August 16, 2023
Otis Fishing Report

Otis Fishing Report for August 16, 2023
It really is Groundhog Day in Katmai! For the third day in a row, Otis catches his first fish of the new day at 12:05 a.m.! The next 13 minutes are a bust, as Otis settles in for the long night of fishing.

Then suddenly — completely without warning — the next 10 minutes were hoppin’ like Grazer fishing on a Katmai midsummer night! Otis catches 6 fish in 10 ten minutes and consumes the better part of all but 1, which looked like a high-grade to our eye. And they were all this big!

If you watch closely when Otis eats, he really takes big bites out of his fish, despite having just those two good teeth. And he’s chewing too. So don’t let anyone tell you Otis’ tooth situ is a problem — he’s clearly got a Tooth Fairy in there helping him out. 😉

Where were we again? Oh, yeah — 30 minutes into the new day and Otis has caught 7 fish already! In the next 30 minutes, he catches 5 more!

Then things slow down a bit, except that Grazer hops in and leaves with a fish. And repeat. Grazer stays on what we believe is her third time, Otis catches a fish, and he takes it Behind the Curtain to eat. Curious because we do know Grazer can pirate (she taught her kiddlins everything they need to know about making a living), but she’s not prone to it. Perhaps somebeary else is lurking in the shadows. Or perhaps Otis just wants some privacy. Grazer finishes her meal and ZOOMs off (remember, we’re at 8.8x speed on rewinds– Otis ZOOMs too).

Things are rather quiet for some time and then at 3:00 a.m. the cams go wide and we lose our boy for a bit. Which is actually a good thing because then you can imagine Otis had 439 fish during that time. 😉 Just before 4:00 a.m., Brooks Falls cam zooms back in, and a few minute later Otis catches another and then another.

After that, he’s off cams a bit and we get highlights a while… and then Otis is napping in his Bank Bunk. 🙂 Not sure how many we missed, but they filled Otis belly!

Just before 7:00 a.m., Otis heads into his Office. He hits up three fish inspections before he goes for a walk around Alice’s, and returns. It’s a slow day at work, and by 9:00 a.m., Otis is napping again.

Around 10:30 a.m., our CamOp checks on Otis (confidently, based on the speed of the zoom) and suddenly and loudly the suspenseful score from JAWS plays in my head. Woah, wait, whaaa? WHERE’S OTIS? (no, we don’t know why our brain chose “JAWS”; our brain is just funny that way lol) Watch this mini-vid from Brooks Falls cam by SuspectCelery and let us know what theme song pops into your head!!

Well, thank goodness for that CamOp because that was our cue to check Brooks Falls Low, where we discovered Otis had snuck off for Platform Snoozles right about that time. Observant Otis stalkers would’ve noticed he had snuck out. 😉

And that’s where Otis has been all afternoon! Our total fish count midnight to now is 17 Fish + 1 High-Grade. We’re aware some chatters have said as many as 20-something fishes, and we respect that — but that’s not what we saw, and so we will have to agree to disagree. 🙂

We’ll catch you up in the morning, and until then wishes for fishes and big chunky coho! ♥

P.S. Speaking of CamOps, we made a casual comment (outside of a report) that it would be nice to be able to zoom into the Office overnight when Otis was Solo Fishing. The next day and every day since, that’s happened for several hours. So thank you, CamOps for that! ♥

Bear cam images in this post are copyright National Park Service and/or Explore.org