Skating in the Puget Sound

Hi everyone!

Today I thought I would share another adventure with you. Several years ago my husband and I owned a small boat and we had a lot of fun with it...and also some more exciting adventures. I know, you thought I was going to talk about roller skating, but no, it's a fishing story!

We actually still own this small, green flat bottomed boat but have not used it in years. We took this boat out fishing and down many rivers when we first owned it. It's a small but sturdy little boat and we could, with some effort, heft it into the back of our SUV and off we would go!

On this particular trip we took our little boat to Point Defiance and launched our boat into the Puget Sound. We were off for a nice sunny day of fishing and having fun on the water. I enjoyed fishing in the Sound as the salt water is full of odd and interesting sea creatures. You never knew what you would catch, a salmon, a small shark or even an octopus! We would catch and release just about all of it, except those yummy salmon!

So, off we go...just puttering around in our boat. It's only about 10 feet long and 4 feet wide. Just big enough for two and a picnic lunch. We only had a five horsepower motor on it so we didn't go very fast. We were catching the usual assortment of fish and snags, old snarled up fishing line. Unfortunately the Puget Sound is full of old fishing lines and tangled up bits of nets and junk. We were of course, hoping for that yummy salmon. Pretty soon Hubby had a hit! His fishing pole was jumping and bobbing up and down. We were pretty excited!

He started to reel in his fish but it was putting up quite a fight. Hubby was struggling to reel in this fish! We were thinking it had to be a huge salmon! They fight pretty hard. On and on this went..and pretty soon we noticed that we were being pulled away from the shore. We tried to stay near the beach so I could jump out and run to the bathroom.

Before we noticed we had been pulled by this fish quite a distance and still the fight went on! We started to move out into the deep water where the bigger boats hung around. I started to wave my arms and ask for help as Hubby was getting worn out. We kept drifting along and were totally ignored. Of course, a crazy blond woman yelling and waving her arms about was not a big deal, just another partyer out on the Sound.

I tried to talk Hubby into cutting the line and letting go of this fish but he wouldn't hear of it. He had a big fish and he wanted to land it!

On and on this went, we were being pulled along and Hubby kept working on this fish, trying to reel it in. We were being pulled from Point Defiance to Vashon Island. Once we got to Vashon Island we started to go along the outside of the island. I was sure this darn fish would pull us out to sea!

Finally after hours of drifting and reeling Hubby finally felt the fish tire and start to come up. Now, we were in deep water. The South Puget Sound has areas over 1000 feet deep! And up comes this MONSTER!



Hubby had caught a Longnose Skate. This thing was huge!! The wing span was nearly as long as our boat! We were stunned! There was no way that thing would fit into the boat. As this huge fish came up out of the water against the side of the boat, we both backed away from it. Holy Cow! Hubby shook it free and off it swam. What a thrill!

After we recovered from the shock of what Hubby had caught he finally noticed how far we had gone. We were now at least five to six miles away from where we had started. Now was the long boat ride back to the boat launch.

What an adventure! This truly is a fish tale to share with family and friends. We had many, many adventures in this boat. I will share some more of our fun and excitement another day.
Talk to you soon!
hugs,
puglette
:o)