2016-07-24 Fishing With Bob and Walt

It's always nice to make a new friend, and also to spend time with old friends.

I met Walt Corbin when he ended up tied up near my slip at Bar Harbor.
He had run his 36' North Pacific "Untethered" up from his home in the San Juan Islands but his crew mate left the boat unexpectedly in Ketchikan.
That left Walt somewhat stranded in town until his wife could come up to help him run the boat back south.  Unfortunately she could not make it up to town for about 3 weeks.

During that time I got to know Walt and we became friends.

For this trip my crew was new friend Walt, and old friend Bob Hammer.

We took off about 8:15 AM from the stall and had lines in the water near Vallenor Rocks by about 9 AM.
We only fished two lines even though we had three licenses aboard and could have legally fished three lines.
I have two downriggers, and while it is possible to fish three lines off two downriggers, it is more complicated, so we just chose to fish two lines.

It was still a little early for the full Silver run but that's what we were hoping for.
This time of year you usually get a mix of Pinks and Silvers.
We were hoping the mix would be a little heavier on the Silver side.

We fished near Vallenor all morning and moved over to the Clover Pass area around lunch time.

During the day we landed 6 Pinks and 2 Silvers.

About 3:45 PM I made the call to pull gear and head in.
That's when we got our "Bonus Silver."

All the gear was back aboard and we were ready to head in.
I went to the back deck to take a last look to make sure everything was secure for running to town.
It was kind of sunny and I could see into the water a little ways.
About 25' behind the boat I saw some flashing that looked to me like a flasher.
I looked further and noticed there was a fishing line hung up on the back of the boat.
I hand lined it in and found a nice Silver complete with a flasher and a lure.
Apparently we had run over someone else's gear and it had cut the line and attached itself to my boat.
It happens.

We pulled into the stall about 5 PM and cleaned the fish.

Once we got in Walt told me that he had just turned 86 on the previous day.
Happy Birthday Walt!

Walt & Bob cleaning the fish