Gone Fishin' (with photos!)

I went fishing on Saturday and although i discovered that my sea legs are not quite as strong as i'd like, I had a great time. The sea was calm, but consistently rolling and in the fog that made everything surreal and eerie, the horizon was nowhere to be seen. Apparently this was not a good combination for me, as I got queasy. But I held my stomach and learned that my personal solution to sea sickness is to sit down outside while holding a metal thermos - go figure. The fish were biting and we immediately caught a triple (every line had a fish), although I lost mine and we sent one lucky guy back to the sea. I caught some fish, I lost some fish, and I learned that when a pole wobbles with a fish, everyone gets very excited. I'm not sure I'd really call fishing the most relaxing thing I've done: each fish would go something like this:

Fish! There's a fish! Set it! Set it! Shit. . .Set it! Reel, reel, reel, reel. . harder, reel harder, STOP!!!!! Don't reel anymore, move back step back, steady, steady. . damnit. . bring it closer to the net, closer. . There! Got it in the net. . . . . . . .Thwock, Thwock Thwock (sound of fish getting hit on head with club). . silence, flop, flop, flop. . WOAH!. . Thwock, thwock, thwock.

Yes, I the animal lover did hit a fish or two on the head, but mostly it was because I would look in the cooler and see the fish still flopping and that would make me sad because I thought that they might be suffering, so I would hit them again. Sometimes it worked. I will admit that it was satisfying to get a good clobber in, but ONLY because I knew I was putting the fish out of its misery, I swear.

As the fish stopped biting and our cooler filled - silvers and pinks and bass, oh my - our captain turned the boat towards the sunshine and we headed to Long Island, which is just off of Kodiak. Kodiak Island was a major staging area for North Pacific operations during WWII. During WWII, Long Island housed Fort Tidball, bunkers, and gun emplacements. Per one of my guides, due to leaked PBCs, Long Island has the distinction of being the first superfund site in America. Apparently it's not safe to drink the water or eat the deer or feral cows that roam the island. Yes, feral cows. We boated past a puffin rookery and hiked up to a bunker site and lollygagged (love that word) in the sun for a bit.

Here's a map.

Here are some links with info about Long Island:
Military History (scroll down to the Long Island section)
Deer Point info


The boating adventure finished with a trip down cannery row (in the water) to a cannery that cleans and packs the fishies for winter eatin'. . and then over to the sea lions where we cleaned the fish. But don't tell anyone we did that, it's illegal. But goodness illegal things are sometimes awfully cool - it was pretty dang neat to be so close to such silly, big, slow moving creatures.

The day ended with a delicious feast on two of our fishies (a bass, a pink salmon, and a king salmon that Mark had caught a few days ago). I went to the house of the two docs who own the clinic and it was, without a doubt, my dream house - absolutely gorgeous with a great big open kitchen and living room. Right on the water with a gorgeous deck. They built it themselves (at least half of it). . and lived in a tent while doing so. "We never fed our children store bought meat and we never eat frozen fish." Sigh. . .I'm a bit in love with their life.

Click the photo below to see even more photos (look at me, I'm doing pictures - wow).

Gone Fishin'