Day 78 – Anchored in Joe Cove

Another beautiful day in the Broughtons! The fog lifted very early today which is so unusual since at night the fog completely envelops the boat and we can’t even see shore. Today I decided to go out with John on the morning slack for some fishing. It was so flat calm and the warm sun was already shining upon us so it was very enjoyable. Some of his early morning fishing jaunts are in the fog and freezing cold, I don’t usually go out on those – I’m a fair weather fisherwoman. Anyway, we fished for a good 3-1/2 hours and the body count was 1 ling cod that I pulled in, and three small salmon that we landed and threw back as they were just a little too small – all were Chinook though. We had a nice silver on the line but he jumped off when we got him close to the boat. We have plenty of salmon in the freezer right now so were very happy with a ling cod and tried to get another one of some size, but only caught one more even smaller one that we threw back. Out at the fishing grounds there is a huge sea lion colony that occupies a set of rocks on the edge of Queen Charlotte Sound. We stopped in for a visit and they were very entertaining. The big males roar a lot at each other and threaten one another and strut with their heads high in the air I suppose to look imposing but they didn’t seem to care about us at all. The females seem to just hang out in groups. I think they must live in harems because one male would plop down in the middle of the group of females and they seemed ok with that. Sometimes this one male would push the ladies off the rock which wasn’t nice. Their constant chattering at each other was hilarious and we got a lot of great pictures and video footage. After that we checked our shrimp and crab pots only to find 3 lousy prawns, and 5 large keeper-sized crab that were all soft shell, so our shell fishing was a bust. Back at the boat we gorged ourselves on more crab, this time in the form of crab melts for lunch then I took a nap all afternoon (because I slept lousy the night before), and John went back out fishing. Dinner was fish tacos from our fresh ling cod and we actually watched TV last night for the second time in 3 months!