Silvers in Seward

This weekend, Andrea and I headed to south to Seward with her parents, Joe and Vickie, and her brother Dan and his fiancee Megan. We chartered a boat to drive around Kenai Fjords National Park, take in some sight seeing and fish for silver salmon.

The wildlife viewing was very successful; we saw puffins, sea otters, sea lions and got very close to a small local pod of orcas.

Kenai Fjords National Park is one of the most beautiful places in Alaska in my humble opinion. The fjords were carved out thousands of years ago by massive glaciers, which left deep gouges in the landscapes. As the glaciers retreated into the valleys, sea water filled them up to steep cliff sides. Now, forests of huge coniferns grow down from the glaciers right up to the edges of the cliffs, whose steep faces provide habitat for countless species of birds and marine mammals. There are still numerous places where the glaciers still flow directly into the ocean and the crashes and booms as they calve into the ocean can be heard for miles.

The weather cooperated as much as could be hoped in Seward; the sun was in and out for most of the day with some banks of fog rolling in from the Gulf of Alaska making things very eerie at times. A large bank of rain clouds rolled in off the Chugach Mountains as we motored back to Seward at the end of the day, making for some spectacular weather viewing (we were safely inside the cabin of the boat at this point).

Unfortunately, we had a few mishaps. The skipper of the boat didn't realize that none of us had fishing licenses until we were about an hour out of Seward (it was never really clear whose responsibility this was). So our exit from Resurrection Bay was slightly delayed while we drove back to get licensed.

In addition to forgetting our licenses, the engine in our boat seemed to be running a little rich all day. Near the end of the trip, the skipper discovered the fuel injector was leaking, which forced us to get a rescue at the end of the day by another of the company's boats. But waiting for the other boat gave us added time to fish and, although we probably only fished for an hour total, we pulled in 8 silvers (our legal limit was 18).

Our freezer is now full of silvers!