Wow, our Alaska trip took a huge step forward when we got off the ship and arrived in Homer on Sunday in our car we rented in Seward Alaska.  This is an interesting town and quite picturesque.  This fits the Wagnersons much better than the week long cruise we had just undergone.  We celebrated Doug and Barb’s 40 wedding anniversary at the Little Mermaid restaurant.  It specialized in wholesome, organic and locally grown foods.  Unfortunately Doug was not feeling well by the time we got there.  As he looked at the menu, it was “a little too froo-froo for his tastes, and he ordered pizza.  We enjoyed our froo=froo dinner there and then it was home to our rooms at the Alaska Beach House and then to bed after a long day.

It was up early because Doug and I had booked a fishing trip on our first full day in Homer.  We met our captain Drew and deckhand Brent, along with a dad and his older daughter who would be fishing with us on the Patriot, a 30 foot 500 horsepower fishing boat.  Our trip for halibut and rockfish required us to take a 55 mile trip (about 2.5 hours) each way out to where the bigger halibut were located.  Alaska allows an individual to catch two halibut per day, but only one halibut over 28 inches.  We fished for the big halibut first, catching two of those and then after the tide changed, we fished for rockfish….something those of us who fish in Puget Sound know that we haven’t been able to fish for in more than a decade.  The four of us who were fishing reached our limit in rockfish (five apiece) in about 40 minutes.  We then turned back to fishing for the big halibut.  We had two more big halibut within about an hour.,,,our biggest was a halibut that weighed 111 pounds, one that weighed 65 pounds, another 45 pounds and one 30 pounds.  The remaining halibut the four fishers could take had to be under 28 inches or “chickens” as they are referred to up here.  We then moved one and a half hours back closer to Homer in order to fish for the chickens.  We caught those four “chicken” halibut in no time and were soon heading back to the port of Homer.  As our fish were offloaded from the Patriot and cleaned, there was an eagle that showed up to eat up fish scraps.  The eagle gave me a great opportunity to get close and take several pictures of it.  Then a quick dinner and off to bed to get ready to leave for our grizzly bear photo safari on Tuesday.