A Day Trip

This is a story about a day trip with Aleut Dance Charters on July 29, 2007.

I discovered that Ivan had July 29, a Sunday, open. I jumped at the chance to get some fish in my freezer.  The weather report was favorable and I had not been fishing in a long time.

We got to the marina about 0700.  The boat was all ready to go.  We loaded our lunch and personal gear and took off for a point that is fairly close to the village.  It was a very nice day.  Warm and overcast, but very pleasant for fishing.

We hooked up with some subsistence fishermen and got a couple of pinks (salmon) for bait.

We went out and anchored over what looked like halibut on the fish finder.  Within less than an hour of leaving my place, I had landed the first fish of the day.  According to the tape measure, it was about 56 lbs.

Here is a little mini panorama of the area where we started fishing.  In the second picture, you can see a rock formation on the left side of the image jutting out of the water.  This is a bird rookery.  The picture following that one is a closeup of the rookery.

About 1130 it looked like the sun was going to break through.  Here I am with my halibut gear taking in the scenery and generally enjoying life.  Just behind me, you can see the bucket with some of our bait in it.  To bad it was so early.  A beer would have been nice at this point.  Here is what we ended up taking from that area.  This is the best size fish for eating.  The meat is tender and very tasty.

This was an exceptional day for whale watching.  All together, I think we maybe saw 20 whales.  They were surfacing and just just having a grand old time.  I only had my little digital camera with me.  It has what they call a "telephoto" lens, but I think in the future I'll take my 35 with the 200mm lens.  Here is one with its fin out of water.

We are heading towards a small group of islands known as The Triplets.  It is past the village of Ouzinkie.  Here is a couple of shots of the view out the windshield and the wheel.

Here we are at the triplets.  We caught some black bass here.  This is the first of 5 or 6 big ones that we landed.  One filet of one of these fish made me a real nice dinner later that evening.  I hooked the 4th and final (that was our limit) halibut and managed to do a little one handed photography of Ivan gaffing it, removing the hook and hoisting it aboard.

We decide to head farther north looking for ling cod and yelloweye.  We get a few more black bass and the whale show continues.  The second picture shows one with its head and one fin out of the water.  The next picture shows one on its side slapping the water.  He is to the right of the picture.  I actually got a decent video of him that is 3 or 4 minutes long.  He kept rolling and slapping and blowing for over 20 minutes until we got closer.  Although barely visible, the last picture shows his tail just sticking out of the water in the center, near the water line.

After a good day of fishing and just enjoying the scenery, the wildlife and life in general, Ivan said it looked like the weather was turning nasty in the north.  He said we would head home, just in case.  Besides, it was about 1700.  The hour ride home was great for me.  I went out on the deck in the fishing area and closed the door.  I lighted my evening cigar and spent 45 minutes listening to the engines hum and feeling the cool, crisp air take my cigar smoke out to sea.

Finally we are getting close to home because I see Whales Pass.  Next is Mt. Ellison towering over our airstrip.  The clouds are covering the summit.  Finally we see the marina.  

Time to clean and filet the fish.  It started sprinkling a little about halfway through this operation.  Now I have to go home and package up a lot of fish and just relax.  A normal wonderful day.