Swissy
Livin' the retired life!
- Joined
- Mar 26, 2005
- Messages
- 4,610
Ok, well...wow. What a couple of weeks off I had. Sorry, just gotta get this out! After missing out all last summer due to my back, I'm back with a vengeance! My 2 nephews (Wife's side) came up, with one of their girlfriends, to go hiking around and fishing with us. And to visit too! So I took 2 weeks off, which also just happened to coincide with the red salmon run. Convenient, no?
Started with the 4.5 hour drive south to the 'Baroo'. Started with a Casa Fuente Lancero compliments of Blue Dragon and his wish granting (thanks buddy!!!) Think I threw in a Padron 40th on the drive too.
So up at 3am the very next day for this:
Thats a couple of hours worth of dipnetting on the Kenai river... Alaska resident status required. I now have the salmon needed to survive the winter, both for grilling and smoking. Whew!!
So the nephews show up and we go halibut fishing of course.
but occasionally you catch things other than halibut...
I love her expression! What she caught was an 'Irish Lord' - an ugly as hell trash fish. Not enough meat on them to feed a cat! But whatever it was, she didn't like it! :laugh:
But what I did not tell them while planning their trip, was that starting on July 15th, there is an opening for residents to catch Tanner Crabs. Now, they can't catch them, but no reason they cannot be on the boat when *I* do :whistling:
Here's a couple of keepers (males 5.5" or bigger across the shell)
But not all was fishing - we did sightseeing as well. We went to the town of Sedovia, only reached by boat or plane. An awesome little community - very picturesque.
While there we witnessed a couple of Bald Eages fighting over a fish carcass
And cruising around on the boat we saw:
Tufted Puffins
billions of sea birds at the bird rookery
and a surprise visit by a seal sunning himself on a raft of seaweed
we got a lot closer to the seal but I really like this photo with the background.
Overall a great trip...sent the nephews home with lots of fish, some crab and bellies full of everything as well. Did a brewpub crawl with them, sent them up to Denali Park where they saw bears, caribou, moose, Dall sheep and lots of other things. Highlight was the crab tho... nothing like having crab boiled with an hour of pulling them up in a pot! I've never had fresh crab like that before, and good LORD is it good. It was hard to save any to package for the winter... we just kept eating it and eating it and eating it!
I smoked so many cigars this past 2 weeks that I'll take a break for a bit to let my taste buds recover! RASS, PLPC, CoRo, PAM's, BGM, Anejo, Opus, Tat Monsters, and the list goes on and on.
And the best part is...? That was not my regularly scheduled vacation! That starts in 2 weeks :laugh: I'll be doing it alllllllll over again with my brother in law!
Started with the 4.5 hour drive south to the 'Baroo'. Started with a Casa Fuente Lancero compliments of Blue Dragon and his wish granting (thanks buddy!!!) Think I threw in a Padron 40th on the drive too.
So up at 3am the very next day for this:
Thats a couple of hours worth of dipnetting on the Kenai river... Alaska resident status required. I now have the salmon needed to survive the winter, both for grilling and smoking. Whew!!
So the nephews show up and we go halibut fishing of course.
but occasionally you catch things other than halibut...
I love her expression! What she caught was an 'Irish Lord' - an ugly as hell trash fish. Not enough meat on them to feed a cat! But whatever it was, she didn't like it! :laugh:
But what I did not tell them while planning their trip, was that starting on July 15th, there is an opening for residents to catch Tanner Crabs. Now, they can't catch them, but no reason they cannot be on the boat when *I* do :whistling:
Here's a couple of keepers (males 5.5" or bigger across the shell)
But not all was fishing - we did sightseeing as well. We went to the town of Sedovia, only reached by boat or plane. An awesome little community - very picturesque.
While there we witnessed a couple of Bald Eages fighting over a fish carcass
And cruising around on the boat we saw:
Tufted Puffins
billions of sea birds at the bird rookery
and a surprise visit by a seal sunning himself on a raft of seaweed
we got a lot closer to the seal but I really like this photo with the background.
Overall a great trip...sent the nephews home with lots of fish, some crab and bellies full of everything as well. Did a brewpub crawl with them, sent them up to Denali Park where they saw bears, caribou, moose, Dall sheep and lots of other things. Highlight was the crab tho... nothing like having crab boiled with an hour of pulling them up in a pot! I've never had fresh crab like that before, and good LORD is it good. It was hard to save any to package for the winter... we just kept eating it and eating it and eating it!
I smoked so many cigars this past 2 weeks that I'll take a break for a bit to let my taste buds recover! RASS, PLPC, CoRo, PAM's, BGM, Anejo, Opus, Tat Monsters, and the list goes on and on.
And the best part is...? That was not my regularly scheduled vacation! That starts in 2 weeks :laugh: I'll be doing it alllllllll over again with my brother in law!
. That is definitely one ugly fish, though.
