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…
We 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…
Unique 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…
Grades 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…
Final 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…
The 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…
Silver 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…
Silver 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…
Our 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…