Day: September 13, 2020

With Alan here, Arthur was motivated to go fishing again, despite continued reports of poor catching.
We left fairly early: away from the dock by 7:30.

The day was clear and the wind was light.
First we went to Port Caldera and tried for halibut. We caught a big ugly orange rock fish, which we decided to keep, though in Arthur’s book it doesn’t count. Then, much to all of our surprise, quite quickly we caught a good-sized halibut. Here’s Alan holding the halibut – it was maybe 30-35 pounds.

After that, we were unable to repeat that luck, so by 9:30 we started trolling for salmon. It was a desultory trolling. We went from Caldera to Port Estrella. A few small black bass, but no salmon at all.
At Port Estrella we tried for halibut again, but there was nothing. We crossed over to San Juan, and trolled from the southeast corner to Black Beach. No salmon there, either. We saw some people camping on the shore there: tents, dogs, a fire going – everything. That was interesting to me. Arthur thought maybe they were hunting deer. The east side of San Juan is native land, so I guess they hopefully had permission to be there. But who knows?
The whole trip, the large motor was behaving oddly. This was not the hiccupping problem we’ve had all summer. It wasn’t something that kicked in when the engine was hot. Instead, right from the start, at high RPMs there would be these irregular surges and pauses – RPM up 100, down 100, up 100. I managed to google the problem on my phone, and everything I could find and read said it was a fuel supply problem, which is also the likely cause of the hiccupping issue. I guess the fuel supply issue is getting worse. Anyway, it didn’t prevent us from using the boat – we could just go more slowly to avoid it, and even with it happening, it didn’t really handicap our ability to get around. It’s just disturbing. Arthur’s stated intention, though, is to get the boat in for service and out of the water before Alan leaves, so it will hopefully get looked at soon.
With Arthur and Alan both on the boat, despite their quite different personalities, they still both remind me of my grandfather (their father Dwight) a lot. It was “stereo Dwight” in some ways. Arthur’s personality is more like Dwight’s, but Alan has more of his mannerisms and his way of talking, if that makes sense. So between them, it feels uncanny sometimes.
Year-to-date totals.

• Coho: 22
• Halibut: 6
• Lingcod: 1