Day 21 ~ Ruth Island, Thomas Bay to Farragut Bay

Ruth Island was just past Petersburg which allowed both Dad and I to get a good phone signal so we spent the morning catching up with our prospective offices and enjoying the sun glistening on the calm water. We had also decided to attempt to confirm the cow sighting since Dad just couldn’t believe that someone would have cows in this wild country. After that we were going to sneak up on our first ice berg and get some pictures and then we were back to fishing and I had a conference call regarding the FDA that was in my offices.

We were unable to confirm the cows, they had either moved to a new field or the rocks we were now seeing had swishing tails the day before. We were only able to view the snout of the Baird glacier and the glacier field. In hindsight, we probably should have put the dinghy down and gone exploring.

After our explorations we headed off to the super secret fishing grounds that we had been told about. Unfortunately, when we got to the destination I didn’t have internet connection which I needed, so…we turned the boat around and drove back towards Petersburg until I could get connected. Once connected, I learned that my meeting had been postponed until the next day – ugh!

We fished our way around Sukoi Islets and the only entertainment was the family of sea lions playing in the water. So we pulled up and headed across Fredrick Sound to Point Agassiz, which was another super secret spot to fish halibut. We dropped the anchor in 125’ of water and started fishing. George told us that you really need to have a scent trail to call the halibut. So Dad decided to rig the crab ‘live well’ to the down rigger ball full of the spare parts from the fish Gene caught a week ago, boy did it have a pungent smell. We sent it to the bottom and we actually had a few good bites but nothing on the boat. Dad was really disappointed that he didn’t get to shoot his gun he called, ‘Snake Charmer’.

We found this wonderful little cove tucked behind Read Island and snuggled ourselves in using both the bow and stern anchor which we had gotten pretty skilled at setting. The sun went down but it never really got dark because it was the longest day of the year. All evening long we were able to view the scenery with that last moment of daylight where the shadows are cast but it looks like someone forgot to turn off a light somewhere. I tried to take some pictures but they didn’t really turn out, I guess some images will only be captured in our personal memories.