HOMER,  AK

July 20, 2011

Still out on the Nautilus trying to pull in that monster 400# halibut.  By this time I am convinced that I want no part of catching a fish any bigger than 20# like yesterday evening.  It was nice to see darkness again.  These 20-21 hour days of daylight followed by 3-4 hours of twilight make you want to stay awake even longer than your body wants to.                         

I awoke shortly after midnight as I heard the engines shut off.  I came up from the bunk room and one guy looked at me, said no fish were caught, we would be moving again, so I went back to catch some

rack time. When LeRoy woke me up at 5:50 a.m. I grumbled we only had only 10 minutes to fish.  He reminded me that my fishing license was good until 6:00 p.m.  We were in another fish hole and I quickly caught my daily limit of 2 halibut.  I even reeled them both in by myself and both my arms were ready to fall off.  Little did I know that where I stuck the end of the pole in my gut that would hurt for a couple of days. 

I don't know why LeRoy made it look so hard. 

By 7:30 a.m. we had all the fish we could take and the crew again started to fillet all the fish making sure each that fish with a specific color tie on their tail were separated for everyone elses.  The crew performed in sync until the last fish was filleted.  I noticed that they filleted all of them as the Asian gals had asked the crew to just gut their fish and not skin them.  Turns out they like to use the heads for fish soup.  Must have changed their minds when the crew said they could all the heads they wanted the next day.  Another 3 hours later we were back in the harbor.  We were handed our fish and the fish processor was there on the dock waiting to take our orders for taking the skin off and freezing our fish in 1# packs.  Even though we caught some Zs on the fishing boat we were tired puppies when we got off the boat.  We were glad we didn't have to deal with the fish processing and were able to head straight home for a shower and a little nap.     

The Homer Spit was calling to us.  We drove into the small boat launch and checked out the sea craft.  The spit is a flurry of activity as there are charter rentals, a fishing lagoon, and shops, lots of shops. 

Walking the boardwalk worked up our appetites.  We enjoyed a variety of seafood with waterfront dining at Captain Pattie's, of course.