The season here at Waterfall for me is winding down. While Nate will stay out her for three more weeks, I’m set to head to town on the 16th or 17th, where I will begin preparing for Saltery. I’m not really looking forward to leaving. Returning to town means morning chit chat at Fish and Game, the never-ending mess that is the ADF and G warehouse, and the “bunkhouse blues.”
What I leave behind is our new skiff. Plungebob Squarebow, a name given by Nate and his co-conspirator Thomas at another field camp years ago, is twenty some feet long, made fully of aluminum, and outfitted with twin sixty horse Yamahas. The boat has an aftward cabin with depth sounder/GPS unit, VHF radio, and provides a dry place out of the rain. This is in direct contrast to our 12 foot aluminum Lund, which was barely seaworthy in the best of weather. The boat has proven itself invaluable in many ways. First, its new space-age electronics (at least for field camp) have been helpful in locating bottom fishing hot-spots. Halibut generally live on pinnacles or in water of changing depth. In the Lund our fishing was more of a drop and pray, but now we can plan drifts to float over these hotspots, which has already proven itself effective.
A few days ago, we pulled ourselves from the kerosene stove warmed cabin to investigate the fishery and do some jigging. We walked the half-mile to the boat and did our rounds with the purse seiners. With four boats in all, it didn’t take long. Afterwards, we set out to our favorite halibut hole, a sloping bottom against a bluff on the west side of Big Waterfall bay.
Being a windy day, we rigged up our heaviest jigs, about 8 ounces apiece. On our first drift Nate hooked a big fish. Wrestling it from the bottom for five minutes, it broke his line to our devastation. We have been working all summer for a large halibut, a shared homepak our goal. In one drift we had hooked and lost what probably would have been enough flaky white meat to last us both the winter. Still though we persevered and reset our drift (using GPS technology no less). In approximately the same place, jigging, I came up hard on another fish. This one I too tried to wrest from the bottom. Pumping the rod, I realized I needed to loosen the drag as the flatfish was likely to break my 40 lb Dacron line. Switching the rod from right hand to left, I reached for the wheel on the reel to loosen the tension. Just as my fingertips touched the metal, my line snapped. I crumpled to the deck of the skiff, line hanging limply from my rod tip. Again, we had lost our homepak. So, we picked up again, and, using GPS technology, we reset our drift. Determined this time, we loosened our drags and readied ourselves for another fish. I re-rigged and dropped again to the bottom. Jigging with the exact same rig I was using before, save for a new piece of cod flesh, I again hooked into a halibut. With my newly loosened drag, pumping the fish from the bottom was a chore, each pump loosing almost the same line I gained by rising the rod. After a fifteen minute fight, a large halibut appeared beside the boat, mottled brown, with its offset eyes staring up at us. Nate grabbed the gaffe and set about hauling the fish onboard. It the deck with a resounding slam, we had our homepak. Now, approximately 40 lbs of halibut sit in our freezer. At about 55 lbs, it wasn’t the biggest halibut caught in Alaska, but it was a heck of a start for a winter feed.
Other notable events have also passed since I last wrote. The Waterfall commercial opener was June 9th. Four boats were there and caught 25,000 fish between them. That day we worked 14 hours and we returned and 12:30 to find our makeshift bench knocked over, trash spread across our porch, and bear prints on the window that looks out on the deck. Otherwise, we have befriended a fox (well I have, Nate holds grudges against the animals from past experiences at Litnik), who appeared at our porch this morning and Nate chased off. He said something about peeing on our porch and getting fox-stink everywhere.
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