Halibut and a Sinking Boat

This is a view from our trailer of the Kenai River. Great view to get up to every morning!

Sterling, AK July 13

We had a great day yesterday! However, according to my body it was a rough day. Guess I need to start at the beginning.

Son-in-law Dan and his dad, Rod, arrived as scheduled on Tuesday.

We sat around and yakked and visited. On Wednesday they tried their hand at fishing for some sockeye, but the run isn’t really strong yet and they didn’t catch any. Late afternoon we headed to Homer to spend the night before going out on our halibut charter on Thursday. We enjoyed the drive down, scenery beautiful as expected. This is Dan’s first time in Alaska and we hope he is enjoying it. We had dinner at the Elks Lodge in Homer, which sits right on the water and has wonderful food. We were all stuffed to the gills as we waddled back to the hotel.

Thursday we were up at 5:30 a.m. (there isn’t much I will get up for at that time, however, Halibut fishing is one thing I will get up early for!) and off to the Silver Fox Charters.

We were assigned to the Silver Fox II boat; just a luck of the draw. “Silver Fox I” was the other boat and then the charter company had leased a boat for the month, the Fat Kat, to handled the seasonal crowd. This charter company runs their boats together, in other words, they never go out with just one boat, a minimum of two always go out for safety reasons. The ride out was uneventful…a little rough, but we have been in worse. There were 7 of us on board, besides us four, Matt the captain, and Mike and Mark, long time buddies from Minnesota. OH, and by the way, it was raining a good, steady, cold rain the whole time we were out fishing. We got out to the “fishing grounds” after a two hour ride, so we were probably about 45 miles out. We immediately began catching halibut. OW, OW, OW. Hey, I forgot how much work this is! My arms are complaining loudly over how much I am working them! First reel in and dang, I have a halibut. Woohoo….I only have to catch one more and I am done for the day! However, getting this first halibut into the boat was harder than I remembered…but finally, with help from Dan, I pull in a measly 25 pounder. The captain asked if I wanted to keep it, HECK YA! By now Dan has caught his first, at 52 pounder (show off!!) and Rod has caught a nice size one as well. Al is still fishing, Mike and Mark have both caught fish as well. To make a long story long, we all caught our limit, which is two each, however, we threw back smaller ones we caught and in all we also caught (and brought up from a depth of 250 feet) 6 sharks (dog fish) and 3 skates (relative to the sting ray). Just checking your bait got to be a challenge as we are fishing in 250-300 feet of water and dragging the bait and a 10 pound weight up time and time again is hard on the body. At least on Al’s and mine….Dan, didn’t seem to have any trouble with it….young whippersnapper! Rod did well, even though the day he flew up here he had a kidney stone blasted out! OW OW OW.

Halibut!! Our catch is 8 of these! The two largest are Dan's.

We had just finished fishing, eating our lunch when over the radio came a “MAY DAY, MAY DAY, FAT KAT TAKING ON WATER”! WHAT????? Fat Kat is the other boat in our fleet! Our captain literally threw our boat in gear and off we go! In the mean time we are getting out our life vests and throwing them out on the deck incase they are needed. We are looking for the Fat Kat, which by now is sinking at a very fast rate. We are literally flying over the water…. Still can’t see her! Over the radio, Silver Fox I says they have all the passengers and crew (total of 7) rescued and on board. We arrive, mind you only 7 minutes after the first may day, and the boat is already two thirds under! And remember, the water is a whopping 50 degrees! I have never seen anything like this. No one is injured and they even managed to rescue the halibut they had caught. The crew of the Fat Kat said she belched a lot of black smoke and started taking on water immediately at a rapid rate. Since this is a leased boat, and only the first time the charter company had her out, one has to wonder. At least everyone is safe, scared, but safe. Both Silver Fox boats circle Fat Kat, waiting for her to completely go under, but she never did while we were there….must have a big air pocket somewhere! Our boat picks up what we can of the stuff floating around that has came off the Fat Kat, but we were unable to retrieve much. We finally take off back to Homer. After getting back to shore and learning that it was an exhaust problem on the Fat Kat they think that sank her. WOW! What a day!

The Boat "Fat Kat" sinking in Cook Inlet, Alaska.

We finally get our fish to the processing plant where they will be packaged in to one pound packages and flash frozen and shipped home. We have a total of 141 pounds of filleted and trimmed halibut…not bad. Dan, Rod, Al and I split up the total, 70 pounds each. Yummmm….halibut for next year. But our halibut fishing trip was just a little more exciting than we anticipated. We are just glad the passengers and crew of the Fat Kat were okay. I talked to one of the men on board and he said it was very frightening from the time they started taking on water to when the Silver Fox 1 arrived…just over 4 minutes and they were already capsizing. Thank goodness Silver Fox 1 was just a little closer than we were or those passengers and crew would have been in that 50 degree water. Makes me wonder why these boats don’t have life rafts on board. I know the next time we book a charter that will be question I ask. And, I will also ask if they boats go out in pairs just for this reason! If they had been out alone, they wouldn’t have survived as most other boats were at least 10-15 minutes away.

We finally got home around 9:30 last night, after a stop at Suzi’s, our favorite restaurant here. We were all exhausted and it didn’t take us long to get to bed.

We all woke up this morning a little sore, but moving. At least Dan and Rod are, Al and I are still wondering if all our body parts are working!!! Dan and Rod and my nephew Bruce are out in his boat on the river today fishing…Al is resting and I am on my way to do my favorite thing…yep , laundry!

So until next time, we are here, fighting mosquitos, hoping for more sockeye to run and having a great time.