Time to Start Fishing

March 20th 

At the beginning of our last time off we decided to set some crab and prawn traps.  Instead of using our small, square fold-up traps, we decided to try some full-size round traps, and so we borrowed some that were not being used.  It was a bit early for prawns here, as most of the locals do not start prawning until sometime into April, but we decided to give it a shot as we would be back at work for the first two weeks of April.  We set out two crab traps and four prawn traps, and the prawn traps were rigged so that there were two traps off of one line and buoy, and the traps were spaced about 20 feet apart.  We took “Little Red” (the speed boat that we have use of) and went out and set all six traps. 

Three days later we wanted to go out and check our traps, and since it looked like it would be a fairly calm day, we decided to try some fishing as well.  They opened the halibut season early this year, like they did last year, so we headed out hoping for a halibut.  The sun was shining on us when we left the dock, and we were very hopeful that the clouds would break apart and it would be a nice day.  Unfortunately, the opposite happened, and the clouds began to build. 

We saw precipitation in the distance and hoped that it would not come our way, as it was already chilly enough in the breeze on the water, but the precipitation did come, and when it arrived it was snow.  We had several snow showers pass by us, and the wind came and went.  We slowly developed a chill, but we were stubborn and we said that we would fish until 15:00, which would end up being 5 hours. 

Using the jig, as I usually do, I had been catching some small fish throughout the day, Walleye Pollock, Green Rockfish, and the occasional small Pacific Cod, and then finally at about 14:30 I got a good bite.  Right away I was pretty sure that it was a Halibut, as I could tell by the way that it fought on the line.  Jason reeled in his line so as to be ready with the net, but as the halibut fought it must have swum around Jason’s line such that when his rig came up, it was all twisted around my line.  I continued to fight the halibut, trying to go somewhat slowly, but also never letting off the tension while Jason tried to untangle the twists and get his spreader bar and hook setup out of the way.  Although these tangles do not happen to us that frequently, it is definitely one of the negatives to fishing with multiple lines from a small boat.  

Finally my halibut loomed up out of the depths and Jason grabbed the net and was ready.  We got the fish into the boat.  Yay!  It was a 29-inch, 10 lb. halibut, and our first of the year.  We were very happy, and suddenly the cold and the snow and the 4.5 hours of fishing were just distant memories. 

We headed in to pull up our prawn traps, curious to see what we would get.  Pulling up the large traps, with two on a single line was a much harder task by hand than pulling up our little traps, but it was still quite doable and we got the first set up and into the boat.

We were stoked to see that we had prawns; in fact we had quite a few.  We reset the pair of traps and then pulled up the other pair.  By the time we had collected all of our prawns, we had a total of 126, and this was after letting at least 20 go that were on the smaller side.  We were very happy, what a day so far, one halibut and 126 prawns.  Wow!

We then headed in to pull up and reset our crab traps.  

We got four good-sized keepers.  Yay.  What a day!  Back at the dock we cleaned our halibut and crabs, and headed home.  We stopped by Ken and Shelly’s place to drop off some fresh seafood for them to enjoy, and then we went home.   

We were happy to be inside, and soon we had our fire going and the house was warming up.  It was nice to start to warm up as we packaged up our fish and prawns.  It was the first time that we had ever caught enough prawns that we could decide to freeze some.  It will be such a treat to have these when we are no longer out catching fresh prawns. 

For dinner we had a feast; fresh pan-fried halibut, prawns, and crab, with some al dente broccoli.  YUMMY!! 

It had been such a long time since we had had such an amazing seafood feast.  What a great day of gathering.