My plan for today was to cook up some breakfast and then go to the Sitka Public Library to upload photos and post some Journal entries (blog posts).
I got out the Blackstone, and cooked a package of bacon while I phoned one of the fishing charter contacts we got from the commercial fishermen at McDonalds yesterday. The first guy I called, Randy Drake, answered and said he could take us fishing this afternoon. The price was right and a lot less than the $400 per person we were quoted the other day, so I knocked on Steve's door (waking them up), and we booked a half-day trip for 11:00 a.m. So much for the library.
We purchased a King Salmon stamp for the day for $15 (the only real extra cost beyond a fishing license in Alaska), and met Randy right on time. Randy is a commercial fisherman that runs his own charter business on the side - Wild Alaska Fishing Charters.
We boarded his boat, got the usual safety talk, and headed out to "The Rocks" as they are known locally. "The Rocks" are the Vitskari Rocks which is a popular spot among marine fishermen.
On the way, we saw a whale spout, and we got some photos of sea otters.
Some of the sea otters had babies on their stomachs though it was hard to get a good look at the pups.
I'm not a big fan of trolling, but that's what Randy suggested, so we trolled for King Salmon. Fairly quickly, I reeled in a Black Rockfish (sometimes known as a black sea bass locally).
Then Steve caught one and we added one more bigger one. We continued to troll on this cloudy day and caught some small Dusky Rockfish and some Quillback Rockfish that we released.
Then we moved to another location where we got nothing, and then on to another location where we trolled and got nothing. We did see, however, a swimming flock of Brants, a species of small geese.
I wasn't sure if we had seen Brants before, but our bird book where we keep track didn't have them marked off, so this is apparently a new bird for me.
After trolling for a while with no luck, I was getting bored, and we switched to "mooching". Almost immediately, I caught a small flounder. But that's all we caught there.
We moved again, and Steve caught a couple of Pacific Staghorn Sculpins and several Copper Rockfish.
Though we could keep five rockfish each and there is no size limit, most were too small to take the trouble to clean for the amount of meat we would get in a filet.
So, the fishing wasn't quite as good as we hoped, but we did get an eagle show toward the end.
We headed on back to the dock, and I took a photo of the north end of Sitka with the clouds hanging at the top of the mountains.
A marine layer also covered most of Kruzof Island leaving Mt. Edgecumbe exposed.
While we were fishing, Esther and Linda hiked the Mosquito Cove Trail near the campground. They did some beach combing in the cove and along the shoreline where the trail neared the water.
They took pictures of the Columbia ferry ship arriving at the ferry terminal.
Later they made a grocery run and then settled in for Happy Hour back at the campground.
Randy filleted our fish, and we returned to the campground for a campfire and dinner. I got out the Blackstone, and Linda cooked the Black Rockfish fillets in garlic butter.
The fish was outstanding, and we wished we had continued to just fill up a cooler with those rather than chasing King Salmon for as long as we did.
After dinner we sat around the campfire, and later I made my usual walk to throw away the trash and check out the estuary.
Again there were no bears, but the tide was in and Starrigavan Creek was full. It made for a pretty sunset photo.
I can only imagine what it will be like later when the salmon are running.
And with that, I returned to camp. Not longer after, the party broke up and we went to bed. Another day, and we just take on whatever Alaska offers us. Tomorrow, I really need to get to the library.
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