June ended pretty much as it began with mostly calm weather, not much rain, excellent fishing for rockfish and halibut but slow, spotty king fishing. The component of luck in the king formula remains exceptionally high with a few boats doing okay amidst others that don’t get a bite. This reflects the ongoing low abundance of…
Monday afternoon, June 18, Captain Ryan Refshaw and the Ravalin party fishing on Skute made one more stop before heading home. Captain Ryan metered the area with the depth sounder and found a big mass of baitfish. He stopped and the lines went in. Not long afterward, Matt Ravalin hooked into a king and thus began…
I’m temporarily suspending one of my favorite sayings: “Good luck is a bad fisherman’s estimation of a good fisherman’s work”. Hard work and fishing skills, the hallmarks of all our captains, currently require an usually large portion of luck right now. To the point, the kings remain in short supply despite good signs of bait,…
I’ve often wondered when spin, as in political, advertising, or in this case fishing, becomes lying. We like to remain positive and there’s much to be said for fishing in Southeast Alaska and Sitka that goes beyond the catching. Also, salmon aren’t the only fish in the sea. But, to cut to the chase, the…
The 2017 season began with Hook It and Cook It in mid-May and finished nearly four months later on September 10. A run down of various stretches of the season are available by looking through this year’s fishing reports. Here’s the high-level summary of the season and the grades earned: Kings Salmon: D We…
Silvers in Randomland The silver has gone from an automatic to a bit more work for the past two weeks. The fish are mainly offshore – meaning in deep water on their migratory routes. They aren’t heavily schooled and concentrated over bait. Speaking of which, there isn’t a major baitfish concentration offshore and we’re…
Coho Ascending It would be hard for silver fishing to get faster than it has been for nearly two months. In truth, it has gotten a little more of a hunt and peck game in the last week. That said, limits or near limits have been attained most days and the silvers are showing their…
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced an emergency closure of the king salmon fishery throughout Southeast Alaska, effective midnight August 9. In simple terms – all kings will have to be released unharmed for the rest of the season after Wednesday the 9th. The “extreme management measures” apply to the entire Southeast Region,…
July 2017 reigns as the calmest month we’ve ever seen in Sitka. We went weeks on end fishing a dead calm ocean and the wind only blew a few days during the month. We pretty much ran all over the ocean at full cruising speed. The fishing from the beginning to the end of the…
Calm Seas, lots of silvers, easy halibut, and a bit more struggle than normal for kings. The pattern of the first half of July continues. How long the extreme calm can last? Who knows, but not forever. It appears the silver run will just keep racing along. The kings remain easy one day, hard the…