This section is entirely, purely my own opinion.

I don't know about you, but it's always bothered me that it always ends up that my best crew member, my longest-tenured and most-skilled guy, inevitably ends up being my lowest paid employee because I had to hire them when I had no money and necessarily just hired the cheapest person. We don't have the ability to alter their pay, so the best we can do is hire and train guys for the roles we want them to have, with proportionate pay for their skills.

(Eventually, ideally, if you play the game long enough, all of your crew members will be maxed out just from working and the pay will be inequitable again, but there's nothing we can do about that.)

Fortunately the game devs have recently given us the ability to train our crew for the skills we want (for cash), so we can tailor people for specific roles.

This is a guide for my suggested setup.

Easiest to execute when you have a ton of spare cash sitting around to spend on crew training. I suggest using one set of 6 characters to build up that money, then hire the other 6 to tailor to these roles. That's what I did, anyways.

With all of that in mind, I've worked out roles and skill sets for each available crew member in the game that I think make sense for their level of pay.

• 1.0% base cut for all employees.
  
• Fish skills and gutting skills require more expertise than basic Crab, Lobster, or Scallop skills, so they get a bonus.
  
• Those who have Cooking, Repair, Crane, or Dredging skills also get paid more.

Names in bold are the people I have on my own 6-man crew and are who I fish with in the game, chosen simply because they are the easiest to visually distinguish; Derek and Victor are easiest to confuse, but Isaac and Mikael, and Pearl and Nora are also similar looking.

After the names are my recommendations for how you should build up their skills, but of course you are free to do whatever you want. This is just what I've found works well for me. I feel like it's a balanced crew and I can always make a good combination out of them that will have all the relevant necessary skills for any non-trawling vessel, and it helps me to not feel bad about their paychecks relative to their experience with me.

Number in parentheses is how many of each role I think you should have for a 6-man crew. Number after name is their cut percentage.

"Fish skills" = Hand gutting, Machine gutting, Longline hauling, Net hauling, Deepline

"Crab/Lobster skills" = Pot hauling, Pot baiting & setting, Sorting crabs, Crane operation

"Scallop skills" = Sort scallops, Scallop gutting, Dredging (of course if you don't have the Scallops DLC, just ignore all of these)

Deck boss (1):
Your right hand man. The guy in charge right behind you. He deals with the crew so you don't have to. Has mastered every station on every boat. Doesn't cook. Gets paid the most.

Mikael Wood 2.7%
Graham Oakley 2.3%
Isaac Green 2.2%

• Has all skills except Cooking

Engineer (1):
Your deck boss's right hand man. Master of all the mechanics. Their expertise warrants extra pay. Doesn't do hand gutting, but can cook. (My story for this guy in my game is he was a seafood chef who went out fishing to learn where his ingredients came from and fell in love with it, so he switched professions)

Graham Oakley 2.3%
Isaac Green 2.2%
Nora Ross 1.9%
Thomas Moore 1.7%

• Has all skills except Hand gutting and Scallop gutting

Jr Engineer (1):
Your backup engineer. Can also do gutting and grunt work.

Nora Ross 1.9%
Thomas Moore 1.7%
Sadie Lewis 1.6%
Emma King 1.5%

• Repair
  
• Hand Gutting
  
• Machine Gutting
  
• Freezing
  
• Stacking
  
• all Crab/Lobster skills
  
• all Scallop skills

Fish Specialist (1):
Has all the skills for all types of non-shellfish fishing. Also can cook, and has a steady hand for scallop gutting.

Thomas Moore 1.7%
Sadie Lewis 1.6%
Emma King 1.5%
Pearl Myrland 1.4%

• Cooking
  
• all Fish skills
  
• Scallop gutting

Shell Crew/General Labor (2):
The grunts and the f**kin' new guys. Just warm bodies to get hard work done. Paid the least. Derek and Josh can run the cranes, and cook, so they get paid more than Rudy and Victor.

Derek Clark 1.3%
Josh Comeau 1.3%

• Cooking
  
• Freezing
  
• Stacking
  
• all Crab/Lobster skills
  
• Scallop sorting
  
• Dredging

Rudy Smith 1.0%
Victor Walker 1.0%

• Freezing
  
• Stacking
  
• Pot hauling
  
• Pot baiting & setting
  
• Sorting crabs
  
• Scallop sorting