A Wonderful Day

March 17th (Tuesday) 

Last night was the first night in a long time that we have noticed phosphorescence in our toilet when we flush. With all of the sunny weather that we had there was an algae bloom and the water became very murky, and the fireworks in our toilet at night were awesome! Who wouldn’t love flushing, even when you have to pump by hand, when you get to see green fireworks at the same time?

In the morning, after a good session of Spanish, and having had some breakfast, we headed out fishing. It was a beautiful morning, with not a cloud in the sky, and the wind that was blowing down off of the mountains and out of Cousins Inlet was light. Based on what we had observed the day before, we were hopeful that the wind would die off in the afternoon.  

Out from Wallace Bay we set up our lines and started our drift. Although the wind was still blowing a bit, it was not strong enough to push us too fast and it moved us along with the ebbing tide on a brisk drift. When the wind blows too strong, and we are trying to bottom fish, it pushes us too quickly and our lines get stretched way out on an angle, and that is when we have to either not fish or one of us rows against the wind to slow our drift and allow our lines to sink to the bottom. So, it was very nice that the wind was not that strong and we could both fish.  

After about an hour on our first drift I felt a fish go for my jig, but it did not bite and I missed it. About 20 seconds later Jason had a fish go for his hook, but again it did not commit and bite, and he missed it. Then about 20 seconds after that I felt the fish again, and this time I had it. 

Right away it pulled my drag, my line spun out, and I waited. When it stopped pulling I reeled, but I barely got a few turns on the reel and it took off again. For awhile it seemed that whatever I reeled in, it pulled back out, but gradually it got tired and I was able to make some headway reeling it up to the surface. As I got it closer to the surface it had another burst of energy and took off again, but this time it didn’t go as far and I soon had it back near the surface. As its shape slowly emerged from the murky, green water we saw that it was a nice-sized halibut.  Yay!

Because halibut are very wide fish for their length, they can be more of a challenge to deal with in our tender, so once we had the fish netted and on board we started the outboard and planed over to a gravel beach that was just around the corner from Wallace Bay. 

Here we were completely sheltered from the breeze, and the sun was beating straight in. It was beautiful, and it almost felt like summer as we filleted the fish. It had been a long time since we had had fresh fish, and much longer since we had had any halibut. We were very excited.  

We had noticed some stuff in the bushes, so after we had the fish dealt with we went up into the forest to look around. 

We found two old ruined cabins. One was completely collapsed except for a small part of an old brick fireplace, but the other one was more intact. 

It had been a log cabin, and it looked as if the ground under it had collapsed, which had resulted in it also largely collapsing. 

Some of the logs of the walls still remained, as well as the old beach-rock fireplace, which was still fully intact and standing about fifteen feet tall. 

We found some neat old glass bottles and part of an old lamp, but everything was partially broken. It is always fun to poke around to see what we might find. 

Back out on the beach we could see that the wind had picked up a bit, so we decided to relax on the beach in the heat of the sun to see if it would calm off again. Sure enough, in a little while the wind started to calm off, and we went back out to do some more fishing. This time, within about a half an hour Jason had a good bite, and reeled up another halibut. Back to the beach we went to clean our second fish of the day. Our first halibut had been 33.5” long and our second one was 24”. We were very happy.  

At one point while we were fishing, J’s line had snagged bottom. We started the outboard and motored up on it, playing with the line, giving it slack and then pulling it and jiggling it, trying to loosen it from its catch. Finally it came free, and we were happy to feel that the weight was still attached. 

When he got it up to the surface he had hooked a very curious looking thing. At first it looked like a piece of a type of kelp, perhaps a root structure, however, as we examined it more closely we could see that it was a type of starfish, for it had a small mouth on its underside, little tentacles on its legs, and its legs started to move. 

It was so neat looking, the way its legs branched off into more and more legs, and it was a type of starfish that we had never seen before. 

Later, once we were home, we found it in our “Life of the Pacific Northwest” book, and found that it was a Basket Star. A Basket Star has five arms, each of which branch out repeatedly, and apparently it can walk along the bottom just like any starfish, but when it wants to feed it holds onto the ground and raises its arms up into the water spreading them out to create a basket-like cage in which it catches its planktonic prey. It can grow up to 30” across, and can live in depths from 33’ to 6,115’. So Cool!  

We also found a lovely shell on our fish-cleaning beach. It was one of the hairy snail shells that we have often pulled up in our prawn traps. I had always wanted to keep one of the shells, but either a snail or a hermit crab had always occupied them. 

This shell from the beach was unoccupied, and in good condition.  

It was a wonderful day!