The last few weeks have been full as autumn gets into full swing. Birch and aspen trees stand out brilliantly among the masses of dark green spruce and pine trees. We got the footing poured for our new home and began to stack the foam block like a huge white Legos project. Our friends from Albuquerque, Bob and Teri Winfield, came up for a week to see the place we chose for our retirement home and to help us with the construction project. Not surprising, it had been rainng for a few days pretty much nonstop before they got here, and we hoped the skies would clear up so they could see what had attracted us to this magical place. We were very pleased that they had made the effort to make the long journey up here so we wanted them to have a good time and want to come back.
We chartered a full day halibut/salmon fishing trip with North Country Charters, located on the Homer Spit and prayed that the weather would be good for our outing. The boat was called a "six-pack" since it would handle six fishermen. We met the two other men, Rob and Mike, who were to go out with us and took off after a short safety orientation with Captain Eric. We traveled out about 14 or 15 miles catching glimpes of dozens of sea otters floating on the surface of the water, as though there simply to entertain us. Once we arrived at the proper coordinates, Eric killed the engines and rigged up four lines, three of which used downriggers with 12 pound weights to keep the bait down at a certain level as we trolled for salmon. He threaded six inch slender herring onto large hooks and used lures that resembled silver aluminum looking "paddles" about 14 inches long and four inches wide that attract the fish to the bait. Teri was the first to catch a fish, but it was a young halibut, so it was thrown back. Rob was the next fisherman up, but missed a couple of opportunities and came up empty handed. I was next in line and caught a 17# halibut, so I decided to keep it. Bob caught a nice 10 pound king salmon and Brad caught a silver salmon of about the same weight. Mike caught a small halibut so it was returned to the water and then there were no more strikes for the next 30 - 45 minutes. We were disappointed that we didn't catch more salmon, since we could have each caught one in that area, but Captain Eric decided we should move on another 10 miles or so to catch some halibut.
Once we arrived at the next predetermined location, Capt. Eric got out the shorter rods and pulled out a large plastic storage box full of huge herring that he cut into 4' chunks to bait the hooks for halibut. The lines were lowered 126' to the bottom with two pound weights and immediately each one of us felt the tugging of the halibut. Up until that time, Teri and I were getting snapshots and video of the fish being caught, but there was absolutely no way we could leave our rods for five seconds without having a halibut to reel in. It was pretty comical, actually, watching the backsides of everyone wrestling with halibut all at the same time. I was positioned against the cabin for what leverage I could manage, struggling to bring these flat, odd looking fish to the surface. Our limit was two fish each, so many were returned to the water in the hopes that we would land one of the huge ones we saw so many pictures of at each of the charter businesses on the Spit and in fishing magazines. This year's biggest halibut to date weighed in at 320 pounds. Since the winner of the yearly contest for the largest halibut will win a sizeable jackpot if he bought the $10 chance before he went fishing, we were hopeful that we might get lucky.
We must have fished for hours, reeling in mostly small halibut that were thrown back, and one that Brad caught early on spit out a little fish onto the floor of the boat, so Captain Eric used that little fish as bait on Brad's line. He lowered it to the bottom and within fifteen seconds had an enormous tug. The fish bent the stiff rod half over as he strained with the weight of the fish, and just knew he had one of those once in a lifetime catches. Twenty minutes or more passed and finally he brought the fish to the surface and the captain yelled, "It's a skate!" I had never heard of a skate before, but it is a member of the ray family, and apparently are among the most ancient of fish in the ocean. I took a picture of it's underside which looked like the face of an unhappy white faced creature like I've never seen before. He was so tired after that experience that Brad was holding his line without letting it drop as he was telling me how sure he was he had a huge halibut, when the sea gulls that had been keeping very close to us for any scrap of fish that might get thrown overboard tried to eat the bait right off his hook that was dangling off the edge of the boat. Who would think that you could catch a bird on the end of a fishing line! Anyway, back in the water he went and Brad tried again with the same bait and believe it or not, caught another skate! Yep, another 30 minute catch making him feel certain he had a huge halibut. He was totally bummed but kept trying to get two big halibut to put in our freezer. He must have caught 30 halibut but a bit disappointed that they were all mostly the same small size. Still, it was a great day of fishing and we all enjoyed ourselves thoroughly.
As it turned out, Teri's first "keeper" was the biggest at 31 pounds and several close to that were among our catch, each group marked with different cuts on the fish to identify whose was whose. I had wondered how he kept track of all that. We ended up with a good amount of halibut and a couple of nice salmon to divide. I can understand why Homer is called the halibut capital of the world. The whole time we were fishing I was trying to imagine what the Inlet floor must look like with all those hungry halibut looking for a good meal of herring.
