Fishin' With Dad

Ready to Fish

My Dad the rambler flew in from Denver Sunday evening. We chartered the U-Rascal for a day of sport fishing on Monday morning. Chris, the skipper, is known for finding the big ones. "People have been complaining that they can't find any fish, but they're just hanging around town," explained Chris. So we set a course for a fishing hole several miles from Kodiak near Afognak Island. As we steamed across Marmot Bay the clouds parted revealing a brilliant blue sky . The Gulf of Alaska spanned the horizon to our right, while the forests, peaks and cliffs of Spruce and Afognak Islands jutted from the sea on the left. Puffins, fulmars and kittiwakes flapped from our wake and the spouts of several whale pods were visible in the distance. After a 90 minute voyage we reached the coast of Afognak Island and dropped our jigs. Before long silver (coho) salmon and the prized king (chinook) salmon were tugging at our lines. Each fish seemed to fight harder than the last. Eventually we caught our limit (two each) of king salmon and as many silvers as we could reasonably eat. We then switched to halibut tackle and from the minute the baited hook sank to the ocean floor we were fighting the tasty flatfish. Needless to say, we soon caught our limit of halibut as well and set our sights on home port. The trip back, however, was just as exciting as the fishing. Pods of Dall's porpoise (known to reach speeds of 30 knots) surfed in our wake, humpback whales jumped skyward in full body breaches and fin whales (second in size to the blue whale) raced in front of our bow. When it was all said and done Dad and I had brought home about 100 lbs. of fish.

Determined to land a monster chinook