Long night/day

Well if you were wondering why there wasn't a blog done last night, it was because we didn't have time.  I will first tell the boring part.  I woke up and went to work as always.  To top it all off it was a super boring day.

Now to the exciting part.  I got a text from our friend Carl, asking if Jim wanted to go out fishing and would be ready to go in 30 minutes.  So I called home and talked to Sonja and he was fair game.  So I took off from work an hour early and got ready to go.  We went down to the wharf just as he was pulling in.  He had taken a bunch of students out fishing in preparation for today which was oceans day.  We got in the boat and found three salmon and two halibut on the floor and a bunch of rock fish.  It was a pretty good haul and it was looking promising for us.  We left about a half hour later and went north towards the light house.

We went around the north of the island to a bay.  It turns out that there was a long line set and ready to be pulled.  The bay was actually just north of the airport.  So a long line is a rope that is 1200 feet long with weights on the ends and middle to keep it down near the bottom.  There is a short foot long rope every 6-10 feet with a baited hook on it.  So Jan's brothers pulled the line up to see what was on it.  There ended up being 3 rock fish on it and 2 sting ray looking things that were tossed back.  After it was all pulled up it was decided that there was still enough bait to set another line.  So we set the line and took off to do some trolling.

We went more westerly and started the troll we were going for a bit and then the bell started to ring a bit.  Carl motioned for one of us that there was a fish on.  Jim took the lead and started to reel up and take the hooks off until he got to the hook with the fish on.  It turned out to be what they called a jack spring, which is just a small chinook salmon.  He was probably 8 inches long, but unfortunately didn't survive being caught as we snagged him in the gills.

We kept trolling for probably another hour, before giving up and moving somewhere to try our hands at a red snapper.  So we pulled up the lines and made our move.  We got to the destination and put in our hooks.  We were just jigging now and I was the master jigger and caught the only fish that was caught there.  I caught 4.  We then carried on to the scallop farm as Carl needed to pick up a lantern of scallops to bring back to town, again for oceans day.

It was after dark by the time we left the farm and went back to our long line.  It was almost an hour boat by the time  got back to the long line.  I helped pull this one up and ended up being soaked.  All of that work and we only caught 2 rock fish on it.  No halibut or nothing exciting.  We finished pulling it up and continued on our way back to town.  It was almost 1 by the Carl dropped us off on the spit.  We went up the spit and it was quickly off to bed.

I woke up too early after our big day, what ended up being a full day of work and then another 8 hours on the boat.  I dragged myself to work and stumbled through the day.  Unfortunately it was a long, slow boring day.  The clinic was closed and the whole town was busy elsewhere for oceans day.  It was a cool day.  All the local agencies had things going on.  The coast guard had displays and tours of the boat, RCMP, and ambulance had things happening, fish filleting and salmon bar-b-q.  The salmon was being roasted the old fashioned Heltsiuk way.  It was really cool and there will be pictures shown when we get to Alberta in the next couple weeks.  I wasn't able to enjoy it fully, but Jim was.  He has lots of pictures and was able to take it all in.

The day drug by and so did Sonja's.  She was doing first aid and CPR in Shearwater so she missed all of the hoopla.  When she got back we headed down to the beach and restarted the fire and had supper down there.  We had some fish, smokies, and pie irons.  We stayed out there till the misting fog soaked us enough and we were done supper.  We came in a watched True Grit, and that brings you up to speed.

It has been a busy, tiring couple days.

Tyler