Will work for fish!

Day 64 – Thursday, August 15

We’re getting pretty good at this fishing thing! Today we went salmon fishing…what fun it was!  The sun was out, water was calm and the fish were biting!  We were on “The Servant”, and there were 16 people on the boat, 8 from our caravan.  Captain Matt and deckmate Mike were very young, but sure knew how to find the right fishing spot.  

 

The fishing was different than halibut fishing.  The poles were longer and lighter (thank goodness, because my arms still ache from Monday’s  halibut fishing trip).  The sinker was also a lot lighter.  The bait was the same—herring-- but the technique was a little different. 

We traveled about an hour on the water, enjoying the scenery and the great weather (it was in the 60’s).  We saw mountain goats, an eagle, puffins and the same seals laying around on the same rock we saw last night.  There were a lot of other boats out, since the annual Seward Silver Salmon Derby is going on.  The Derby runs from August 10-18.  The prize for the largest fish is $10,000, but there are specially tagged fish that will pay anywhere from $100- $50,000!  

During the trip out, the deckhand prepared the bait for the poles as the seagulls followed us along.  

We finally stopped in a cove, and received instructions on the fishing technique.   Since salmon can be anywhere between the surface and 60 feet, the approach is to let out 60 feet of line—controlled by your thumb on the reel with your left hand, and pulling out line with your right hand 60 times. (what an easy way of measuring 60 ft!)   Then, you reel in your line.  Salmon like to chase, so it was important to keep the bait moving, and get the fish to chase and bite it.   Once they bit, we had to jerk the pole to set the hook, then start reeling in after calling “Fish On”.  We had to stay at least 8 ft. apart, to keep the lines from getting tangled. We began dropping our lines in the water, and all of the sudden, three people had a bite, and we all were yelling fish on!  Since there were only two crew guys, they were scrambling from one end of the boat to the other with a net to help land the fish in the boat.  On top of that, one of the nets had a hole in it, so it added to the excitement!   I caught my first fish in the middle of the hectic activity, and they got it in the boat, but somebody else was yelling fish on, so I had to put my foot on the fish to keep it from flipping around until they could get back to me to take the hook out.  (No, I didn’t want to try to do it myself!)

I immediately caught two more, and was the first to hit the limit of 3 fish, so I was able to watch everyone else and take pictures!  In between, I caught a rock fish which was too small to keep, so we threw him back.   Jim also landed his limit, and we were happy with the results.  This all happened before 10:30 am!  We had to be back at the dock by noon because there was another group going out after us.

It was pretty exciting.  This time, since the group was not all together, instead of dividing up the fish equally  at the end of the day, they tagged them with a wire tie of a specific color, so you knew which was yours.  Jim & I had green tags. 

 

 

 

On the way back to the dock, the deckhand Mike filleted the fish and put them in a plastic bag with a colored tie to identify each person’s bag. 

When the boat landed, they loaded up the fish and wheeled them up to the fish processing place for those that wanted to have them vacuum packed, frozen or sent home.

 

We ended up with 16 lbs of silver salmon filets!!  Guess what we’re having for dinner tonight!!