Fishing & Swimming with Orcas while Camping in Alaska on an Island. Fishing Catch & Cook

Luke and Tom here at the Outdoor Boys YouTube channel and we're here with my brother and his son on a remote island in Alaska and we've been camping, fishing, spearfishing and having a good time haven't we? Yeah we have. It will be. Alright guys we're here with John who's going to be our captain and we're with Coldwater Alaska and we are going to be spearfishing, rod and reel fishing, camping. It's going to be awesome and look at this weather guys. We couldn't ask for better weather than this. Alright we're just taking a little stop to drop a chum bag down in this cove and this might be a spot we hit later on but look how pretty it is and there's just sea otters everywhere. Got a brick of frozen chum and a little herring oil on a paper towel. Gonna drop that down in a crab bait bag, let that soak and bring in the fish. Dan's wasting no time here. He's spot sampling. Yes I am. Alright got a chum overboard we're gonna keep heading down the coast. There's a whale right in front of us. I think it might be a humpback. Yeah right there see the fountain there's the tail. This is amazing. Here I want you to hold the rod. We're just heading to a spearfishing spot and we saw some signals on the fish finder so we're just going to drop some lures down and see if we can't pick something up real quick. You want to reel it in? Yes. Come here. Here come here. On you buddy. Let's see what you got Tom. Let's see what you got. A little greenling. Oh they're pretty. There you go. Look how pretty that sucker is. Yeah. I got a little guy too. You got a little guy? Got something. Oh another greenling. That's a prettier. Yeah they're pretty. Oh nice Dan. Here let me get pop them off. There you go. Pretty fish huh? Yeah. Now those are called greenling and while they're a gorgeous fish and they make great lean cod bait they're not the best table fare so we'll just send those one back. We're gonna get some better fish today. Alright that was a fun little drip we're gonna pick it up and go try another spot. Got a little spot here a little bit of kelp right depth. Visibility's not horrible. Yeah. Oh you got a rockfish? Yeah that's a nice little black rockfish. That's exactly what we're looking for. Alright. Tuck him in there. Got one there. Nice little guy. Oh another one Dan. That's a nice one Dan. While I'm getting geared up the guys are jigging for black rockfish and so far you already got two in the boat right? Oh there you go. Oh kelp greenling. Nice. I knew something was biting. Oh look at that nice nice little greenling. I'm a mama is that a grayling? Greenling. You got another one Tommy here? Yeah that's a big one. Yeah. We're just hitting them one after another. Alright guys this is my first time diving in Alaska and it was so different than anything I've done before. It's like diving in an underwater forest. You've got these massive 30 foot tall bull kelp plants all around you and you're just swimming through leaves. It's really a unique experience. Son of a gun. My spear broke off and went flying. No I don't have the equipment to fix it if I did. Now our target species was rockfish and halibut and one of the big techniques we used was to go slightly downstream from the chum bag and hide in the weeds and you'd sit there in this little snowing chum and wait for a halibut or a rockfish to come up. We'd see lots of these kelp greenling and I was doing this right by the boat and so I could actually watch my brother fish and he was literally out fishing me while he was sitting there trying to look for a rockfish. I'm just basking in the sun like a fat seal on a rock. Hey Tom, you having fun? Yes. Gonna take a hot shower here. That helps get the feeling back in my feet. My socks are like hot water bottles now. We didn't see a lot of fish just a couple black rockfish and a whole bunch of kelp greenling but we're gonna go pick up and try another spot one of these other places we chummed up. So far Dan's been the one tearing it up. He's got three black rockfish in the coolers. Something little. This is a big, this is a heavy rock. You know this looks like a lingcod. That's a baby ling dude. Yeah it's a baby lingcod. Those are good eating but not legal. Yeah it's a little small too. Yeah multiple levels of illegality. All right Dan what you got? I have no idea. There you go. That guy hit it hard. Like a big skullfish. Just dozens of sea otters. Yeah you can see the little babies riding on their tummies. All right we're back at this chum bag we dropped earlier. We're gonna go dive on it see what's there. This next spot was really different from the other one. There was mostly sand and it was wide open. So I'd go and I'd shake up the chum and I'd sit there and look for halibut in the sand and they're really camouflaged. You have to look really hard. After kind of making circles around the chum bag I'd go downstream in a zigzag pattern looking for any halibut or rockfish that were following the chum back to the chum bag. And we saw lots of really cool stuff. There was starfish and you notice there was all of these little dimples and depressions on the bottom. Those were caused by sea otters where they would dive down and dig up the clams and eat them. We also saw little baby halibut little one inch halibut hiding in the sand. But one of the coolest things was we started to hear orcas. Yeah yeah. For the next hour there was a pod of orcas hunting salmon right around the boat. We got to see them jump and breach and hunt. It was really cool. But it was creepy having an 8,000 pound predator bouncing sonar waves off us while it hunted. I could hear him down there. Yeah underwater there. Dory this is not whale. You're speaking like upset stomach. I didn't see any halibut but there were a ton of greenling in this spot and they would come right up to you and you could get so close to them. I was very tempted to take a shot on several occasions. At one point one of them was even close enough that I could just touch him with the tip of my spear. I am frozen. I need to get some more hot water in my wet suit. Oh it's better. Well we saw some flounders. I saw a ton of kelp greenling. I saw a little baby halibut. You guys having fun? Yeah. We're gonna do a quick dive on another spot. Most of these dive spots was in about 35 feet of water and we'd sit just downstream from these chum bags looking for halibut swimming through the kelp so we could ambush them. You'd also kind of look in these sand patches to try to see if you could have any halibut. You had to get down low to try to see if you could see their profile in the sand. After my fourth fifth or sixth hot shower seventh hot shower we're gonna we're gonna try another spot but we're gonna do a little jigging on the way over here. Maybe we'll pull something out. This is the worst point right. Check it out there's seals right there. In this final spot we dove down on the chum bag and we saw a bit of cod sitting there. You can see right there there's like a little cod right on the chum bag and I thought about shooting him but then I just let him go. But I'd go downstream in the chum slick and saw lots of kelp greenling and sculpin but no halibut. My brother however had loads of luck catching cod and kelp girly. Man look at that champion sized cod. Look at this. My fish don't jiggle jiggle he folds. You know I'm actually a lot warmer now than I was last one. Oh well I am totally gassed guys but it's been awesome. But uh John's just being an absolute champ. He's putting in a lot of work to try to get us on fish and uh he's gonna take us to one last jigging spot before we camp for the night. We're gonna see if we can't catch a few black bass. Feels feels good to be warm. All right you tell us when you need to drop. Okay yeah Dan's got something. That's a rockfish. Is that like a dusky or something? A little baby dusky? That's what it looks like. Hey man. That's a big old one. Yeah there you go. Go on real real aggressive John. I got one. Copper rockfish dude. I've never seen one of those. I think that's the non one of the non-pelagic if I remember correctly. Oh that's you can keep you can keep one of those. Oh yeah sure reel that in Tom reel that in. Oh Okay John does the sickest eagle call I've ever heard. There you go Tom. Get him Tom get him. Nice Tom. Oh lizard fish. That's a decent one. Oh I got my rockfish. You got one? Oh Tommy. Tommy's got a lizard fish. I had it on for a long time. Oh that was awesome. We caught so many rockfish but we're gonna just mosey on down here and see if we can't snag a salmon just for a minute or two before we call it. Hey there's salmon right there. Yeah. Wait wait wait wait wait. Pulled this boat into this little slough here and there we can see salmon it's just crystal clear and we're trying to use rock fishing jigs to get them. There you go bring it around to the side. I hooked a beautiful red we got him up and he broke off as we're getting him over the rail but he was so fatigued he just kind of went down and went belly up so I tried to get the gaff to get him almost fell over and somebody grabbed my heel kept me from going over and then my that was John and then my glasses went in and I managed to get those so that was a lot of fun and really sketchy. Oh that was so awesome but we gotta get going it's getting late and we still need to set up our camp. That's our ride no way getting off this island until John comes back for us. I'm very hungry. Look at this this is a this is a root ball right here. Gray tender. I think it's time to start cooking some dinner and we've got some hamburgers to cook so I am really looking forward to that. Some ketchup, tomatoes, and we've got onions, lettuce. What do you think Tom? Burger tastes good? Yeah. The hamburgers were good but they disappeared a little too quickly. I think we need to go fillet up some of those fish. Oh I did it but my legs have gotten up. Oh boy there we go nice pile of fish fillets. All right I got some sweet chili sauce and mayo here I'm gonna put on my fish burger. There we go fish burger. I really like rockfish. Well guys it is late and I am exhausted so I'm gonna hit the sack but uh we've got a full day here tomorrow and uh cross our fingers there aren't any bears on this island because we've got food laying around everywhere and we reeking fish. It's hard to communicate to you at home how much of an incline there is in this tent. I feel like I'm sliding down a hill in a potato sack. I have the high ground. It's over Anakin. Tommy take my hand. Don't let go. Be brave. Well it is a gorgeous day today. Look at this. All right guys well I'm gonna go ahead and start cooking some breakfast and I think my brother here is gonna go try some surf fishing. Well I got breakfast simmering over the fire. Oh look at all the mussels here. Look at that. Tommy and Ben have been beach combing. Let's go see what they found. Oh look at that starfish. That is a cool one. We're looking for octopus. I want to eat one. Another starfish. All right. Sitting here cleaning up the campsite and Dan's got a fish. A lot of seaweed. You know what that's like a little cod thing. Yeah. Yeah look at that little tom cod. Wonder how long he's been on there. There you go Ben. There you go. You want some popcorn? Yes. All right I'll give you some popcorn. Let's go. All right. There you go. Watch out. Watch out. Watch out. Tommy like that? It's been a lovely low-key morning. We went and shot the 22 a little bit. Me and Tommy went and explored the island but we got word the boat's gonna pick us up in about 30 minutes so uh we're gonna kind of get everything packed up and stacked up on the water's edge. Get ready for the boat. Here comes our ride. John thank you so much for an awesome trip. We had such a great time. Listen guys if you're ever in Homer, Alaska and you'd like to do this too make sure to check out Cold Water Alaska. I'll put a link in the video description below. Thanks for coming with us. Awesome. Line or mail? We're a little hungry so we got a pizza for me and Dan. Oh that looks good. Got that? Okay. That's heavy. Go take the pizza box inside. Well listen guys that was an awesome trip. I hope you guys have enjoyed this video. If you want to see more videos from the Outdoor Boys YouTube channel make sure to click subscribe. We've got tons of videos. Check out our playlist. Thanks for watching. Have a great day. I'll see you guys next Saturday. If you like this video don't forget to check out the Outdoor Boys YouTube channel where we have hundreds of videos just like this and don't forget to click subscribe so you can see other great videos every Saturday morning and hit that bell button you'll get notifications. Thanks for watching.