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.

End Of The Road

Cloudy morning as we drove to Charlottes Café for breakfast and then to Safeway to replenish the pantry. Now we’re ready to move on. We said good-bye to Mike and Mary and took off down the Kenai Spur Road. Soon we turned right onto Bridge Access Road and then right onto Kalifornsky Beach Road heading south. The volcanoes are hiding in the clouds again. The beach road will take us to the Sterling Highway and the landscape is lush woods and marsh with lots of ‘moose danger zone’ signs. Mt Redoubt appears in front of us but we can only see the bottom half.

We rolled through Clam Gulch and passed spruce meadows covered in clumps of purple and white Lupine. It seemed like no time before we were at the top of Homer Hill overlooking Kachemark Bay. Pulling into a turnout we got our first view of a narrow, wiggly strip of land jutting into the waters of the bay known as Homer Spit. The Sterling Highway finally gets to where it’s going… Homer. The highway sweeps down a hill along the bay, skirting the older part of Homer and runs onto the Homer Spit where it ends abruptly at the water.

Our surroundings are magical. Kachemak Bay runs on both sides with the snow covered Kenai Mountains as a backdrop. The ocean crashes onto the rocks of the 5-mile long Homer Spit. The road is lined with old boat yards, little wooden sea shops, homes and spruce trees turned upside-down in the sand. Locals bury the trees with their knarled roots upward for eagles to land on. The Salty Dawg Saloon, a well known landmark, is on our left sitting on the edge of the bay. It reminds us of Cape Code with sand dunes and lot of sea grass.

Just before reaching the end of the ‘spit’ we found our campground on the right sitting on a small piece of beach. We were lucky and got upgraded from an inside spot to a bay view and it’s perfect. After setting up we put out our chairs and settled in. The park itself is not pretty but we wanted to be where the action is this weekend. It sits on a strip of beach and the sites are very narrow with logs set out to identify where one site borders the next. This is 4th of July weekend and we were lucky to get a site.

Time to check the place out. First stop was the small boat harbor to find out where our tour leaves from in the morning. We watched some folks fillet their catch, some nice Halibut and Black Bass. There were a pair of eagles sitting on top of the light post in the parking lot squawking away. I think they wanted the fish.

We drove back down the strip and stopped for lunch at the Fresh Catch Café. I had a Rockfish sandwich and a cup of Razor Clam Chowder. It was good, but not many clams in the chowder.

Back at camp the light keeps changing - sun, clouds, showers - it’s cool and breezy. There will be a lot more people arriving soon as they are full for the weekend. We sat outside for a while. There’s just enough space to put our chairs next to the coach without encroaching on the next site. The clouds are rising a little so we went for a walk up the ‘spit’. Walking along the shoreline we stopped at the Seafarer’s Memorial which remembers those lost at sea.

After our walk we just relaxed and went to bed. We're really looking forward to staying here.

Photos: View of spit from Homer Hill, Kenai Mountain across Cook Inlet, Our campsite, Homer Spit Main St shops, Seafarers Memorial