Fishing trips start at the butt crack of dawn and this one was no different. Carlie and I rode to the Homer spit with Jim, Mindy, and Hannah, and first stop was breakfast at the Boardwalk Bakery, where we also picked up our lunches for the trip. We had coffee, biscuits, paninies and a lot of talk about an over reaching corrupt federal government that is going to steal our fish. Homer's entire economy is being threatened by federal regulation that will limit numbers of privately caught Halibut drastically while increasing the commercial limits. It sounds a little like the raid on the guitar company that made the news - the government appears to be applying different rules to different people based on politics.
Since I was missing football, all that political talk got me fired up - or maybe it was the three cups of coffee, but I was ready to go. We headed from the bakery down to North Country Charters, whose office is right beside the Time Bandit offices. That was sort of cool, but if North Country called themselves "the Deadliest Charter," I was considering fishing from the shore - my daughter was going on this boat after all!
They did not call themselves that and in fact, we were in very good hands. Our Captain was Eric Lehm and we went out on the Storm Petrel. Eric is a first generation American, whose parents are both German. I knew when he told us that bit of personal information that we were good to go. I am sure my buddy Ingo would see this as an answered prayer for our safety and for a good trip.
Eric took us down to the boat and gave us the safety brief. I paid close attention because those of you who follow my blog know that some kind of story always breaks out around me and I didn't want it to be one that resembled Gilligan's Island or I Shouldn't be Alive (Jay Allen's second favorite show behind Finding Bigfoot). After laying my hands on the inflatable life raft, I was more confident and ready to get going.
We started out of the harbor and stopped before we had even gone a football field away. Just to show off, Eric caught our bait for the day. He handed out poles and we all pulled in a couple of Alaska wall-eyed pollock (fish sticks). We literally pulled these in as fast as we could cast. I see the pictures you people from the lower 48 post and I know we pulled in more fish than most of you do in a full day before we even started really fishing. Us native Alaskans (yes, I am native - I bought a Subaru for goodness sake) fish at break-neck speed and need our huge coolers for fish, not beer! We fish a little differently up here and looking at those fish that I would have been proud of myself in my pre-Alaska days and realizing those were only bait, I got fired up yet again! This was going to be awesome!
We started our drive out to the fishing hole and saw a humpback whale showing out just as we left. That is why I don't believe in wild life cruises. All those wild life like to eat fish and if you go after the fish, you will see the wild life. If you want to find the Southern people where ever you live, go to where they serve biscuits and gravy - same principle.
To further make my point, we saw dozens of Sea Lions also. They were laid up sorry and making quite a ruckus, but they were all fat of fish. And not to be left out, we saw seals, puffins, otters and eagles, all sharing in the great bounty of nature that God provided.
The drive out to the first fishing hole was pretty long. We were all pretty entertained just exchanging stories and catching up. In addition to the five Fitzgeralds and Benefields, another fisher person named Judy came with us. At the point where we were completely caught up with the eleven years since we were last neighbors with the Fitzgeralds and knew Judy and Eric's complete life history, I was beginning to have visions of Chevy Chase at the Grand Canyon. I know people make fun of Sarah Palin for saying she could see Russia, but we drove for such a long time that people would have made fun of us for saying we could see Alaska! We were out there!
It was time for us to stop cruising the Russian shore and share in the bounty with all the other wildlife, so we got to fishing. Captain Eric told us we would go for the big Halibut first. It went just as he said, the first two fish we caught were the biggest. Jim caught the first and biggest of the day, but my competitive nature requires me to point out that we let Jim have the first fish because this is his last chance to fish this year. If we were going to catch only one fish, we wanted Jim to catch it. Next time, though, I will crawl over his back to get that big one! And Carlie will crawl over my back - it gets pretty competitive out there!.
We (Jim and Mindy) caught a couple of really big fish at the first site, but things eventually started to slow down. We pulled up a huge Starfish that was an absolute marvel of nature, but as it neared the surface, it realized there had been a misunderstanding and it released our bait and went back into the ocean. As the fishing slowed down, Eric told us some stories of the sea. The otter floating by our boat reminded him of one story that he had witnessed just the night before. There was another otter floating around doing his thing, when BAM! A killer whale came up and ate him. That would have been quite a show, but I had just watched Soul Surfer and I didn't want to be part of any story that included, "BAM! The big sea animal ate him!"
So, not wanting to leave with only two fish and a few stories, we cranked up and left the first site and motored out to a fishing hole that was really hopping. We all ate lunch while Eric took us to the new site and that was good, because we were going to need all that energy.
As soon as Eric killed the engine, we started bringing in Halibut. Every Halibut you reel in from the bottom of the ocean feels like Moby Dick! And the later in the day it gets, the bigger you expect each fish to be when you get them to the top. We went from two fish to our limit in about an hour and a half. We were all pulling in Halibut and started to be selective about the size of fish we kept. Back to my previous fish story, fishing in Alaska is really like NASCAR, but fishing in Alaska doesn't get rained out (at least not in Homer).
I have to praise some of the catcher people on our boat. Mindy Fitzgerald brought up some really big fish and despite sound effects that might be better suited to women's tennis, she is an awesome catcher person. Carlie and Hannah also did a great job of bringing in their fish. Hannah had one that fought her for about twenty minutes and we thought sure was going to be a record. It ended up having some old fishing line attached to it, which made it doubly hard to get to the surface, but Hannah did. Carlie refuses to let anybody help her pull in fish and I was scolded the one time I tried. Our team did awesome! It was a good thing everybody was so independent because there were a couple of times that there were four fish on the line at once.
With out limit of Halibut in the box, we started the long drive back to Homer. If you doubt that Halibut fishing is hard work, I would like to point out that everybody in my party feel asleep on the way back. We were smoked!
As we left those Halibut rich waters, I pointed out the most amazing cloud formation I had ever seen to the rest of our boat. There was the perfect form of a giant wolf on top of the mountain in the background. The wolf's head, face, legs, and tail were all visible and it was perfectly postured in a sitting position on the top of the mountain as if he was watching us leave and maybe was watching over us the whole time. Whatever was watching over us on God's behalf did keep us safe. God also blessed us with a good day of fishing.
When we got back into the harbor area, we had to huddle to determine how much to tip our captain - I recommend you figure this out before you go so you don't have to text your wife and tell her to bring you some cash to the pier. I usually plan better than that, but I goobered it up this time and Cammie bailed me out and delivered the cash. I think we tipped an acceptable amount for a successful trip, but I am not sure if we tipped as generously as Judy did. She and the captain were both single and I think she might have thought he was sort of cute and that probably influenced her tip formula. Cute did not influence mine - we were not out on the sea that long that I found our bearded captain cute.
When we got to the pier, the balance of Benefields and Fitzgeralds met us there and so did Charlie, the Halibut filet master. He hauled our catch to the North Country Charter Office where we took pictures and so did some tourists who were just passing by. What a foul to take your picture with somebody else's fish and claim them as your own. We did not know these picture poachers - they weren't on the boat with us and we had never seen them before, but somewhere on the internet, they are claiming our catch as theirs! Of course, I think I did almost accidentally roll Eric's fish into our count, but we had Charlie there to keep us honest on the numbers.
When Charlie started preparing our fish, another wave of tourists happened upon us. I had no idea fileting fish was such a tourist draw, but I did share with Charlie my experience in Valdez with the French speaking tourists. I also told him that I could tell he was a pro because he got all our fish prepared without showing any butt crack - something I still have not accomplished.
These Alaska fishing towns have a lot of great services provided. After Charlie got our fish cut up, we had it hauled over to Coal Point to have it packaged and frozen for a small fee. We were too smoked to do this ourselves and the Halibut is just too valuable to be trusted to amateurs like us. We dropped it off at 1600 on Saturday and picked up our fish 0800 on Sunday. What a great deal!
With our fish at the processing plant, we needed to find some fish that had already been through the processing plant and the deep fryer. After a long day, what better place could we eat than the Happy Face Restaurant. No kidding, their logo was a big yellow smiley face. Despite the happy logo, some of our little people were not so happy. I am not going to name the child, but I have to tell you that I thoroughly enjoyed the complete melt down that occurred when we said grace before one of our little people was ready. We had to pray over our food again just for him! That is going to be a great story when he grows up!
With our bellies full, the Benefields were ready to call it a day. The Fitzgeralds had to drive back to Eagle River Saturday and I did not envy them -I fell asleep before 8 pm and was not fit to drive. The Fitzgeralds also had to go buy a freezer early Sunday so when we got their fish home, they could keep them frozen. What a great problem to have when you have more fish than freezer space. We had just enough freezer space for all of our fish.
I can't wait to eat all that fish and refill the freezer next year! As soon as Alabama releases its 2012 football schedule, I will know when we will be going back to Homer to get our Halibut! Thankfully, they kept up their end of the bargain this year with a 48-7 win over Kent State, but don't worry football fan friends, I will be in front of the TV next week to see Alabama take on Penn State - in front of the TV eating fried Halibut!
