Orzinski 2011 Season...(more pictures than this to add...)

Whew!...finally made it back to Sand point and another Orzinski season is down. All in all it went well and everyone made it back in one piece. Again. Thankful for that. The bears were mild this season thought they were responsible for some of the excitement. I will be adding more pics and video to this post as I get more stuff downloaded, but I had to get started while things are still fresh. It was a different place without Sarah coming out this year. This picture, taken by my new coworker Critta, sort of shows that. It was taken after a hike to the top of the ridge behind the cabin, on a day when the weather went from sunshine to rain to snow to sleet to hail with 40mph wind gusts in about 20 minutes. In June. I would like to caption it "Misery". :)



Also, here is a 'trailer' I made for the upcoming Orzinski Movie for the 2011 season. Will be heavy on the fishing, and light on the bears this go round, but, then, so was the summer....For whatever reason, the html I entered places a double version, so don't bother clicking on the second one...they are both identical......

My own personal highlights of the summer would have to have been the fishing. (Big surprise there, hmm?....) It was a banner year all around in that category. Though Sarah didn't head out to camp this year due to baby coming, Critta and I enjoyed a QUITE memorable season on the saltwater this go round. For starters, I decided to raise the bar to a new mark for myself and set out to surpass the 100lb. mark on halibut....with a FLY ROD. I've boated big 'uns before but this was something I'd thought about doing for a while. I resolved to fish with nothing else until I reached my goal. I began with an 8-weight rod and a 5-weight reel - yes, a 5-weight reel. If you're gonna go, go big, right? After landing several 'butts on that rig, up to about 40-45 lbs or so, my newest purchase arrived by plane with a food order - an 8 wt. reel. A while after that, the goal was reached...and then repeated...several times. Oh, how sweet it was. We lost some jigs, broke a rod, and snapped 100lb line this summer, (yes, really) but we got it done. It was a great summer of fishing, even for the kind of fishing that we've seen Orzinski can provide year after year. In less than sixty days, of which about 1/3 are decent enough to go out in, we boated 199 Halibut. Not to mention catching a couple hundred dollies, a few hundred P-cod (120 of those in just 3 hours or so on one outing), and a combined 'hundreds of fish' of other various species.

All of my fish in these pictures were caught on the fly rod. Critta stayed with the conventional bottom fishing setup (known to the two of us as the "Cod Rod"). Without a doubt though he was having a blast. Some of them were firsts for me on the fly rod and some were 'old friends' but made for memorable experiences nonetheless. There is nothing quite like setting the hook and feeling solid resistance, knowing you are fishing in the deep salt with a trout reel and not knowing what is on the other end... But now, enough with the synopsis and on to the visuals...

Here's a nice male Kelp Greenling. It can be impressive that fish of this size will chase a bait/lure as large as they do:




A Staghorn Sculpin that Critta caught:


This is about the largest Bigmouth Sculpin (that's their actual, and appropriate, name) I have ever seen, let alone caught. He had an entire Red Irish Lord in his gullet, as you can see, and still was hungry enough to inhale my offering for dessert. That Red Lord would have been about half the length of the sculpin, if you could see it all...that's just the tip of its tail protruding from the mouth...






As you can imagine, if the fish down there are eating like that, you've got to use bigger baits to get the big fish's attention. Here are some samples. First, Critta caught another sculpin, this one a Staghorn, with a ton of crabs in his mouth. We harvested some of his would be dinner and modified it into a fine Halibut bait.

Before:


After:


Another favorite for us was to put on half a Dolly Varden:


Slap one of those babies on, send it to the bottom, and hang the Hail on...here's Critta with one of the results; a fine Halibut specimen of about 80lbs.+: "Haleeebooot!!!!!"


You never quite know what you are going to catch down there, and very often, you would get a P cod (Pacific Cod). As stated above, in one afternoon we caught exactly 120 of these before hanging it up. They are schoolers, and when you catch one, you can rarely get back to bottom without getting more. This is a good one, as far as they go, though Critta's size betrays him a bit:


On to more of our target species. After getting some small ones (will add lots of video later after editing) and losing many big ones, it all came together and I scored with my first Fly Rod Halibut over 100 pounds. Setting the hook on one of these babies will make you think you have hooked Alaska. Fighting him to the boat on a Fly Rod will make your lower back and forearms scream for mercy. But oh, man, does it rock!

Here is where the realization sets in that you have just hooked something more than half as big as You:


And here is where you start praying your rod and your back don't break before you get him in:


After about 20 minutes, you get to introduce yourself:


Now, after several more runs, you have to haul him aboard ....


When you get them partway out of the water is when they get really heavy, and usually really angry on top of the whole mess....




And these are images of victory!!! I was lucky enough to get three this summer in the 100lb+ class. This was the best set of Happy Guy photos.