This is our third year heading to Alaska.
What started out as a cool concept and a onetime adventure has turned in to a
slight addiction. This year it was Mr. Siegel (Lee), Justin, my bro
Bryan, and myself. It is an exhausting trip but a great time.
It starts off with a 6am flight out of San Diego
off to Seattle, quick stop over there straight to Ketchikan, Alaska, with just
as quick of a lay over there and on to a beautiful float plane ride to
Waterfall Resort! Then, believe it or not, we are on the boats and
reeling in the fish by about 1:30pm. This kind of insane schedule will
now go on for 3 days, up at 5:45, breakfast at 6, on the boat by 6:30, bait in
the water around 7:30, fish until 4, back to the dock, shower, get warm, change
clothes, dinner at 6, bar at 7:15, beer finished by 8, bed, and repeat!
The trip was pretty amazing. The scenery is
absolutely unreal. I don't know about you, but I was raised with the
understanding the Bald Eagles were endangered, well these things are like
freaking pigeons up there. I counted 24 circling in the wind above us at
one point. One of the coolest things about this trip, is when you drag a
boney un-tasty fish up from too deep, which doesn't really do well for their
insides so there isn't a lot to do with them, but you take that fish and go
spot an eagle in a tree and chick the fish in to the water. By
"chuck" i mean maybe 5 feet from the boat, and you wait, but no wait
like you are a National Geographic photographer, you wait maybe 10 seconds
until this beautiful giant bird spreads its wings and starts diving right at
the boat, wings fully extended, talons out, and snatches this fish right in
front of you! Just amazing!
Two very cool things happened on this trip, one... could have been amazing, but somebody blew it. The first cool thing was I caught my biggest fish and the 4th largest at the resort for the season, a 42 pound King salmon, pretty fun and great eating!
Secondly, we caught a monster! Now, first you have to realize, the captain/fishing guide of these boats really know their stuff. They almost always somehow know you have a fish on before the line does anything, they can tell what kind of fish you even caught when it is still 200 feet deep, they can un-tangle rats nest like a champ, re-bait you hook in seconds while knocking out the fish someone else caught and bringing it in the boat, pretty impressive skill set if you ask me! So we were out in some pretty deep water going for Halibut and Snapper when Bryan’s line goes nuts, he is 200 feet down and within seconds the line is pulled out to around 400 feet. The weight of the fish is going anywhere and Bryan can’t get anything back from it. The captain says Bryan caught a big Halibut on the bottom, could get some good eating. But then the fish starts fighting, which Halibut don’t do, so then the captain say it’s a Salmon Shark!!!! Two words for you, “Awe” and “Some”! The boat is excited now, however, then this thing start taking more line, fighting more, and the captain gets pissed, he says a Sea Lion has taken the catch and is running with it(pretty common, and very funny to see, they come to the surface afterwards and play with your fish like a dog with a tennis ball). But then the fish continues to be on the hook and gain weight, Bryan start to get some line back, we might actually find out what this thing is!!! But it starts to head for the rocks and pulls Bryan’s line in and eventually cuts itself free. We will never know what laid in the depths of the Ocean that day. Some say is was too big for us to comprehend, that in time we will begin to learn and understand the depths of the blue abyss.
So that was my amazing trip to Alaska. We each brought home 48 pounds of filets and fish meat. We caught King Salmon, Halibut, Coho Silver Salmon, Red Snapper, Black Sea Bass, Lin Cod, and some Giant Blue dinosaur looking fish with blue meat that I can’t remember the name of.
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