Left to Right – Emma, Jenny, and Calleigh with a King, Chum, and Silver
The Good News – Endless amounts of salmon on the ocean west of Sitka
The Bad News – A few too many of them are pinks
Those uninitiated to fishing Sitka might wonder why our guests bemoan constant attacks on their baits by 3 to 6 pound pink salmon. We might like them more if pinks were the only fish in the sea. But, they are actually the least desired fish in the sea due to their less than stellar food quality. Plus, they run constant interference to hooking more highly desired silvers and kings.
This season we’re also seeing a bumper crop of chum salmon – bigger than pinks, extremely hard fighting, and the big bright ones are much better eating than pinks. Still, they aren’t quite on par with kings and coho which remain two target species. Regardless of which salmon species you hook, the action seems endless right now.
Focusing on the main act of August – silver fishing has hit a steady, albeit wavy, pace. Some days we’re seeing limits (6 per angler) while other days the catches are half to three quarter limits. The silvers are getting steadily bigger as expected as they eat voraciously in preparation for their spawning run. King fishing continues the mystifying pattern we’ve seen all season – very random from day to day and boat to boat. The limit has been raised to two per day and four per season, an almost unattainable target given the lower abundance. The average right now is a couple of kings per boat per day.
Marty Feinmark with a king salmon
The Placek Party
Halibut fishing remains reliable but the white hot bite seems to have slowed a bit. As our guests target salmon with the boat on anchor, we send one bait deep for halibut and get them without taking a long run. The key to attaining high scores on the silvers is “rod time” and running longer distances cuts into that time.
Speaking of long runs – guests aren’t opting to cut into the salmon fishing time to pursue blackcod. In the best of times, catching blackcod will take a 4 hour commitment. These aren’t the best of times and that big time commitment hasn’t been rewarded with limit catches. In short, it’s not worth giving up catching salmon to run way offshore with no guarantee of putting blackcod in the hold.
Rockfish remain abundant yet seem fussier than normal. Yelloweye remain open for one per angler per year. The weather has been mostly grey, calm, and delightfully cool for people escaping the sweltering temperatures in the lower 48.