On the Ocean

Last weekend, we made the trip down to visit Ty's parents, Jeff and Pam, in Dallas, Oregon.  Jeff had promised to take us out salmon fishing in the ocean.  Jeff is a very experienced fisherman, and offered to share some of his skills with us.

Pam and Jeff keep their boat -- Happy Anniversary -- moored at a big, beautiful marina in Newport, Oregon.  Newport is where the Yaquina River flows into the Pacific, and is home to some of the west coast's largest commercial fishing fleets.  In other words, there were a lot of boats for us to gawk at!

Jeff knew there wasn't much luck of us getting salmon as the season hasn't really ramped up quite yet, so we brought along two big crab pots to drop on our way out.  (And according to Newport's official website, it's the "Dungeness Crab Capitol of the World," so we knew we'd have good luck getting crab at least.)

We headed out to the ocean and left our pots right past the breakwater.  After that, it was out into the open ocean where we dropped our lines.  As expected, we didn't get any fish, but we certainly got some bites.  Being out on the ocean with expanses of water and sky on all sides was amazing!

We headed back in to check on the pots and were amazed at what we got.  Over 12 of the largest Dungeness I've ever seen.

 

Pam and Ty were naturals pulling up the pots together.  I stayed out of the way and snapped pictures.

 

 

After pulling in the pots, we headed up the Yaquina to do a bit of sight-seeing.  The river quickly leads away from the hubub of downtown Newport and into quiet areas with lots of wildlife.

Once we'd gottn Happy Anniversary cleaned up and the crabs packed into coolers for the ride home, it was great to head back to Pam and Jeff's house to boil up some crab and enjoy them -- along with some cold drinks.  Yum!