Had Jesse here the past few days. He is the husband of one of Sara’s early students, Hanni, who is like our niece. She knows this because I gave her my prized possession – a Swiss Army knife with all the gadgets – when she left for the Peace Corps. The knife was given to me by a Japanese dentist at Wood River Lodge who could not break me of my habit of cutting my fishing line knots with my teeth. Hanni met Jesse in the Peace Corps in Guyana. And of course, he’s known as Jesse the Body in our household, after my favorite professional wrestler and governor.
Jesse came over on the ferry. I thought we’d go right on the boat that evening, but it was raining and foggy so we started first thing the next morning. We were on our way to my outer fishing drags when we saw a pile of charter boats in a cove where I’ve fished before, but never caught anything. We dragged around there for several hours and got 3 nice cohos and a small one. We went on to one of the favorite drags and not much. A pink and rockfish released.
We went back the way we came so I could set the 2 hook halibut skate. We anchored right next to the set location, near a favorite deer hunting spot. Jesse enjoyed a paddle in the Tucktec folding kayak while I made venison over salad for dinner. Loving this kayak. Super light and seems to handle well.
The next morning, we were up early to check the skate as I was wary after we almost lost the last 2 to sand fleas. As soon as the skate line was picked up, there was a nice halibut tugging away. When it came up to the boat, I saw the circle hook wasn’t all the way through the jaw, but somehow it was solid. I got the fish around to the swim step, and got the harpoon through the jaw and that was it. I stunned it a few times, then cut a gill and we relaxed for awhile to let the fish bleed.
The big fish came up through the swim step and onto the deck just fine. We measured it – 68 inches. When we looked up the weight from the length in the tide book it came out to 160 lbs. Dang.
I described to Jesse how to fillet the big fish, and he got to it while I motored to one of the favorite king salmon spots near the outside. By the time we got there an hour later, the halibut was filleted into the four big pieces and onto the frozen water bottles in the cooler.
We lost a nice fish at the king spot, and then just nothing the rest of the day. We fished all the way around the island. With 80 lbs of halibut meat in the cooler, we decided to head to town to take care of it, and run out closer to town the next day.
We tied up to the harbor dock, hooked up the hose to the water hydrant, and got to work. We tag teamed skinning the big fillets, then I portioned them, and the portions went into the first rinse bucket. When that was full, I took the fillet portions out and rinsed them again and put the portions into the colanders to drain. When all the portions were well drained, we each took a Costco yogurt container with the bottom cut off and cut up the side, and used these to insert into the vac pack bags to keep moisture off the top of the bag that gets vac packed, and slid the portions down through the container into the bags.
We loaded the bags into clean buckets, and when we had them all ready, we loaded them into the collapsible cart, and walked the green mile from transient moorage up to the parking lot. We drove to my inlaws and borrowed their freezer to freeze the fish in the open bags overnight.
The next morning, we were up and going at 530 am. We fished close to town today as that’s where we caught the fish the first day. We dropped the gear along the Prince of Wales Island shore across from the cabin at a regular king salmon drag. We lost our first strike, which looked like another nice fish. We fished the drag all the way to the corner, and caught 5 nice coho.
We crossed over to an island, and put our gear in there on Mikey’s advice. We saw a cruiser come up and drop their gear not far in front of us, so we figured this must be the place. The cruiser was a local boat, and turned out to be run by a good friend of my inlaws. She was on the kicker tiller, and her young crew was mooching. We trolled around them. We caught 2 nice cohos trolling, and they caught many more than us mooching.
We called it quits a little after 4, and headed home. Back at the dock, we did the same program as with the halibut. I cut off fins and the head, then Jesse filleted and portioned. Then I spooned off burger that was left along the backbone after Jesse filleted. We loaded up the bagged salmon and walked the green mile bac k to the truck.
We picked up our halibut from the night before and got to vac packing in the shed. I got the battery operated radio from the bunkhouse to listen to the Democratic Convention in Chicago on KRBD, where Sara was in attendance.
When the halibut was done, we started in on the salmon. Then weighed out the fish so we could get Jesse’s box packed quickly in the morning.
When we were done, I put pasta to cook in the instant pot, and started the cream sauce with the salmon burger, red onion, a little sea asparagus, some artichoke antipasto left over, butter, and the rest of the milk left from the Morgans. When it cooked down, I added a little pancake mix flour to thicken it. When the pasta was done, I added it to the sauce. Jesse and I both had seconds.