August, 2011 | 153 Fish Camp Weblog

Congrats to Dewey Bastedo, who made his fame by catching 7 limits of fish, in 7 days, on his 7th trip to Fish Camp!

Week five was fantastic! Usually it’s about this time that the salmon run slows down just a little bit, as the silvers are moving out and the pinks are coming in, but instead the run has stayed the same, if not gotten better!

The humpies (pink salmon) are starting to come in, which is nice because it allows the guys to keep more fish. (Six salmon per species, per person, per day.) Surprisingly enough there were very few snaggers this week! Most everybody stuck to lure-fishing and did extremely well, bringing in 371 silvers for the week! Those Flying C’s are like gold now! (But the Blue Fox lures worked pretty good too!)

Since our previous problems with the halibut boat, we have not been able to get it running again, so we’ve gone back to sending the guys out to the North Entrance in the small boats until we are able to buy a new motor for it. These guys made two trips out there, and managed to pull in a nice halibut!

The evening studies were great as well. Pastor Dean Walker, of Garfield Washington, had the entire group involved in going through certain Psalms throughout the week, which promoted a lot of good discussion and great learning.

I was looking through the pictures on my camera, and I just realized that we only have 4 pictures of this entire week! Oops! If anybody from this week has any great pictures they would like to share, feel free to email them to me at 45below@gmail.com. I’ll post them up! (That goes for all summer as well, not just this camp!)

Overall it was a fantastic week. Thanks so much guys for putting up with our halibut boat difficulties, and nice job on the silver-slaying!

Here’s the group photo:

Left to right: Jonah, Jacob, Ken, Keith, John, Ron, Mike, Dean, Art, Dewey, Mariah, Rusty, Miles, Mitch, Hollis.

Thank you all.

Well… it’s been a while. 🙂 We have a lot of catching up to do!

Week 4 was another great one. Nearly all of the campers were returning veterans, with only a couple being newcomers. Every single one said that the fishing was so much better than the last year they were here, which has been true for almost every week so far. The fish are in, and they’re biting hard! The Mepps Flying C, pink and chartreuse, has proven to be a killer. Tony was also catching them on a Krocodile spoon.

Us staff have been working on camp improvements as well. Jacob, Jonah, and I spent 8 hours underneath the cooking/eating cabin putting up insulation.

But we’ve still had plenty of time to have fun…

Meet Jonah Stone – an axe throwing maniac.

The big adventure of the week was centered around halibut fishing. We got in a new CDI unit and installed it, which fixed the motor problem. One group of guys went out and caught a couple of fish, but accidentally forgot to bring the gaff or harpoon! They lost the two fish, went to shore, cut a stick into a harpoon, but unfortunately never got to test it out on another fish. Not to be deterred, they went out on a second trip to try again. They boated two fish, but then disaster struck… the motor broke down once again! Once they realized that the motor wasn’t going to get started again, they lowered the kicker to try, but that wouldn’t start either! These guys were out in Snow Pass, about 22 miles from camp, bobbing up and down in the 4-5 foot whitecaps, with two dead motors! Thankfully, they had the SPOT system, which told us they were having difficulties, and they also had the Coast Guard give the camp a call. Mark Gunkel (Dad) and I borrowed the neighbor’s Boston Whaler and set out to tow them home. It took a while to find them, because they had drifted so far from their fishing spot. However, when we got there, the guys were in good spirits, despite being broke down and starving. Tony was even fishing off the back of the boat as they drifted along!

Dad climbed into the halibut boat and tinkered with the motor while Tony, Brian, and I started towing them home. After a bit, Dad and Brad got the kicker going (water in the gas) and that helped our speed some. Even still, it was a long haul. We were making 12 mph water speed, but because we were fighting the current and the large waves, our average speed was only about 6-8 mph. Needless to say, it was a long, wet ride back, and everybody was happy to get back to dry land, and a dinner (only about 3 1/2 hours late.)

We’re really thanking God, because His hand was in the “rescue.” We had little trouble finding the guys, and the ride back was uneventful. It easily could’ve been much worse.

As you can see, it was a pretty crazy week. Even though the halibut trips didn’t really pan out, the guys still loaded up on the salmon. More importantly however, we all just had a great time fellowshipping together. What a great group of guys. Pastor Bill Bull gave another great series of devotionals, which really capped off the week nicely. And we can’t forget about Zeke reciting the poem of “Old One Eye” the 900lb halibut!All in all, it was as week to be remembered for a long time. And it will be every time these guys eat some of the 378 silvers they brought in this week! Nice job!

Here’s the group photo:

Left to right, back row: Pastor Rob, Brian, Chris, Brenna, Brad, Zeke, Tom, Jacob

Front row: Jason, Michael, Tony, Noah, Jerry.

Thanks for a great week guys!

7 trips, 7 days, 7 limits

A successful week once again.