Who Is Papa George

Our Mission:

Papa George Gourmet Albacore has one goal ...to produce the highest quality seafood products from our catch. Our thirty years of experience in fishing gives us the advantage of knowing how to catch and process really good fish. We use only sashimi grade albacore and salmon in our products. We are family owned, operated, and oriented.

About Papa George:

Papa George Belsome was a Cajun from Bayou Laffite, Louisiana, who shrimped, oystered, and hunted alligators. He built the F/V Papa George (to ABS standards) in 1973. He was famous at Superior Shipyard in the nearby town of Golden Meadow for his eagle eye on the workers who maintained and painted the F/V Papa George and for his lunches. The entire shipyard gang enjoyed his massive pots of gumbo or red beans and rice. This proud fisherman, George Belsome, painted the boat green because it was the color of money and he wanted some good luck. Steve and Holly Lovejoy bought the F/V Papa George from his son, Darryl, in 1990.

We are a family business ...Steve and Holly Lovejoy, owners. Our business and our passion is fishing. We love to hunt fish. In honor of a favorite Alaskan fishing spot on Nagai Island, the largest island of the Shumagin group, we named our internet business Mist Harbor, Inc. This circular cove can be spooky in a fog as all sound echos off the steep surrounding walls. In a gale the whistling of a williwaw shrieks inside the sideways rain. The hillsides become Irish green in the third week of June. Mist Harbor is deep, possibly a sunken volcanic crater. It is a haven from storms and a great hook-off point for sockeye seining.

We converted the Belsomes' shrimper into an albacore troller and then into a seiner. Albacore trolling took a back seat to squid seining in Southern California and sardine seining in both Oregon and Washington. Steve found a few weeks in the summer to troll for albacore. We enjoyed trolling in the South Pacific for several years as well as in the North Pacific for over a decade.

On September 2, 2007 our vessel sank off the Washington Coast with the loss of our relief skipper, David Starbuck, and his friend, Ethel Zelaya. The other three crew escaped the sinking hull and drove the skiff to shore, twelve miles away in the wind and fog. All fishermen know that tragedy and disaster can happen at anytime, just not to them. We grieve the loss of our friends and we are getting back on our feet as a fishing business once more. It's what we know how to do best.