Monday June 30, 2008: Gone Fishing, Just for the Halibut!

June 30, 2008: Seward, Alaska; Army Resort




Seward Military (Army) resort - Main building and deck area. Sleeping quarters (motel rooms with microwave and small refrigerator on both sides of flag pole. Townhouses (hard to get) are further away and the fish cleaning area is 150 feet back of the main entrance. The "bar and grill" is just in back of the building where the flag pole is.





















Above left- boats in Seward Harbor; right above is Resurrection Bay on way to Harding Straits out of the Harbor.

Jeff and I rose about 5:30 AM, not long after Charles had already risen and gone outside. Of course, it was daylight! Did not see darkness the whole trip!

Seward Harbor with mountains surrounding
We were supposed to be at the main deck or meeting room at the Army Resort by 6:15 to take the shuttle to the boat. Of course, this was a typical Army thing as could have been expected (Hurry up and wait!). Though the assigned herder/deck hand was there only about 10 or 15 minutes late, we did not get ready to board the shuttle for the 5 minute ride to the boat until after 7 AM. It took us to the docks where the 5 Resort-owned head boats were. Each would supposedly handle 28 people handily, but they usually kept it to 14 fishers + 4 deck hands, including the Captain. This was a special day. There was a large family from Kansas in the group and they had children (youngest was 7 - who acted like 2!). So the group grew to about 18 + deck hands, I believe. We stopped at the "bait shop" next to the boats and were tempted to purchase all sorts of things that we did not need. We persevered and bought only a pair of gloves, one of the best for fishing that I have seen. They were about $5 which is unheard of in Alaska to buy anything for $5.
We finally boarded the boats and cranked up and left. Much of the route out of Seward was the same as the tour boat the morning before but we were much earlier, even though we were late. The water was calm as glass and the skies were crystal clear. The temperature was in the 40's and was comfortable in our bundled state until the boat got in motion. Then it was difficult to stand outside for very long, though some "tough guys" stayed out there the whole time. It was a difficult choice to be cold or exposed to a 7-year old throwing a temper tantrum! So there was a lot of back and forth in/out during the trip.

The captain was a year-round "boat driver" and one of the deck hands is his son. He fishes out of Hawaii in the winter and Alaska in the Summer. I don't know if he owned the boat in Hawaii or not but doubt it. Totally different kind of boats, fish and people to deal with he said. He was a colorful guy but did not seem to be much over 40, if that. We had 3 hours going out to the fishing grounds. Basically, when you left Resurrection Bay, you swing a left and keep on chugging. Along the way, as we neared the end of the 3 hours, we all broke out our sandwiches etc. that we had bought at Safeway the night before and had our lunch so that the fishing would not be underway when we got really hungry. We saw a whale or more on the way out but on the way back saw another colony of sea lions. Even when we reached the fishing grounds, the mountains were so high/near (probably at least 3,000 feet, with a steep drop off at water's edge, that we were always in sight of land. In NC, we would have been way out of sight of land at the distance we were.

When we got to Chaos, the name the captains or someone has given the fishing spot, we got a short fishing lesson. The lines/rods were all baited with something resembling mullet and were set up with 2 lb (yes 2 POUNDS) of weight. The 100 lb test line was let out till it hit bottom and then pulled back up a little ways and bobbed op and down. It did not take much bobbing until you had a fish. We were in prime halibut fishing grounds. The halibut, which I was not very familiar with before this trip is like a flounder on steroids. The smaller halibut are in the 15-20 pound range whereas that is a very large flounder. Otherwise, they grow up the same, swimming as a vertical minnow with an eye on eacy side, then like a flounder, as they mature they turn and swim on their side and the two eyes end up on the same side of the head. Weird fishes! Anyway, the record halibut is in the 700 lb range! Most of the ones that are caught by regular fishermen are in the "under 100 pounds" range but while we were there there were articles in the news about 200 and a 319 pounder being caught out of Homer which is just a few hours away and over on the Cook Inlet side of Kenai Peninsula. There was a 90-something pounder caught by one person on one of the 5 boats that day, but most of us caught 20 pounders, give or take a few pounds. The limit of halibut is two per day and the fish are tagged when you pull them up. You decide if you want to keep the one you catch or release it and try for a larger one. When you keep two, you quit fishing. The deck hands are very careful about this and if you (the boat) catch more, the captain gets a stiff fine. Since all the fish seemed in the same narrow size range, I gave up early and kept my two and quit but Charles and a couple of other guys would have stayed all day! They finally kept their two and it was time to go looking for salmon. Total, Jeff Charles and I caught our total limit of 6. We figure that the dressed weight is about half of the caught weight. When you pull them out of the water, they are flapping a bit still trying to escape. The deck hands help pull them in. The sequence is to yell "One on," followed by "I see color," and then the deck hand will either come to help or repeatedly say hold him just under the surface while he is helping someone else. It was indeed chaos at times. We all caught our limit in substantially under an hour. When the fish were taken off the line, they used a small wooden stick resembling a shrunken baseball bat to whack them in the head and put them out of their misery and cut down on the flopping. It is fairly humane.
Picture above Jeff and Charles on way out 60 miles to the fishing spot "Chaos"

During the fishing frenzy, I thought I had caught a sheet of plywood or something, it was so difficult to pull up. When we got it to the surface, it was one of the ugliest fish I have ever seen. It had eyes that looked like horse eyes, they were so large; and it had a large under belly drooping down under.
The deck hand identified it as a Ling Cod - it was about 30 pounds (grows every time I think about it). There was a consensus that it was one of the best tasking fish you could eat. However, I had to throw it back because the season did not open for another 12 hours! I teasingly suggested we could tie it under the boat and I could "catch it" in the AM, but the deck hand would have nothing to do with that idea. Too bad, it was an interesting looking fish. No one else caught one of them that I saw.

Deck hand helping to "handle" the fish.
We moved about 20 minutes to a new spot looking for salmon. Everyone started catching rock fish (black sea bass) which is OK, but the AK regulations say you can catch up to 5 per day, but you are not to "target" them. Since we were not catching salmon, the captain kept moving the boat as he was expecting to get a $100++ fine for "targeting" them as he obviously must have been fishing for them as he did not have other fish. Someone did catch a couple of silver salmon which could not have been over 5 pounds. After moving about 4-5 times and not finding salmon (and there are about 6 kinds of them!), it was time to return to Seward.

Curiously, while we were not finding our salmon, further south in Ketchikan or someplace down that way that has canneries had to tell the commercial fishermen to stop fishing for two days while they caught up canning them, they were catching so many Coho Salmon! I don't remember many details, but each kind of salmon has a unique life span and habits. They are all hatched way up stream (spring fed only - as the gray looking glacier melt has too much sediment and not enough oxygen for them to live) and life there for a time and gradually move down stream, eventually becoming a salt water fish. Depending on the type, they will be gone way out to sea someplace from 1 to 4 years. As dictated by their kind, they will magically head home and back up the stream they came down. They fight their way against currents, dams, falls, bears, fishermen and all sorts of other barriers back to the headwater streams from whence they came. By this time they are exhausted in many ways. The females lay the eggs, the male fertilizes them and they all just hang it up and die. They are good for only one cycle! Must be a mess with all those dead smelly fish when this happens.

The trip back to Seward was very pleasant and the temperature had warmed up to the 70's and was still a bit brisk on a moving boat, but was bearable for much of the 3 hour return trip. All 5 boats which we had hardly seen all day collected at the mouth of the Bay and we came in as a fleet the last half hour or better. The picture I got of Seward in the afternoon light is one of the better ones that i took, I believe. By this time, a young (teen) lady who was with her dad (or there was a huge age spred!) who had been sick and in the bed most of the day came out and looked to be feeling better. She was supposedly sea sick, but the waves were not such that that would have normally been the case.

We caught the shuttle back to the resort and the deck hands followed a few minutes later with bins of our fish. All together Charles, Jeff and I caught 6 halibut and 11 rock fish. They dumped everyone's out together on a concrete slab and sorted them according to the tags. We neglected to string ours up and take a picture in that fashion, but we took pictures of them on the cleaning bench. The "gutting facility" was very accommodating to the chore. They had high pressure running water hoses every few feet, a Corion top and a "dump hole" in the back board where the unwanted fish parts went away outside to some container never to be seen again. We started cleaning the fish ourselves, but the deck hands were available for a "whatever you think it is worth" tip for helping. Charles and two of the deck hands did most of the work. Charles was much better than me but the deck hands made it look like short work. We tipped them for helping. They are paid hourly salaries on the boat and are "off the clock" when they leave the boat. So, it works out for everyone. They don't accept tips for their deck handing while on the boat. Above: "Finest gutting facility in Alaska"

I packed the steaks/slabs into plastic bags which we purchased for a nominal price at the front desk. Jeff was the chief vacuum packer (nice device that sucks out all the air and seals the bags) ; then we packed the sealed bags into a plastic "box" and took them to the freezer check in where they went by id card to make sure they got back to the right person, etc. The two large walk in freezers were nominally at -6 F. They recommended 48 hours for a thorough freeze.
Left below is the outside of "the finest gutting facility in Alaska" according to the staff; right is Jeff and Charles on the way out 60 miles to the fishing grounds named Chaos.


We finished up, washed up and went to eat at a Greek restaurant downtown in Seward in the older part of town. I got a pizza and it was one of the best ones that I can recall having. Jeff and Charles got Greek/pasta and other dishes that were equally good. The price was almost reasonable! It was a great experience. The waitress knew the Seavey's who are the dog sled people. Jeannine, who was in the youth group that we chaperoned in the 60's went to Alaska after school and married the son. The father was and Ididerod musher and has since won. Her husband is also a musher and has won, I believe. Now her son is in the competition. They have a summer camp in Seward where they charge a fee to take people for a ride on a wheeled sled. In the winter, they live someplace further North. They use the sled operation to keep the dogs in shape and to train them in Above: Our catch 6 halibut, 11 rock bass
the off season. We stopped by their place on the way back from Exit Glacier, but she had gone to town for some reason and was not there. Anyway, in a small town of 2000 locals, everyone knows everyone, especially the folks that run a tourist business from which many of the town people earn their living.

The fishing trip was certainly a highlight of the trip, though some of the views were similar or the same as some of the tour boat the day before. I don't think the scenery can ever get old or wear one down such that it is something to "get tired of."

That is about it for this session. I will be back with more in Seward about the Museum and the Exit Glacier.