Fishing out of Seward...Montague Island

Me attempting to NOT puke by focusing intently on the swaying mountains....ugh.

Sorry...not sure why I didn't have this pic rotated the right way...just tip your head and it should work fine.  :)

Shayne's Dad, Dana, wanted to do some different fishing and try and target some fish other than just halibut. So, he decided to get a charter out of Seward towards Montague Island where we would be targeting halibut, rock fish, and Silver Salmon, with the possibility of Ling Cod.

We dropped off the kids at the Pugh's around 5 in the morning...man, that's early, especially for my kids that like to sleep in until 9.  We made it to Seward by 7:30 but nearly missed our boat, b/c we couldn't find the right dock...they were terrible with directions and nobody on the docks could tell me where exactly the dock was.  But...we made it.  Did I mention that it was also down pouring rain the entire drive, and was raining even worse in Seward?  Ya...not a good sign.

Well, our captain decided to try to get to Montague, but the seas weren't pretty.  What should have taken like maybe 2 hours, took almost 4 b/c of the rough seas.  We never did make it all the way out to Montague, but kept to some shoreline to help ease the massive waves that were out in the open ocean.  Thankfully we were on a catamaran type boat so it was a little more stable than a regular boat..

We fished for halibut first...and that was not fun!  I don't normally get sea sick...but with the waves rocking the boat the way they were it wasn't good.  I spent most of my time staring intently at the mountains in front of me trying to focus on NOT puking...I never did puke...but I was VERY close more than once.  Shayne's dad who pretty much always pukes when we go out on the ocean had a scopalomine patch and never had an issue...I was sure wishing I had one of those for this trip.  Shayne was a little queezy but I don't think he was as sick as I was.  We did catch our limit of halibut...but they were tiny chickens.  Definitely not the biggest fish I've caught...but most of us were so ready to move to a calmer spot to fish for rock fish we kept almost everything we caught.

We then moved to a cove to fish for rock fish, and I felt MUCH better.  Fishing for rock fish was fun.  They were hitting hard and fast and our entire boat quickly caught our limits.  Dana was the first to catch his 4 rock fish so he went inside and bs'd with the captain and ate Twinkies.  :)

We couldn't get to the good ling cod hole, so we started heading back to Seward and on our way stopped and tried to a spot for Silvers.  It didn't go so well.  It think out of the 10-12 people we had on the boat actively fishing we only caught 4-5 Silvers.  It would have worked better if we could have trolled a bit, but there was some dumb guy who couldn't figure out how to fish it right and kept getting his line tangled with everyone else's line...seriously annoying.  At that point our captain was done dealing with sick people, dumb people, and poor weather, so we headed back.  I wasn't complaining too bad b/c it was down pouring rain again and it wasn't a warm rain.

On the way back I don't know why, but while sitting inside the cabin I all the sudden about threw up and frantically raced for the door to stand outside.  I ended up feeling better and went back inside but only lasted about 5 minutes before I had to get back out.  I ended up staying on the deck watching the deckhands fillet out all the fish for the entire trip back.  Thankfully we were going with the wind at our backs so the trip back only took 1 1/2 hours.  I was fine while I was on deck with the fresh air and rain pelting down.  What a nice day.  Bleh.

We did see some whales but it was so cloudy and rainy I couldn't get any pics of them, which was a bummer.  It was fun seeing them though.  That's the nice thing about going out of Seward and Resurrection Bay...you always get to see some great wildlife.

We were all glad to be back on land after a long day on the water.  It was nice to go out and fish somewhere new and catch some different fish, but man...I would much prefer to do it on a sunnier day.

Maybe next year we can do it again and have some better luck!