Fishing in Icy Straight/Couverden

This past weekend Jackie and I enjoyed a three day weekend on the boat down in Icy Straight/Couverden area. The weather forecast was for the best weekend of the entire summer (light winds and temps between 77 and 86).We loaded up the boat with crab pots, shrimp pots, salmon fishing rods, and halibut fishing rods. We had limited success fishing but had great success with our shrimp pots. Our final count for the weekend was 3 king salmon, 1 halibut, 1 King crab, Dungy, and about 200 shrimp. Here are some pictures.

Leaving Juneau headed for Couverden.

Halibut fishing in Icy Straight.

Barley enjoying the view of Chichagof Island and Icy Straight.

Our first shrimp pot we pulled had some decent size spot prawns.

Swanson Harbor

The view from Swanson Harbor

Swanson Harbor has floating moorage but no land access. We brought along our zodiac to go to shore to cook dinner and walk barley. Notice the floating docks in the background.

Yes I am wearing shorts and a t-shirt! First time this summer in Alaska.

Saturday morning we cruised over to Whitestone harbor to try to find some halibut-- no luck. Even though we didn't catch anything the weather was still unbelievable.And we had whales bubble feeding all morning.

We caught both Coonstripe (upper) and Spot prawns (lower) on our trip. The prawns were huge! They measured almost 8 inches.

Jackie and her prawns.

The coast mountains behind Juneau as viewed from Lynn Canal

The latest addition to our boat, a crab pot puller. The puller was given to us for free but had to be totally rewired before it could be used. I scratched my head for a few days and figured out how I could wire it with out having to order the expensive kit from the company. It was sure a life saver on this trip. The shrimp pots were set in 40-60 fathoms of water (240-360 feet).

We also placed a few crab pots while we were out. here Jackie is holding up a red king crab that we caught in one of the pots. King crab season does not open until July 1 so we had to toss it back. It was sunny and 86 this day, very warm for SE AK.

The weather was supposed to turn so we headed back to Barlow Cove near Juneau on Saturday night. Here barley and I are enjoying some sun waiting for Jackie so we can go to shore and cook dinner.

I forgot the bear spray when we went to shore in Barlow Cove. Barley thought I was leaving him behind and watches me closely as I returned to the boat to get it.

Sunset over the coast mountains as viewed from Barlow Cove.

Barlow Cove.Lions Head in the background.

More Prawns!

We caught two King Salmon on sunday in Auke Bay. Here is the bigger fish of the two that Jackie caught. This is all the evidence we have that Jackie caught the fish because she dropped it overboard while trying to gut it. OOPS!

Our final haul of shrimp, cleaned and ready for the freezer.Come visit to enjoy!

Work at Leconte Glacier

I spent last week down in Petersburg to visit the Leconte Glacier for work. We are researching the ocean/ice interaction on tidewater glaciers. For this specific project the goal was to put in a mooring buoy that has several instruments that will measure sea water temperature, salinity, and currents. The weather was fairly decent, overcast and light winds for the first few days. Here are some photos from the trip.

 

 Our first look at the Leconte Glacier after hours of travel from Petersburg.

 View from the bow of the R/V Kestrel.

 Here is part of our mooring buoy that we will retrieve in the fall. The large orange buoy on the left will house our instrument that will measure currents in the fjord. The concrete block on the right is the anchor and the yellow instrument attached to it is the acoustic release. If all goes as planned we will send a signal to the release in the fall which will allow the release to detach from the anchor and large orange buoy to float to the surface.  

 Closer view of the Leconte Glacier

 There were lots of seals with pups that were enjoying the weather and were hauled out on the icebergs.

 All the black dots in the photo above are seals hauled out on the icebergs.

 This was about as close as we could get to the glacier due to ice conditions.

 Scenic fjord

The only picture I have of myself from the trip.

 This is the R/V Kestrel. It is about 100' long. It was a big boat to take into the fjord!

Jackie went fishing while I was gone. She caught a nice King Salmon on her boss's boat last Friday night. The King weighted around 20 lbs.

Hopefully we will have some more fishing pictures soon!

Barlow Cove

We went on our first overnight boating trip of the year in search of shrimp and crab in Barlow Cove. Our friends Peter and Jules joined us for the one night adventure.
The weather was perfect on Saturday with light winds and blue sky with the temp in the upper 50's. We set three shrimp pots in Barlow Cove and then headed to the head of the bay to set some crab pots and make some dinner.

 The Blue Cheese leaving Auke Bay.

 We recently purchased a new Zodiac inflatable boat. The photo above is the fist time it has seen the water.

 View from Barlow Cove. You can see the boat anchored off in the distance. The boat need to be anchored far enough from shore that it would not go dry at high tide.

 The first thing we noticed on the beach were lots of LARGE brown bear prints just above the high tide mark (Jackie's hand is shown for scale)

 Jules setting up the wind break for the fire and preparing dinner.

 Sunset at 10 pm.

 11 pm

 12 am

 Jackie and I slept on the boat. The photo above is us headed back to the boat at about 1am. No headlamp needed!

 Shrimp!

Our first spot prawns of the season.

Hello from Greenland

As many of you know I am in Greenland this week for work. It took 36+ hours to get to Greenland from Alaska but we made it here and had our first day of "work" yesterday. Here are some pictures from yesterday.

Here is our mode of transportation for the day. This is a Bell 212 helicopter. It is much larger than the typical helicopters we use in Alaska but all of the smaller A-Star helicopters were booked for mining exploration. The Bell 212 can carry up to 8 passengers and gear!

 This is a photo of the fjord as we left Nuuk. The weather is always worse in Nuuk than it is at the glacier (see following photos).

 Flying up the fjord.

 After 30 minutes of flight time from Nuuk we arrived at our summer field camp. The glacier in the background is KNS glacier. KNS is where we are focusing most of our research.

 KNS terminus

 The KNS glacier overlook.

 

 The lower sections of the KNS glacier are heavily crevassed.

 There was 20 cm of fresh snow from the night prior so we had a hard time finding our sites and landing on the glacier. The glacier is so massive it is white in all directions.

 Another glacier we flew over.

 This is the NS glacier, another Glacier we are researching.

 Here is the fjord that I was in last summer on the boat. There is a lot more ice this year.

 When we got back to Nuuk we went to the Brewhouse for dinner.

More pictures to follow in the next few days. The weather has turned so we are staying in Nuuk today waiting for better weather.

Random Pictures from the Spring

Here are some random pictures from the last few weeks. Summer is officially here in Juneau with the arrival of the first cruise ship last Thursday. I took a picture of the first ship coming down the channel but you can hardly make out the ship in the picture.

We are lucky to have a friend who is a commercial fisherman. He supplied us with six or seven King Crab for the annual Ski Patrol crab feed.

The king salmon are also starting to make an appearance near Juneau. The picture above was our first attempt at trolling for kings this year. No luck yet.....

We bought some additional rope to add to our new shrimp pots but I accidentally dropped the spool of rope while walking down the steps. The picture above is the mess that I tried to untangle for two days. Hopefully the next blog update will have some pictures of fresh King Salmon and Shrimp for your viewing pleasure.