Miles Inlet

June 12 (Wednesday).
We were up fairly early to check out the fog, and saw that it looked like it was sitting fairly high. Our visibility was good. We decided to get ready, and move anchorages. We pulled up our anchor, and headed out with a well-planned set of way-points on the chart for carefully making our way through the mass of reefs and islets. We decided that instead of going out and around everything, which would take us out into the denser fog and also the channel for other boats, that we would take the maze instead. 

We saw porpoises off our starboard side when we were passing between two islands. 

As we made our way more out towards open water the swells got larger. When we were passing on the inside of Mayor Island the swells were hitting Bramham Island and bouncing off and ricocheting between the two islands, creating quite the jumble of swells. Once we were out a little further we were just getting the swells, which according to the weather were 2 meters.

Coming down the channel into Miles Inlet was quite pretty. When we were at the entrance we had a view over the near hills and could see many mountain ranges one in behind the other. Coming in further the beautifully wind swept shoreline with colourful rocks and angles sometimes looked like building blocks. The channel narrowed and we came into a peacefully calm anchorage. 

Miles Inlet is shaped like a "T" and we chose to anchor in the southern arm in about 20' of water, with a stern line tied ashore to a very conveniently located tree. Once we got settled, we had a very different day. We just enjoyed our surroundings and relaxed. 

The one time we did leave the boat was because we were seeing many, many fish jumping out in the main basin of the anchorage. We took Jason's fresh-water fishing rod and lures because they are smaller, and rowed over to do some casting. It didn't take long to catch one, and then another one, however, unfortunately they were small rockfish, so we let them go, and left them to feed. It is interesting that a fish that is considered a Ground Fish seems to spend a lot of time at the surface feeding on bugs when they are young.
Back on board I felt like cooking, so I made us a bigger lunch of Church Dinner (a family recipe). Then after lunch, I put on a batch of bread for us to bake the next day, and tried a new cookie recipe. 

Earlier, when we had had cell service, I had tried to find some baking recipes that were eggless. Unfortunately we are running out of eggs, but I still wanted to be able to bake from time to time.  The cookies turned out pretty good, the dough was yummy, but I struggled with the cooking a bit. The moisture of a propane oven makes baking a bit of a challenge, and a new recipe didn't help, as I think I made the cookies on the first tray a little too thick. Anyway they were good. We had fish and crab cakes for dinner with sea asparagus. 

As the wind picked up through the day we could tell it was still foggy out in the strait as tentacles of fog were blown into the anchorage. Sometimes it would build up, and then the sun would pop out from behind a cloud and manage to burn it off again. We were glad that we had moved early in the day, as the weather definitely seemed to worsen as the day progressed.

June 13 (Thursday).
This morning was another foggy morning. We went out to do some fishing, and explored our way along the northern shore. We saw another Rhinoceros Auklet, and the Pigeon Guillemot have become a daily sighting. They are quite numerous around this area. 

We mainly ended up fishing off of the island at the northern entrance to the inlet, as it seemed particularly good there. We were catching Rockfish, Kelp Greenling and Lingcod!  We pulled up four Lingcod, but unfortunately none were quite legal size. We had two that were about 24", but legal size is 25.6". Oh well. 

We caught our first Vermillion Rockfish -- a beautiful brilliant red colour. We found a spot off of that island where we were catching them one after the other. We would seriously drop our hook, and have one within the first few jigs. We ended up keeping two Vermillion Rockfish, and one male Kelp Greenling. 

Vermillion Rockfish and a Kelp Greenling.

Once we got a sense of how good the fishing was there we started being more choosey in terms of size, and only kept the bigger fish. We let a lot go. 

The swells were still around 2 meters, and we bobbed around out in them like a cork. It is quite a different experience fishing out in swells with large crashing waves continually breaking on the shore close by. When you are reeling in a fish and trying to keep tension and suddenly you loose 6 feet of height because you drop down the backside of a swell you have to reel really fast to not give any slack. 

The fog got quite thick while we were fishing, and we were left with just our little island in view. In the afternoon the fog retreated and the sky cleared, and it became a beautiful sunny day. The wind also picked up from the north west as was forecasted.
When we pulled up our crab traps we had one girl who was in the process of growing back a claw. If you recall me mentioning how they can grow missing claws back. I tried to get a decent picture with my phone for you. You can see her large left-hand claw, and the very little right-hand claw. Amazing!  

Rock crab regrowing a claw. The crab's left claw is big.

The little claw is the far right on the crab.

We kept two good-sized males. In our round trap that we had also set, we had only one very small rock crab, and that was it in the whole trap. The whole fish carcass that we had put in for bait was gone. It had only been, maybe four hours max. Weird. We reset our traps, and after a few hours I went out to check the round trap to see if we could catch the thief in the act before it got out; we were thinking maybe a starfish or something. Well I sure was in for a surprise, when I got the trap to the surface it was full of crab and three of them were large Dungeness!!! Wow. 

I raced it back to the boat to show J, and as I had it sitting in Kiki I watched one of the rock crabs wiggle its way out of the door. So earlier they must have come in, had a feast, and vacated, all before we got back to pull it up. Impressive!!  

Back home we checked the gender and they were all males, even the three Dungeness! Yippee! They all had seven inch shells, and most of the rock crab had 5-6" shells which is big for them. We kept the Dungeness, of course, but only two of the rock crab since we already had two from earlier. We reset our trap, with the hopes that maybe we could get some more Dungeness, because it would be very nice to put some easier to clean crabs in the freezer.
The Vermillion Rock Fish was delicious, the meat texture and taste were perfect. 

(More to follow soon.)