#2013-29 Cape Edgecomb Fishing and Chamber Music Concert

June 21, 2013

Friday morning we gave Sitka local fishing one more try.  We fished just inside Cape Edgecomb under the ever-present Mount Edgecomb, an extinct volcano.  The fish were there but not in the numbers to which we've become accustomed, as we have been spoiled by Whale Bay fishing.  By 3pm we headed into the harbor and a night of Chamber Music at the Sitka Music Festival.

Great classical musicians at the Sitka Music Festival.

The decorations aren't too bad either.

On Friday we heard music composed by Stravinsky, Batok, and Brahms. On Saturday we heard music from Chopin and Brahms again. Great musicians led to super performances.

June 22, 2013

Saturday was boat clean up day.  All the crew pitched in and Wild Blue is clean again for Monday's arriving guests. 

It's been great fun fishing, dining and hanging out with Roger, Dave and Sid.  If Roger will start taking swimming lessons, we can do it again next year!

#2013-28 King City Revisited

There was no question where to fish today. King City is it.  We fished until noon and departed for Sitka to get our fish to the processor before the end of business.

This week we've consumed some kind of fish every day.  Here's a short list of our "fishy" epicurean adventures:

Barbecue marinated king salmon on cedar plank

Steamed king salmon in pouch

Barbecue grilled king salmon.

Salt and Sugared Gravlax Coho "Lox"

Salmon salad sandwich

Whale Bay salmon and fish soup

Baked salmon bellies

Crab enchiladas

Fresh warm crab

Baked Black Cod

Another fine coho salmon dinner.

Crab quesadillas and variations..

Cod and king dinner.

The Coast Guard rescue is always at sea or in the air.

The bridge marks the return to Sitka Harbor.

#2013-27 King City: The Grapes of Wrath.....NOT!

Out of The Small Arm early, we decided to set crab traps in a place that looked to be favorable in Port Banks.  There's a fresh water outflow from a river on the east shoreline.  After the traps were soaking, we began trolling again along the north shore of the Whale Bay entrance.  We landed several cohos then moved down to the shoreline between the Small Arm and Great Arm.  There's a spot there at 56 37.5 N, 134 58.82 W we have named King City!  Each time we crossed that spot we hooked a king, on three consecutive passes, and a 4th king after a couple blank passes.  No Grapes of Wrath in this King City, just many rich King salmon.  We reached our daily limit and headed to Port Banks for the evening. Our crab traps again were empty.

Four kings, some coho and a black cod.

Dave only has to clean 10 fish today, not 17 like yesterday.

Dave was in a filleting mode so we packaged the king salmon.

Baked salmon bellies, black cod, salad and fish soup. Delicious.

The river that flows into Port Banks is a spawning salmon waterway.

Wild Blue anchored in the river delta.

Crab retrieval team.

Nice crab retrieval form.  Be nice if there were some crabs here.

#2013-26 Back to Whale Bay

Yesterday, the crew took the day off from fishing, to the relief of many salmon, and toured Sitka.   By day's end the boys had located the local Elks Club Lodge and payed a visit with the Exalted Ruler.  Roger, Dave and Sid are all "Elkies" and are experts at the Elks Hailing Sign.  Their Signing improved as the drinking progressed.  Non-member Alex was coerced into ringing a bell, not once but twice, causing everyone present in the Elks Lodge to receive two rounds of drinks, on Roger, Dave and Sid.

Dave, Roger, The Sitka Elks Exalted Ruler, Sid and Alex

On Tuesday we got going at 5am to do some local Sitka fishing.  In 30 minutes were at the Rock Pile known as Vitskari Rocks.  We had landed a King there last week and wanted to see if more were around. By 8 without a bite, it was unanimous. F--- this! Let's head back to Whale Bay.  We arrived at the Bay at noon dropped our line along the northern shore, just inside.  Before the down-rigger ball was down to depth, the bell was ringing.  Dave landed a nice 34-inch king.  We fished the Bay until 4pm and anchored back in beautiful Small Arm.

Dave's nice king.

Yacht Golden Boy anchored inside Kristoi Basin.

This trip to the Bay, we seemed to be fishing near Jamie Jo a lot.

#2013-25 Give Us This Day, Our Daily.......Limit!

It's Sunday and we should be in church. Just can't make it today, so we'll worship on the water in our beautiful and natural surroundings.  The choir is ready for our favorite hymn.  All together now....FISH ON!

Alaska Department of Fish and Game sets the limits for all fisherman.  Alaska residents have no limit.  We non-residents are allowed 1 King per day up to 3 fish per year, if caught before June 30th.  So when the bite's on, we have to stop landing Kings after one per fisherman, or 4 total for the day.  As soon as we get our King salmon daily limit, were headed back to Sitka to get our fish into processing.  So just give us our daily limit......  Luckily we can keep up to 6 coho salmon per day per fisherman.

What fish we've caught takes Dave a long time to clean.  It takes much longer to fillet it all then vacuum package it.  Even so, the Wild Blue just doesn't have the freezer space for so much fish. So the cleaned fish is iced down and kept in coolers.  It will be filleted and packaged in Sitka by a private seafood processor and stored frozen until ready to ship home.

Today we fish at the entrance to Great Arm and the shoreline between Great and Small Arms.  The bell is ringing all day long.  As the morning wears on, we've landed many Cohos, 3 Kings but one shy of our daily limit.  We've lost 8 fish due to broken line, poor netting, smart fish and too tight reel brakes.  But the bell keeps ringing and by 1pm we're talking crab enchiladas again.  We pull into Kristoi Basin and anchor for lunch.  An hour later is fish time again, yet we need to head north by 5pm to make high tides in the narrows.  Just give us our daily limit.  At departure time, we just can't find that last King, even so it's been a record setting day!

Roger is King for a day.

Dave's King.

Roger's 35-inch salmon weighed 19 pounds.

3 King and 14 Coho for 17 fish total, 

a new Wild Blue daily record, but

we missed our King limit by one!

Just before 8pm we crept into Kliuchevoi Bay aka Hot Springs Bay and set the hook.  Dave and Roger began cleaning fish. We'll make Sitka tomorrow and get our fish to the processor and then we're taking the rest of the day off.  Anybody for a barbecue fresh salmon dinner?

Fresh barbecued King salmon for dinner.

Served with the appropriate accouterments, of course.

#2013-24 Whale Bay's Small Arm is a new favorite anchorage.

Coast Pilot states "The depths are too great to afford anchorage."  The Douglass guide states "Small Arm may offer reasonable anchorage...".  Sounds discouraging, however in our opinion, Small Arm is one of the finer anchorages in SE Alaska, especially for the magnificent views..  We anchored in about 6 fathoms on the south side of the bitter end, tucked just behind the small peninsula.  It was out of any wind and quite secure.  We asked others who have anchored there and they too have had great experiences.

A pretty morning in the Small Arm.

Dave takes in the morning sun.

Amazing views of snow-capped mountains.

Shore excursion shows westerly view up to Small Arm's elbow.

We're up at 7am and with the crabs collected last night and today, we're ready for a crab breakfast. Fresh sweet crab is quite good when cooked with Pappy's seasoned saltwater.  Served with butter and mayonnaise, Sid reminds us he has extra and will sell us gout tablets for $100 each!

Crabs in a cage.

Crabs a cookin'.

What patience to pluck all the crab meat before a taste!

Even with all this sunny morning's activities, we are still able to get fishing by 9am. We troll back and forth across Whale Bay in warm weather and flat waters. We have a lazy day of fishing shagging a King or two and a few Cohos, but there's talk of crab enchiladas tonight, and a possible Alaskan trifecta.  The trifecta is three species caught on the same day.  Today we've caught salmon, crab and, if our traps don't fail us, prawns. The last trifecta on Wild Blue occurred in 2009 at Lituya Bay when we caught salmon, halibut and prawns. By 2pm we're headed back up the Arm to pull prawn traps.  The champagne is on ice.  Is it a trifecta?  A BIG no....the prawns aren't in the Arm for us.  Hopefully we can suffer through the rest of the day on fresh salmon with sweet crab enchiladas.  Hey Sid, any of those gout pills left?

Chef Dave preps his famous crab enchiladas. 

So good the crew demanded a repeat performance for tomorrow's lunch.

#2013-23 Man Overboard! The Tale of Leaping Larsen

We're up early and out of Stillwater Harbor by 8am on the way across Whale Bay and up its Small Arm to drop the prawn traps. We drop'em and continue up to the end of Small Arm to scope out tonight's anchorage.  It looks pretty good with a majestic snow-capped mountain view.

By the time we're able to begin fishing it's well after 11am.  We start at the base of the Small Arm trolling the coastline towards the Great Arm. Within minutes the call from the back of the boat is "Fish On" and sure enough we land a medium size coho salmon. As soon as that fish is aboard the lines are back in and King salmon is hooked up.

Now as most of you know Alex has hearing in only one ear, and with the door shut it's difficult to hear the "Fish On" call. The call is needed so that he can take the boat out of gear until the fish is aboard. A better sounding device is needed.

Sometime in the 1800's the Coast Guard required all boats to have a ship's bell. The bell is considered a manual sounding device.  It's a backup for today's ship's whistle, boat horn and siren sounder but typically is never used. Wild Blue's bell is mounted just outside the rear door, super handy for the fisherman, and rings a sound that Alex can hear all the way from the pilot house.

Sid hooks into a big King.

Roger fights a King.

Double Hookup!

As the day progresses, the sweet sound of ringing bells brightens our day. Within 3 hours we have several fish and are on our way to pick up the crab traps. By the way there are no crabs in Stillwater Harbor. By 5pm we anchor at the end of Small Arm and launch the tender to reset the crab traps there.

Roger and Alex are returning in the tender to the boat.  They have set the traps and are attempting to tie up. Sid lends at helping hand to Roger attempting to get the tender closer. However, the opposite is occurring, and as the tender inches away, Roger loses balance and dunks  (or was it leaps) head first into the cold Alaskan waters.  Burrrrr!

Thankfully the man overboard is wearing an inflatable life vest. He is able to hold onto the tender without inflating the vest, but is unable to pull himself out of the water, even with Alex's help! By now the rest of us are worried that he may be getting the chills.  He isn't speaking much, then suddenly mumbles "oh shit!" Are we witnessing the onset of hypothermia?

We quickly get the stern underwater ladder deployed and guide Roger to it. After 6 minutes or so in the water, he is able to leave it under his own power.  Still worried about hypothermia we ask Roger to disrobe and go get in a hot shower, even though he insists he is not cold at all. Later after his hot shower, a check of the ocean temperature reveals it's a warm 66 degrees! ......Who knew.

Whale Bay's notable locations.

Turning the corner into the end of Whale Bay's Small Arm.

A good day of salmon fishing up to this point!

Dave's seafood soup. Yum!

Roger's wallet and camera went for a swim too.  Surprising what
one finds in a wallet.  Is this laundering money or what?