July 19 (Day 1)
What a monster of a trip. I left Knoxville at noon on Sunday for a 6 pm flight to Phoenix out of Atlanta. The next leg was Phoenix to Anchorage and then after 6 hours of layover it was Anchorage to Kodiak.
Once on Kodiak I needed to track down Art, who I’d recognize by the sweatshirt that Doug had made up for all of us. Finding Art was pretty easy as the airport terminal gate is about the size of a small gas station mini mart. I’d been up for approx 24 hours with limited sleep sprinkled in so the first order of the day was to get coffee and then some breakfast. Art and I made a side trip in their blue, 9 passenger van to gather our gear that had been delivered days earlier and then it was back to the boat. After a short nap and change of clothes we were headed off to do some inland fishing.
My firs fishing experience on Kodiak was fly fishing and I have to say throwing the line was much easier than I thought. I think it had something to do with how they had my line setup but I wasn’t going to argue, I was actually casting a fly rod. I didn’t catch anything but managed to enjoy myself any way. Our first interaction with the Kodiak wildlife was a huge deposit from a local brown bear. It looked like something a horse would have left, it was so huge. Later in the day the bear decided to make another appearance while we were walking upstream to head home for the day. Yes, we were walking (in our waders) up the stream and the bear was walking downstream. We went to one side, the bear to the other and that was about it, we did take pictures taken and I’ll get those posted as quickly as possible. So our score from the fishing trip was Riley (Art’s son) caught one fish that was worth keeping and we saw a bear. Not bad for the first day in my book.
After a quick drink and some fries at a local restaurant, we hit the airport to pick up the other trip participants, Doug, Chris and Vinny. Then it was back to the boat to start the unpacking process and get some organization to our mess now that our gear has multiplied. Last chore for the day was to visit Wal Mart for fishing licenses and some groceries with the remainder of the groceries to be picked up at the local Safeway.
We’re all pretty beat so that’s all for now as it has been a long day for everybody. I’ll get some pictures of the bear up tomorrow. If the weather permits we should be on the open ocean fishing most of the day on Tuesday.