Shrimp cake with kelp relish and mayo tartar sauce and sriracha sauce on a little tortilla.

Shrimp Cakes

When fishing the shrimp trawl, sometimes you get a lot of pink shrimp. And sometimes, those pink shrimp are big enough where it’s easy to take the head off, and then remove the shell from the tail. Just like processing the bigger coon stripe, side stripe, and spot prawn shrimp.  But sometimes, you get really small pink shrimp. The kind that you have to be real careful to pinch the head off, and then you might mush the meat of the tail getting that little tail shell off, if you can get it off at all.

So, I started looking for ways to eat the shrimp – shell and all.  I got the idea when I was working in Ecuador, where the shells were used, minced finely in a blender, in the liquid of the ceviche sauce.

Sara tried coating the little shrimp in panko and frying them, which was okay, but not great. And messy.  Real messy.   I’m now on a diet to get ready for hip replacement, so I’m off carbs as much as I can.  Panko was now out. 

Next, I tried a recipe that said to just fry the snot out of whole shrimp in olive oil. I didn’t like that too much. The texture was okay, but somehow I didn’t like the (perhaps) overheated olive oil taste.

What’s a shrimper to do. There are still bags and bags of little raw pink shrimp staring me in the face every time I open the freezer. If I could come up with an easy way to use them, then catching them the next time wouldn’t feel be such a chore after harvest.

So tonight, I decided to try to make shrimp cakes.

I had a bag of raw, mostly tiny tails with the shell on. Some of the shrimp were still whole, with the head on. My shrimp lot made about 2 cups worth. I put the thawed shrimp into the food processor and let it whirl. I let it go till the shrimp was a paste – a gooey, really thick liquid.

Now, what to bind the shrimp paste to make it into a patty. First, I added a couple eggs. Then 3 heaping tablespoons of fine almond flour (used because it has very low carbohydrates, for my diet). Lastly, I added about a 1/4 cup of finely grated parmesan cheese. I mixed the eggs, flour and cheese into the shrimp paste with a whip.

I spooned the mixture out in about tablespoon portions into a pan of hot olive oil, and flattened the blobs as much as I could into a patty. I fried two such patties for a good while on both sides so they would thoroughly cook the shells in the batter to a crisp. The patties had a good texture and held together nicely, but the olive oil got a little too hot, I think, and gave it an off flavor.

Next batch,  I added half a yellow onion finely chopped and 6 of the cherry peppers stuffed with cream cheese in a jar of oil you get from Costco, coarsely cut up with scissors, to the remaining batter.  I tried frying these patties in butter. The resulting cakes almost burned badly, but not quite, in the butter, again from the extended time I was cooking them. 

 
Shrimp batter for frying

Shrimp batter for frying

Well, the ingredients now seemed about right for my taste.  They worked well together, held together nicely as a patty, and a topping of kelp relish and mayonnaise tartar sauce turned a good thing into something great.   Sara ate 3 of the 4 cakes I made, and that confirmed I was on to something. We talked about what else might go in the batter. The only other thing we thought of was maybe celery, but the cakes were great the way they were.

The last thing tinkered with was the oil I cook them in. I asked Chef Brenda in Haines, and she suggested avocado oil or grapeseed oil. Grapeseed oil was also suggested by Amanda in Homer and Joe in Smithers. I told Joe, who worked with me in West Africa in the heart of red oil palm country, that red palm oil would be the best for these, as I thought it would impart the best taste of this combination. I used to keep some red palm oil on hand. But when the Contehs moved to town, I gave it all to them, because then it returned in authentic West African dishes of sauces made with greens over rice.

Shrimp cakes frying in palm oil.

Shrimp cakes frying in palm oil.

But luck was on my side.  When I went to make breakfast this morning and was looking for some of the suggested oils, there, in the back of the oil drawer, was some leftover ancient African palm oil!   Using palm oil is almost cheating, since anything tastes good fried in palm oil. Heck, palm oil tastes good in palm oil.

As I thought, even old palm oil still made great shrimp cakes.  Now I’ve got a use for both the old palm oil and the rest of the little shrimps in the freezer.

Shrimp cake with kelp relish and mayo tartar sauce and sriracha sauce on a little tortilla.

Shrimp cake with kelp relish and mayo tartar sauce and sriracha sauce on a little tortilla.

Shrimp cakes are here to stay.

Person pulling net from water on boat.

Shrimping with Roy

Roy was coming back through Juneau town, and I asked if he could stay a few days to go shrimping. I’d hoped we could run down the 8 hours to the honey hole, but decided that was too far to run for just the overnight time Roy had to stay, so we tried prospecting closer to town.

We first tried a cove which was a favorite for pot fishermen targeting spot prawns till it was closed due to low numbers. We would be after coon stripe, side stripe or pink shrimp on what looked like a muddy bottom at the head of the cove. It was a flat calm, dry day and we drank gallons of espresso and coffee on the ride out. I served up some of my canned smoked salmon and some cheese with some carb free little tortilla shells and we both agreed it was freaking excellent stuff. We set a 2 hook skate baited with octopus when we got to the head of the bay, then got to shrimping. I had some octopus left from Craig from last year, and scored two more whole octopus Costco is selling for food seafood here in town for this year’s bait supply.

We made 4 trawl passes for the day. We caught maybe 50 shrimp of varying species – some “rock shrimp” and coon stripes. All small shrimp. Plus, as always, some cool fish you never would catch hook and line fishing, and some crab. We didn’t keep anything. We pulled the skate on the way back. Man, was the tide running. I sure thought we had something, but it must just have been the anchors dragging on the rocks. Nothing but octopus baited hooks came up.

The next day we tried right near town to start. We made an hour long tow over what we knew to be mud bottom, I think, and this time, we caught exactly 1 coon stripe. And a lot of cool flounder and sea starish looking things. The wind picked up to a chop so we decided to drown a herring fishing for king salmon around Auke Bay. That produced nothing but sunshine and an even better batch of canned smoked king salmon, cheese and tortillas.

We had dinner of king salmon, salad, and sauteed asparagus that Roy’s wife Brenda showed me how to cook. Roy caught the midnight ferry to Haines.

Today, I was back to chopping some wood and swimming. I’ve dropped 20 lbs this past month in preparation for a hopeful hip replacement later this month. Losing the weight hasn’t been hard at all with the motivation of hopefully getting my hip fixed. Man, I miss being in the woods. Just cut out most sugar and carbs, eat great salad from Juneau Greens with venison or seafood for dinner, and keep up with a little exercise. I didn’t go for the new miracle injection medicine to start, and happily losing weight the old fashioned way. My sisters and Sara have used the new medicine successfully. One sister is down 70 lbs (which doesn’t seem possible) and Sara down 30. Seems to give a lot better outlook on life as we golf the back nine of life, even with those we’ve elected to Congress turning a blind eye to the government takeover. The best I can say about that is it’s gonna get worse, before it gets worse.


Snowy mountain landscape with ski tracks and shadows.

Meeting at the Lake

Snowy mountain landscape with ski tracks and shadows.

My hip is at the end of its useful life. I can see why people used to die at my age as a matter of course. My hip hurts. I don’t want to move. I think when you stop moving, that’s how the dying starts. I’m living in a golden age of sorts. I’ve got insurance and access to miraculous prosthesis replacement. A new hip is scheduled for March, as long as I lose some of the weight I’ve gained with the bum hip. I have to admit, I  feel guilty about such privileges often. To my fellow Americans who don’t have insurance or means for the surgery. And to my friends in other countries, where clean water would be a big improvement to their lives, and the health care we enjoy only something they can dream of for their great grandkids.

I know, surgery or not, I’ve got to keep moving. Motion is the lotion. Move it or lose it. I get it. So I started swimming when we got back from Hawaii (another privilege!). Then the snow came. I tried cross country skiing – my favorite sport- but didn’t make it a mile the first day. Crap, was the hip sore afterward. And me out of shape. The hip feels like that tendon linking the ball to the hip socket that you have to cut to get the hind quarter of a deer to let loose is not there anymore. The hip ball sort of flops around in the socket. Sometimes it’s not so much that it’s painful as it just doesn’t work very well. And other times, it’s like that, and hurts too.

But with sunny days and daytime temperatures in the 20’s or low 30’s, I keep going. I’ve gradually increased skiing to over a mile, which still isn’t very far, but better than nothing. The doctor and Teri told me to get the hip muscles in as good a shape as I can before surgery so recovery will be easier. I’m also filling up the wood locker at home. That involves more movement in one place splitting and stacking, so I get a good workout but don’t work the hip so hard. And it’s my other favorite exercise alongside cross country skiing.

When I got to the lake today, who did I see coming off the lake but my good friend Bob and his wife Sylvia. Shit, did Bob look good. He’s had some kind of bad, bad cancer he’s been fighting. And winning. Last time I saw him he was a little wobbly on one of his legs from cancer treatment, and going to physical therapy when we met, to gain some strength back. Today, he was beaming on his first day skiing, and said they’d be back tomorrow!  Seeing him made my whole day. My whole month. Bob has always been a spiritual guy since I’ve known him, and I could see he’s been taking everything one day at a time and that his outlook is what may be giving him the strength with his illness.

We said our goodbyes. I told them to let me know if they need anything. I get them fish and game as I can, since Bob can’t get out for it. What he and his wife can do, however, is garden, and he keeps us in zucchini, which we surely enjoy as a special treat as he does the seafood and venison.

I stepped into my skis and started off across the lake towards the glacier in the distance. I was soon out of the shade and into the sunshine. This is why I live here, I thought.  As I skied, I also thought of another friend battling bad, bad cancer. Bob’s probably 15 years or so older than me. But this friend is my age. Actually, a tad younger than me.  Both of them were in good physical shape when they got diagnosed. Better shape than me, for sure.  This friend is not the same kind of spiritual as Bob is, but is in his own way. His one day at a time, thankful for his present being, is similar to Bob. He looked pretty good when I dropped him off some shrimp from our trip last week. Both of them are winning at the present moment.

All the thinking and the sunshine made the skiing alot easier today. I wasn’t thinking about my hip or anything else till I was on the homestretch back to start point at the shoreline. Then I had to take a few breathers. Crap, I’m out of shape. But thankful for living in this place and having two good people I’m lucky to call friends still keeping on keeping on.

Crab trap with caught crabs in the water.

Wilderness Shrimping

Kurt and I watched the weather to make an 8 hour run in the Jeanne Kay to do some winter boat camping. We were after shrimp and crab, and would do a little king salmon trolling on the way home. Nick and Amanda showed me how to work a shrimp trawl last summer, and it’s now one of my favorite ways to fish.

We watched the weather, especially since there’s little help close by that far from town this time of year. The barge lines and a few trappers are about the only winter boaters. The forecast called for 15 knots day one, then 10 knots days 2 and 3 of our planned trip. There were places to hide if the weather came up. Temperatures were around freezing and perfect for keeping seafood.

We left town about 7 am with a crescent moonlight. I wanted to get down to our destination before dark so we could set our pot gear and get anchored before dark.

We turned into the destination bay late in the day. I was surprised to see another boat when we turned the corner. A bigger aluminum boat with sodium lights glaring from the bow roof was anchored in a cove. I saw a man walking the beach with purpose. I was puzzled why he was anchored on the side of the channel facing the wind, then understood from experience: he was trapping. I saw him return up the beach with a cart of something – probably bait. Wow. This is some pretty remote trapping, I thought. I guessed he was after marten, wolverine and wolf. He anchored near us that night, and we saw him going from cove to cove checking his traps the next day. I wish I could have talked to him about how he was doing in this trapper’s dreamland.

We set the shrimp pots first. It was my first time setting shrimp pots. Nick gave me some general advice on where to set. Then Kurt picked a point, and we set there, using some floating line I borrowed from Chris. I only have 3 shrimp pots, and we longlined them. I grabbed a bucket of shrimp bait left at the harbor free pile last year, and I finally got to use it. I set the string out while Kurt ran the boat.

Next we set some dungeness and king crab pots up the bay. We anchored right at dark, and settled in for the night. Kurt is always the meals guy on our trips. He brought what has become a standard dinner of bison burgers, with a topping of balsamic vinegar and onion condiment he got from Coleen’s shop. Great combo.

We were up and moving at daylight on day 2. We checked all the pots first, so if we weren’t doing anything in their locations, we could move them. We started with the shrimp pots. I ran the little electric hauler Dougie gave me when he moved fulltime to Bethel, where he’d never use it. It sits on a standard Scottie downrigger mount, and although it looks kind of flimsy, it actually works fine for our scale of fishing. The puller is not going to pull a commercial king crab pot, and won’t like pulling a commercial dungeness crab pot, but it pulls our lighter “sport” gear just fine.

Up and up comes the line we borrowed from Chris. After a minute or three, we get the first 50 fathoms up, and here comes the first anchor. I take it off, and soon the first pot shows coming up from the depths. Astonishingly, we have some spot prawns in it!  The biggest I’ve ever seen. About 8 to 9 inches long!

Crab trap with caught crabs in the water.

They might not look all that big in the photo, but here’s one of them alongside the crab measuring device. The gap above the prawn is the 7 inch king crab ruler.

Shrimp next to measuring tool on metal surface.

The next 2 pots were about the same. Not a lot in numbers, but holy cow, big shrimps!

Next we checked the crab pots. We caught quite a few tanner and king crab, but only one king crab was a keeper (a male minimum 7 inches across the body shell), and a tanner or two (male minimum 5.5 inches across the body shell). Again, my Pulitzer prize photography makes the crab look small as it’s in the bottom of a line barrel, but that’s them.

Live red crab in orange bucket

We reset pots to try for more legal sized crab, then got the shrimp trawl out and got trawling. Kurt wasn’t all that enthused about trawling – he was more about the crabbing – but he’s always game and a good skipper or deckhand whenever you need him. I got the net out of the action packer tote. The first time I tried shrimp trawling my own net with Nick and Amanda (with Charlie and Amy aboard), we snagged the net on the bottom and lost it. Amanda had a friend (who we later figured out was a mutual friend as often happens in a small city) who had a trawl he wanted to sell, and which I bought. The trawl net was from Memphis Net and Twine (where everyone I know gets their trawl nets), and their smallest net configuration, I think. The “doors” that keep the net open were much smaller than the doors on the net that I lost. And that made the new net much easier for a beginner to work, and I like it better than the net I lost.

I got reacquainted with the trawl net and its configuration. The doors on either side of the trawl net have a line that leads back to a junction – a double ended swivel eye hook- where both caribeners at the end of the door lines are attached. A ~ 10 lb cannon ball is attached at this junction as well. The tow line is tied to the other end of the double ended swivel eye hook.

When I got ready to set the net, Kurt told me to get my life jacket on. Capital idea!  Then I explained to Kurt what we’d be doing, got him lined up at the helm, then started barking out instructions for forward or neutral as I set out the net from the swim step. In the absolute wilderness, I should mention. With mountains all around. That’s why they’ll bury me here.

I payed out the two door lines, then the tow line. I asked Nick how much tow line you pay out in relation to the depth you’re fishing, and the answer was 3 or 4 to 1 – leaning towards 4 to 1. So I when I started paying out line, I regularly asked Kurt what our depth was. When I payed out enough tow line for the depth we were fishing,, I snubbed the tow line to the cleat. I asked him what our speed was. 1.7 knots, he said. That seemed faster than I remember with Joe, so I payed out a bunch more tow line. Speed, I asked?  Still 1.7 knots. Well, I thought, we’ll just keep going at this length of tow line at this depth, and see how it goes.

A half hour later, I had Kurt turn the boat around so it was heading towards the net, and that made hauling back the tow line alot easier on me and the hauler. When we got to the net, Kurt put the engine in neutral, and came to the back deck to see what we’d caught. I hauled up the net to the swim step. When I had about 2/3 of the net on the step, I saw we’d caught some sticks and some crab. Thinking that was it, I hauled the rest of the net over the step. OOOOHH!  A cod end full of shrimp!  We are shrimpers, I said!

I learned from my last trip with Joe to have a bucket ready to dump the catch into, and then reset the net and continue fishing while you sort the catch. I cut a 30 gallon pepper barrel I got somewhere in half, and drilled drain holes in the bottom and sides of it. We tossed the crab from the top of the net overboard, then lifted the cod end of the trawl net into the barrel, untied the cod end line, and dumped the catch into the barrel. Then Kurt lined up the boat to trawl new water on the opposite side of the channel, and I reset the net.

I sorted through the catch, which, while mostly shrimp, also contained small fish, small crab, and sea urchins. I sorted through the catch and returned everything that wasn’t shrimp. We caught mostly pink shrimp, with a few of the larger coon stripe shrimp. I went inside and got a cup of coffee to warm up, and soon it was time for the second haul.

After towing for about 20 minutes, we snagged on something, which stopped the boat. It’s not like you can notice you’ve stopped. You just see your speed go to 0.0 knots. Kurt turned the boat back to the net while I hauled the tow line in. When we got close to the end of the tow line, the line was tight, then it gave slack. I knew we’d freed the net.

We weren’t expecting as much on this haul since we’d had to haul in early. When we got the net up, we saw we’d done just fine. With lots more coon stripe and some spot prawns than the first tow. We got the catch into the barrel and reset the net, then I sorted the catch.

After sorting the catch, I headed inside the wheelhouse for more coffee. It was getting dark – 330 pm ish,  We wanted to check the crab pots, and move them if they were in non-productive ground. Kurt turned back to the net, and I started hauling the tow line. Nick told me that there was a “habitat change” in this location. Now I knew what he meant. The top of the net was full of rocks and some kind of sponge or coral. The cod end held a nice catch of pink, coon stripe and spot shrimp. It took us awhile to get out the rocks and other debris. Then we dumped the cod end into the barrel. Kurt headed the boat to the crab pots across the bay in the waning daylight.

We checked the pots, and no keeper king crab or tanner crab. We moved to new locations. Then we anchored in 20 feet of water, sat down in the galley, and relaxed. That was a full day. Sunrise to after sunset. A good 8 hours of fishing. Kurt served up another dinner of bison burgers, and nobody complained. Man, that’s good stuff. I figured out how to use my new In Reach. I texted Sara and others we were all anchored, and the results of our day. What an age we’re living in.

We were up at dawn on day 3. I checked the coolant and the oil, started the Yanmar,  and pulled the anchor with the. We pulled and stacked all the crab pots, catching a tanner crab. We pulled the shrimp pots, and got about half as many as the day before. The prawns were just as huge as day 2. Then we steamed for home.

Kurt was at the helm while I got to figuring out what to do with all the pink shrimp. We decided to cook them whole. I put water on to boil. When the water was steaming, I dumped in a load of pinks. Within a minute or two, shrimp started to float to the top. I dumped the pot of steaming shrimp into a colander suspended in a large bowl. I then put moved the colander full of shrimp to the sink, and returned the water to the pot on stove. I took the steaming shrimp to the back deck, put the shrimp in a bowl, and ran sea water into the bowl to cool the shrimp and halt it cooking.

I repeated this procedure the rest of the way home. I finished cooking the pink shrimp about an hour from the harbor. In the meanwhile, we also trolled for king salmon. We didn’t see a strike, but when Kurt pulled up the rods to quit fishing, we had a shaker on one of the lines.

As nightfall came, Kurt asked if I had bow lights so he could better watch for logs while cruising to Auke Bay. I did, I said. I put both bow lights on. I rarely use the lights, so this was a good opportunity to adjust them. With Kurt at the helm, I got out to the bow and adjusted the lights so they were pointed in the optimum direction.

We arrived in Auke Bay, tied up, and loaded the catch in my folding cart to take to the car. We’d move gear off the boat tomorrow. Kurt lost his truck and house keys somewhere, but he had a spare house key he could use at his residence, so I dropped him off and we’d look for the keys tomorrow. I made him take half the prawns and coon stripes and the king crab, as he tried to refuse it all. Such is the customary dance amongst Alaska best friends.

I picked Kurt up the following morning. We had had such a good trip I was confident we’d find his keys. When we got to the boat, Kurt looked aft while I looked forward. First I found his boot traction grippers. Then there they were. Right behind the fire extinguisher in the forecastle. His keys!  We were on a roll.

We hauled back barrels of line to the truck, and I got home in time to start processing the shrimp while watching the NFL semifinals.

I processed the raw coon stripe and spot prawns, but what to do with the cooked whole pink shrimp. I first removed the heads, then peeled out the meat from the tails. That worked on the larger pinks, but the smaller tails it was really hard to mush out the meats. Wow, was it a slog. I started to peel only the tails of the larger pink shrimp, and sort the tails of small shrimp to another pile to figure out what to do with them later.

All the while, I watched my Bills lose to the Chiefs. The Bills played their hearts out. They should have lost last week to the Ravens, but won. They should have won this week to the Chiefs, but lost. I remember being in my mud brick-walled, thatch-roofed house in Sierra Leone in 1988 (?), listening on Armed Forces Radio by shortwave radio, at 330 or so in the morning, to the Bills lose their first Super Bowl to the Giants on the wide-right field goal try. Then three more losing Super Bowl appearances in a row. Followed by decades of suckage. It’s good to have them back to respectability. I sure miss Paul. I’d have been calling him after the game, lamenting how close my team came to going to the show.

In the meantime, I thought about how I’d seen shrimp used in Ecuador, where they pulled out the meats, then used a blender to grind up the shells for a broth to make ceviche. I asked Sara about processing the shrimp into a paste or ceviche or something. She said what about cooking the tails with the shell on in tempura batter like they make popcorn shrimp?  Well, that was genius.

She got the tempura batter together, and the hot oil going. She battered the pink shrimp tails, dropped them in the hot oil, and I tended the fare. When they were browned on both sides, I scooped them from the oil, let them cool in a colander lined with paper towel, and we each tried them. Good!  That was an attitude changer for me. Separating the heads from tails was easy, but removing the shell from the tail was a pain in the ass, and many times, it just squashed in my fingers. Now we had an answer.

As the evening wore on, we got to divvying up the bounty with our friends. During these conversations, Sara said she wanted to try what I’d seen in Ecuador, and make some soup. I put a few quarts of the whole cooked pink shrimp in the blender, added some water, and Sara whirled it into a puree. She added mushrooms and some other stuff, and had me taste. Shrimp bisque. And really good. Now we have two dishes to make with pink shrimp that are less painful than peeling the tails.

I got shrimp and crab divided up for Sara’s staff and our friends. I vacuum packed what was left for our freezer. I told Sara I sometimes lament that I’ve given away more than I’ve kept for ourselves until I open the freezer to put our share in there and look at all the bounty that’s already in the freezer and how will we ever eat it all.

So, a memorable banner trip winter camping and lots of lessons learned.

Freshly caught crabs on fishing boat deck

MV Natural Disaster

Freshly caught crabs on fishing boat deck

We arrived home the evening of the opening day of a 5-day personal-use king crab fishery. One pot per vessel allowed. Limit of one crab per household. If you thought these restrictions would limit the number of participants, you would be wrong. Everybody and his brother goes out, especially this time of year when deer hunting is mostly over and salmon fishing is six months away.

The fishery is usually a group affair. Since the limit is one per household, the skipper calls friends, and each boat often has members of several households in hopes of sharing the catch. Many of us also take proxy permits for friends 65 years or older, allowing us to keep a crab for them if they can’t join.

I got my permit and a proxy permit for Jeff and Terry right away. I went with my friend Nick to check his pot. Strong winds were forecast, but luckily Nick had set his pot near town in calm waters. There were three crabs in the pot—enough for each of us. I then set my own pot near Nick’s for another chance at crab.

Later, I delivered Jeff and Terry’s crab. Jeff was thrilled. Last year, he hesitated to let me take his proxy permit, but this year, there was no argument. He even brought crab to his son Nick in Seattle, leading to a hilarious text about Jeff’s shucking skills needing improvement.

The next day, Bob, Chris M., and Kurt joined me. I set a pot Jeff had given me but didn’t check the line thoroughly. It snapped, and the pot sank. Thankfully, biodegradable twine ensures the pot will stop ghost fishing eventually. Still, it was a frustrating mistake.

On the final day, Bob, Kurt, Andrew, Sam, and Dorothy joined me. We set another pot in a promising spot. However, the pot was configured for shrimp, with covers over the crab gates. Needless to say, no crab could enter. A snail and hermit crab were the only catches, which Dorothy enjoyed examining before releasing them.

The adults on the boat know me well and weren’t surprised by the outcome. They seemed to enjoy the experience regardless, adding another story to share during our next gathering.

Fishing boat waves on ocean, distant shoreline view.

Kauai

I went to Hawaii, island of Kauai, for my first time this past 2 weeks. I went with Sara, her sister and sister’s husband, and our two nieces and their husbands. We went to spread Sara’s younger sister Jane’s ashes, as Hawaii was her happy place.

I didn’t know what to expect, really. I thought it would be crowded beaches with tourists everywhere. Kind of like Juneau in the summer. Boy, was I wrong. Most beaches had few people, and the beach adjoining the house we rented was used by mostly local people as best we could tell.

I was immediately struck by how remote the islands are. Alaska has always seemed remote, but not this remote. We flew about as far west from Seattle as I would fly east to go to New York State, over nothing but ocean, and then there are these islands. People found these not all that long ago in human history, without GPS or even rudimentary navigation tools. Maybe they could read the stars and sun and moon to navigate. But how did they know where they were going? Amazing, really.

I was a bit tentative swimming or snorkeling in the ocean surf until we went out on a snorkel charter. I hadn’t been snorkeling since I was a kid, and hadn’t done much swimming since then, really, either. The snorkel charter gave me a good refresher for swimming and snorkeling. After that, I went down our beach to some quiet water almost every day until we left and snorkeled in an area that was not over my head anywhere I swam. I saw all kinds of beautiful tropical fish, and usually saw new ones I hadn’t seen each day. I saw sea turtles there, too. Now I had something I enjoyed doing every day, as traveling to a different beach to sit in the sun has never been my thing. Plus, I burn easy. Sara got sun most every day in the yard.

Fishing Charter

We also went on a fishing charter. We were scheduled to go on a Wednesday, but the winds were too big to go. Weather there really is sort of wind or no wind. Not rain or no rain. Or cold or warm. It’s not cold. And rains were intermittent, cooled things off a bit, and sort of not a thing for rainforest dwellers like us. We rescheduled to the following Monday, which meant half the crew couldn’t go, but decided that was best since it was the first calm day in the forecast.

Fishing boat waves on ocean, distant shoreline view.

We headed to a small harbor near Lihue. We went for an afternoon of fishing. We met our boat, about a 30′ charter boat with twin diesels, with the people aboard who fished in the morning, and the crew was cleaning their catch. Out of nowhere, a big shark – 6+ feet anyway, I’d guess – porpoised to eat some of the fish remains pitched over. The crew thought it was a Galapagos shark, which I’d never heard of.

The four of us boarded and soon knew we were going to have a good time because the captain and deckhand were easygoing, good friends with each other, and lots of fun. We decided to troll awhile for pelagic fish like tuna and marlin, then fish on the bottom at the end of the trip. We started trolling right as we left the harbor and fished along an uninhabited coast. The land was for sale for 80 million dollars, and we watched a George Clooney movie (The Descendants) when we got back, on the advice of the boat crew, that explained the family ownership of the land, sort of.

We trolled at about 8 knots in a swell with big squid-looking baits right at the surface. They hadn’t caught any pelagics for several weeks, but we were happy to try. Then it happened. A fish was on. I got the rod since this was my birthday charter. I got into the fighting chair and started the work yarding in the fish on the heaviest gear I’ve ever fished. After about 5 minutes, I got the fish to the boat, and the deckhand gaffed it aboard. A skipjack tuna. I had to admit, it was smaller than I thought it would be based on how hard it was to get aboard, but it was a nice fish. We trolled back towards the harbor and caught no more. We tried bottom fishing the last hour. We caught a nice gray snapper, which the crew said was among the best eating fish. We had tacos made from both fish, and both were great eating, especially with the nice avocados and other local vegetables. Sara made ceviche with the snapper as well, but I didn’t try that. I snorkeled each day the next 2 days until we left Wednesday evening.

We had an all-day layover in Seattle. Gail picked us up and we napped at her house after taking a print Sara left at Gail’s once upon a time to air freight to send to Juneau. I arranged to meet my Peace Corps friend Dan for lunch. Sara and I met him and his girlfriend and his son and had a great time.

We got home in the evening, and Kurt was there to retrieve us as always. No sleep sounder than the first one in your own bed after a long time away.