Day 31 - Saturday 7/18/2026 - Valdez

Today we stayed in Valdez to do some more exploring.  It was in the 40s all day, and it was misty and sometimes a little rainy, but beautiful even in the clouds.

As planned, we drove back out to the hatchery and parked along the water with our new fishing licenses ready.  We re-spooled our three Penn 4400SS reels with Japanese J-Braid x8 line (some kind of crazy strong and very slippery line), and attached our swivels and salmon snaggers. 

It felt a little funny to fish without bait, but since the salmon aren't actively feeding on the way back to their birthplace to spawn, it's really the only way to catch them (and controversial).  We finally got out there and situated on the very slippery rocks, and away we went.

Turns out we were early for high tide, which is when the salmon supposedly are ready to be caught, so we cast and cast and cast some more until other people showed up, and we saw salmon jumping, and we finally started catching some.  Mike caught the first one,

   

then we both caught one at the same time, but Becky's got away in the rocks. 

Mike caught one more but it managed to escape too, and Becky finally snagged one and got it in,

even though her reel broke in the process and Mike had to help pull it in by hand.  Oh and BTW, Becky's was the biggest at 5 lbs! 😁🎣

We are both now so sore we can hardly move (snagging is a lot more body movement than regular fishing, and the slippery rocks provided Mike a few slips...)!  I'm sure we were some fun entertainment for all the other folks fishing nearby.

We stopped by to see the Stellar sea lions playing and feeding at the weir for a few minutes before heading out. 

With our three salmon in a fresh state-of-the-art kitchen garbage bag, we headed to the cleaning stations at the docks downtown and Mike cleaned our catch. The local gulls were having a field day!  There were glaucous winged gulls, short-billed gulls, and black-legged kittiwakes all enjoying the fish.

We had one fillet for dinner tonight, and we used our portable vacuum sealer to package the rest to freeze for later.

The kitties were very curious about all the fishy smells.

Tonight's dinner was the very freshest salmon seared in oil and butter, with homemade freeze-dried roasted broccoli and mac and cheese.  Delicious!

We came back to the same camp spot as last night over at Glacier Lake for more free-of-charge camping.  We noticed this sign while driving back in to the area - we'll be sure to be careful with our recreating! 😎