Sitka, Alaska

We woke up early at 5am for our early port of call in Sitka. We met up at 7am for deep sea salmon & halibut fishing with Big Blue Charters. We had a quick breakfast and a short shuttle ride to downtown Sitka. Normally ships tender in Sitka but there has been a new dock built and our ship got to take advantage of that. Sitka is a small charming community and we wished we had more time to explore there.

We boarded our boats: Richie, Casey and us on one boat and Dennis, David, Matti & Dick on the other boat. Our captain was Ben on the Blue Sapphire, and the other captain was Mike, the owner of Big Blue. The weather was cloudy initially but cleared up and was a bright, cool sunny day. We saw a few eagles and whales. Mount Edgecombe was visible once the fog cleared. The ride was bumpy and nausea-inducing on the way over and continued to be quite rocky even when we were anchored. I caught our boat's first fish: a small halibut that we had to throw back. For the keeper fish, we had a total of 1 king salmon and 1 halibut for me, 1 halibut for Myron, 1 halibut for Richie. A few small ones had to be thrown back. Richie caught 2 additional (salmon & halibut) but were eaten by a sea lion just when he was about to pull them aboard. we packed up around 12:45 and were ashore by 1:30. The other boat had hit a log on the way to the anchor site and those passengers had to come aboard our boat for the ride back. Overall a great tour with a good haul. Ben told us it was too early in the season and typically the passengers catch a lot more when they go out. Processing at $2/lb plus FedEx overnight shipping, but with the holiday on Monday, we won't get our fish until later this week (about 1 week after it was caught). The processing includes cleaning the fish, cryovac and flash freeze, so hopefully it will still be delicious.

We wandered around downtown Sitka and bought a christmas ornament and lunch at a food truck. I got smoked salmon mac & cheese and Myron got fish tacos. We were back on board for all aboard at 3pm.

The rest of the day was spent eating and relaxing in the Ocean Bar (happy hour 4-5pm). Trivia was at 7pm and dinner for Casey's birthday in the MDR at 8pm.Read more