Alaska postscript by Danny O'neill

Saturday June 9^th we left Petersburg after staying on an extra day because of the weather.

We have learned to fish the slack tides for Halibut. They seem to bite much better and it doesn't take a lot of weight to stay on the bottom. Its also easier to pull the anchor.We were short 30 lbs. to fill a 50 lb. box which would make our total 200 lbs. of Halibut fillets.

Fishing was a little slow so we played cribbage while we left our lines out, waiting for the tide to change. After three games of cribbage we went out to discover a halibut on one of the poles, it weighed about 25 lbs. So we were nearing our 200 lb. goal to send home with me, four 50 lb. Boxes.

We moved to deeper water and fished another ½ hour. We hooked a large 60 pounder and just got it on board when the other pole went down and we on and we landed a forty pounder. We had dropped a fresh bait in while we fighting the last fish and it produced a 30 lb. Fish within minutes. Needless to say the 30 lbs. we needed to fill the fish box turned into 80 additional pounds of fillets.We anchored in Exchange Cove, about 8 miles away, 45 miles south of Petersburg. We filleted and packaged fish until midnight, we had a couple drinks and fell into bed without dinner.

Sunday morning was spectacular, the sky was clear and sunny without a breath of wind. The views of the bay behind Exchange Island are beautiful. We spotted a doe and her fawn walking along the beach. I took a few photos of an old fishing boat anchored in the bay and we headed back to Petersburg. We have a lot of work to do to cleanup the boat after fishing and I'm sure Toni will appreciate coming aboard to a boat that is not smelling like a cannery.

The big island we anchored next to while fishing is Prince of Wales Island. It seems strange to have something that large up here without a Russian name, most of the islands have names like Mitkof or Kupreanof. How fortunate for us that Mr. Seward was able to purchase this beautiful land for only 7 cents an acre.

I go home Tuesday and Toni arrives on the same plane I depart on. The airport is small and I was surprised by the helpful people that work there.

I was amazed at the marine atlas we used to determine safe passage. It was very complete and a wealth of information on our trip up.

I am thankful to my best friend for including me on this trip. It does complete one more of the things I need to do on my bucket list.

Well, you've never heard from me before and its a treat to share our adventure with you. I'll sign off now and hope to meet some of you in the future.

Danny