Advertisement
First off, this 22 hours of daylight thing is really hard on us old folks. The sun is still up when you go to bed and already shining when you wake up. Even when it’s “dark” for two hours it’s not really dark, just twilight, and there are 12 more days until the longest day of the year. No matter how much we blackout our little RV bedroom the light still creeps in and it wreaks havoc on your internal clock. You sleep because you’re tired, not because its night, but it does leave more daytime for fishing and this stop in Ninilchik was all about the fishing. Our first scheduled trip was for halibut and we drew a boat with Capt. Brian, the owner and operator of Afishunt Charters. Halibut fishing here is just like flounder fishing on the bay, except everything is bigger. Five pound weights to get to the bottom and stay there against the tide, large hooks for those big halibut mouths, and big bait for big fish. The limit was two but one had to be under 30 inches and we both got our “under” fairly early in the trip. After that it was fishing for
that big “over”. Michelle and I both caught and released 6 more fish until it got late in the trip and the tide started to really rip. Michelle took another nice fish and I kept fishing right up until the end trying for that barn-door halibut but settling for another 30 incher as even the five pound weight would no longer stay on the bottom. It was great fun on a clear calm day with an outstanding crew and six other avid fisherpersons. Even though we didn’t get that 100 lb. fish just being on a halibut trip in the famous Cook Inlet, gazing at the volcanos, sharing our fish stories with locals and vacationers from the lower 48 was a fantastic experience. I would love to go out fishing with Brian again but I’m not sure there is time or budget for that. Besides, there are Salmon to catch. Our timing was good for salmon even though we missed the early first-run Kings we caught the tail end of the run and there was good action on the local rivers. We hooked a few but failed to land them with one really big fish rolling up on my line,
breaking off and breaking my heart. We scheduled a Drift Boat trip on the Kasilof River but Michelle decided an open river boat with no cover or facilities and prediction of rain most of the day was not her idea of fun so she took the day off and I went fishing. It ended up being good fishing weather, overcast with light winds, and I had a great day landing two good fat King Salmon. Drifting the river mainly consisted of our expert Afishunt guide Bryan working his tail off back paddling against the river flow keeping the lures in the best fishing holes as we wandered down among the other drift boats. It gets exciting when you hook one of these fish as they really like to run, testing the ability of the oarsmen-guide and fishermen to work together and get the fish up to the net. There was some rain later in the day but by that time I was so thrilled with my fishing trip that it didn’t really matter. We used our other few days in the Old Russian town of Ninilchik to do some sightseeing, taking advantage of the clear weather to get some perfect
photos around the old village and of the Redoubt and Iliamna volcanos on the other side of Cook Inlet. This has been a great week, and thanks to Afishunt Charters and Alaskan Angler RV Park, we got just what we came for. Now we leave the sleepy little fishing village for the tourist mecca of Homer, a short trip for us of just over an hour. Who knows, we might even run into the Kilcher’s as we understand they come to town pretty often.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.216s; Tpl: 0.021s; cc: 14; qc: 67; dbt: 0.0853s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Scott Mattison
non-member comment
Thanks for the updates!
Thanks for sharing your trip. I've enjoyed the rolling narration and the spectacular photos.