Halibut Fishing Capital of the World

What a night! People started arriving about 11PM. The folks on our right were really loud. Their parking spot was right outside our bedroom window and after an hour of yelling, loud music and slamming of car doors we had to ask them to quiet down. We have to be up at 5:30am and its well after midnight now. It did feel like everyone was standing in our bedroom! About 3am we slept and we soon crawled out of bed at 5:30am. The sun was shining! We got coffee and donuts at the little grocery and headed for dock EE.

Today we’ll be on the Arctic Endeavor, and we are going Halibut fishing. We met our other 10 fish mates and then the 2 young Chinese ladies arrived. When the captain asked to check everyone’s fishing licenses they said “oh, do we need a license?”..Eh.. So we all waited for them to go up to the dock shop and get licenses. Finally we left the dock and rode 2 hours out into Cook Inlet just off Ninilchik. The sky is cloudy now and the water is like gray suddenly there was a tug on the line. I caught one and it was good size so we kept it. Ken caught one soon after. We fished all morning and I had 3 Halibut that I released and Ken had 2. We were hoping for bigger fish. There is a limit of 2 Halibut per person so we didn’t want to limit out too fast.

“Fish On” called one of the small Chinese women and we could see she had something big! It took quite a while to bring the catch to the boat - it was a huge Sing Ray! The crew helped her bring it on board, they used it for bait.

Back to fishing and by noon most of us had caught fish. Along side the boat a large orange octopus appeared and Mike, our deck mate, brought it on board. Eventually it became bate too.

We took a break for lunch and then it seemed the fish took a break to. No hits. Between the Dramamine, lack of sleep, and all the exercise I couldn’t stay awake. I curled up on the bench inside and took a nap. Ken woke me after a while and said the fish were hitting again. I was bating a hook when Mike yelled ‘ take this’! I grabbed the rod and could see a good size Halibut below me. I brought it in and both of us were done for the day.

Finally everyone had their limit. Mike fillet them all for us on the way back to the harbor. When we got back we took the fillets to the processing store. They will flash freeze it and send it home. We kept some to put in our freezer. We had 24.5 lbs of Halibut!

Leaving the processing store we walked over to the Salty Dawg Saloon to celebrate. It was pretty crowded. We had our Bloody Cesar and went back to camp. We’re both exhausted! We flopped into our chairs and sat out for a while but its really cold. The place is packed with families, groups of bikers, and college kids. Dinner was white corn and salad - yum.

This was a great day and we really enjoyed catching the Halibut. I think we’ve discovered that we prefer river fishing to deep sea fishing.

Photos: Homer small boat harbor, Leaving the harbor early morning, Octopus, Huge Skate, View of mountains while fishing, Our Halibut catch (2), The Salty Dawg Saloon.