Fishin in Homer

Casey, the other intern in our district, lives down in Homer and her boyfriend runs a charter fishing boat. They had some openings for Saturday, so Kristi, another school psych (and Casey's supervisor) and I got to go along fishing (for free!). I need to get residency though so that the fishing license will be cheaper. I drove down to Homer early in the morning, and got to see the spit at sunrise- it was beautiful.


Homer boat harbor from the water:


The weather was incredible- clear skies and wonderful views of the volcanoes- we could see Augustine, Iliamna and Redoubt (all volcanoes). Redoubt and Iliamna had been hidden by clouds for a couple weeks, which means it was snowing on them, so they were covered in fresh snow:

(Mt. Iliamna)

Augustine and Redoubt were both steaming- I guess since Redoubt is active, and the lava inside is so hot, after a good snowstorm, it steams because of the snow vaporizing. Augustine is smaller, but has also been active in the past few years, so I don't know why it was steaming- it was shrouded in clouds, so not many pictures of it came out:

(Augustine)

It was an incredible background to fish against. First we went halibut fishing- the limit is 2. It took me a long time to get my first halibut- I caught 2 cod and a shark before finally pulling up a halibut. The false-alarms were frustrating, because the line is 200+ feet deep (or about 300 reels- we counted) so it feels like the fish is never going to surface, and when they fight you, it makes it even harder. Your arms burn reeling them in. The shark fought a lot- we let it go, but the cod was kept and used as bait. The birds really liked the leftover cod bait too:


Casey and I halibut fishing:


It wasn't so bad waiting for a bite though, because the views were incredible:


The tricky thing with halibut for me was keeping the bait near the bottom with the current coming in, I had a really hard time with that, and then knowing when to start reeling in- they use a c-hook, and so you have to let the fish nibble the bait, and wait for a couple strong pulls before reeling in. The hook won't set unless the fish has the bait and hook in it's mouth and has turned to swim away with it- the timing was tricky. Luckily, Kristi met her limit early and coached me.

The first halibut was about 35 lb, and came in fighting- it took a lot to subdue it in the boat- it was the meanest to come in. Reeling in my first halibut:


Casey got the winner of the trip- a 75lb+ halibut- it was a really impressive catch, and the only one that needed to be shot. Casey, with Kristi concentrating on setting the bait:


My second halibut was the second-largest catch after Casey's- between 45-50 lbs. My arms were so tired by the time it came in! The guys who chartered the boat met their limits pretty early, before the tide was really coming in and we came along the big fish. They even released some to try and get bigger ones- theirs were tiny compared to ours- you could tell they weren't very happy with girls out-fishing them.

Another beautiful shot of Iliamna:


After we all met our halibut limit, we set up to troll for salmon. The lines are set at certain depths, and we trolled along the coast line waiting for a salmon to bite- the fishing line pops off of the depth-setter, and that lets you know that there is a fish:


It was a lot of waiting- we trolled for hours. There was a raft of otters near the shore- tons of them. They were so cute, a couple times we saw moms with babies floating on their stomachs, that was adorable.


We all just sat and watched the line for action- we deferred to the guys, and they reeled in the first two salmon- a king and a silver. Kristi reeled in the next one another silver, and I pulled in the last one- a king salmon that was by far the biggest caught. Again, the guys weren't too happy. We kept trolling for more, but one each was all we caught when it was time to go back in to harbor.

Fresh kill, then cleaned off: (I was told I hold fish like a girl, but it was really heavy and slippery)


The girls definitely out-fished the guys- here is our catch. My salmon is the big one furthest to the left, and the largest of my halibut is the one furthest to the left- next to Casey's whopper:


Cleaning my large halibut while coming into harbor:


The Homer spit from the water:


Coming into harbor, we saw the Time Bandit:


The guys had their revenge in the end for us catching bigger fish- trying to haul the fish up the ramp out of the harbor really hurt, especially since my arms were sore from all the reeling in. In all, I left with over 40 lbs of meat. It was a great day fishing and so nice of Casey and David to bring us along!

Casey and David on the boat:

Kaeli Visit Final Day

On our way to Seward the day before, we drove by Cooper Landing, where they have some fun tours. There was a rafting tour, but that was a four-hour wilderness float, and we figured, without fun rapids, it might get a little boring by hour two. So we signed up for a Horseback riding tour. It was Kaeli's first time on a horse:


It was really nice and relaxing- we rode through thick forest- sometimes I forgot to look at my surroundings, I was concentrating so hard on the path for the horses- there were deep holes between tree roots, and the horses had to set their feet carefully into the holes. The woods were thick evergreen- we went by some water, but the trees were so thick we could hear it but not see it:


We stopped along a lake with a beautiful view of the mountains, although it was cloudy:

My horse Duke:


When we were on our plane ride, Scooter said we had to go to Whittier, that it was incredible and worth the trip. Whittier is on the way back to Anchorage, and not too far out of the way. There is a 3-mile tunnel under the mountains, it is shared by cars and trains, so when a train is coming through, cars wait. It's one-way, so on the hour traffic goes through from one direction and on the half-hour the other direction of traffic passes. As we got near the bridge, there was a neat lake by Portage Glacier, with huge chunks of ice floating in it:


The tunnel under the mountain:



Whittier is on the Prince William Sound. It was a rainy, misty day, cloudy and dark. I'm sure there were beautiful mountains and views that we couldn't see because of the weather. There are cruise tours like the one we went on in Seward, on a nice day, I would love to go on one in Whittier and see the glaciers and mountains. Whittier was a sad town, pretty small, and some really run down buildings, including a huge empty barracks from WWII. When Exxon Valdez spilled oil 20 year ago, it was into this sound, and it makes me wonder how much that affected the town and economy here. It probably impacted them a lot.

We had lunch and walked around the small strip of touristy area,

and then tried to find a walking path to a huge waterfall you could see above the town. We found the bottom of the falls, but nothing further. There were a lot of people fishing along the shores in the rain:



Since we couldn't find much cool in Whittier on this rainy day, we left, went through the tunnel again, and over to Portage Glacier. They have short 30-min boat rides to the glacier, but we had already done that yesterday, so we decided to hike to Byron Glacier- it was a nice, short hike. It was so exciting once we got to it- we could TOUCH it, and climb on it- Byron Glacier has two parts- the primary part is waaay up in the mountains, but then another half is down below. There were even people sledding and snowboarding on it. Very cool!

After the glacier, we drove to the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center, so that Kaeli could see some of the animals we didn't see in the wild. They had moved the animals around to different enclosures because the deer are in rut- it was cool to hear the elk calling to each other across the park.

Porcupine:


Moose:


The Grizzly Bears had been fed road-kill moose when we got there, and it was really cool to watch them eat- kind of like huge dogs!


It was so so good seeing Kaeli- hopefully we'll have more time next time- I can't wait for our next adventures!

Kaeli Visit Seward Day 2

So on Day 2 of Kaeli's trip, Sunday, we drove down to Seward. By the end of this day, she had been fully down the East and West sides of the Peninsula. It was early in the morning, and there was an eerie fog in patches over the rivers and lakes we drove by:


Once we got to Seward, the fog had burned off around the shore, and the water was calm as glass- it was going to be a beautiful day! We checked in for our tour, and then walked around the harbor:


We saw some great animals early in the trip, while we were in Resurrection Bay. It's fall here, and most of the rookeries are empty now, with most animals leaving for deeper sea, but there were still some pockets of animals left. I was worried we might not see much- I had heard on the news that the humpbacks had started to arrive in Hawaii- they migrate down there from Alaska for the winter; it made me nervous about what was left to see. Being that this was Kaeli's first time on the ocean, I wanted it to be worth the trip!

We saw a couple sea otters- they are always my favorite- so calm and relaxed!


There were still some birds left-
Gulls:


Puffins:


Cormorants:


We also saw bald eagles, both adults and juveniles. One rare thing we saw was a mountain goat on a cliff relatively close to the boat- much further down the mountains than is normal for the animals:


When we left the bay and got onto the open water, it was really foggy- in some places you couldn't see anything through the fog. It got a little chilly too!


We came to an area full of Stellar Sea Lions (they are much bigger than the ones down in California, and very endangered). It was hard to see some of them in the fog:

Once we got into another bay where some glaciers were, the fog cleared up and it was beautiful again!


We went to Holgate Glacier- this one is a little smaller than the Ailak Glacier that I saw with mom, but it was really calving- we watched small pieces break off in the same area, and after a while a HUGE piece came off- definately car- sized, if not garage sized. It was really hard to gauge size- here's a picture of the glacier with a catamaran in front of it to give some size-reference:


On the way back, there was still some fog, but less than earlier in the day.


The captain was really trying to find whales, as we hadn't seen any yet. Another ship had found some, and he cruised toward them. We got lucky- we got to see a juvenile Humpback:


And we saw a Minke Whale- I guess they are not often seen- they are also a baleen whale, like the Humpback, but they are smaller and move much faster. This one kept coming to the surface and his head came out of the water a couple times- the captain said taht was really rare, but it was cool to see. They have much pointier dorsal fins than the Humpback:


After Seward, we went and hiked up to Exit Glacier. There is an all-day hike that will bring you up to the Harding Icefield. We didn't have time to do it, but after flying over and seeing how incredible it was, we were trying to cook up ways to get back up there. There is a tour where a helicopter will fly you up to the Harding Icefield from Seward (much shorter distance than from Homer, where we started yesterday), and at the top you can ride on a dogsled with a team pulling you across the edge of the icefield, and you can hike around on it. It sounded incredible, but when we called they were closed for the season. Next time. So, we hiked the short path to the edge of Exit Glacier. It's disappointing to get so close to it though and not be able to touch it.



When we finally got home we were so exhausted, we walked in the door and straight to bed, because we had another early morning the next day