Saturday July 24th,

You win some, You lose some.

Today’s start was like any other this week and we were all very hope full that if we returned to the last point we fished yesterday our chances of hooking some Halibut would be pretty good. It was the same point where I landed the 57lb Halibut. Man were we wrong, set after set we had nothing. We had two fish in the keeper bucket that were put there early in the morning and then we hit a major dry spell. Art picked some of our set points and the fish were not hitting. Chris then took a turn picking some points with the same result. At one point in time I even took a turn driving the boat and picking a drop point but still nothing happened. The fish were just not biting. Plain and simple, today was a bust when it came to hitting large amounts of fish. It wasn’t like we were not catching fish, they were just too small to keep. The day ended with Doug, Art and Chris catching a couple of very large Lingcod at our last set so the day was not a total bust with no fish.

There was a highlight once we decided to head in and that was I got to drive the boat back to the harbor. Earlier in the day everybody was unmotivated to do much of anything and we were drifting aimlessly so I asked if I could drive the boat and see if I could find a drop point. Art said “Yes” and much to the dismay of the other guys I managed to drive to a point on the GPS that looked somewhat decent. When it came time to drive back to the harbor Art asked if I wanted to drive. I managed to get the boat 90% of the way back to the slip and didn’t crash into anything. Art took care of the last part of the drive as it required tight maneuvers in the harbor.

The fish cleaning part of the night went pretty quick as there wasn’t much to clean. No surprise there. Dinner plans were for Henry’s a local restaurant right next to the harbor. Just as I was about to leave the boat for and walk up to Henry’s there was a special visitor to the harbor, a Sea Lion. An honest to goodness sea lion was swimming around inside the harbor. From what I understand it lives in the waters close by and from time to time comes into the harbor to things out. I couldn’t get in position fast enough and close enough to get a good picture so I have one to post. It looked as though it was about 15 feet long but that is only a guess because it didn’t come out of the water too much. It did splash and roll around while thrashing a halibut carcass around. It was pretty interesting to see one in the wild as compared to seeing one in an aquarium.

That is all for tonight.

Right on.
J

Doug’s Plug: www.CameraLandNY.com