Our blog, like our business, stems from a deep love of sport fishing. We’ll inform our readers about the fishing, the techniques, and the fisheries resources that are unique to Alaska. The focus begins with what we do at Angling Unlimited – high quality, light tackle, hands-on, saltwater sportfishing in Alaska. The view extends to locations and species all over North America.
Hard to imagine we’re about to hit the 2020s. Our outlook for the coming summer is positive for king salmon. The kings were more abundant and bigger in 2019. The commercial trollers had a good fall of king fishing off Sitka which is about the best predictor for abundance in the following year. We see…
DetailsWe christened Petrel, the first outboard powered AU boat, in the spring of 2019. Shiny and new, she drew a lot of attention at the dock. For many of our curious customers the main question was “why outboards?” Here’s the short answer and a quick review of the new boat after one season: Why: Refining…
DetailsUnique benefits to fishing mid-May through June 10th, 2020 in Sitka, Alaska. Kings only – If catching chinook is your thing, this is the time to focus on them. Catch rates are high and hopes of the tyee (over 30 pounds) are ever present. Inshore – In the early season we find kings in classic…
DetailsGrades for 2019 Coming up with grades for a season that runs from mid-May thru mid-September presents a challenge. We see ups and downs every year, but 2019 seemed particularly prone to peaks and valleys. Grading the season is an exercise in averaging 110 days of fishing into a single score that will look low…
DetailsFinal Report of 2019 Season – Saving the Best for Last September offers the widest range of possibilities in Sitka. We’ve seen it all from hard rain, wind and tough fishing to solid action under a cool blue sky. What we saw on September 10 extended the upper limit of that range. The morning dawned…
DetailsThe past week brought the biggest silvers of the year and a decent shot at kings. After a slowish day of silver fishing on September 1, we experienced a southeast blow with heavy rain on the 2nd which brought excellent silver fishing along with some kings. It was rough, the drift was fast, but the…
DetailsSilver fishing is coming into late season form. The numbers range from good to excellent and the size occasionally reaches the high teens. For the uninitiated, silvers reach a critical mass at somewhere between 10 and 12 pounds at which point they go from swirling and thrashing their way fairly quickly to the net to…
DetailsSilver fishing has ranged from excellent to picky over the past week. There have been days of early limits, there have been days of scratching all day to get half limits. And, there was Sunday when we had a howling north wind that made for very rough seas and difficult fishing. That was the first…
DetailsOur guests often wonder how in the world our regulations get set, so we’ll start with step one. Abundance based management is a means of establishing harvest levels based on the current abundance of each species. The abundance of stocks of fish, particularly salmon, can vary significantly from year to year. So, when stocks are…
DetailsKing Salmon: B- King fishing was solid throughout July which would have earned them a higher score were it not for the regulations which limited our anglers to one per trip. We found kings in all the usual place nearshore and a fair number out in deeper water as we pursued silvers. The kings of…
DetailsFishing in the last 10 days of July was good for kings and very spotty for silvers. As our season progresses, the emphasis become more and more on silvers and right now we’re wondering when they will make their way onshore in good numbers. The best silver action has been offshore in 300 to 400…
DetailsKings Salmon – B minus Kings made a significant comeback from a very slow 2018 as we continued to recover from the effects of the warm water event called “the blob” which began in 2013 and lasted nearly three years. There were stretches when king fishing got hot followed by a few days of hit…
DetailsKing fishing took an unexpected dip in the second week of June. It wasn’t totally bleak, but it got to be very hit or miss. On any given day, some of the boats would get limits while others struggled to get one. The general pattern is steadily building numbers of kings in mid-June. Thankfully, we’ve…
DetailsWe’ve been fishing two weeks now and can say unequivocally that 2019 is off to a very promising start. We’re finding good numbers of kings in a variety of spots along a wide stretch of the coast. The kings are bigger than the previous few springs with an average weight in the upper teens. Our…
DetailsThanks to all our loyal fans for the boat name suggestions. We ultimately landed on “Petrel” for the new boat name. We begin with looking at seabirds with attributes we like. Petrels are in group of off seabirds we often see offshore that includes albatrosses, shearwaters, and fulmars. Albatross and shearwater are already taken. We…
DetailsOn April 29, Captains Ryan and DJ spent the morning fishing and brought three king salmon to the boat. They also admit to missing a few bites that were definitely kings. The ocean was dead calm and they found nice size halibut on the bottom while mooching for salmon. They saw lots of baitfish…
DetailsIn the spring of 1999 “Shearwater” arrived at our dock. It was a custom walkaround cabin Almar that we designed, and she pretty much revolutionized the Sitka charter fleet. Within a few years there were at least a dozen Almar walkaround cabin models in the local fleet along with another dozen or more similar designs…
DetailsFor all of us at Angling Unlimited the season can’t come soon enough. Bright 16-hour spring days replace dark 16-hour winter nights. King fishing kicks into gear along with an exciting combination of halibut, lingcod, blackcod, and rockfish. AU is ready to do what we love doing most – sharing the excitement of fishing the…
DetailsWe get calls constantly regarding the regulations for the upcoming season. Of special interest are the king salmon and halibut regulations. Both species are managed based on forecast abundance for the coming season. This is the right way to manage fish, but it does mean waiting for data that will establish sustainable harvest levels.…
DetailsAnyone who fished with us between the years 2005 and 2014 more than likely remembers Aleta. She began as a hostess from 2005-2008, then moved up to office manager from 2009 – 2014. Her smiling face, lively sense of humor, and customer service lit up the office for all who entered. She loved getting to…
DetailsCaptain Spencer Chute and hostess Alli Godin met on the job at AU when they were new hires in 2015. It was Alli’s first summer in Alaska. Spencer had been fishing and working at other charter businesses in Sitka since 2007. The two were just friends thru the end of that first season. Alli missed…
DetailsBack in 2013, Ryan Leverington was going to college, studying criminal justice. A life-long lover of the great outdoors, especially hunting and fishing, he became aware of Angling Unlimited through a friend. He immediately applied for a deckhand position and started with AU in 2013. Lev earned a captain’s license in the winter of 2015.…
DetailsAngling Unlimited has been blessed through the years with a long list of great captains, deckhands, and land crew. The list most assuredly includes Captain Bryan Christensen, aka “the Cobrah”. For the past five years he has brought a terrific combination of fishing smarts and people skills to the helm, quickly developing a following of…
DetailsSarah Levar began as hostess at AU then moved on to become a deckhand. In 2017 she began running trips as our first woman captain. She took the helm on a more full-time basis in 2018. She’s also a licensed Occupational Therapist in Minnesota in the offseason. There she met Kurt Farber, a manufacturers rep…
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