Fishing Fun

Out of all the things we did on vacation, our two fishing trips were by far our favorites. When I started planning our trip in January, I found a Half Off Deals website sponsored by a local tv station in the Bar Harbor area. After watching the site for a couple weeks, I got lucky. They offered a special for adult tickets for fishing or puffin tours through Acadia Nature Cruises. I don't remember the exact special, but it was quite a good deal. I ordered enough deals to get 8 tickets and ended up spending around $90 for $360 worth of tickets!! I scheduled one fishing trip and one puffin tour for the four of us.

As it got closer to vacation time and I was looking over our plans, I reread the description for the puffin tour. It also included a lighthouse tour, and it sounded like something that would bore the kids silly. So, I cancelled that one and kept the fishing trip. After we went on our first fishing trip, we had so much fun we all wanted to go again. I used the remaining 4 tickets to book another trip later in the week. It could not have worked out better!

We had such a nice time. Our first trip was a 4 hour trip in the morning. The boat was not overly crowded, the crew was especially kind to Tyler and Danielle, and we caught a lot of fish. It was overcast, chilly, and a bit rainy but we didn't really notice. At one point when it was raining we realized the four of us were the only ones outside fishing! We saw some wildlife and especially enjoyed it when an eagle swooped down to within 20' of the boat to snatch a stunned pollock out of the water. (That was Ron's first catch of the day, which he sacrificed to see the eagle "perform".) Tyler outfished everyone on the boat; He was pulling them up 3 at a time. We had decided ahead of time to keep our fish and have them for dinner.  We caught mostly pollock and mackerel, but I pulled up a 14" cunner, which was the largest catch of the trip. The crew took pictures of him because they had never seen one so big.

A harbor seal bobbing in the water.

Cunner have teeth!

 

Our bucket of fish. We stopped keeping them after awhile because we had so many.

Ready to be cooked!

Ron pan fried the pollock and mackerel and baked the cunner. It was all pretty good. Tyler especially enjoyed the pollock. It was a great & memorable experience, which is exactly what we were hoping for.