Alaskan Vacation Part Two - Fishing!

After heading out of Denali, where we had beautiful weather, we drove 6 hours to Seward and was met with lots of clouds and rain :( However, we made a quick pit stop in Anchorage to pick up my luggage - since I wasn't going to have to wear the same pants every day anymore, I didn't care what the weather was like!

For our first two days in Seward, we went fishing!  The forecast predicted that it was going to be "sunny and calm" for day one.  By noon, it had started to rain and the wind picked up, treating us with rough seas and 5 ft swells.  Because we stupidly listened to the forecast (note - in Seward, I've noticed that it tends to do the opposite of whats forecasted), we had no rain gear, and we were stuck in our cold, wet jeans.  I was FREEZING, but I couldn't go inside the cabin because I would start to get sea-sick from all the waves.  To make matters worse, no one was catching ANY fish.  After a couple hours of misery, we trucked on over to a calmer area and began to catch some really nice fish (shown here on the cleaning table ready to be filleted), which definitely takes the sting out of being wet and cold.

After a nice, hot shower and a big Chinese dinner, I began to entertain the idea of keeping our reservation to go fishing again the next day.  Patrick and I showed up bright and early in full on rain

gear borrowed from the fish processing plant: rubber boots and gloves and bright purple rubber pants and jacket.  After popping a dramamine, we were ready for anything! The whole day, the weather was sunny and calm.  Unfortunately, we only fished a half-day because our captain had to go tow another boat that had broken down at sea, but we still ended up with 7 great looking fish!  I even had a fish follow my bait all the way to the surface of the water before he struck, so I could see him take the bait (which was awesome to watch) AND I didn't have to reel very much to pull him in!!!  I caught the big fella on the right (about 14 pounds!) and we ended up taking home a total of 80 pounds of salmon that somehow managed to fit into my itty bitty freezer!

Besides the really nice salmon that we got (silvers this time around), it is also beautiful to just be out on the water and looking at the majestic landscape!  In the picture below, taken from a mountain across the bay from Seward, we fished most of the day right off of the point in the middle in an area called Porcupine Ridge. 

We also fished right next to a glacier and you could see chunks of ice that had broken off and were floating in the water.  The air coming off of that baby was COLD!

On the water, we were always surrounded by such a variety of wildlife!  There were puffins everywhere, and we even had one that kept diving underneath the boat.  We could see him swimming underwater, and since they can dive so deep, we were afraid that they were aiming for the herring on our hooks.  It would have been interesting to catch one!

 

There were also porpoises (think dolphins that look like baby orcas) that swam right up next to us, and we saw many river and sea otters (that were doing what they otter) and huge sea lions (shown on the left). 

Despite the weather, we had a great time.  And from now on, no matter what the weather forecast, I will definitely be bringing my dramamine and full on rain gear!

Love, B

(and Larry Lingcod, RIP)