For the second consecutive year, we had incredible weather for our fishing trip out of Seward. Unfortunately, we did not catch as many silvers as last year. We knew we were a bit early for the coho run, but my buddy started a new job this spring, and he lost his time-off flexibility. Still, we did okay on cohos, and we did extremely well catching rockfish. There are 102 known species of rockfish, with 30 of them in the Gulf of Alaska. We caught several yelloweye rockfish, which are bright orange in color, and a couple of tiger rockfish, which are orange with black stripes.

I should stress the reality, that weather like this is extremely rare, and welcome, in the Seward area. To the left of the above photo is Bear Glacier, which the deck hand said hadn’t been visible for two weeks.

Once we started to get bait ready, the seagulls magically appeared. The deck hand threw several herring scraps up in the air, for the seagulls to catch. That action not only increased their numbers, but their aggressiveness too.

The ride out to the fishing area was to be 45 minutes, but wildlife viewing increased that time frame. We saw otters galore, as well as a group of sea lions in the above pic. There were about a dozen sea lions dozing in the sun, along this small island’s shoreline.

We also came across two orcas in the Bay. One adult, probably the mother, and her calf. It’s not a good pic, with the boat rocking, and the zoom way up. The fin of one of the orcas, and the water vapor from its blowhole is just visible in the center of the frame. The initial sighting was as close as they came to the boat. At one point, my buddy said, “You know they are going to pop up on the other side.” Sure enough, the two orcas did resurface off the opposite deck. At this point, I finally relented and pulled my phone out of my waterproof pocket, to catch this final glimpse of the orca. My apologies for being slow, but I had cohos on my mind.