Second week, Petersburg, crabbing, prawning...

Lee Simpson is "the man", and his wife, Diane "the lady"! We have followed them around, and learned so much it's hard to describe....some of the below tells about the experience.


Lee cooking steaks before leaving Petersburg for the crabs and prawns..


Lee's tender....this is a 1,300 pound real boat, with an 80 HP outboard that stays on top of Sonata. He has a 2 ton crane to launch it....


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Thursday, May 21, 2009

Lee called at 10:00 and said let’s get going. We cruised over to Thomas Bay, and what a sight.

Undoc'd in Thomas Bay, with a crab trap float deployed....

We curled around Ruth’s Island to our anchor site and launched the dinghies. The crane motor worked without leaking, and the dinghy started right up, our first start of the year. Then we set out my 2 crab pots, and Lee’s 4. This was in about 50 feet of water near a flowing stream (best places, according to Lee). Then we went further along the shore into 300 feet to drop 4 shrimp traps. On the way back, we pulled up one of the crap pots “just to see”, and there were already 2 huge crabs! We decided to wait and harvest everything tomorrow morning. We played Mexican Train on Lee’s boat until 6:00 or so, then came back for the night. The morning will be at 8:00 and our “harvest”.

Friday, May 22, 2009

Christy and I are up at 6:00 to start the gen and get some heat into the boat. She warms up quickly, and the battery bank has only dropped to 70% during the night. At 8:00 sharp, Lee and I head out to “harvest”. Two of the crab pots had a total of 12 huge males, and another had 3 more…this was a lot of crab-meat. Then as I was re-launching one of mine, I let the rope tangle with the buoy, and it sank forever, lost and gone. Lesson learned, and thank God it was not Lee’s. We took them to the boat, and headed to the prawn’s. We had 50 or so huge prawns, and they looked fabulous to me and The Coog….about 50-60 with several huge “tigers” the rest “spots”. Lee suggested dropping the prawn traps again in another spot. We immediately cleaned the crabs, boiled them, and refrigerated them. I almost lost a finger to a big one. You cannot get any fresher than that. Then we cleaned the shrimp and Chris took them back to our boat to cook. She is doing dinner tonight for the 4 of us, and it will be risotto and shrimp, with tomato and cucumber salad, French bread, and the rum cake Chris made yesterday. Then Lee took me out to try our halibut skills. We fished from the dinghy about 3 miles from the boats, and didn’t have any luck. But I am hooked, and now I think I know how to do this stuff.

Lee suggested that we pull anchor at 3:00 and head further into Thomas to an inlet he has anchored before called Scenery Bay. It is beautiful, narrow, and calm. On the way in, he spotted a black bear at the head, and we just sat there for 30 minutes watching him graze and hunt. He was oblivious to us and great fun to watch him. The anchorage in the inlet is very narrow, and deep but we found a 50 foot spot with enough swing room. Lee took a spot further out, in 80 feet of water. Once secure, Chris fine-tuned the dinner while I took care of checking the mechanicals. What a day!

Lee & Diane came over for dinner, and the bear came out again. He roamed for an hour at the spit of land at the mouth, about 40 yds from us. We watched him for the hour, and Lee & I got in the tender to head closer for pictures. He was never startled, but finally headed back into the woods.

On Saturday the 23^rd we got up early to pull the prawn traps, and this time there were even more, and much bigger. What a feast! Lee insisted that I take all of them, which I did, and we cleaned and boiled them before 9:00AM! They would be our appetizer tonight at the dock. We pulled anchor and headed back to Petersburg and the dock. I had some fishing, crabbing, and prawning gear to buy. Lee & Diane came over for the prawns and other horderves at 6:00 and we socialized at the dock before turning in.

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Another sunny day, and T-shirt temperatures. We provisioned some, and planned the trip south toward Wrangell. We have an anchorage in mind half way called Jones Harbor near the entrance to Sumner Strait (it comes directly in from the Pacific). Petersburg had a Memorial Weekend fishing tournament every year with $thousands in prize money. The winner for largest Salmon was on display….weighing 59.8 pounds! With this in mind, I made sure that I had bait for the trip to Wrangell. We popped some popcorn, listened to music, and played gin for an hour before getting the book out to read for 5 minutes before passing out.

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