Fancy Cove to Codville Lagoon

September 3rd (Tuesday)
The fog appeared to be clearing in the morning, and we were in the sunshine early. We pulled up anchor around 08:00 and motored out of Fancy Cove. Just as we were exiting the bay Jason saw a big splash up ahead in the fog. Jason was at the helm so he kept an eye on where we were going and I kept an eye out for whatever had made the splash. It did not take long for me to spot the whale blow and then shortly after I pointed with excitement and exclaimed, "breach! breach! breach!"  The humpback whale was rocketing upwards into the air, then, falling sideways, it became horizontally air born before descending to sea level and beneath with a massive splash.  

Jason looked just in time to see a flying whale. With wide grins on our faces we watched as the whale continued to entertain us with two spy hops and a back splash. What a way to start the day!!

The lighting was really cool as we left Fancy Cove and watched the whale, as we were surrounded in fog and yet the sun was lighting our way and illuminating the whale. 

As we motored through Lama Passage towards Fisher Channel we remained within sight of land, and I remained on deck with camera in hand watching for the whale. In the fog it was almost impossible to spot spouts, but I was hopeful. I was just about to go back into the cockpit when I heard the whale, I could not see it at first, but I heard its breath. Peering into the fog I spotted it.

Hard to spot a whale spy hopping in the fog.

It was now traveling along the same shoreline as us, but sticking much closer to shore. It was about 400' away from us. It continued for a while, traveling at a similar speed to ours, and coming up regularly to breathe. Eventually it did a big dive, showing its tail, and disappeared.
The fog did not improve on our trip, in fact it got thicker, but we made our way to the entrance of Codville Lagoon, and after announcing our intentions to enter the narrow passage on the VHF radio, in case anyone was on their way out, we made our way through.
Once we were anchored, we got ready and headed out for some salmon fishing. We did not know if the salmon would still be around at our fishing grounds, but we were hopeful. Over the last week or so we have been seeing much less salmon jumping when we were out on the water, so we were wondering if perhaps they had started making their way up the rivers and out of the ocean. Within less than a minute of trolling I had a bite! It put up a fun fight, and we got it into the boat. It was a nice sized female Coho Salmon. They were still here. 

Small fish found inside the salmon.

We started trolling again and it did not take long before Jason had one. It was a male Coho roughly the same size, about 28".  Before coming out fishing we had looked in our freezer and guessed that we could fit in about two more fish, so we were done fishing for the day.  

We dealt with the fish at our same salmon-cleaning log, and left the scraps we did not want for the eagles and ravens. We chopped up most of the remains of the carcasses to keep for trap bait, and we put the two heads out in our crab trap to see what we might get, but there were some scraps still left for the birds. One brave eagle came while we were still working and got a good feast off the bits we threw to him. In all, we put eight meals for two people into the freezer, and left enough out for dinner that night.
Back at home we spent a few more hours painting our 303 Fabric Guard protectant onto our enclosure fabric. It works best when it is applied in direct sunlight, and it needed time to dry and cure before the dew fell, so we did as much as we could in the time we had, and left about an hour’s worth for another day.
Our dinner was amazing! We had salmon nigiri, salmon sashimi, and a vegetable salmon Don (rice). It was all so delicious!!