More Fish

June 22-24

Lake Bay, Prince of Wales Island

We had to weave our way carefully into the anchorage, zigzagging through the maze of gillnets set in the waters from Coffman Cove to the entrance to Lake Bay. It was almost a game, with binoculars required, to spot which red buoy belongs to which boat. It’s important to match up boat with buoy, since there’s a net strung in between them. Some gillnetters keep one end of their net attached to the boat, others detatch from their net and drift away, or patrol back and forth between the red buoys at either end. Small white or yellow floats line the top of the net, but they’re hard to spot unless you are right on top of them and the water is flat calm… it was lumpy today.

After the gillnetters' opening ended we ran out in the skiff to see if there were any salmon left in the area. The good fishing put a smile on the Capt’s face and put 2 more salmon in the boat, a fat coho at 5:00 a.m. and a nice king at 5:00 p.m. We’ll be eating a lot of fish this week (never a problem)!

Check out what the salmon eat...........

Continuing North...

June 19-21

Meyers Chuck

Surprise, there was room at the dock when we arrived - always a bonus here.  We met interesting people, like this long-distance kayaker,

...and enjoyed good conversations, lazy beach strolling and easy trail hiking through the woods. We love The Chuck and usually stop on the way north and again on the return home.

RL took advantage of the sunny days to do some repair work on the teak trim and I did a little cooking and cleaning. Mainly, we just enjoyed being there. The new cellphones received voicemail alerts on the boat, but we had to climb up the long ramp to the high dock for a stronger signal in order to connect. Lazy me, I ignored the phone at super low tide and also when it rained hard, just to avoid that uphill trudge. Some days it feels good to stay disconnected.

Behm Canal, North Arm

June 17-18

Forss Island Float, Helm Bay in Behm Canal

We ran to Neets Bay, hoping to find some good salmon fishing. Instead we ran log-watch exercises in Behm Canal, bumped through choppy water and saw no fish on the fishfinder. Zero. Zip. Nada. None. Another boat occupied our pre-selected anchorage, so Phooey! we retraced our route somewhat and headed for another new-to-us location, Forss Bay, not too far from Tatoosh Is. We did see one bear on the way out of Neets.

We arrived at Forss Island in a drizzle to discover 2 small boats at the state float, with plenty of room for us and more. It’s good the Capt. checked the depth and the tidal range. The -3' tide the next morning certainly changed the landscape. We did just fine on the outside of the float, with the depth sounder reporting 9 feet under the keel at low water. However the inshore side of the same float was too shallow for comfort for Rhapsody.

The Blair family welcomed us with friendly Alaskan hospitality, and generously shared their crab catch and some freshly-made crabcakes with spicy sauce, still warm from the stove. Yum! They had booked the Forest Service cabin for several days, so we visited on the float and on the boat.

Our fishing expedition yielded no salmon. No problem, we’ve got crab and lox to work on.