Fantastic Four Fish Stories - Chapter 2

        Here is one of the great fishing outings I had with my Dad that was very eventful and another great bonding moment for my Dad and I.

I will start by saying that Dad and I were not the smartest guys to have ever challenged the great Pacific Ocean.  This story will more than prove that! One day this almost proved to be our doom.  The world's largest ocean will take full advantage of those lacking logic, common sense or as in the case of my Dad and I, a combination of the two.

One day we went out in our ginormously, huge 13-ft aluminum skiff that my dad had used for years.  It was pretty beat up and we used a souped up (how my Dad says jury-rigged) 10.5-hp motor that worked about 40% of the time.  Most people who had the privilege of seeing the motor thought that my Dad had actually built it himself out of a bunch of random parts he found.  It was something you might see a couple of young boys using to putter themselves around a small pond. To use it in the grandest body of water on Earth was quite..... remarkable. Yes, that is the word we will go with.

       We put our boat in the water near the mouth of the Anchor River. We took the traditional 15 minutes waiting for the motor to start and then putted out about 500-700 yards out off the coast just outside of Anchor Point.  We set the anchor and dropped our lines in hopes of landing a nice halibut. For bait, we were using pieces of Irish Lord, the ugly fish mentioned in my previous post. As we quietly floated we talked and enjoyed the cool summer air and the relaxing sounds of the ocean as it gently rocked the boat. It was a beautiful day and those moments in the great Alaskan outdoors were the ones I cherished the most.
After about 30 minutes or so, I looked out in the distance and saw a large black sailboat.  I thought that it was interesting that someone would use a black sail.  It reminded me of the pirate stories I'd read as a kid.  After a few moments of watching the sailboat we noticed that it went under the water line and didn't come back up for a while. When we saw it again it had moved a considerable distance while it had been under water.  This is when we realized it was not a sailboat at all, but rather a whale.  I normally didn't think much of seeing a whale in Kachemak Bay or the Cook Inlet but something was not right about this whale. It wasn't a big harmless krill eating whale. It was a meat eating Orca Killer Whale! Dad told me he had never seen a killer whale out there before.  It was pretty cool to see.  We were alarmed at how big the whale was for us to think that it's dorsal fin was a sail! We laughed hard at our mistake as it was a pretty funny goof.
It was only funny for a short time, however, as we began to realize that the giant dorsal fin had turned and was now heading directly for our boat.  At first we had no reaction other than continuing to watch it.  But it didn't take long for us to realize that the whale was getting closer than we were comfortable with.
"Pull the anchor!" my Dad said slightly raising his voice.  I was pulling the anchor before he even finished telling me to do so.  As I was hoisting the anchor rope as fast as I could my Dad quickly reeled in his line and began to prime the motor.  Of course it wouldn't start on the 1st pull of the cord!
I finished with the anchor and began to reel in my own reel while my Dad yanked the cord a second, third and fourth time.  When I finally had my reel ready my Dad was on the eighth or ninth pull.  In the mean time the whale had made considerable distance and was now only about 30 yards away.  Dad looked at me and I looked at him and then he said, "I love you, Horace."  I knew what he meant and the realization of what was about to happen began to envelop me.
We watched the whale submerge below the surface just 15 yards from the boat.  It seemed like forever as I braced myself for the inevitable.  I had seen the movie Jaws many times and this whale was much larger than that shark.  It could just about swallow the boat whole!  I was sure that it was shooting it self from depths of the sea up to our boat to devour us as if we were just a large blubbery walrus floating on the waves.
It was just when I was about to release my bowels into the bow of the boat that I saw the whale resurface on the opposite side of the boat.  It continued to swim away from the boat until we lost sight of it in the distance.
After a few moments of time our heartbeats slowed to an above normal pace and Dad looked at me in relief.  Then he said three words I shall never forget. "Drop the anchor".  He REALLY likes to fish!