Gotta love the early season. While we're waiting for the summer crush to hit us at the shop, Ryan and I took advantage of the downtime and went on a seriously cool adventure with our good buddy Jeff from Sunday to Monday.
We took advantage of Jeff's new baby — an all-aluminum Hewescraft with a sealed canvas cover on the bow to protect against ocean spray and the elements. This thing is decked out for adventure and screams across the ocean with a huge 150hp Honda four-stroke engine that pushes the boat hard.
We spent Friday searching for bays to explore and made some difficult landings from the boat on a pack raft that we had aboard.
We also had the brilliant idea of cooking some on the boat with a little charcoal grill that we brought along. Our delicious dinner was freshly marinated in pineapple juice by Jeff, and they cooked off superbly. Ryan was so hungry he had no qualms about eating his steak right off of the boat rail (we forgot plates), and I learned what a pleasure it is to grill out in the middle of a body of water at night on a boat. I hope to make this a regular occurrence in my life — what an amazing meal the scenery does make for.
After dinner, we landed again in the pack raft (two people can fit in a tiny raft and paddle as we discovered) and slept in bivy sacks under the sky.
The next day, we hit the ocean hard and caught a bunch of cod right off the bat. We had to quit fishing our first spot simply because we couldn't handle bringing up more of these hard-to-clean fish. The instant we would touch the water with our bait, they'd be on the hook like they were swarming our lines. We did manage to catch some rockfish of myriad colors, but — with one 14lb exception – the halibut managed to elude us. If anyone want to send over tips for catching halibut in Resurrection Bay, there's a couple beers in it for them from me.
At the end of the day, before heading back on Monday, we landed on Driftwood Bay's east beach and checked out the huge logs that have washed ashore. There's massive piles of wood there that look as if they were tossed there casually by some careless titan of the sea. The scenery was absolutely stunning, and the surrounding mountains on this bay just beg to be explored.
This was about as epic as a short trip can be. Thanks, Jeff, for the boat and the bait, and that fish that bit Ryan while he was trying to release him back into the water better watch his back. Unlike you, mister Cod, we have longer than a 5 second memory, and we're coming back for revenge.