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I just got back from an awesome Alaskan trip. We stayed at Dove Island Lodge in Sitka. (Not exactly roughing it!) We fished the salt water for King Salmon and Halibut three days and flew out in a float plane one day for Cutthroat. I limited on Kings every day. Most of the Kings we got were 12-15 lbs. One guy in our group caught a 42 lb hog! Halibut fishing was a bit tougher, but we came back with a few small ones. We also got yelloweye rockfish and black bass.
We were fishing with Taylor on the Bay Son. Taylor is the youngest licensed charter captain in Sitka (20 years old). This kid grew up fishing Sitka and deck handing for his dad, also a Sitka guide. I was really impressed with Taylor's knowledge and professionalism. His rough water boat handling skills were tops, too.
On our last day, we ran across a crab boat on the rocks on the inner passage east of Kruzof Island. The skipper had reportedly fallen asleep at the helm. It apparently wasn't too disastrous. The boat was gone when we came back in. They floated it off on the high tide.
The lodge was fantastic. The meals were incredible. We had a cabin 25' from the ocean with a jacuzzi on the balcony. Not what you expect from and Alaskan fish camp!
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Ahhh,someday! Nice looking kings,Ive heard that the bigger halibut are getting scarce.Most we are getting at our market are 25-30 lbs.On the flip side the copper river sockeye have been beautiful for first of the season.
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Nice report and pics Jim, thanks for sharing it with us. Was that second to last pic taken in Sitka? The bridge in the back ground looks like the one they have in Juneau Alaska.
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Good on ya Jim! Im jealous maybe next year Alaska is a dream of mine
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All the pics were in Sitka. I think that's someone's dock laying on the shore.
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We didn't try for the bigger halibut. According to the locals, it's all a commercial fishing industry conspiracy. There's a slot limit on them now for guided trips. All halibut between 44" and 86" (if I remember correctly) have to be released on a charter boat. The commercial guys can keep them. The private boaters can keep them as well. So, basically you can keep one halibut a day less than 40 lbs or over 160 lbs. Both skippers we fished with said we can go anchor up on the bigger fish, but you'll have to throw almost all of them back. The chances of getting one over the slot are thin and they said it's not worth the effort. They're pretty bitter about it. So, what we did was drift the smaller halibut areas culling small fish in hopes of landing a 25-40# fish. We brought home about 5 smaller ones total.
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Very nice!!! I have a trip coming July 13, I can't wait. we'll be in excursion inlet about 60 miles west from Juneau.
thanks for sharing the pics. looks like a cool place.
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Looks like a great time and beautiful area, I'm jealous as well. However I'll be up there the end of august for the silvers and all bottom fish. Did you guys see any bears on the flyout fishing trip? Looks like a great stream for bears to be on. I'll be going on a self-guided trip with CalderMountainLodge out on Prince of Wales Island, love the self-guided fishing cause you can have total control of your fishing time and species you want to catch plus theres no slot for the halibut and you can keep 2 each. and the silvers this time of year average 14-22 lbs. But we definitely don't stay in the fancy lodges like you were in but it's still a nice place and fantastic people and meals. Thanks again for sharing your experience and I'm really getting pumped now after seeing your pics, love Alaska.
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Didn't see any bears on the flyout, but we saw one on our last day there just after going by the beached crab boat. The skipper chopped the throttles and turned toward him. That sent him high tailing it into the trees, so we didn't get any pictures. It was still pretty neat to get to see one.
I sat next to a guy on the flight back who sent me a link to a couple Prince of Wales Island self guided outfits that we are definitely going to check out. That high-end of a lodge normally wouldn't be my style, but there was a business aspect to it as well, so I jumped in. Probably do the self guided thing next! The limits are a lot more friendly when you don't have a guide. Good luck and take lots of pictures!
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I don't blame you for jumping in on a deal like that, but I do reccommend the self-guided trips over guided for a lot of reasons as long as you know what your doing with that type of fishing. There are a lot of nice outfitters that provide self-guide fishing and most of them take good care of you, all you have to do is get out of bed and go fishing and they do the rest. The CalderMountainLodge I've been going to is a family run business and they are super nice people. This will be my third time using them and we have that area figured out pretty well for catching fish. The only thing about this area is there is a lot current in this area and it makes it hard to fish for the halibut. We have finally figured out how to deal with this problem and it's all good now, we started having to back troll to stay on top of the fish and this made all the difference. We hope to have a great time and catch a lot of fish and I will post pics. If you are interested in this outfitter all you have to do is look-up CalderMountainLodge.com.. I highly recommend them. The picture on my profile is from this place, I did a self-guided bear and fish combo 2 years ago with them and it was a memory of a life time.
Better Gitcha Some
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[quote perchound] Looks like a great stream for bears to be on. I'll be going on a self-guided trip with CalderMountainLodge out on Prince of Wales Island, love the self-guided fishing cause you can have total control of your fishing time and species you want to catch plus theres no slot for the halibut and you can keep 2 each. and the silvers this time of year average 14-22 lbs.[/quote]
I went to POW with Calder Mountain a few years ago. You are in for a treat. I hope to get back there again myself in the future. When are you going?
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I'm going the week of august 28th thru september 4th. How did you like your trip with them, and did you do well fishing? The reason I ask is because some folks don't do very well if they haven't had any experience with this type of fishing not to mention the currents in this area make it tuff for the bottom fishing. However, the currents don't play a roll in the salmon fishing, the salmon are eager and plentiful and the amount of whale activity in this area is amazing. I really like this place because most of the self-guided outfits are all about numbers and CALDER only books twenty guests for the week and Pats cooking is out of this world. I have looked at Doc Warners but they are another 500.00 more in price and they have as many as 85 people per week, don't think that would be as personal of an experience. But all in all if your fishing in Alaska no matter where your at, it's an amazing place. This will be my 8th time up there and I have tried a lot of different outfitters and have had a great time on all of them. Once I got the experience I now prefer the self-guided trips.
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[quote perchound]I'm going the week of august 28th thru september 4th. How did you like your trip with them, and did you do well fishing? The reason I ask is because some folks don't do very well if they haven't had any experience with this type of fishing not to mention the currents in this area make it tuff for the bottom fishing. However, the currents don't play a roll in the salmon fishing, the salmon are eager and plentiful and the amount of whale activity in this area is amazing.[/quote]
I loved it and did extremely well fishing. I was there for a continuing education meeting, so half our time was dedicated to the classes, but there was still plenty of time on the water. Some of the guys with us had done it before, which eased the learning curve, but we got halibut every day we were out. Between the GPS locations provided by the lodge and hitting the halibut especially at slack tide, we got plenty, plus some nice rockfish. The only bottom fish we didnt catch was ling. We also learned that if there was a high chop on the water, to head to Defiance bay (I think that is what it is called) and even put a few bots in the boat there as well, along with a bunch of cod and rockfish.
I was there the first week of July, which had some silver action and a lot of pinks, but the silvers were a bit smaller than what you will get at your time. We still got plenty of salmon. (no kings though, the one (tiny) bummer of the trip) You are right about the whales. The area is a must if someone in the party wants to whale watch. We had a pod of orcas come within a stones throw of the boat. Way cool but a bit scary. We watched the humpbacks all day while we fished.
I'd definitely do the self guided there again in a heartbeat, especially with the new halibut regs. The only thing on my next AK trip is I'd like to work in a day or two of stream fishing, but they still can accommodate that too.
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Sounds like you had a great time as well. I don't recall a bay by the name of Defiance but there is a bay called Port Protection Bay that is poplar, I'll have to do some home work or ask Bill about a Defiance Bay.
The silvers are definitely larger in the later part of the season, second run. That's why we go that time of year, puts a lot more fish in the freezer. It's fun to catch a big king during early season but your only aloted 2 or 3 for the year so going later makes more sense to me if you want to fill the frezer. We have fished the rivers there also but I prefer the Soldotna area more for river fishing especially the Russian River or the Kasilof. All in all it's a great place to go, and for self-guided fishing it's hard to beat considering the accommendations and the way your taken care of. I would reccommend CalderMountainLodge to anyone, nice people.
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I was uncertain about the name of the bay and went and looked it up on a map. It is called on this map Lebouchere bay. Sorry about that.
http://www.mappery.com/map-of/Prince-of-...Island-Map
Bill had programmed on the GPS units a couple of waypoints in the bay for halibut. They weren't their favorites compared to some other locations, but it really saved the day one day when we had rough seas out on the main areas and we still got our quota of halibut there.
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That North End of POW there is where the guides out of Coffman Cove take people to halibut fish now. Halibut right near Coffman Cove are almost universally too big in the summer to keep with a guide under the new regs so they head up to that area for the dinks under 40 lbs. Whale watching up there is spectacular until a few pass gas within a 100 yards of you or you have to move your boat not to get squashed[pirate]. Try a real DIY trip and hit the 2500 miles of roads (mostly forest roads) on the POW and have the freedom to go where you want when you want. We're headed to Whale Pass this year in 4 weeks for a 12 day trip. Most days we still see more beers on the stream than people.
I don't think the halibut restrictions are a conspiracy at all. Yes the commercial fishermen can keep them within a set harvest limit for the region. However when the 1 limit and reverse slot was introduced for guided trips they also reduced the permits for commercial halibut. Only female halibut get very large. So if everybody kept only 100 lb+ fish it would impact spawning females disproportionately.
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Ok, I'm familiar with this bay and it is a good place when the main waters are ruff. When I have gone in the past it seems that most of the waypoints they give you are fished pretty heavily by the end of august so me and my buddies have gotten a contour map of the area and found other spots that are good for halibut that haven't been fished and we do very well. Just something for you to think about in the future if you make it back up there, we also take our own gps that we have put in some cordinances of these areas and this puts us right where we need to be. We try to be as aggresive as we can using every tool we've got to put us on fish.
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This sounds like a fantastic trip to go on. I'd love to see a lot more of the island and be able to fish all the streams and rivers not to mention the wildlife that lives there. Do you rent a car at Whale Pass or somewhere else. If your going in 4 weeks what species of fish will you be able to fish for and do you also work in some halibut fishing besides the river fishing while your there?
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You can rent a car in Ketchikan and take it over on the Ferry. You can also get rentals from various locals on POW Island. This time we're getting a Suburban from these guys http://hollisadventurerentals.com/Prices.html
Besides the Ferry, there's the float planes that'll take you anywhere if the weather is good. There is a paved runway outside Klawock that has quite few flights back and forth from Ketichikan daily. Island Air has many flights back and forth on a Caravan that can fly when most other flights are grounded due to weather. We chose Whale Pass this year because of the runs of silvers all summer and we have only fished down that way a few times on other trips. We come back early August so sometime you can get some of the second run of silvers elsewhere by then. Normally we'd go at least a week later. We mostly river fish but will dock fish and set up some spur of the moment guided ocean fishing for halibut and rockfish as well as pick up some ocean kings and silvers if we're waiting for tides to change to start halibut fishing. The locals on the island are incredible nice down to earth folks. Can't tell you how many times we been given smoke salmon as well as fruit and vegetables from their gardens. Plus invaluable advise about when and where runs are going or who to call to set up an ocean trip. It's off the easy travel routes so you don't get the riff raff that you see further north. Almost no one locks their cars or let alone houses still. Whole different feel to the island than further North.
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