Day 38 ~ De Groff Bay, Krestof Island to Leesoffskaia Bay

The rooster had been called back to action so we could exit the bay during high tide. Once again, Wendy had requested a pardon the night before which Dad granted and Michael requested one in the morning which I granted (she had a bit too much fire water the night before).

It was amazingly beautiful departing the bay; the water was so calm that I could hardly stop taking pictures of the reflections. The rocks were black and orange which were new colors, one formation looked to me like lips!  In the still of the morning, we eased our way out of the bay and out of the outer cove trying not to disturb its ambiance.   

As we entered Sitka Sound, we were certain that at any moment we could see the fleet of fisherman out in the Sound but they were nowhere to be found. Finally, we just picked a spot and started fishing. Wendy was still sleeping so we promoted Michael to the helm. I was watching the poles and checking emails and Dad was talking on the phone on the bridge when we got the first fish on.

It took us so long to get our act organized and all the gear out of the water that we lost the fish. Frustrated, I marched downstairs and fussed at Wendy that she had to get up because I just lost a fish. Needless to say, it wasn’t the most pleasant way to start her day……sorry!  We got all the gear back in the water and proceeded to catch a fairly nice silver salmon. Then the fishing got really slow so we moved to another spot.

The second spot turned out to be more fruitful, we caught two more silvers one of them was really nice. Michael had been driving all morning so I offered to relieve her at the helm. She went back and started fishing with Dad. They thought that they had a fish on and they began bringing up gear. Michael was concerned that her drink cup was going to get spilled so she carefully reached behind Dad without his knowledge which turned out to be a tactical error because Dad jerked the pole backwards to grab the weight and jabbed the butt of the pole right into Michael’s head just about her left eye. She instantly had a goose egg and a new nickname “shiner” since she was well on her way to a major black eye.

We decided that we had enough with fishing and headed behind a couple of islands towards our anchorage for the night. We could have gone into Sitka but we wanted to stay on anchor instead. There were some spectacular homes perched on the islands. We knew the movie The Proposal was based out of Sitka so we looked everywhere for the house where the movie was shot with no luck.

Leesoffskaia Bay turned out to be a beautiful choice for Wendy’s and Michael’s last day on anchorage. In route, we spotted a ‘small boat’ channel that looked perfect for a dinghy ride and some black bass fishing. The last time we were in Sitka we brought home lots of black bass and we were off to find some more. Dad wanted to take a little nap so the girls provisioned the dinghy and off we went. We had a wonderful time floating around chatting. Michael caught one fish that we put into live well, waiting to see how many more we could catch, turned out that it was the only one. When we got back to the boat, Dad was ready for dinner, which turned out to be a bit of a challenge due to our beverages.