Halibut Fishing 7-29-10

Today was the big day for fishing! I have to admit I was a bit nervous about the trip. We got up insanely early to head to the boat dock. I made us slightly late when I couldn't locate my fishing license for a bit.

After we checked in and paid, we went to the boat and sat outside (almost everyone else was inside), and took a whole lot of beautiful sun/cloud pictures. It was a beautiful morning (and now I have that stupid song in my head). We rode for about an hour and a half into the sea, which grew increasingly more rough and rolling. I'd never been on a boat in the ocean (other than the bigger ferry we took to Seldovia), and this was a completely different sort of adventure. I could feel stomach wanting to get queasy, but tried to ignore it.

We finally got to our first destination fishing place, and they handed us all poles which were already baited, and showed us how to work them. The sinkers were as big as my fist, and quite heavy, so when we let them go into the water, it pulled the line out pretty quickly. We were to let it sink (about 250 feet) until it hit the bottom of the ocean, and then real it up slightly so it didn't drag. As soon as we figured out what it felt like to hit the bottom, we were catching fish very quickly.

It was very exciting to get the first bite on my pole, but it soon became exhausting work pulling in both the fighting fish and the heavy sinker. We were all taking breaks as we pulled them up. It was very gratifying to pull that first fish out of the water. We had to yell "fish up" when he came to the surface, and one of the boat crew would come to take care of it. I guess it was "tourist fishing," but I reallly didn't mind. Halibut are not pretty, as you can probably tell from the above pictures.

We each caught our two fish in the end, and slept most of the way back to shore in the cabin. I know two of the three of us was not feeling so happy about the rolling ocean movement by the time we got back.

After collecting our cleaned fish, we went to Cosmic Kitchen for a bite, back to Ray's cabin,and slept away the afternoon. We then took down my kettle corn stand to get prepared for the upcoming air show this weekend. We are definitely facing a long, tiring weekend in Anchorage. After all this was done, Ray cooked up some of his halibut for us to eat deep fried. It was heavenly. I'd never had halibut that was never frozen, but it was divine. Wow.