Robert Hogrefe - The Lone Whale
Our family fishes the late summer King and Silver salmon run in Juneau, AK every year. The weather at that time can vary from sunny to full time rain. We boat fish, therefore we are also exposed to the ocean variables of waves and cold temperatures. Every day is an adventure on the water depending on weather, ocean and the fishing. Polarguard is a mandatory layer every day and is as essential as fishing poles. One day, we had fished hard since before dawn without much success. We decided to try out a new area in between two islands that we were told about. We started catching some nice Silver salmon by trolling the shoreline near the tip of one island. All of a sudden, a Humpback whale surfaced not 20 ft. from our 26 ft. aluminum rented boat. In the next heartbeat, our wire downrigger line (which takes the fishing lure down to desirable depths) started screaming as the spool reel spinned in a blurr and our wireline headed off horizontally at the speed of light. We helplessly watched as 200 ft. of wireline disappeared from the spool in seconds. After a "pop" from the end of the wireline, the whale again surfaced several hundred feet distant showing our line trailing after one huge fin. The whale dived, then shortly surfaced again, this time showing that our line had fell off his fin. Since the wireline had carried a 10# weight attached, it sunk after the whale released it, along with the entire spool of line. We sat there speechless and stunned for a few minutes by the whale's surprize appearance. Typically, one sees Humpback whales in their pods moving around together that allows boats to keep a safe distance. We never saw another whale in our area either before or after our surprise. There are stories about boats bumping into whales when approaching too close in order to get a great photo, but this can be a violation of rules and fines can result. We ended up heading home that day grateful that our boat was safe as was the lone whale.

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