Northern Trails And Tales

Monday morning, or more accurately, Sunday night, I rolled out of the sack at 3:00 AM, quickly washed, dressed to the nines in my finest, and driest, saltwater gear, and began the 78 mile drive in a light drizzle to Homer, “the halibut capital of the world,” for the long awaited halibut/ silver salmon fishing trip. As soon as I stumbled out the trailer door, I realized the trip might be in jeopardy as the wind was gusting around 20 to 25 miles per hour. This is fairly unusual here. Though there has been almost constant cloudiness, there hasn’t been much wind. As we began the drive, I waited for the cell phone to ring with notification that the trip had been canceled. It doesn’t happen, and in fact, the winds seemed lighter the further south we drove on the Kenai Peninsula, though since the trees available to gauge the strength of the wind were often stunted black spruce, appearances may have been deceptive…. We reached Homer with plenty of time to spare for our 6:00 AM rendezvous with Captain Bryan Bandioli and the Ashtikan, a 44 foot sport fishing boat, so we grabbed a cuppa before hiking out to the slip, where our fellow ship mates were already waiting. They were two couples from Florida who have fished repeatedly with Bryan, and were effusive in his praise. But Bryan and the “Ashtikan” were late arriving. Small talk ensues. It turns out that both of the Florida guys own boats, a 34 foot Luhrs (Hewett would approve of that) and a 26 foot Sea Cat (what I always wanted!) and are veteran saltwater big game fishermen targeting primarily marlin and sailfish though they admit to chasing kings and just about anything else that swims…..Bryan finally arrived with the boat about 6:30. Immediately, I liked the cut of his jib. He just had winning personality and looked like he belonged on the water. When you’re picking guides out of a brochure, no matter how many e-mails and phone calls are made, you still feel like it’s a crap shoot. Without much ado, we were off. One thing I did notice as we boarded, however, was that the canvas flying bridge in the brochure photo had been replaced by a new and totally enclosed rigid cabin. I’d soon figure out why….Bryan made a quick vow to put us on fish and scrambled up to the wheelhouse. We steamed southwest out of Kachemak Bay and past the protection of the east end of the Kenai Peninsula, which was affording some protection from the wind. In fact, in the Homer harbor the waves were about a foot at most, then in Katchemak Bay the seas were no more than two to three feet, but after we cleared the last of the land past Port Graham and Nanwalek—surprise, surprise— we were rocking and rolling in eight foot stuff. The Floridians proved their mettle, and trust in Bryan, by sleeping through the whole trip out, a total run of about two hours…. Now many of us who fish have been in eight foot seas, but traveling through them, not trying to stand at a rail of a 44 footer and fish. But the time had come to fish, and I found myself lunging about the cabin for a handhold, stumbling from the cabin into the cockpit by grabbing the flybridge ladder, and then sliding into place along the non-padded coaming at t the stern without falling (barely) into the icy Gulf of Alaska, or wherever the hell we were. The low stern was better suited to a fighting chair than stand-up jigging with, get this, six pounds of lead at the end of the line. But the lead got us down the 170 necessary feet, though Bryan commented that the terminal tackle was at least a hundred yards behind the boat and I was soon to believe him. It only took about five or six minutes before John, of the Luhrs, hooked up, and about two minutes later while he was still in the beginning stages of his wrestling match, I hooked up. I was honest-to-God confused for a while as to whether my primary objective should be to land the fish or stay in the boat. It seemed impossible to do both as we pitched and rolled and I tried to press my knees and thighs into the non-existent stern, at least non-existent at the level of my knees. Folks, halibut fishing is just like they say, “hauling up the anchor.” You feel the head-jerk that you get with fluke, but otherwise it’s just dead weight, though very occasionally you feel some resistance as they make what vaguely might be called a run. I saw none jump. While I was deciding whether to pitch the rod overboard, hand it off to the mate, or continue my inglorious ballet aimed mostly at survival, though I did crank the reel a bit, John landed our first halibut of the day. According to the mate, it probably weighed in around 25 pounds, a mere “chicken” in the parlance. At the other extreme is a “shooter,” a fish over a hundred pounds that’s plugged with a pistol before hauling it over the gunnels so noone gets hurt by the thrashing fish. Some “shooters ‘ go two or three hundred pounds and are referred to as “barn doors,” the appellation needing no explanation but I would add that barn doors I’ve handled are a lot lighter than these halibut. Anyway, I’m making progress slower than I probably should with my shiny Penn International, designed to whip swords, sharks, and marlin. By now, I wished I was wearing a fighting belt like the one women who was fishing and also one of the guys, neither of whom looked like they missed too many meals, though both were big rather than obese.(I never did put on the belt, though it was foolish conceit, as I went mano a mano a la Hemingway, though he committed suicide in Idaho, if I recall correctly). My sinewy forearms were already tiring and my bulging biceps were crying for steroids. Bryan was the epitome of patience, however, and when I dragged the “monster” close enough for the mate to gaff and swing over the rail, imagine my surprise to find the monster of the deep SMALLER than John’s I was too tired to ask how much it didn’t weigh. But with an air of practiced nonchalance, I slipped and slided and skidded and banged across the deck and tried to hide on the starboard livewell, which, positioned against the cabin, made a satisfactory seat, of sorts. I quickly fired up a cigarette before the ever attentive mate could re-bait the hook, though it was a close call given his eagerness. By now, all four of us who were fishing for halibut had at least hooked up one and landed, or were in the process of, landing it. Mistaking my momentary relief for enthusiasm, the mate soon had me back in the rotation, and damned if one of these nefarious halibut didn’t attach itself to the hook I was trying to make sure never reached the bottom, which is the only place they are supposed to be available for attachment. So I plastered a grin on my rapidly tiring face and worried if the muscle use would sap the little remaining strength in those no longer sinewy and muscular arms. My aching hands began to crank the reel, at least when I thought anyone was watching. In smiling agony, I whipped the brute in no more than five or ten or twelve interminable minutes. This time I had no energy for nonchalance so I simply crawled across the deck and collapsed in a steaming heap of sweat on my old friend the livewell. As if on cue, I heard Bryan sing out merrily, “We have six licenses on board so we can take eighteen halibut.” I figured maybe we had seven so far. As I glanced at the frothing waves and listened to the wind whistle through my sure-to-fail-shortly hearing aides, I saw the mate headed my way and I had barely put the match to my cigarette. Dutifully, I resumed the rotation, this time at the starboard position where there was a bit of knee grip available. However, the catching was picking up and I soon was back on the stern fearing for my life….. Things have been moving so fast I’ve not had time to fill you in on the intricacies of technique and proper pounds of lead with a hook below, and with a stinky sardine impaled thereupon, to the bottom, which you’ll swear is somewhere south of China. So you try to cheat and let the whole rig go whammo at the bottom, but the ever vigilant mate is lurking there to remind you that with the braided Kevlar line you might damage the equipment or commit other forms of anti-social behavior if you fail to follow the prescribed course of torture. Anyway, when you get it to the bottom, sometime around the sixth inning, there’s no seventh inning stretch on the horizon. You must immediately begin “jigging” this rig, which is something like bouncing a six pound yo-yo off the Fifth Avenue, or actually First Avenue, asphalt from the top of the Empire State building, cause the you-know-what ain’t any longer available for this simile. Of course, you’re doing this to attract the voracious halibut to your morsel of rotten sardine. Of course, by now you have come to the conclusion that a halibut can spot a morsel of sardine from two or three seas away and are faster than speeding seagulls in getting to the offal And again, and of course, retrospectively, I have to say that halibut make a bluefish feeding frenzy look like a sedate dining experience. So I am determined not to twitch a muscle never mind create a movement that might attract one of these devils of the deep. Already, I have slyly removed half the sardine from the hook as the mate begins to swing it over the side. A wave whacks the boat and I’m spun around. While trying to regain my footing as we wallow in a trough my eye is drawn to that fully enclose flying bridge that I now recognize as something akin to Ahab’s hidey hole. But there’s no time to ruminate as something tries to swipe the rod from my hand, and that something is you-know-who back for another sardine. By all that’s high and holy, I swear I don’t know how I’m gonna crank this one up. But crank it up I do…. Meanwhile, remember Kathleen Harris, folks, that classy Floridian that helped Dubya to the White House? Well, I’m at the rail rubbing biceps with her as she bellows out, “That’s four for me!” But quickly, I realize this can’t be Ms. Harris, as she makes Kathleen look like your high school sweetheart. Or maybe I’m being unfair, and just a teeny bit jealous, of her unflagging enthusiasm and inexhaustible supply of energy. But, man, this woman can fish. She got to four first, and to five first, but then retired to, yup, the livewell. On the matching opposite livewell, with a lighter weight rod, sat the second women, quietly and wisely fishing for silver salmon. The huge advantage here is you only have thirty or forty feet of line out and almost no weight attached. She is your high school sweetheart with a winning way of congratulating you each time the mate slides one of your halibut into the cockpit. She also has a winning way of nabbing silvers as when you ask how she’s doing, she says she thinks she has seven. My devious mind is conniving a way to wrest that rod from her hands, get a seat on that port livewell and take break from halibut cranking. I decide on a direct approach and ask if I can give it a try. Sweetly, she admits her arms are tired and surrenders the rod. Triumph, or so I think, until I fail to attract a silver in the next few minutes. But Bryan comes to the rescue, familiarizing me with another jigging technique, and adjusting the depth a bit and soon I’m fast to one. By now however, a silver feels as heavy as halibut-with-lead-attached though I do get it in up in a respectable minute or two. “Hey, Carl,” I hear the merry mate calling my name as he thrusts a halibut rod at me. So I’m back in the rotation. At this point, Bryan sidles up to me and quietly asks if I mind if we cut the trip short and he returns a few bucks to my badly depleted supply of greenbacks. I drop the rod on the deck and kiss him fully on the lips! Not really, but I’m willing to turn over my future state pension if he’d call a chopper and get me out of this halibut hell and back on to terra firma. He says everyone else has agreed, so I feign disappointment but acquiesce. He says only four more and we’ll have our halibut limit, and I stifle an audible groan….. I won’t bore you with the details of the apprehension and capture of the final four Osama Bin Halibuts, only to say that the Sunshine State folks graciously agree that I should catch number 18. I do, somehow, though it all seems blurry now….. At 10:20 AM we have completed our mission more or less. It has taken four of us about one hour and forty minutes to catch 18 halibut and, with the assistance of a fifth (person), nine silvers. Unbelievably, my contribution has been five halibut and one silver into the fishbox. Now comes picture time. I’d rather skip it and start homeward, but most of the halibut and a couple salmon are laid out on the cockpit deck and we sit tight on the gunnels as the mate climbs to the flybidge for a fine photo op. He promptly drops one camera, but miraculously it proves to be a Timex and keeps on clicking. A second camera won’t work and precious moments are lost as the wallowing of our good ship “Ashtikan” causes the line up to begin a maximum randomness experiment. But the mate keeps clicking away and the Kodak moment is soon over. It takes a couple hours to slosh our way back to port, but the seas lie down a bit as we begin to gain the lee cover of land. At the dock, we learn that only four boats from a fleet of something-zillion made it out to the Gulf of Alaska grounds this morning. Proudly, we all say goodbye and stagger up the dock to the Coal Point Fish Company where our catch has quickly been spirited. We keep a couple for dinner and to smoke, then agree to have the rest shipped home, thereby transferring the halibut problem to someone else— but shipping costs more than negate the rebate from Bryan, who, by the way is a great guy to book a trip with if you’re ever up this way….So there you have it, the halibut trip from hell, or, rather, Homer: “a quaint little drinking village with a big fishing problem.” For the record, we’re not going to win the Homer Halibut Tournament. Currently atop the leader board is a three hundred pounder. The biggest we managed weighed around 55 to 60 pounds, but that fish was in a class of it’s own. Most were in the 20 to 30 pound range with two about 40. I doubt that any I caught were over 30, thank heaven!…. I have a tiny Calvinist streak in me that whispers “work is good.” But if I had to work hauling up halibut every day, I swear I’d be down at the unemployment office in a flash!…. In August, I have two so-called friends, Dave Friez and Paul Glinski (impartial alphabetical order), flying up to join me on a halibut trip out of Seward. The water in Resurrection Bay should be a lot quieter, and the six pound weights replaced by sixteen ounces or maybe twenty four, but the principles will remain the same. My cogent advice to them is start working out! My left forearm and right bicep are still aching thirty six hours later…..While we were out on the halibut trip, the ADF&G closed the sockeye salmon fishing “temporarily,” so there’s no bank fishing at the RV park. On Thursday, though, Dave and I head out on a trip for kings on the lower Kenai River. Stay tuned for more spectacular action!!! But the halibut haunt me. I can’t wait to go again…..