Homer claims to be the “Halibut Capital of the World” but if things keep up it may add serious whale watching to the menu of cool stuff to do.
We’ve always had some whales hanging around the bay part of the year but, at this moment, the main fleet is in and has been for awhile.
Humpbacks, minke and orcas are cruising around Kachemak Bay and off the end of the Homer Spit in such numbers that it looks like a major geyser event in Yellowstone National Park.
Some Dall’s porpoises even blew through in a rare late season appearance around the end of September.
If you are not quite sure what Dall’s look like, visualize small killer whale posers that love munching on schools of pint sized bait fish and playing around the bow of boats while trying to look tough.
As I write this, spouts are exploding everywhere and those beautiful high tail dives are as common as mini Snickers in a kid’s Halloween stash.
There’s so much blubber in the bay it looks like a synchronized sumo swim team cruising through the sea waters.
Old timers around our hamlet-of-the-peculiar can’t recall such a large and dazzling flotilla of fat and founts off our shores. And, as of last Friday, it continued to be a hell of a visual ride as we watched more blow hole blasts from our cabin’s deck.
Most of the activity ranges along the south side of the bay but when the tides roll in, the pods move closer and it gets tough to find a place at the tip of the spit to watch the show from the comfort of your beater.
If it really gets rocking, there are more field glasses, spotting scopes, and iPhones stationed along the shore than the championship game at a nude beach volleyball tournament.
Now don’t get excited and go all Captain Ahab about the situation down here by rushing toward K Bay. Sometimes the critters are very distant after they backstroke off to check out the seafood buffets elsewhere in the area.
Days with small craft warnings and heavy rains a fish could swim through aren’t worth the trip either. You would have better luck hoping for the Chicago Cubs to win a protest that they were so stunned to be in the playoffs that they weren’t mentally prepared and should be awarded a redo.
As a side note, the whales have also seemed to have sparked an unusual fishery, again off of the end of the spit.
As you know, Kachemak Bay is somewhat famous for its winter king fishing and there are multiple feeding areas where they seem to congregate.
It keeps guys like me from withdrawal symptoms associated with not having a line in the water at least a couple of times a month during the fall and winter doldrums.
I won’t go into the exact details of those symptoms but I know they are dire when my bride hands me an old bag of freezer burned bait herring and gear then solemnly points toward the bay’s shoreline and mouths, “Go.”
This fall, thanks to the whales, no warning signs have manifested themselves such as trying to hold meaningful conversations with my tackle boxes.
Several weeks ago I noted an unusual amount of kayaks and small boats circling just off the land’s end. It didn’t take five minutes until I realized what was going on. They were trolling for and nailing kings within a stone’s throw of my Xtra Tuffs! It was all over when a salmon went flying out of the water not thirty feet from my belt buckle. The hunt was on.
I’m not sure if my bride has yet to recover from the front door nearly coming unhinged as her fired up spouse, sporting ten year old eyes, blew into the cabin ranting about kings as he thundered into the basement.
She managed to block my subsequent exit long enough to get an explanation for my zeal and calmly suggested that it might behoove me to include a pole in all of the piscatorial battle gear I was hauling out to the truck. I wish we both had remembered the bait.
I hope those pods of feeding humpbacks stick around a bit longer. They need to keep pushing schools of chinooks my way and into the smoker that has mysteriously appeared from the depths of the cellar.
Come to think of it, I don’t really care. Just being out there whale watching and waiting for my bobber to go down is like the holiday season has arrived already.
Nick can be reached at ncvarney@gmail.com if he isn’t contentedly ensconced in his deluxe on-shore fishing chair somewhere on the Homer Spit.
