We are in Alaska, the last frontier. We’ve been here for 4 days now. It was Izzy’s first time flying and she did pretty good actually. We had 2 5 hour flights and a 4 hour layover. The night we landed, Anna and I saw a moose and her calf (no one else has seen a moose yet). We started in Anchorage, and they have Ship Creek right in the middle of it. The first morning we walked down and saw them catching the king salmon, so I tried that night and next morning. In the morning, not knowing what I was doing, I hooked up….it broke the line( I had forgotten to strip the old line from the reel that Fred gave me). Before fishing we went on a hike. That one was ok, the river was really cool. We saw a black bear on the highway. It was small.
From Anchorage we went to Seward, which is beautiful. The drive was about 4 hours, and it was also pretty. We didn’t see any whales, but we saw lots of doll sheep (aka white spots on the top of the mountain). In Seward we stayed in a small cabin on the point, overlooking the bay. That night we had a king crab broil, and it may have been one of my favorite meals ever. The crab meat comes out like hot dogs, but bigger, and is unbelievably good. It’s so easy to get the meat out too. I actually got full on crab.
Our first full day in Seward I went fishing, and it was truly spectacular. It was slick calm, the 10 people (Larry, Mike, Brandon, Andrew and his in laws, Perry and Charles, and Jim) and 3 crew (Griffin, Mason, Trey) were a lot of fun, and we caught a ton of fish. We went 50 miles to Montague Island, but we never were missing a spectacular view of snow capped mountains. The boat was the Tailwatcher, and it was a large aliminum boat with a heated cabin – nice boat. We went to a spot called Overnight Swipe, which Griffin found using Avionics. We went there bc the app said that the depth was 80 ft, but all the charts said 90. Mind you, we traveled in water that was 500 ft+ almost the entire way. On the way, Mason and Trey rigged up salmon heads (butterfly hook on the head), salmon fillets, herring, and Chum. We fished 10 poles and had 2 people jigging. We caught fish right away, and kept catching fish. At first they were throwing back fish that I don’t think I could have thrown back. I caught my first fish jigging myself, and it was 28.5 inches, which meant that I couldn’t keep it without it being my biggest fish of the day (28 inches and under is considered a short). I then caught my halibut (50-60 lbs, 27 lbs dressed) off of Griff’s jig. We limited out (each person caught a big one) pretty quickly. Then we went for rockfish, and caught 40 within 30 minutes. I caught a China rockfish. We were bottom fishing with diamond cuts of salmon and herring, and you couldn’t get it to the ground a lot of the time. After that we went for king salmon, trolling planars and spinning lures. I had the first one on, but he got off. Larry the ex marine who now works on airplane engines (who I made a deal with that if either of us caught one we’d split the fish) caught the second one caught the second, after Jim (the old guy from North Dakota with peircings literally everywhere who caught every fish first, including a massive ling cod that we couldn’t keep because it wasn’t July). Then, I caught the third and final. The salmon fought the most (we were also fishing light tackle), but I got it! One of best fishing days I’ve ever had ( other than the price tag for shipping it home – $200+). They fileted the halibut in less than 5 min per halibut (it was fast), then had a weigh station and vacuum pack/shipping/flash freezing. Quite the operation. That night we got home and ate the fish. The rockfish were kind of like lobster. It was quite the meal.
Day 2 in Seward we went hiking to exit glacier. It was a tough hike, but the views along the way and at the top were amazing. Anna carried Izzy on her back, and she went super fast. They beat us to the mid way point (Marmot Meadows) by 30 min. Marmot Meadows we ate lunch overlooking the glacier, then we tried to go to the top. Anna, izzy, mom, and dad turned around because it was snowy. Uncle Paul, Jack, Phillip, and I went on, and pretty soon it was only snow. But we went almost all the way to the top (probably stopped 30 min short of the emergency cabin), deciding the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze. The view of the ice ridge was pretty vast, and makes you feel really small. We then started hiking down, which we turned into a sledding on our butts session. That was really fun. We got down in about a third of the time it took us to get up there, and had way more fun. Then we went the rest of the way down with Fred (who had waited for us). That night we ate at the salmon bake – I had halibut fish n chips. Also watched the raptors blow game 5 on my phone.
Day 3 and final in Seward we went kayaking (I had also gone kayak fishing early) with a couple guides. Again the views were awesome, and the wildlife were out. The porpoises (or.dolphin) are black and smaller than what were used to. I was in a kayak with Nicole, and we had a sea lion jump right in front of our kayak which was really cool (they are huge). Forgot to mention that on day 2 in seward we had some bald eagles chilling right in front of our house. We kayaked for 3 hours, and then went to lunch and began our way to Ilyeska ( I know that’s not how you spell it). That’s where I’m writing this from, so I’ll pick this back up after I have some new stuff to share.