Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Fishing Trip: Prince William Sound

Last weekend we were able to go on a fishing trip with my dad, Rachel, Calvin, and our family. We headed out of Whittier to the Prince William Sound. That's the place that you always see on commercials of cruise ships next to glaciers. We went in my Dad's new boat and had an amazing time. We launched the boat friday night and found a place to lower our shrimp pots. After baiting them up and setting them down we went back to the harbor to pick up Lee who flew in from Fairbanks that evening. After picking Lee up we decided to check the pots. It hadn't been very long, but we decided to check them anyway just in case. We were so surprised to pull up pots that were full! We collected 90 monster size shrimp and then lowered the pots to sit overnight. As we started pulling away, Dad looked back and saw the bouey (however you spell it), dragging behind us. We had run over the rope and twisted it around in the motor. We ended up having to cut the rope and we thought for sure we had ruined the pots, or lost them by dragging them in the mud. That night we drove for an hour or so and found a nice little cove to spend the night in. We slept in the boat under the bow, the boys loved that! I didn't wake up all night, slept like a baby.
On Saturday we got up and started fishing for halibut. We ended up catching 3 small ones, a red snapper, and few other assorted rock fish. Dad also caught a ling cod by the tail, but we couldn't keep it yet. We spent the day fishing and sight seeing. We lucked out and saw a whale, dolphins, and otters, but I couldn't get any good pictures of those with my little camera.
On our way back to the shrimp pots we saw a boat with some guys waving for help. Turns out it was our good friends and neighbors from Palmer, the Hillis'. They had run out of gas and somehow we were the first boat in the whole ocean to come across them. We shared some gas with them and were on our way.
When we checked the shrimp pots again we had another 85 shrimp for a total of 175! That's the most we've ever caught and we hadn't lost any pots! On the way back to the dock we were hit high seas. We were bouncing up and down for over an hour. Overall it was an amazing trip. Dane and Ty loved it!
We enjoyed fresh shrimp and halibut on Sunday and Monday night, it was delicious!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Sounds like SO much fun! I can't believe the size of those shrimp!? Or the luck of the the Hillis's!? You can definitely do the coolest stuff up there in AK, that you just can't do anywhere else! Sounds amazing!

micHelle said...

What a great weekend trip! Save some shrimp for me to catch when I come up!Sounds like a blast