More Family Fun, and You Guessed it, More Fishing!

We were very fortunate to have two sets of family visitors the first summer we have been in Alaska. Besides the fact that we got to be with the people we love, the highlights of the visits (at least for me) was fishing with family (sorry for all those who don't fish, as there are still more fishing pictures to share with you).


Me with my biggest Sockeye (Red Salmon). Our Mahay's guide, Rhett showed us how to "floss" them as the reds don't typically bite once they start up the rivers to spawn.

Me, Dad and another guy that was part of our guide group awaiting a lesson from Rhett on how to "floss" reds. In other words, how to get the fishing line to drift into the fish's mouths so when you set the hook, it hooks their mouths. By regulation, you can only keep fish that have been hooked in the mouth. The beautiful glacier fed Talkeetna River in the background.

Nice set of black bear tracks lining the gravel bar where we fished. Good thing he had already passed through long before we arrived. We also saw a few bald eagles along the river, as well as more bear tracks.

My first silver of the day, caught on salmon eggs ("roe") two feet from the boat.

Dad with Rhett, our guide. he reminds me of a Jeremiah Johnson in training - the guide, not Dad.

Well, I hate to disappoint, but this may be the last batch of fishing pictures until next season, unless I can sneak away and do some ice fishing.

Pictures of Jaycie

Just wanted to include some newer pictures of Jaycie. She has been a lot of fun. She is now starting to pull herself up to standing position and then letting go and balancing for a few seconds. She has also been throwing a ball back and forth with me (Daddy). She is developing quite an arm. She aslo has learned to say "ball" and says it often. We went to the Alaska State Fair last Saturday and while we were there, Jaycie kept saying ball. I couldn't figure it out because I didn't see any balls. After a while, Shannon figured out that she was calling some balloons, ball. What a fun, innocent little mind.

A little helper helping Shannon with the dishes

A cute picture of Jaycie with her jungle animals

Jaycie wrapping Mommy's sweatshirt around her. For some reason, she likes things wrapped around the back of her neck. She is also slowly getting longer hair now, as you can see

Furry Neighborhood Visitor

Wild Blueberries

"Ling Lake II"

A picture of the bull moose. He is only about 200 yards away. I was going to include a picture of the grizzly, but he was about 500 yards away (little brown dot in the photo). Click on the photo for a better look.

On Saturday, I woke up early in the morning anxious to go hiking and fishing with our neighbor Tyler. As I gathered up my gear and started to walk a few doors down to meet Tyler, Something caught my eye. I looked down the adjacent street that runs perpendicular to our street just in time to see a black bear jog across a front yard! I had to do three double takes for it to register. I couldn't believe that the first bear I am seeing in Alaksa is 100 yards from our house, in our neighborhood. After I spotted him I quickly headed down to Tyler's house and the safety of his truck. I told Tyler and we circled the block to catch another glance of the bear. We saw him walking down an embankment down a fenceline and he disappeared into the woods. I was bummed that I wasn't quick enough to get a picture (but I thought getting to the truck was a priority).

Already excited by what we saw before our hike, we headed ot the trailhead of my favorite lake so far in Alaska. It of course now has only a code name. - "Ling Lake II." As we hiked the 5 miles to get to the lake, we saw a grizzly bear, black bear and one of the two huge bull moose that me and Chris spotted on our hike into Ling Lake II. We also flushed a group of 4 ptarmigan. They were just starting to turn white for the upcoming winter. Our fishing was successful as well. I caught about 5 grayling and a bunch of small dollies. The biggest grayling was 14-15 inches (the biggest I have ever caught). It was a really pretty purplish color. Tyler took my picture with it on his camera, but I haven't gotten a copy of it from him yet. Any bigger, I would have liked to take it home and get it mounted, but I turned him back to grow bigger for next year.

Another highlight of our hike was the discovery of a nice wild blueberry patch. I have been hearing that this year was not a very good year for blueberry picking, but these berries were in really good shape and ripe. They were right next to the lake on a southern-facing slope. I am thinking that they got extra rays of sun from the reflection of the water. I picked a whole Gatorade bottle full of them. I also ate handfuls of them as I picked. They were really sweet. In fact, Shannon made blueberry pancakes tonight with the berries that I picked. They were fabulous.

Photo Enlargement

I found out that you can click on any photo we post on the blog to see an enlarged version. This will also enable you to print the photo in a better resolution. Just thought I would share this useful tidbit.

Fishing, Fishing, Fishing (cont.)

Here is Chris' silver I eluded to in the previous post.

Fishing, Fishing, Fishing

One of Ryan's Doll Varden caught by Symphony Lake


Chris with one of his Dollies


Shannon's first-ever halibut


The guy with the skate he caught


Our halibut haul (72 lbs of halibut fillets).

During Mom and Chris's visit, Chris was excited to hit the rivers and lakes to catch some fish. I was happy to oblige. So, we started by hiking to a graying lake called Symphony Lake. We took a small detour during the ten mile round trip day hike, so the total hike was 14! Chris's guide (me) isn't very experienced yet. But our 4 mile detour did yield us an awesome animal sighting. We saw a wolverine. These fiesty creatures are like a huge badger and are almost impossible to see in the wild. It all happedned so fast, we weren't able to get a pic. We did make it to Symphony Lake and caught some nice grayling. The lake hold some trophies, but we weren't lucky enough to pull out a whopper. We also caught some dolly varden out of a river on the hike back. We also saw two nice bull moose and some dall sheep (the dall sheep were specks on the mountain about two miles up the range). No bear close encounters, thank goodness.

The silvers weren't running very thick yet. But we worked hard in the evenings and mornings to hook up with some and Chris was able to catch a nice one. Notice in the picture that the fishing area is surrounded by mountains with a glacier in the background. A beautiful spot!

To end the trip, we headed down to Ninilchik to fish for halibut. We had a great outing. "The seas were rough that day, my friends (George Costanza)." We had 3-4 foot swells which made for a rocky boat ride, but we were able to catch pretty much all the halibut we wanted. You can only keep two each so we tried to keep the bigger ones. Chris caught the most and the biggest out of he, Shannon and I. The biggest halibut caught on our boat was by another guy from Florida and weighed 55 lbs. Out of our group, we caught 30-40 pounders that we ended up keeping. Another cool thing happened, another guy on our boat hooked into a Skate (kind of like a sting ray). It took him a while to reel it in. The guide figured it weighed 80 pounds.

We had fun and thought it was a great way to end Mom and Chris's visit.

Oh, and by the way, no one puked out on the high sees (thank goodness).

Mom and Chris's Visit

We've been enjoying Mom and Chris while they have been visiting and seeing the sites with us here in Alaska. We went to Portage Glacier, an animal preserve and other day trip destinations. Here are some pictures of the sites.