We've wrapped up our four days in Homer. Early this morning we hit the road, and in just over six hours made the very easy drive to Talkeetna. Talkeetna is a small, eclectic community located where the Talkeetna and Susitna Rivers come together. From here you can occasionally get a wonderful view of Mt. McKinley (also commonly called Denali). The mountain is an impressive sight that stays hidden in the clouds about 70% of the time. We've visited Talkeetna several times, passing by on the way to or from Denali National Park. This trip we'll be spending one night in Talkeetna, which will give us more time to soak in all that it has to offer.
When we saw the Halibut Capital of the World sign, on the way to town our first day, Beth said "you need to go fishing". I remember half heartedly saying something like, "that could be fun". Beth, as she is so great at doing continued to encourage me to go out. Before long I was booked on a full day trip on board the Diamond Cape, which is a part of the Homer Ocean Charters fleet.
Early Saturday morning I headed down to the Homer Spit Marina and met up with Captain Clay, his deckhand Henry, and the five fisherman (four hung over friends and another single guy), all who were around half my age, who would be my fishing mates for the day. They were all nice guys who picked up on the age difference and started lovingly calling me "the retired guy". One of them even asked me if I had any advice for the group. I'll leave you wondering what my words of wisdom were, but they seemed to like it!
Although I enjoy fishing a lot, my fishing quests usually aren't very productive. The beauty of a lack of productivity is there isn't as much mess to clean up afterwards. With others to clean up the mess, I was hoping for a bountiful harvest of creatures from the sea.
The planets must have been perfectly aligned and the gods of fishing were smiling down on us. Within a minute or so of dropping our lines down into the 100 foot water we were reeling up cod so quickly that Captain Clay and Henry had trouble keeping up with the six of us rapidly bonding fishing amigos. Within less than a half an hour someone brought up the first halibut of the day. It probably weighed around 20 pounds and was quickly followed by a couple of more halibut of similar size. Suddenly the tip of my rod was bent at a much sharper angle than on any of the previous fish I had hauled in. Something big down there had taken my bait!
The fight lasted about 10 minutes before we got our first glimpse at what was causing my left arm and right hand to cramp. My young fishing amigos all broke into profanity laced shouts of encouragement as I brought the beast from the deep close to the surface. Captain Clay had me bring him close to the boat and the fight ended suddenly and with a bang, literally (a .410 shotgun blast to the halibuts head), which elicited even louder, more profanity laced cheers from the young amigos. Henry gaffed the big boy and the two of them brought him on board. Turns out what I had been fighting weighed in at 92 pounds! While we all caught our limit of halibut, none came remotely close to the size of this big fella. Heck, I only missed the current world record for Pacific Halibut by 367 pounds!
