Our charter left at 5:45 in the morning, so we could catch the slack tide. I was to find out later how important the timing with the tides is for deepwater fishing. We had beautiful weather the whole morning, and got to see plenty of wildlife - puffins, sea otters, porpoises, and lots of gulls.
The boats are launched using tractors
The fishing was very tiring because the lines have 3 lb weights and are lowered about 200 ft. Even if you don't have a fish at all, it takes a lot of effort to reel in your line! I was unlucky enough to lose my bait many times before I hooked a halibut.
The "bottom side" of the fish looks like a crudely drawn fish-sketch come to life! They don't have eyes on their bottom side and it's also pure white.
As the tide began to change it was harder and harder to keep the weight and bait on the ocean bottom, and the lines kept getting pulled farther and farther away from the boat (which means more reeling). Eventually it was too hard to fish while anchored, and so we made a final pass "drifting" with the current and caught our last few fish - phew!
We were told by our captain why brining bananas on a boat are bad luck, in an attempt to explain why our lines were entangled in jellyfish for most of the morning.
Posing with our catch - apparently the Chihuly's are relatives of the famous artist glass-blower Chihuly.
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