Halibut Fishing

Yesterday we went halibut fishing in Cook Inlet, by Homer, AK. The limit is 2 halibut per day. They get as big as 400 pounds, but most are around 30 pounds. If you catch a small one, you can throw it back and keep trying for a bigger fish. We had 8 people fishing on our boat, and everyone got their 2 fish. The biggest fish was 34 pounds. We got in the water about 6:30 a.m., and got out around 1:00 p.m. Our friend Jan went fishing with us, and a friend of hers said she would take all the halibut Jan caught and the friend would pay for shipping. Then she found out that it costs about $300 to ship, so we ended up with Jan’s fish.

The captain of the boat was Bob. He has a house in Oregon, but leaves his wife for about 5 months each year to come to Alaska and run fishing charter trips. He says when he's up in Alaska he really misses his dog. The first mate on the boat was a girl named Tiffany, from Texas. We asked her if she stayed in Alaska during the winter. She said she usually does, and last winter she lived in an old abandoned school bus near Talkeetna. A musician had lived there, but he told her she was welcome to it since he was moving back to the lower 48 states. She said the people in Talkeetna were very friendly. She would run into them every once in a while when she went into town to take a shower. She said the wood stove didn’t work that well, and when it got to around 60 below, the oil in her oil lamp would gel, so she didn’t have any light source. I think she understated it when she said last winter was kind of rough. But I guess it can be rough for many people in Alaska. Nan wants to move from the campground we are in now because we don’t have TV.

I included a picture of the inside of the Salty Dog bar in Homer, AK, where people sign and stick dollar bills to the wall. If you are a fan of the show Deadliest Catch (about king crab fishing), it was the bar where Mike Rowe interviewed the ship captains on the show. Also, the boat Time Bandit docks in Homer, but it wasn’t in port when we were there.