2019 Alaska Trip - Day 74 - Fishing Charter & Reunion, Seward, Alaska

So, we met at the Miller's Landing office at 6:30 a.m. as we were supposed to do for our 7:00 a.m. half-day fishing trip with Capt. Dillon. We were the only ones scheduled for this trip but then employees Bree and Tucker decided to join us since it was their day off.

Because we were all early, we climbed up on the old fishing boat .....

and got out on the water well ahead of schedule.

The winds were calm, but it was quite foggy and the sea was rolling. We couldn't see the scenery, so I took no photos on the way. Young Capt. Dillon had a spot picked out for us about an hour and fifteen minutes out.

This really isn't the usual "half day" charter since they are only four hours, and they do three of them a day. The "half day" charters we've been on thus far tend to go for five to six hours. With the long run out and back, we'd only be fishing a couple of hours, and we hoped that would be good enough.

Our trip was a "Silver Salmon and Black Bass" charter, and we started going after the rockfish. We had "fish on" quickly and pulled in some huge Black Rockfish (aka black sea bass).

In the first half hour, I caught my limit of four, and Linda had three of her four when she got seasick. Unfortunately, after purging, she didn't recover - she was done for the day. We've been on a lot of ocean trips and Linda hasn't gotten seasick in years, so it was a surprise to both of us. We have medication - Bonine - which has worked well for her in the past, but we just didn't think about it and we didn't expect to go out quite as far as we did.

Bree & Tucker (they are a couple from Massachusetts working here this summer), got their rockfish limit and one Silver Salmon, so we moved on.

Tucker then reeled in this nice Ling Cod.

At another spot where lots of boats were fishing for salmon Bree & Tucker each caught another salmon, but I got shut out the rest of the day and, of course, Linda never got her line back in the water.

The Silver Salmon haven't arrived in big numbers yet, but people were catching them. I was disappointed that we didn't get any salmon on the "salmon" portion of our trip. Still, we had seven big rockfish, and I got my picture taken with all the fish from the morning.

It was a really nice mess of fish, so I couldn't say it was a bust.

Linda went straight to bed when we got back. She was cold and still feeling pretty bad.

Dillon fileted our fish, and I gave him a nice tip. We ended up with 15 pounds of fresh rockfish. Plus, Bree gave us a salmon filet. She's a sweetheart.

Later, Linda got up and took a shower and felt better. She vacuum packed our catch.

I took it to Captain Jack's Seafood Locker in town where they froze it and stored it for us for a $1/pound. We could pick it up anytime within 10 days or add more to it.

Back at the rig, we learned that Seward had implemented a fire ban, so there could be no campfires. The original email we got said no "cooking fires" either, but they backed off that.

As I wandered around, I saw Steve & Esther's RV. They had just gotten in. I went and welcomed them, but they were exhausted and taking their time getting set up.

After getting back from Ottawa, they went from Whitehorse up to Dawson City and took the Dempster Highway up to dip their toes in the Arctic Ocean. Then they returned to Dawson City, crossed the Top Of The World Highway and crossed over into Alaska. They said the road from the border to the town of Chicken was horrendous and they made their way to Tok. From Tok, they landed in Anchorage, and then they came down to Seward.

So, they've been doing lots of miles, their RV is filled with dust, and Esther just wanted to take time to relax, clean the inside of her rig, and recover a bit. We agreed to get together later after dinner.

For our evening meal, we prepared the salmon Bree gave us. I grilled it up on the Blackstone, and though Linda couldn't eat much, she immediately decided it wasn't as good as the Sockeye Salmon. I would have to agree as it was a bit more fishy, but I still thought it was pretty darn good. We have leftovers for tomorrow.

So, we had our after-dinner reunion with Steve & Esther at their site. They have that site for one night and then they move to the site next door tomorrow. They aren't on the ocean, but they have a view of the mountains over the top of the RVs in the waterfront sites.

Esther had been sick, and everyone was tired, so we called it a fairly early night with plans to sleep in tomorrow. It's good to have our friends back with us.