A Hard Act to Follow

I picked my youngest nephew (10 years old) up from his first flight traveling solo at 8:30am. His mother – my youngest sister – traveled with him from Rochester, NY, and put him on the plane from Seattle, and she traveled to Portland for a meeting. By 11am we were on the water. We set dungy crab pots at our cabin anchorage, then ran down Chatham Strait and set a king crab pot I’d bought the night before from a friend of a friend. Then we went fishing. We had a few strikes and caught a pink salmon. Then we got a nice coho, and Eaton played it just right and landed it – his first salmon.

Just as I put the gear back in the water, I looked behind the boat to see a line of smokestacks. Nine adult humpback whales were headed our way side by side. We got out of their way, and watched them bubble net feed up the shore line for the next hour.  We headed back to spend the night at the cabin, and as we got to our anchorage, I saw a bear feeding on grass on Admiralty Island. Eaton was fast asleep but I finally shook him awake, but he was not as impressed as I’d hoped.

We pulled one of the pots and got one keeper – enough for dinner. He thought he could eat a whole crab but he didn’t quite make it so I finished it off. We slept hard that night. Eaton was so quiet I couldn’t even tell which of the top bunks he was in. The next morning we picked blueberries, blue huckleberries and red huckleberries around the cabin for putting in our pancakes.  After breakfast, we left for town, as I needed to get a part for my outboard because it wasn’t charging the battery. As we motored over to check the crab pots again, there were porpoises in the little bay. All around us. Right next to the boat. We pulled the pots and caught 3 keepers.

When we got home, Eaton was happy to have crab for lunch as I called around town for the part I needed, and then around the region, and finally found it at Rocky’s in Petersburg. He’s sending the part up on the morning jet. Eaton’s first 24 hours in town will be hard to beat.

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