Andrew went with me hand trolling on Monday.  It was so choppy I would not have been able to fish I don’t think if he wasn’t there driving.  The jacked up cleaning tray worked great.  My back is still sore, but better.  We caught 23, which is another good day and for sure I caught many more than I would have if Andrew wasn’t driving.

Too windy to go out to the hand trolling waters today, so I delivered my catch from yesterday to Chris, then took Andrew and his newly arrived daughter sport fishing.  We only caught one coho, but it was a hog, and there were half a dozen crab in the pots, so the daughter got a good first boat ride and day fishing.  When I got home, I decided to swap out the home made hand troll gurdies from Cannon to the Penn downriggers I picked up over the winter on craigslist.

It took a couple hours but once I did the first one, the second one went quickly.   I like the brake on the cannon over the penn, but the penns are more skookum built, especially the handle, which is metal.  I’ve already broken off 2 cannon handles.   We’ll see how they fish tomorrow.

Chris and Sheila left this morning after a week of fun here. Sheila is the sister of my late friend from grad school, Jimmy, who made me feel most welcome among his family during my 2 years in Mississippi. Chris was Jimmy’s best friend growing up.

Dropped them off at the airport shortly after 3 am for their 5 am Delta flight to Seattle. Wheeled in their fish box and it was dialed in at the maximum 50 lbs on the nose, which was not surprising given the week they’d had.

Every day was exceptional for them.

• We took a ride with Larry to Tenakee and back and saw humpback whales bubblenet feeding.
• We caught 13 coho salmon in a day, then saw orcas on the way home.
• We took a ride to Haines with Larry and Roy showed them around town and we saw the cranky sea lions hauled out on the way home.
• We caught a pile of crab and overnighted at our cabin eating all the crab we could for dinner, then picked the rest.
• They took some walks and drives around town, and saw a sow black bear with cubs, went up the tram and climbed further up Mount Roberts, and they loved the whale statue park.

Yesterday, we drove out the road and stopped at the Shrine of St Therese, and they did some praying in the church, walked around the stations of the cross, and then Sheila walked around the labyrinth.  Chris explained to me what a Columbarium is. On the way home, we were running low on electric for the car, and luckily Sara was also in the same area, so I plugged my car in at a station,  jumped in with her and we all went over to Zarelda’s to order take out, then I took her car to get ice for fishing from Chris, dropped it back at my car, and when I returned to pick them up they came out with food in hand.  I added leftover salmon to my vegetarian curry and it was excellent.

We learned  a lot about the Methodist Church from these two ministers, and interesting to hear about their different congregations in Mississippi and their daughter’s in Atlanta. Also how long term a “mission” can be, as they spent 10 years at a site just helping to rebuild from Hurricane Katrina, and now are headed back to see what the situation is with Ida, that passed through their area when they were here.

Got in a couple days of hand trolling the past two days. Had my best days for coho hand trolling in my second year, two days in a row. My friend Gordy had his best day yesterday, too, fishing south of me, and he’s been hand trolling a long time.

And wow, is my back sore from cleaning because my cleaning trough is too low. Got to take tomorrow off at least. Now that I don’t need the money, my health takes priority over fish checks, and my back needs to be in good shape to go elk hunting with Roy in about a month.

The fish were coming about as fast as I want to have them come yesterday for awhile. I had to quit pulling fish and just clean, and in doing so, realized I should let the lines load up with fish like that all the time as the fish on the hooks attract other fish to hooks without a fish.  I had four fish on each side – with the only hooks not with a fish were fouled and maybe one of the hootchie hooks was bare. Of course, fish could have got on and off with all the soak time as I was cleaning the other fish.

Coho dock price from my buyer is $3.50/lb, so the pay checks are somewhat stunning just for catching the coho with cannon manual downriggers rigged for trolling.

Of course, I lost the first fish of the day and the last. Both hogs. And I think each time – there goes 35 bucks.

Still refining my little troll show. Realized I can just take out one of the benches behind the captain seats and put the cooler there, instead of having it in the way all the time, so that’s one of the next projects.  I must get some welding done for better mounting of the downriggers, too.

I started off just fishing flashers and hootchies as that’s what I’d been catching coho on sport fishing. I put in an orange spoon here and there as well. When I saw the coho start to hit the spoons, I swapped the flashers to spoons, except for some 4 inch flashers I got from Cabelas to try. They seem to work okay at times, and create no drag on the wire like the bigger flashers do.

Yesterday a humpback whale surfaced right next to me, then started cutting in front of me. I yelled to him or her, and she seemed to hear me and dove across my bow at a safe distance.