Friday, July 4, 2014

Yakutat 2014

I went fishing with my father and some of his coworkers in Yakutat, Alaska.

More after the break…

You can find a lot more photos in the album.

2014-06-27

This first day started off with the flights to Juneau and Yakutat.

I spent a lot of these flights reading 1Q84.

After arriving at the lodge, we went to fish at the "Rodeo Hole" for sockeye. This involved a 1.25-1.5 mile hike. Along the hike, there's an old railroad ROW.

We always gutted the fish at the river so that other animals could eat the guts and reproductive organs. Pretty much everything loved the eggs.

2014-06-28

We went out to the same spot again the next day.

2014-06-29

We went out on Yakutat Bay for ling cod, halibut, and rockfish. But before that, I had some fun dealing with Google Authenticator after my phone dropped its login on one of my accounts out of nowhere.

I caught four rockfish (not shown below) after recovering thanks to some Dramamine that one of the other guys gave me.

2014-06-30

Some of our group went out really early and quickly got their limits (3 sockeye per person). I ended up going out later, and during the pouring rain, I caught four sockeye for this other part of our group. This was after breaking one spinner reel, so I did most of it with a baitcaster. I ended up flipping the rod upside down so I could crank with my right hand since it was easier.

2014-07-01

I started by tying my first hooks onto leaders this morning, which wasn't too difficult. We went down to the Rodeo Hole again, but I only caught one fish. I was using the baitcaster incorrectly the previous day, causing it to wear out significantly, and I wasn't able to pull anything in until I bothered my father's fishing rod, which I didn't like because the line was too light.

In the end, I borrowed one of the other guy's rod, which worked pretty well. He told me to not flip the rod as it wasn't designed for it, and I learned that I reel "left-handed."

2014-07-02

Since the other guys were sleeping in after a late night drinking a lot, my dad and I tried fishing at "The Bridge," which was too crowded so we tried another spot. We didn't end up catching anything.

The lake, which was the headwaters of the Dangerous River, was quite something.

We checked out a few other spots, too.

After checking all of our fish, we went to a bar to wait. Our flight was delayed by a bit over an hour.

Epilogue

The plum was actually quite delicious.

Due to some issues with lashing my dry bags together, I ended up getting a 115 liter dry bag to replace them.

The total amount of fish I brought home was half of 85 pounds.

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