Commercial Halibut Trip, Day 1

I've been a very small time commercial halibut fisherman since the spring of 1980.  That first year, ML and I bought a $35 dollar halibut license and set a hand skate from our 14 foot hylaker open skiff with a 33 HP Evinrude on the back.  Surprisingly, we caught one!  But, we didn't know what to do with it after we caught it.  We learned, though.

As you can imagine, like many things, halibut fishing has changed over the years.  Now it is an "IFQ" system, which stands for Individual Fishing Quota.  Every year, I try to fish my quota so that I have some money to support my boat and outdoor habit. 

Like the last couple of years, I combined with my friend Greg who has about the same number of IFQ's as I do, so that it's worth it for a bigger boat to make a bit of money off of us.  This year we went out on the Sunbeam owned by Captain Fabian and had a good trip. 

The first day was a 12 hour run . .  . or maybe walk at 7 knots.

On our way out of town, we passed two StandUpPaddle boarders.  Unluckily for one, our wake caught him and he ended up in the ocean.  I'll bet it was cold.  You can see the road out of Sitka in the background.







But the scenery is nice, and we got lucky with a great sunset.  These pictures are taken over a 16 minute time span, from 10:24 p.m. to 10:40 p.m.  One nice thing is that when you do get a sunrise of sunset here, they last quite a while since the angle of the sun is so low compared to more southern latitudes. 

It'll be time to start fishing tomorrow.