Our End of Summer Visitors

With fireweed blooming along the hillsides and the cow parsnip starting to brown, I knew the salmon runs were changing from Red to Pink to Silver. The middle of August brought us two visitors: Melissa from Savannah and John from Port Arthur, TX. Melissa arrived a few days earlier than John, who stayed a few days longer after Melissa headed back south. The overlap gave us a well rounded table for dinners of salmon and board games (housewarming gifts from our favorite board game addict, John), and a full car to explore the island’s hillsides, streams, fishing holes, and museums.

The highlight of our trip was seeing the bear who has been entertaining a lot of residents and visitors alike down at the Russian and Sargent Rivers. This male has seen some action, as evident by the missing sections of his hind quarters. Not hindered by the missing flesh, he ambles about, catching salmon in the streams, stocking up for the winter.

Now these two visitors did have uniquely different experiences on Brad’s Halibut Charters…. Big Mama remains the top halibut catcher (not processor) by helping put about 20-25lbs of high quality and “organic” meat in the deep freezer, but she did have some notable challengers... Melissa was the ultimate trooper and assassin, but the jet lag proved too much and Kawika and Brad decided it would be more fun to limit out on Pinks in Women’s Bay. John was the seasoned sea going warrior, but not quite the master fisherman. He started slow (he did manage to catch a starfish), but finished with 8lbs of halibut and 4 legitimate non-snagged pink salmon.

Like Big Mama, we treated Melissa to a dinner cruise, where we took in the sea lions in St. Herman's Harbor, birds in flight (puffins mostly), and some amazing ray's of sun over the newly installed wind mills on Pillar Mountain.

Isn't that gorgeous?