Fishing Update

We packed up and headed out of town about 5:00 on Saturday morning. It was a nice, albeit overcast morning as we headed South towards Anchorage. We got just South of Delta Junction and came upon this bull moose. You can see the start of his rack coming back. He just went about his munching. As we cruised along we saw hundreds of hares, a porcupine and 2 more moose. A pretty good time of day for wildlife viewing I guess.

Bull Moose

This is a picture of the Alaska Range on Saturday morning. The mountains were looking particularly majestic and I just couldn't help sneaking a shot. I just never tire of this view.

Summit Lake

Misty Mountains just outside of Glen Allen

Winding Mountain Road- a little scary but the scenery was worth it!

The drive from Delta Junction to Ninilchik was long, but beautiful. I am most definitely looking forward to doing it again. Everyone should see the Kenai Peninsula at least once. It's breathtaking! We hope to plan another get away, most likely next summer, just to explore the peninsula. Hopefully we can do some clam digging in Clam Gulch, visit the Salty Dawg in Homer, and take some pictures of the scenic highways, byways, and out-of-ways on the peninsula.

Sunday morning we got up bright and early to get to the charter office by 5:30 a.m. Once we got situated with paperwork, license info, etc we were on our way. We piled in a van, towing a very large boat, to Cook Inlet waters. As we stood watching the tractors drop other boats in the water a bald eagle swooped low over the inlet hoping to catch a leaping sockeye.

They have a pretty handy system. The above tractor hooks up to each trailer. It backs you in and simultaneously shoves the boat off the trailer. Passengers barely feel the movement at all, and suddenly you are off.

We started the morning trolling for King Salmon. We soon found out, via our captain, that there were very few Kings to be caught. It was disappointing, but at the end of the troll Brent caught the Sockeye below. The captain speculates that it took a chomp of the bare hook as Sockeyes aren't meat eaters, and we were using frosty herring for bait.

Sockeye Salmon

Once we left the trolling behind we headed into deeper waters in search of halibut. They are strictly bottom feeders so we had to put on 4 lb. lead weights in order to get our line to the bottom, 220 ft. down. There was a riptide on Sunday, so we had to time it just right, but once they started to bite, we managed to reel in a few.

The largest halibut caught that day was hooked by me, and reeled in by Brent. A real team effort! The captain said that he was about 45 pounds, I don't know if that's accurate or not, it's just a guessing game out there.

We were slightly disappointed in our captain. Okay, more than slightly. He rushed us, was rude, and just all around made the trip miserable. We didn't get to take our fish back to shore in one piece as he had the deckhand fillet them on deck.

The trip was well worth it, but I can safely say we'll be using a different charter next time.

The trip home was sunny and beautiful, but long. We were hoping to see some more sights, but we had no idea how exhausted we would be from the sun, wind and sheer exhileration of the fishing trip. Unfortunately we didn't get to see much of Ninilchik, not that there's much to see, but we also didn't make it Homer, which I was really hoping to do. Next time. I guess.

Along the way we saw many beautiful sights, but the only wildlife we managed to sneak a peek at were much closer to home. As we came into the Donnelly flats area we saw this caribou and the moose below out for their evening meals.

It was a really great trip, despite the disappointments. The drive is one that I couldn't do everyday but it is well worth it. I am looking forward to seeing more of Alaska in the days, months and years (?) to come!