Cruise Day 4 - Lynn Canal - Salmon Fishing & Haines Bald Eagle Preserve

Salmon Fishing

A four cruise ship day at Skagway... We never got to see the town itself as we were off elsewhere, but we suspect jewelery shops would have featured large...

  

Looking down the inlet...

 

Hanging glaciers above us...

First casts, full of hope...

 

We travelled to various parts of the fjord and saw bald eagles and a whale...

The whale wouldn't pose on a pole for us though...

Miche, looking relaxed...

 

We're gonna need a bigger boat!       Miche lands a king salmon barely bigger than the bait, you've got to admire his pluck though. We threw him back (we would have done with anything we caught).

 

Miche's whopper turned out to be the only landed fish of the day. I was bitten through once and had another missed hit...

 

Haines Bald Eagle Preserve

After a quick break we take the ferry down the inlet to Haines and then head to the Bald Eagle reserve to take a jet boat up and down the Chilkat River.

Miche is taking no chances with the cold... and to be fair it was pretty nippy as we zipped along the largely glacier fed river...

Mist hung eerily over the river all afternoon...

A tree had recently fallen into the river...

 

Immature bald eagle - they don't get the white 'bald' heads until they are at least 3 years old...

 

Being glacier fed meant that the levels were very low as the high country was beginning to freeze up again and reducing the melt. A few minutes after taking this photo we were stuck fast on a sandbank and pinned against these logs. We had to take turns trying to push ourselves off with oars - it took a fair while as we twisted from one trunk and sand ridge to another. We returned to camp to barbeque a hot dog and have some much-needed warming chili...

This time it's a towel dog with our chocolates, newspaper and details of the next day's onboard activities...