Headed Home

Well we're sitting in the Anchorage airport waiting for the gate agents to show up so we can check all of our luggage. Jackson and I both decided when we were packing that we brought entirely too much stuff. It's hard to believe we've been in Alaska for two months. We ended the season by fishing non-stop from 7am Monday morning until 10pm Wednesday night, and then fishing again at 7am Thursday. Needless to say, the last week of the season wasn't quite as relaxing as I expected/hoped, but the work made the week go fairly quickly, so that was nice. Our flight doesn't leave until 9:10pm local time, so we have a while. Jackson is napping on the seats beside me. We're both pretty excited to be home, even though we checked the weather and saw that the forecast for the next few days is mid-90's. Little warmer than mid-50's... This summer was an amazing experience, and I'm sure I speak for Jackson when I say that the Chase's could not have been better hosts/bosses. Thanks so much guys, and we look forward to seeing you again, whether it's next year or further in the future.

Halibut Fishing

Friday and Saturday we weren't commercial fishing, so we went halibut fishing and camping on the family's 28 foot bayliner which slept 7 of us comfortably. It was a blast, and we ended up keeping 13 halibut between 7 and 20 lbs. We also dropped a crab pot and caught 5 tanner crabs which we ate for dinner along with the halibut...sooo good.

We are fishing again today. The morning pick was surprisingly good for being so close to the end of the season, though not many were reds. We are catching more off-species (silver and pink salmon).

We have pulled some of our fishing buoys already and will be pulling some more in the next couple of days - another sign that the end of the season is near. We only anticipate one more regular day of fishing after today. David and I had our plane tickets rescheduled for this coming Saturday, a week earlier than we were planning on.

I added some photos to my picasa album.

30 Hour Opener

This will have to be a quick post, since we are heading out in 15 minutes to pull our nets by midnight, so excuse the lack of flow from sentence to sentence.

We haven't had a 24 hour opener (where fish and game allow us to leave our nets in the whole time) yet, which has been very surprising, especially since it is so late in the season already. We just found out that we will be fishing every tide for 30 hours starting at 1 pm tomorrow. It seems that this is a sign that our season is wrapping up, as the past few days we have seen a lot fewer fish, and fish and game is trying to give us a last minute chance to finish our season with some good time in the water.

Yesterday, David and I went to Seward, 2 and a half hours away, with Hannah and Matt to deliver fish to one of our buyers, go hiking, and go out to eat.

I updated my picasa album. See link in post below.

gotta run. the tide waits for nobody.

Fish and Logs

Hello all. Sorry for the lack of updates lately. We have gotten into the groove of things and are working hard and often. We do have breaks and even an occasional day off, but during the down times we try to rest as much as possible...sort of. Often even our breaks and days off are full of adventure and "work." Tuesday, for example, we went razor clamming in Ninilchik in the morning and I went dip-netting at the mouth of the Kasilof River with Aaron and Anna in the evening. I got to drive the boat since Aaron was the only one of us who was an Alaskan resident and therefore the only one who is allowed to hold the net. We caught around 15 reds (sockeye) so it was a successful trip. We saw several seals. One had a fish in it's mouth, another we got so close to we could see the whites of his eyes.

The fish came in pretty strong this past Monday, when we got more fish in the morning pick than we had on any other full day of fishing this season...almost 3,000 lbs in the first pick alone. Yesterday we didn't catch a lot of fish, and the ones we caught were mostly smashed by debris. A storm had occurred somewhere down the inlet, and that, in conjunction with a twenty something foot tide (vertical feet between high and low) made for a difficult pick and pull yesterday. ("pick" referring to picking fish, and in this case trees, logs, branches, and stumps, out of the nets, and "pull" referring to pulling the nets out of the water and stacking them into tarps in the boat). David and I were in a boat with Aaron and we spent the whole time, about 2 hours, on picking and pulling one net. The only thing that allowed the other two boats to pick up our slack was that the raging current and debris had flagged (broken the net at one end and therefore caused it to wave like a flag in the current) several of our nets. It was not a pleasant evening. We went out this morning to set nets, but we could see so many logs still floating around that Mike decided not to set the nets. Even if we had set and had caught fish, the damage that the logs would have done to the nets (15 of them at $1,500 each) would not be worth it.

ps - i added some photos to my picasa photo album. the new ones are from the shooting competition we had on the 4th of July, dip netting, and one is of a 61 lb King Salmon (3 lbs smaller than the one i caught on a hook and line) next to the family's granddaughter, Elise.

Day Off

We had the day off today after four straight days of fishing. We fished from 7am to 7pm on Monday, 5am to 7pm on Tuesday, 5am to 8pm on Wednesday, and 7am to 7pm on Thursday. It was rough not only because we weren't getting a ton of sleep but also because there were way less fish than the authorities expected there to be, so we weren't catching a lot. We had a 36 hour closure from last night at 7pm until tomorrow morning at 7am, when we just heard we'll be fishing again. We expect the next two weeks or so to be pretty busy, with a few 24 hour fishing days probable, so I think Jackson and I will be heading back to the cabin soon for some preemptive sleep.

Salmon, Salmon, and More Salmon

On Monday fishing was open from 7am to 7pm, so we got up at 5am to put nets in the water. 5am came really early considering we got to bed around 2am the night before. The water was much smoother than it was on Sunday, which was nice. There was no fishing on Tuesday, which meant the crew had the day off. Jackson and I were up at 4:30 to meet a guide on the Kenai River. The guide trip was great, and Jackson caught a 64 lb, 47 inch King Salmon with a 33 inch girth. Unfortunately King from 46 to 55 inches in length must be released, so we couldn't keep it. There are, however, pictures on Jackson's Picasa site. Enjoy!

A Humbling Experience - Explained

Yeah, sorry guys. I know that was a little confusing. I got cut short and had to go and didn't get a chance to proofread or anything. The ocean was really rough - mainly that was the humbling experience, but also just fishing for the first day and not really knowing what to do or how things work. On top of all that, everything seemed to go wrong, and finally, after I volunteered to go out in the boat and find the missing net, we ran out of gas over a mile offshore and it was over an hour before somebody came to tow us back in. We finally all ate dinner at midnight, went to bed at 1:30, and had to be up and at the house by 5:30am this morning to fish again. Thank goodness, David and I more or less have the day off tomorrow, however we are getting up by 4:30 to go on a free guided King Salmon trip down the Kenai River with a guy that used to teach at the same school as Mike. Hopefully we will have some pictures of big fish up on the blog in the next couple of days.