Ron and I have been friends for a long time, but never somehow have gone halibut fishing together.  I’m not big on halibut fishing but Ron needed to get in his winter supply and I was game as John would get to see something different.  Ron led us to his secret spot, and we were not disappointed.  6 halibut, 9 rockfish and 3 cod.  Ron got all the halibut and cod he needed and I like rockfish.  Had a humpack come right near the boat then it dove under us and came up on the other side.  Ron also showed me a trick for chumming.  He takes his fish scraps and freezes them with a rock in a tupperware container, which pops out after freezing into weighted chum cube.  When you are anchored up, he simply dropped the rock with fish frozen to it under the boat.  Simple and apparently effective. We thought we’d stop to try to jig up some herring for later bait use on the way home when I saw several whales blowing in the distance.  Looked like bubble netters to me.  When we got there, sure enough, they were netting and John got a great show and was pretty jazzed to see it. John remembered he liked the rockfish he had while in Craig last year, so we hope to make that tonight and have Ron over to dinner and to vac pack his fish.

I got up at 305 am and put the coffee perculator on I’d prepped the night before.  At 4, I woke up John and asked if he wanted to go see if the weather was fishable and he said “sure”.  I poured the coffee and John was ready to go in 5 minutes.  The boat was already hooked up to the truck and parked right at the road so we might not wake Sara when the diesel started.   When we got to the ramp it was flat calm and a little foggy.  We were fishing by 5 am and John was a little groggy.  The first fish woke him up.  A real nice large chrome coho.  Not long later, another one of the same vintage.  John was awake now.  We were fishing where I’d caught the mess of fish with the Sierra Leoneons last week.  After a few more trips around our marks, we continued south and I had the coffee can and taking a leak when “whamo” another strike.  I corked off what I was doing and grabbed the rod and handed it to John and cranked up the down rigger.  John played the fish up to the boat and we missed netting it several times.  Then the fish started to shake it’s head back and forth and I thought we might lose him.  One more try and she was in the net.  A 15+ lb coho – maybe the biggest of the year. We fished till 730 and headed back to the dock.  I dressed the fish on board, and put ice on them when I got home so John could go back to bed and me to work.  He will fillet the fish when he gets up.  I checked on our fish drying in the smoker and it looked great. –

John arrived about 15 minutes after Sara did on Thurs evening.  John helped me with salmon deliveries to Juneau households on Friday, and we fished in the evening but no fish.  On Sat, I did one whale watch trip and John fished around the harbor while I was gone.  Then we got home and loaded the boat and headed out fishing.  I had John drive so he could learn to run a boat.  We had no action for 3 hours and then good fishing.  We landed 3 coho and as many came off, and shook a couple pinks.  Also saw a deer on the beach and saw the splash of a full-size humpback breach that must have been 30 feet high.   We went to the cabin with the fish on ice at sunset, and I picked a 1/2 a coffee can of blue and huckleberries while John cooked a pizza.  Off to bed and I was up at 4 am making coffee.  John’s alarm went off at 430, and I took off the coffee and went and picked another 1/2 can of berries.  I got John up and he was dressed and out the door in 5 minutes.  He said we could eat breakfast in the boat.   We went back to Pt Retreat and got 2 more coho, again after several hours of fishing. The wind picked up, so we went to Hand Trollers, where we lost a nice one.   The winds were hitting there too, so we left at 11 am and John drove us all the way back as he’s competent now at running the boat.  When we got home, I showed John how to fillet the first fish, then he filleted the other 4 while I vac packed.  Then I ran out to our fish processor and dropped John at a nearby creek so he could check out the spawning chum and pink salmon.  He got several photos and liked being down on the creek with the fish.     –

The principal from my hometown high school is coming in to fish with me today off the cruiseship.  So, I thought I’d check to see if I had any frozen gel pacs in the freezer in the garage else I’d need to get ice to keep the fish on the boat.  When I got to the freezer, the door had opened and after one of the hottest days of the year yesterday, things had started to thaw.  I probably would not have gone up there for another day and I might have lost much of it.  I transferred everything to our other freezers, as it was time for a defrost of this freezer anyway, and then a fresh start.  As always, it pays to take your friends fishing. I fished with John and Lorraine last evening.  3 or 4 pinks and a coho so not great but not skunked.  And another beautiful evening as we fished till sunset about 930 pm.

Took Emmanuel and Peter out fishing on Saturday morning.  The boys had a hard time driving by GPS in the fog but Emmanuel was much better at landing cohos.  We caught 6 and a pink in the fog.  I took them back to the dock, cleaned their fish for them, then sent them on their way to their second jobs.  I returned and got 2 more hog coho for us.   Yesterday I ran the whale watch boat for a late trip.  After big winds and cancellations during mid-day it laid right down and was flat calm and warm on the water last night.  Most of the whales around were in North Pass bubblenet feeding on herring and put on quite a show in the late sunlight.  Quite a night to be on the water. I collected a free fridge from Craigslist and will make a smoker with my nephew John when he arrives later this week. –

I took the lead as the biggest looser in the fishing category yesterday.  Jeff and I lost my only king salmon to a seal 100 yards from the dock at the end of our fishing trip earlier this spring.  After blowing me off for a month not accepting any requests for fishing or berry picking, I was assigned babysitting duties of one Samuel Conteh yesterday, and therefore he could not decline the request this time.  The trip did not start off well.  The boat stalled about 1/2 mile from the dock.  Water in the fuel – again!  Hopefully this is just a remnant of the early trouble.  I got the small kicker going and figured we’d just troll out to George Rock and back for the time we had on the little motor.  Near the rock, we caught a big coho.  Samuel tried to hold the rod but was too scared so he had me land it.  A big, fat 10 lb coho.  As soon as I got the gear down again, another fish was on.  Then the downrigger drag slipped, and 150 feet of line went out and the wire jumped the pulley and it took quite a while to get it back on the pulley – this is a flaw of Cannon downriggers. I had put the first fish on a stringer, broke a gill, and was towing it alongside the boat.  Then I put the second fish on the stringer after fixing the downrigger and we trolled on.  Then the little motor quit.  I could not get it started.  Again, looked like a fuel issue.  In drained the fuel filter, pulled the plugs, and as I was doing so, Samuel was pulling up the line that held the fish in the water and letting it down, pulling it up and letting it down.  After I was worked up into a lather both physically and emotionally trying to get the boat going for 15 or 20 minutes, Samuel says “hey, where did the fish go?”.  I look back and he’d work the double half hitch loose.   The line with the fish were gone.  A short outburst Samuel’s way led to laughter as now the trip was complete.  Two motors out of service and the only bright spot so far -the two fish- were now gone.  I told Samuel this story would now replace his first trip to the cabin, where he announced he wanted to go home as there was no video games or TV at the cabin.  I finally got the little motor going and we idled back to the dock.  –