5/6/06 First Fishing Trip

Some friends from work and I got our first fishing trip of the year in this past weekend, fishing for king salmon and halibut on a charter out of Ninilchik (down on the Kenai Peninsula near Homer). I decided to make a weekend of it, so threw the camper on the truck and headed down on the 4-hour ride.

Driving down the Turnagain arm of Cook Inlet is a beautiful drive, but it’s always windy. Wind gusts of 35 MPH to 50 MPH are not unusual, and gusts of 75 to over 100 MPH occur. There was a high wind warning with gusts of 50-60 when I drove down, and the truck got blown around quite a bit with the camper on the back.

You then head up into the mountains, and when I got to Turnagain Pass, there was still feet of snow on the ground. In fact, it was snowing steadily when I went through. The rest of the drive was uneventful (a good thing!), and I got to Ninilchik and got a campsite right on the beach. We went to bed listening to the sound of waves breaking on the beach.

The next morning, we woke up to the sound of rain, but at least the camper wasn’t rocking back and forth, so I knew it wasn’t windy. We got to the charter company and loaded up, and were in the water by 8 AM. Launching the boats in Ninilchik is unique. They don’t let you do it yourself, as there are too many boats all trying to get out at once, and there’d be a hell of a traffic jam.

With your boat all loaded, you arrive at the beach and unhitch the truck. You board up, and a skidder comes and hitches onto the trailer and hauls you down to the water, unhitching the bowline. It hit’s the breaks, and the boat floats off into the water. The whole thing takes about 2 minutes. On your return, you call ahead and your trailer is waiting for you. You drive the boat on, it’s hitched up, and you’re back at the top of the beach, again in about 2 minutes. No muss, no fuss, and very efficient.

We started fishing for king salmon first. It’s still a bit early in the season, so it was slow going. A friend and I got the first two strikes, but missed them, and were given a hard time about catch and release fishing before we had the fish to the boat. In two hours, the only king we got to the boat was taken by the 8-year-old son of one of my friends.

We moved out into deeper water, and started fishing for halibut. This is done with a short, thick rod, a 2 pound weight, and a piece of herring as bait, right on the bottom in 120 feet of water. Trying to haul up a 30 lb. flat fish that doesn’t particularly want to come to the surface from that depth can wear one out rather quickly. We all managed to get our limit of two each, and threw a number of smaller ones back. I now have 16 lbs. of fresh cleaned halibut fillets in my freezer.

While we were fishing, we saw a couple of sea otters, and sighted 4 or 5 Minke whales. When we got back to the campsite that evening, the beach was just loaded with eagles. At one point, I counted 32 of them from where I was standing.

The next morning dawned gray, cold (low 30’s), windy and rainy. I was very glad our fishing trip was the day before! I collected my fish from the packers, all packaged up and frozen, and made the 4-hour trip back home.

Spring is just now coming here, the snow is mostly gone, and just today I’ve noticed leaf buds on the trees. The days are getting longer, too. Sunrise is around 5:30 AM and sunset is 10:30 PM. With our long dawn and dusks, we have very little night time left, and we’re still gaining over 5 minutes of daylight a day. Time to get the fly rod out and start hunting those rainbows, dolly varden and grayling!