2015-06-20 Halibut!

The weather forecast was very encouraging for this one day solo fishing trip.  I had heard rumors of fish being caught off the southern end of Gravina Island in an area known as Dall Head, so I decided to try there first.

I pulled out of Bar Harbor at about 7:45 AM under gray skies, but on calm seas.

On the way out of town I took a few pictures.

This is a private moorage area in front of a local law firm.  Those lawyers are smart.  They realized some years ago that they had waterfront property, so they built just a few docks that are large enough for those yachts that are too large for our other harbors.  I have heard they charge about $3 per foot per night.  Not a bad business for the summer months.  Don't you just hate it when you park your beautiful yacht and then someone pulls in in an even larger more beautiful yacht right next to you?  Yeah, me too.

This is a vessel called the Wilderness Explorer.  I think it is owned and managed by National Geographic.  They do cruises all throughout Southeast Alaska.  I have always said that if I ever went on any kind of cruise it would be on one of these, not the big 3000 passenger cruise ships.  I looked up their website a few years ago and sadly the costs were prohibitive for me.  But it's nice to dream once in awhile.

The above vessel Carolina was moored at Doyon's Landing, another private dock near town.  Looks to be about 130' or so.

The above picture is the first, one and only 120' Nordhavn, named the Aurora.  I follow boats all over the world, many of them Nordhavns.  The Aurora was built in the Nordhavn boat yard in Xiamen, China, and then run on its own hull from there to the new owner's home in Vancouver BC.  This is a voyage of about 6500 miles, taking 45 days.  I followed the whole journey as it was happening via their blog in the summer of 2013.  They had a professional photographer/videographer on board, and they sent me a DVD they prepared for the journey.

And now it is in Ketchikan.

I had started to notice USCG (United States Coast Guard) vessels moored at odd places around the harbors in town.  In the Saturday morning paper there was an article about the base and the construction going on there.  They are replacing all or most of the existing docks and piers and adding significant moorage space as well.  That is why they had to move all their vessels.

The sea conditions were excellent today so I could go pretty much wherever I wanted.  My goal was to catch some halibut so that's what I set out to do.

I bounced around the islands near Dall Head, which is on the southern end of Gravina Island, but to no avail.

When I got out to Dall Head proper I made the decision to run over to the Percy Islands.  I had heard good things over the years about bottom fishing in that area, but I have never been there before today.

I made my way over there and found what looked to be a good spot.  I had to be a little careful because right in this general area is Annette Island, which is an Indian reservation.  You are not allowed to fish within 3000 feet of Annette Island unless you have a permit from them allowing you to do so.  Of course judging 3000 feet over the water is not an exact science.

In any case I made sure I was at least a few miles from Annette and began bottom fishing.  It's literally been a couple of years since I caught a nice sized halibut, but all the conditions were good here.  The depths were good and I had a nice slow drift across the area.  So I was hopefull.

Lo and behold after a couple of hours I hit a good fish.  He ran off quite a bit of line before I could get control of him.  Landing a decent size halibut by oneself is a challenge, but I did manage to get my gaff hook into him and haul him in over the side rail.

Once I got him on board I whacked him a few times with my gaff, and then got a small line through his gills which I tied to his tail.  Halibut are notorious for  flopping around long after you think they have expired.

I fished a bit longer in that area and got one more good hit, but it got off and I never saw it.

Since I had never been in this spot before, and I came here by way of a somewhat circuitous route, I really didn't have a good idea of how long it might take me to get back to the harbor.  I figured at least 2 - 3 hours, but that was really just a guess.  I can run in the dark, and this was the longest day of the year as far as daylight hours go, so I wasn't worried about it.  But I did hope and intend to get home before dark.

I fished until 5:30 PM and then pulled the gear, fired up the engines, and headed home.

About 7 PM or so I was getting hungry so I slowed down a bit, fired up the generator, and grilled some Omaha Steaks pork chops (thank you Marilyn and Sara!)  They were terrific.

As I was heading into town I passed 2 cruise ships that were heading out of town.  Here is a shot from my nav unit that shows what a cruise ship looks like on radar as it approaches.

This particular nav unit shows the chart information together with the boat, and superimposes the radar information on top of all that.  In this show the boat is a small black triangle in the middle of the display pointing up.  The bright red areas are radar reflections.  Directly ahead of the boat is a large red blob - that's the cruise ship coming towards me.  It was still light enough to see with my eyes, but just to be safe I had the radar running as well.

The other information on the unit is:

SOG (Speed Over Ground) - 10.3 knots

COG (Course Over Ground) - 291

DPT (Depth) - 411.7 feet

POSN (Position) - Lattitude & Longitude

My estimate of 2 - 3 hours was a bit off.  I pulled into Bar Harbor at about 10:15 PM.  So it took me almost 5 hours to get home.

Here's a small map snippet that shows my circuitous route that circumnavigated Annette Island.  I stopped numerous places along the way to fish.  Find the spot the farthest away from town along this route, and that's where I got the halibut.

I don't carry a scale so getting the weight on that halibut is a matter of measuring it and then using a length to weight conversion table.  Here's one last shot of the halibut after I got back to the harbor and before I filleted it.  Length was about 44" which converts to about 40 lbs.  Yahoo!

It was a late night for me, and I only did a fraction of the boat clean up chores that I would normally do.  The rest of the chores could wait until tomorrow.

Now I just want to get back out there and get some more halibut!

I logged 77 miles on this trip - a long way to go for 1 fish, but it was fun.

2015-06-06 Hide From The Wind

Not much to report for this trip, so this post will be brief.
But in the interest of full disclosure of all my trips I'll make the post.

I left Bar Harbor about 9 AM in gray skies, gloomy weather, with occasional rain.
This was the last weekend of the annual King Salmon Derby so there were a lot of boats out there trolling.

As an aside, the winner of the derby this year was a 14 year old boy who caught a King about 40 lbs.  That's the smallest fish to win the derby for decades.  I think he won about $10,000 in cash and assorted other prizes donated by community vendors.

On the way out I passed the cruise ship Disney Wonder on its way into port.

I went a little out of my way to take a shot of a large yacht anchored in front of Pennock Island.

This is the "Ice Bear."  Here's a blurb from Google:
One super yacht being readied to go is the 172-foot "Ice Bear," owned by billionaire business leader and noted philanthropist Walter Scott Jr., who sits on the board of Berkshire Hathaway. Scott is a childhood friend of Warren Buffett and is chairman emeritus of Peter Kiewit Sons’ Inc.


I headed west and then north into Clover Pass.
Dropped my shrimp pots in my standard spot in front of Salmon Falls Resort.

I spent the rest of the afternoon drifting around trying to catch a bottom fish, to no avail.

I hadn't been to the Naha since January so I decided to poke my nose in there and see if there was room at the dock.

Fortunately for me there was room.  There was only 1 boat there, a sailboat around 36' or so, named the Cookie Cutter.    I went on board and visited with the owners for a little over an hour.  They were from Canada, near Victoria, but they had spent 10 years sailing the South Pacific, so they were very experienced sailors.

Above is the Cookie Cutter at the Naha dock.

On Sunday morning it was rainy and blowy but I started to make my way up into Clover Pass to pull my shrimp pots anyway.  On the way there I listened to the marine weather - the report was not good.
So I turned around and went back into the Naha area and played "Hide from the wind" for the rest of the day while trying to find a place where I could bottom fish.  The weather forecast had said the winds would be diminishing later in the day so basically I was just killing time.

Late afternoon I once again headed for Clover Pass and my shrimp pots.  Pulling the pots is a challenge to accomplish by myself even in calm conditions, but today conditions were far from calm.  It took me a long time to hook the line and then my pot puller proved its wimpiness as I had to add considerable elbow grease to get the pots in, all the while getting blown across the bay.

In any case, I made it home safely about 5:30 PM in fairly calm conditions in Bar Harbor.

Should have stayed home this weekend.
The best part of the trip was visiting with those folks on the Cookie Cutter.

2015-05-23 Salmon Trolling

I usually get my load of salmon in late August and into September when the Silvers come in strong.  This year I will be running the boat to Seattle in mid August so I won't get to do my Silver fishing, so I thought I'd do some King Salmon trolling early in the summer.  My friend Len and I went out for the long Memorial Day weekend and spent a good portion of it trolling 2 lines for Kings.

Memorial Day weekend is the start of the annual King Salmon Derby that runs here every summer.  I read in the paper on the following Tuesday that over 400 Kings were turned in over the 3 days, so someone was catching them, just not us.

We logged about 140 miles, and did not get even a single bump.  So this blog will be short, but not so sweet.

I did take a few pictures along the way so maybe I'll just post those and call it good for this trip.

This is the small USFS dock in Neets Bay, which is the bay just north of Naha Bay in Behm Canal.
We spent Saturday night here.
I had never been in here before but Len had.
This is the smallest USFS dock I have seen in our area.
It was empty when we pulled in but then that small metal boat came in and tied along the end.

Up in the very end of Neets Bay there is a salmon hatchery run by SSRAA (Southern Southeast Regional Aquaculture Association.)  This is a facility that is manned year round.

 

This is the main dock for the facility at the head of the bay.

These are some of the pens in which they rear the salmon before they are released into the wild.

If you want more information about the hatchery go to http://ssraa.org/neets-bay/

We spent Sunday night in Moser Bay on a mooring buoy.  Had a great sunset and enjoyed a good dinner and a movie.

We trolled in the Clover Pass area on Monday morning but again, not even a bump.
I was starting to wonder if Len was actually putting bait on those lines.
Maybe I should have supervised that a little more closely.

The only additional excitement we had was when we were approached by the Coast Guard (lots of guys and gals with guns) on our way to the fuel dock.  It was a little breezy in the narrows so they didn't seem too motivated to actually come on board.  I had my boarding report from October which is good for a year.  They couldn't actually see it, but they accepted it anyway and let us pass by.

We logged about 140 miles on this trip, and not a fish to show for it.
But we still had a good time out on the water.