Halibut Cove, AK

This past weekend will be remembered as the weekend of the "lost king salmon." I think Gus was more upset about it than me. We sailed across to Halibut Cove Lagoon on Friday. We had a steady SW breeze at 10 mph and sailed 4-6 mph, using both the main and the jib. When we arrived at the lagoon, king salmon fishing appeared to be hot. Spotters from higher up were watching and directing fisherman where the big school of salmon were circling around. Fisherman were casting lines left and right and across from each other. As it turned out, this particular scene was the high point of fishing. Three people netted nice sized kings in about a 10 minute time frame.

I started out optimistic, but as the evening wore on and hours went by, only one other person caught a fish. We made an unfortunate mistake of leaving our good casting rods in the truck at the dock and the only thing on the boat were salmon trolling reels, which are not so easy to cast. Firm placement of your thumb on the rod where the line spools is crucial otherwise the line is in a tangled mess. Learning this new technique was quite the adventure in itself.

By midday Saturday, I would only goof up if I needed a good cast into a school of fish that were swimming nearby. Otherwise it seemed as though I perfected the technique. By this time, the fishing seemed to dwindle to nearly non-existent and I entertained myself by looking at the counter on the reel and seeing how many feet of line I could cast out successfully. It was about 3 pm and only 2 fish were caught all morning, but the weather was nice and we didn't plan on leaving the lagoon until the 5:00pm high tide, so I continued with my game of casting the rod for as many feet as possible without a tangle. Surprise . . . It must have been my lucky chance because once when I casted out, my line immediately was being pulled away. I shrieked, "It's a fish. Gus get the net."

Seeing as this was the most excitement the dock had seen all day, the few persistent people still milling around the dock came to watch and the fisherman casting from the boat nearby, casted with a bit more umph and hope. The fish fought and I tried reeling. I would make progress and then watch my rod counter move from 25 feet to 76 feet when it spooled. Unfortunately I was standing in a bad position on the fish pen, where I couldn't even hope of landing a fish. I had to move off the pen and get the rod around a piling in order to land the fish on the dock. Somewhere in this process, I also must have loosened the drag too much and the fish got a little more line than one would ideally like. And of course like the half-hearted fisherman I am, I didn't know how to tighten the drag. All and all, I did enough things wrong and in the end, the spirited fish succeeded in wrapping itself around the anchored fish pen under the dock and freeing itself. My chance at a first every king was replaced with a snag in the fry filled fish pen awaiting their release into the ocean.

While disappointed, I wasn't crushed. Gus was crushed. He said that he'd have rather I not even had the bite if he knew I was going to loose it. Apparently, he thinks king salmon is much better than halibut, so he wanted a little of that for the freezer as well. He must have been enjoying his meal the whole time I was in fish frenzy chaos, and fish frenzy turned into a story instead of a meal.

We left the lagoon early that evening and decided to practice sailing in Kachemak Bay before docking for the night. Bryant and I always try to switch jobs so each of us get practice managing the sails and navigating. In general, we are learning that we need more practice remembering all the little details that go with sailing. It seems like eventually the act of getting ready to sail should be as smooth and flawless as moving a clutch on a car to 2nd gear, but now I feel like we are stuck in the jerky movements of a beginning driver. Eventually we get to sailing, but it isn't without the "Oh yeah, remember the . . . ." After beating upwind a bit, we turned around into a less windy bay near the community of Halibut Cove and practiced reefing the main sail. We hadn't reefed our sail before and Bryant had recently read that sailors should reef the sail before you need it. While we've never been in the position of reefing a sail in harsh weather, we both suspected that it is easier to let a reef out than reef in foul weather conditions. Practice . . . practice . . . practice.

We decided to spend the night at the public dock in the small community of Halibut Cove. While in Seldovia last weekend, another sailor told us of this public dock and we scouted it out before we entered the lagoon yesterday. It works out good for us because we are self-contained with bathroom facilities. Because of the lack of facilities and public land off the dock, the dock by default becomes a private dock for a few who live there or have summer cabins, which prompts one to think about why state funding was ever allocated to build this dock in the first place. Hmmm. . . . . . .

The next morning we woke up to rain. We decided to motor back to Homer and call it a weekend.