July 12, 2009

My parents arrived last Friday.  They took a cruise up from Vancouver to Seward.  A bus dropped them at the airport and I picked them up at lunch.

Saturday we left home at 5:00 AM.  We needed to make the 6:30 tunnel opening to Whittier to catch our fishing charter.  The weather was foggy, comfortable, and still as we departed the dock.  We road through a few short stretches of chop, but most of the three hour ride out to the Gulf of Alaska was in protected glassy water.  As we emerged into the big water, we were surprised at the flatness of the water.  The Gulf of Alaska is not known for calm waters.

Three hours is a long ride out, but it went pretty quick.  The fiords and glaciers provided spectacular scenery even though they were significantly obscured by the fog.  The marine environment provided some amusement.  We saw otters, jumping salmon, porpoises, and whales.  We saw a huge pod of orcas hunting in a bay.  One of the larger ones had an odd curl in its dorsal fin.  We also heard sea lions barking from the rocks, but we did not get close enough to see any of them.

The fishing started slow, but the six fishermen on board, our party of four and two friendly and amusing strangers, put a couple of small halibut in the hold before moving to the next spot.  We started catching rockfish.  I pulled up a big yellow-eye.  Kris pulled up one even bigger.  Then one of the strangers pulled up the largest yellow-eye the captain had ever seen caught.  We were soon flirting with our limits on rockfish and started returning the ones that survived the extraction from the 200 foot deep water.  The captain began looking for a muddy bottom to get us some halibut.  We eventually landed on top of them as the feeding peaked.  We were pulling up halibut or empty hooks every few minutes.

The fishing was exhausting.  We started with 2 lb lead sinkers.  Reeling up a two pound sinker from 200 feet down just to check your bait is exhausting.  When the tidal currents picked up, we all whined when they moved us up to 3 lb sinkers.  The captain and mate started helping Kris and my mother reel up when they moved us to the four pounders.  It was sometimes difficult to tell if a fish was on the line with a four pound weight.

As we neared the end of our trip, we were rapidly approaching our halibut limit.  I was one of the last ones to catch my second fish.  When it hit, I knew it was different.  The big rod bent under the weight.  As I made a little progress, the fish took it back against the powerful drag of the heavy gear.  I tried to retrieve it on my own.  People kept offering me help.  I kept resisting.  The fish kept undoing some of my progress.  I relented to my dad’s offer to assist in lifting the rod.  We began a reasonable rhythm of lifting the rod a short distance and then I would reel down on it.  The captain was getting excited, thinking that any fish that could pull back on that drag had to be really big.  It was a little disappointing to pull up only a forty pounder, an oddly thick fish for the typical proportions of a halibut.  The strong tidal current probably assisted the fish in the fight.

Sunday started with a four hour fish packing process.  We set up an assembly line.  I was responsible for skinning and rough cleaning of the fillets.  My dad took the final cleanup.  Kris dried and packed the fillets.  My mom ran the vacuum packer.  We were all tired and the freezer was full by the time we finished.  We took an afternoon hike along Campbell Creek before cooking up a meal of baked halibut and fried rockfish.

I took Tuesday off and my dad and I went looking for salmon.  I had a report of second run reds moving up the Kenai, so we decided to try a spot that provided easy shore access.  The fish were boiling in the water when we arrived.  Reds were swirling and jumping all around us.  Big kings jumped clean out of the water further out.  In spite of the activity, we couldn’t coax a hit.  We tried a couple different spots.  We had our choice since we were practically alone.  We hooked a couple that quickly got off.  My dad took a break and walked down a little further.  He came back and reported that he thought he found a spot where a big rapid would funnel the fish to the shore line.  It was a good call.  We had more hookups in less time at that location than any other.

Unfortunately, they are big fish and difficult to land.  We struggled with low river levels putting the water level far below the fishing decks along the shore.  The handle on my net just wasn’t long enough for easy reach.  Adding to the challenge were the spruce logs with lots of branches pinned to the shore below us.  We had to control the fish with the rod to get it into a good location for netting.  We each lost one right at the net.  We landed only one big red, not enough to smoke so we have several packs of frozen salmon in the freezer to go with our rockfish and halibut.

In spite of the slow fishing, I had a great day.  The lack of crowds always makes me happy.  Fishing is a great distraction, even doing the stupid Kenai flip in our attempts to catch fish passing only a few feet from shore.  The weather cooperated for most of the day, with clouds and cool temperatures eventually giving way to the blistering sun.  The temperature by the time we left was brutal, almost 70 degrees.  The drive wasn’t too painful, although an accident closed the two lane highway for 20 minutes on the return and road construction brought us to a stop for 15 minutes on the way down.  Life is more fun when you don’t feel rushed, and even our disruptions didn’t make me feel like I was running late.