Alaska 2021 - June 10 - 15

Alaska 2021 – June 10-June 15

 

We left Craig this morning headed for Port Real Marina which is between Baker Island and Lulu Island.  It was an overcast day when we woke up but not rain!  Pictures of Craig as we are leaving the area.

We have stayed in Port Real Marina on past trips to Alaska and have always seen a lot of Whale activity here. It is the same this year! The channel is full of Kelp beds and the whales love it here. In 2016 we daily saw a whale we named Barnacle Bill and if it is not him it must be a relative this year as he also has a lot of barnacles on him! This one we named Zipper because he has a very large scar on his side that looks like he had a close encounter with a boat prop that you can see in the picture below.

In addition to the whale show Zipper provided we also had a family of 5 Orcas go cruising past the front of the boats! It looks like a Dad, Mom and a couple of toddlers and baby. In the photo you can count the 5 fins. Dad brings up the rear and Mom is out front

We went fishing out around Noyes Island. Fishing is slow and we only saw 1 fish being pulled in over several days but there were local guide boats fishing the area so we expect the Salmon will arrive soon! We heard several fishermen in Craig talking about it being early still.   We did catch several Black Rockfish and we kept catching Halibuts that are called Chicken Halibut because they are small including two halibuts at one time! Glen had a Lingcod that got away at the boat.

The water was a little rough and I now understand why the big bay on Noyes is called Roller Bay! We got a lot of whale shows but I could not get many pictures due to the rolling boat! We had a breech but I only caught a part of it and the resolution is poor but it was fun to see!

We went fishing again the next day with a similar result! Several Rock Fish, 1 Ling Cod that got away from Glen at the boat and another Chicken Halibut that Glen caught that we kept so we can have halibut for dinner tonight with the one we brought in yesterday. We fished a spot off of Baker Island and again there were several boats fishing around us again but like yesterday, we did not see anything being pulled in. We only had a few nibbles and lost bait. We heard the fishermen talking about it being about a week early.  We did see a lot of bait balls on the surface in the area so there is food here for them! Despite the slow start to fishing it was another glorious day on the water! Much smoother than yesterday.

We headed out this morning for a different anchorage for the next two days – same area as Steve and I fly home from Craig on Tuesday for 3 days then come back with our friend John Lindseth who is coming to fish with us for a week. The fishing and weather should be better when we get back! Both of the pictures show the snow covered mountains on our cruise.  The ones that are far off in the distance are completely covered in snow – at first I thought it was clouds! I think they are on Baranof Island. Our Anchorage tonight is in the Maurelle Islands by San Lorenzo Island.

We left on June 14th to get closer to Craig since we are flying out tomorrow - we went over to a new bay we have not stayed at before about 7 miles from Craig and had halibut on the Nelsea for dinner.  We celebrated Glen's birthday since it is tomorrow the 15th and we will be leaving for Craig tomorrow morning to dock the boat for a few days while we go home! Happy Birthday Glen!