for hooks,” Tibbs said.

Then when switching back to slinky pots, that valve can be bumped back up to a pulling power around 1,900 PSI, which provides ample force for pulling slinky pots. Integrity provides several sizes of the Nordic brand haulers, although Tibbs said most of the conversions have been on 58-foot limit seiners with 24-inch haulers. His new project, however, is to help usher smaller boats into the slinky pot revolution, which has him working on juicing up 17-inch haulers so they are able to pull in soft pots.

“Right now it’s the big boats that are changing over, but there are a lot of smaller boats that have quota to catch, and I’ve seen a lot of interest in there in using slinky pots as well,” Tibbs said.

Integrity also offers several kinds of 10-inch and 12-inch longline haulers in davit-style, bulkhead or hanging models.