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Pics Galore

The best aspect of this "Alaskan experience" is not the wildlife, not the sunsets, not the fishing, nor the money, or even the mountains. By far, the most cherished part of my two months fishing in Juneau will be my time spent with my wonderful cousins. They have been so generous; opening their home and their lives to me, and I will look back on this time with a fondness of meaningful interaction with people I love.

The ENTIRE Box family rallied for last week's all-night off-load. Even the kids stayed up until 4:00 AM packing our crab into insulated totes to be shipped to Portland. Molly was our camera woman, and I would say she captured the events damn well.

The other pictures are of today's perfect trip in the skiff. Usually, the last thing Steve and I want to do on our day off is head back out onto the water, but with a rare break in the clouds and the sun shining overhead, Molly insisted that we take the skiff out, try to catch a Halibut, and check out some remote beaches. It was SO much fun to experience the water in a new light...leisure, instead of work. We set anchor, and Corey hooked into a HUGE fish. He fought it hard for about an hour, and Molly (as you can see) was ready with the harpoon. It turned out to weigh 150 pounds!!!!! Corey only weighs 100 pounds, so he really worked hard to pull this fish up from a depth of 150 feet.

Might have to do a few posts to get them all on here. We leave tomorrow for our last week of gill-netting, then the last week of crab pots before we have to get all the gear back out of the water and on land. Hard to believe I only have 3 weeks of fishing left.

Pics

More picture of the bubble feeding humpbacks. It was an amazing experience to be so close to this incredible symphony of movement. The whales circle around a bait ball of herring and release bubbles that rise in a cylinder to confine the fish in a cage of bubbles. Then other whales rise up through the center of the column with mouths agape to scoop up as many fish as possible. All the whales surface at the same time, and if you look closely, you can make out the inner baleen of their mouths. SO cool.

The other pics are of me making bait out of cut salmon (pretty slimy/gooey on a hot sunny day) and posing next to a nice pot of 23 keeper dungees. Our record pot for the season is 29.

Bubble Feeding

3-4 foot seas

Picking fish