Fire Works at 10pm

Oh ya, it's another 4th of July in Hoonah! We made it down for the parade today, we had to show Chase (our friends son who is staying with us and learning to deck hand) what it's like to celebrate the 4th of July in a small community. I'm sure he was terribly impressed! The parade looked the same as last year, Smoky the Bear and Sammy the Sockeye were riding high again, along with all the sirens from the ambulance and fire trucks. Chase didn't complain about all the candy he scored though. We actually went down to the park after to check out what was happening there. Not much.....not even horse shoes! A lot of food being sold, and there were races for the kids, but that was about it. Fireworks start at 10pm tonight, last year half of our van occupants were snoring before they were finished! I hope we can make it up that late for Chases sake, he really wants to go. Man, are we getting old or what?!These 3 wheeled bikes were a new addition. I keep waiting to see them around town with tourists in them, someone should be making some $ with them.
Frank (or Dread Barta) is finally getting his salmon itch scratched, we went out for fun yesterday and caught 9 Silvers, 1 big beautiful Chum and 6 halibut. Chase will learn to fillet too!

Montana Deb and Lin week-end

Our friends Lin and Montana Deb from Juneau were here last week-end with Debs parents who were visiting from Montana. A little rough water the first day out, but we managed to bring in a boat load of halibuts, a ton of crab and we gorged on clams too!

Lin with the "one" that didn't get away! Nice 56 pounder!

Saturday the guys had their own day on the water for some salmon fishing, they managed to bring in 5 silvers and a nice chum. YUM!
Frank (Dread) got over his salmon bluesDebs parents, that look says it all. I can't wait until we go visit them in Montana, what a great couple of couples!

Fun Filled Friend Week-end

Friends from Juneau and friends from Washington all were here this week-end. That meant a lot of fishing and crabbing. The first day we brought in a limit of halibut (14!) That's a whole lot of fish to clean and wrap. I think the last of the crab has just finished cooking, we'll be shelling those for a while, good thing a lot of them will be going back to Juneau. I think we are all tired, but a good tired, it's always so much fun when we get together, the week-end went by way too fast.

We got so many crab, we ate until we couldn't hold any more!
That week-end was so much fun, time went way too fast, but we got a ton a halibuts and lotsa crabs. Yum YUM!
This is "Aflack", she comes back every year to the marina and every year she looses all of her babies to Eagles, mink, and other predators. This picture was taken last week-end, I saw her today and she had no babies left.........poor Aflack.
I love the "girls" week-ends, and I love my girls!!!! I can't wait until our next one!

Neka Bay

Frank and Erickson went up to Neka Bay fishing the other day, what a beautiful day they picked too. For some reason I had a different idea of how it would be up there so stayed home instead, but now that I see the pictures, I don't think I will turn down my next invitation.They caught and released a bunch of beautiful sea run Dolly Varden. What beautiful fish they are!The wild flowers were in bloom everywhere.
Frank got a great picture of these shooting starsAnd these are something I've never seen before. Chocolate Lilies, how pretty is that! They tried to talk him into bringing me home a big bouquet for in the house. But they never made it here, they thought they were pretty funny, I guess they don't smell as good as they look!

Sum, Sum, Summer Time!

Someone said to me today, "I wish it would rain", ACK! Bite your tongue!!!! It's been 2 years since we've had this nice of weather. I don't know what she was thinking. It's so nice to say, "man, it's hot in here", or "where are my shorts?" And I know I am not the only one feeling GOOD!
The kids are out swimming off the docks, the water temperature today was around 50, that's really not that warm.......

The tubing looked like a lot of fun too:
And sunbathers, ha, you don't see that very often in SE Alaska! I bet those 2 were really red today!And this awesome picture that Frank took today while doing a whale charter. He said they were jumping everywhere. It's not just the land lovers that are liking this sun.

Harvest of The Sea

This week we've had a -4 tide, which is an excellent time to go clamming and since it was not too early in the morning we decided we'd better go get some. When we pulled up to the beach there was a lot of sea grass covered with herring eggs. They were everywhere, and the clams were squirting all over under the grass and farther up the beach in the sand. Frank convinced me that I needed to try eating some herring eggs just to say I had. It's not something I'd like to add to my diet, but I can say I tried them. Very crunchy, but I'll pass next time, thank you very much.
It only took us about 20 minutes to get all the clams we needed. Frank raked them up and I gathered, rinsed and put them in a 5lb bucket.The clams will stay in clean saltwater for a couple of days until they spit out all of their sand.
Also with that low tide we were able to get our crab pots in a good location, left them overnight and ended up with 16 dungeness crabs today.Tomorrow we will spend the day cooking, smoking and canning the clams. Cooking and shelling the crabs, and freezing or canning what's leftover from us eating them!

Herring, Herring Everywhere

Herring, without herring we'd have no other sealife. Everything follows the herring schools. They are in by the millions now, and ready to spawn. We catch ours fresh for bait, we use them for salmon and halibut fishing. These beauties were caught right from our boat slip. Plus, they're a lot of fun to catch.
This wild group of sea lions were feeding on them too when we were out trolling for salmon, if we would have caught a salmon, they would have switched their main course from herring to salmon in an instant! These bad boys like to take a nice big bite our of your salmon as you're reeling it in.
This eagle swooped down and grabbed a herring in the water, but couldn't fly back out with it, so he decided to swim to shore instead. We've seen them do this with salmon also.There were also a couple of whales enjoying the treats of herring, but I was unable to get a picture of them today.