Matt Johnston's boat Wild West featured in National Fisherman

A Swinomish fisherman has netted national attention for his 47-foot crabber built from an in-house design at Full Time Fabrication in Sedro-Woolley.

Matt Johnston's new boat, Wild West, is featured in National Fisherman magazine, which covers the U.S. and Canadian fishing industries and whose target audience includes commercial fishermen, academics, government staffers, sport fishermen and environmental advocates.

Wild West was to begin sea trials in late January.

National Fisherman correspondent Paul Molyneaux writes that Johnston leased a crab license during the COVID-19 pandemic and decided to build a boat with his longtime friend, T.J. Lowry, who formerly worked at La Conner Maritime Fabrication before opening his own boatbuilding firm upriver.

Molyneaux reports that Johnston, who for several years worked a 34-foot boat, had been diving for geoducks, cucumbers and urchins when during the pandemic he obtained his crab license "and realized it was a fishery he could succeed in."

"I looked at how things were during COVID and I wasn't sure, but coming out of it I figured I could make it and started looking for someone to build a boat," Johnson told Molyneaux.

Johnston tapped Lowry early in the process.

"He was just finishing up three Bristol Bay boats and could pretty much start right away," said Johnston, "so I went with him."

Johnston's boat is the largest that Lowry's team has taken on thus far.

Molyneaux notes that Lowry enlisted Tom Drake of Cadre Marine for the design work.

"He was a welder at Maverik (Marine) when I worked there so he knows how things are done, so he's not designing what can't be built," Lowry said of Drake.

The Wild West's engine, Molyneaux writes, sits ahead of the vessel's fish hold, which can handle 15,000 pounds of live crab.

"With crab," Lowry told Molyneaux, "you've got the hold filled all the way and flowing over as more water is pumped in so that the crabs don't use up the oxygen and die."

Johnston, currently fishing out of Westport on southwest Washington's Pacific Coast, also fishes on Puget Sound and this fall will continue diving for sea urchins, cucumbers and geoducks.

"We also fish the tribal prawn fishery," he said to Molyneaux, "but we get that quota pretty quick."

When the National Fisherman went to print, Lowry was looking forward to getting Wild West in the water.

"We're about 20 miles from the harbor at La Conner," Molyneaux quotes Lowry. "I think we can get it down the road. I'm told we can."