Wet Walk - Beaver Lake Trail

ML and I are 'training' for our impending (read 2 months to go) Peru trip.  Despite a typical Southeast Alaska rainforest day, we decided we better truck up the Beaver Lake Trail - a 4 mile sojourn that takes us up the mountain a ways too.  What a fun time!

You walk up along a stream.  Today it was full of water from the rain.  At this time of year, the periphery of the woods are VERY green.  After all, there's still a good 15 hours of light and lots of moisture.

At the top of the stream is a big falls.  Today there was a section of it, that you can just barely see in the middle, that went straight out.  Nice.  

A little further you get up to Beaver Lake.  I love the mist and clouds in hanging out, drifting through.  Sometimes the lake was calm enough to have a reflection of the surrounding mountains, and sometimes there was just enough breeze to erase the mirror.

You can see there's still some snow hanging out in the crevasses of the mountains.  

Yeah, you're right.  This is staged!

After you walk up to the lake, there's a trail around it.  You walk through a "mass wasting event" - a multiple tree blowdown that friends of ours barely survived.  Then it opens to an alpine meadow that has some real nice flowers at this time of year. 

The bridge is made of yellow cedar.  ML is laughing because I ran across the bridge thinking I was going to get a picture.  She ran right behind me to foil my attempt. 

But look at who won!

Great trail, great fun.

Fishing rods renewed!

I confess that I'm a practical sports fisherman.  I like to eat salmon, so I try and catch some.  Smoked king salmon is probably my favorite food - assuming that I've done it right.  Or, I should say that smoked king salmon right out of the smoker is definitely my favorite food: warm from the smoker, moist flesh, salty enough but not too salty, and the taste of the KING!

Anyway, any self respecting sports fisherman would be embarrassed to use my fishing rods and gear.  But they catch, so I don't worry about it much.  Finally, though, one rod had only two eyes left and one rod didn't have a tip or a second eye.  It's kind of hard to use fishing rods like that, so it was time to fix them.

And that's where YouTube comes in handy!  So far, I have never failed to find "how-to" videos on the internet somewhere. There are quite a few videos about, as I learned to call them, "rod guides."  I always thought they were little fishing eyes!

Here is the old stuff.  A rod guide is broken in the back of the photo.  In the front is a rod tip.   I can be kind of impatient, so after I followed the video instructions to use a lighter to warm up the rod tip and it didn't come off with a pair of pliers, I used my trusty propane torch.  WOW.  That thing shot right off and would have killed me if I was in front of it.  So much for not following instructions - again.

The rod tip was easy to put on - put a little warmed up hot glue in it and shove it on (of course making sure eyes/guides are all lined up.

Yep, there she is!  I know, doesn't quite look like the fishing rods in the store, huh?  But I'm pretty doggone sure that it will hold up as long as the old ones did.  With a couple tricks to start and finish that you'll have to look up on youtube, you just hold the thread and turn the rod with your other hand.  Slick!  Then you put some epoxy over it.

They've held fine so far after 6 hours of fishing or so.  And I feel good that I kept my two rods out of the landfill and I didn't have to buy new ones!!!!

Just Cruising with my Friends

I was trolling out of the harbor the other day, and saw this.  Tough to go to the bathroom.

ML's Green Thumb

Our Mom loved flowers.  As was the case "back in those days," she had certain flower gardens that were "hers" and our Dad took care of the rest.  She was proud of the gardens and they looked pretty doggone nice.  I remember her working hard in the evening when it cooled off a little and she had Dad to help entertain the little urchins (us!).  I confess that I didn't appreciate them nearly as much as I could or should have at the time, but now that no-one cares except my brother and sister, I think they were glorious.

ML also has a green thumb.  She has a real sense of what plants need to allow them to thrive.  In the last week or so, she planted some pots of flowers.  Take a look.  Pretty amazing.  The photos don't really do them justice.

This is the setting.  There is a short and cool growing season in Southeast Alaska.  But there is lots of light, although not always sunlight.  Containers, or pots, are often the best way to go and ML just sets them on the porch.

I won't ruin the beauty with commentary.  Please continue below.

Time is going fast, but there's still lots of Southeast Summer.  And the flowers will just get better.

Halibut Fishing - Day 4

We started back on the long haul home on Thursday after all the gear was aboard.  After a 6 hour run, we anchored for a short night's sleep.  Away we went, but that's the advantage of being crew.  The boat was cleaned up, and so I went back to bed.

Fabian called in our information and we got a sell time of 3:30 p.m.  We made it in plenty of time.  Now to get the fish off the boat into the fish house, in this case Seafood Producers Co-op.

Captain Fabian has a great system of brailer bags and slush.  We hooked the brailer bag ropes to the dock winch.  A brailer bag of fish is coming out of the hold in this photo.  Nice bag of halibut, huh?

There goes the bag of fish, slime draining down, as it crosses the dock.  The heads will be chopped off with a little halibut guillotine.  Then they'll be weighed and listed on a fish ticket.  We get to go do the paperwork with the Feds and State of Alaska, and then finally we can get a check for all our work.  Of course, the price went down 25 cents a pound in the last couple of days, but that's the fishing business. 

So long Fishing Vessel Sunbeam and Captain Fabian.  It's time for you to take off the longline gear and put on the gillnet and reel for gillnet season.  Good luck and we hope to visit you again next year!

Halibut Fishing - Day 3

I'm not totally accurate in the daily schedule for yesterday and today.  On both days, we set all 700 hooks and pulled them back in.  For blog purposes, I figured I'd concentrate on setting yesterday and pulling today.

Now it's time to pull the lines and see what comes up.

The line comes up from the water and through the block above Fabian's head, then over to another block, and then back onto the reel.  Fabian is the "roller man" who unsnaps gangions and deals with whatever comes up on the hooks: rockfish, starfish, skates, sharks, coral, and sometimes a halibut!

Oh yeah!  Here comes a halibut.  Get ready, Greg!

Greg pulls the small ones aboard, bleeds them like he's doing in this photo, and snaps them over to the other side of the boat where I can clean them and get them in the hold.  The faster they get on ice, the better quality they are for the consumer - and we like our fish to be the best quality!

Sometimes the big ones take two people to haul aboard.  If we're really lucky, we'll get a three person fish.

Get that one, Greg!  It's a nice one!

Greg and I switch jobs every set.  It helps our "mature" hands and arms to vary the job and we end up being less sore.

Greg got this 100 pounder to clean.  Then he'll take it and slide it in the "ice slush" ready in the fish hold to his right.  It'll be kept nice and cold.

Captain Fabian put us on the fish.  We tally the total by measuring each fish.  You get in quick trouble from the National Marine Fisheries Service if you go over your quota. 

It always happens.  As soon as we caught our limit, 5 fish between 80 and 120 pounds came up on the line.  We released them gently.  Come back next year!

Halibut Fishing, Day Two

Longlining is simple in it's most elemental terms.  Throw out a buoy, let out enough buoy line for the depth of the water, and afix an anchor.  Then space out hooks every so often that are baited with something appetizing for the fish you wish to catch.  Then add another anchor, more buoy line, and finally the second buoy.  There you have it - you're fishing.

The buoy is out!

Let out the line!

Aw shucks.  The day is so bright you can hardly see the line stretching out behind the boat.  Fabian and Greg are baiting hooks and snapping on gangions as the line goes out. 

The best thing is the ocean.  It's flat calm.  Nice.

Now we'll set another 700 hooks.




One of the reasons I like longlining is that you can do something else while the hooks are (hopefully) catching.

So off we went to the beach for some beachcombing.

  

We walked for longer than I thought.  You can see the boat at anchor in the distance.







 

Time to anchor up.  Nice little anchorage, huh?  Too bad it's called "Murder Cove."  Makes you think.