I would rank this year’s fishing trip as the best ever. This was our 13th consecutive year, and 14th overall trip, since we returned in September in the year of the Blob.
We didn’t know until the last minute that we would be able to fish, due to the Covid-19 restrictions of the state of Alaska. The 14-day quarantine, of course, was a non-starter. Then they allowed visitors who had a negative test within 72 hours of arrival…Captain Tom organized testing with StrataClear, and that worked perfectly, with results arriving 24 hours after we submitted the samples.
Angling Unlimited did extremely well in Covid-19 precautions. We were exposed only to our hostess Colleen (who always wore a mask), and Capt. Tom and deckhand Captain Jack.
It seemed like there were only about 30-40% of the usual number of boats fishing. Fishing was the best ever, as we caught limits on everything every day and were done by 12 noon. We even released a number of kings. Unfortunately, we had to release our largest king (because we already had four in the boat). Willie caught it on rock fish gear. We had to release our largest halibut, which I caught in 100 feet of water using rock fish gear. The thing was clearly a monster, as it ran out 500 feet of line. It took forever to gain on it. When I got it beside the boat, Captain Tom estimated its weight at 100 lb. We don’t expect to catch that large a halibut in shallow water. On the second day, we released our first king. It was legal, but small. After a few hours, we had three kings in the boat and wondered whether we should have kept the first. Then we had four kings on the line at the same time—a really fun frenzy of everyone dashing around the boat, following Tom’s instructions of where to go, passing lines underneath or over top of others. We released three of the four, making our catch total four, and our release total also four for the day. On the third day, we also had four kings on the line at the same time. I believe that has happened to us only once in 13 prior fishing trips. The weather was comfortable, a little rain one day and not much wind.
I am a 75-year old retired physician, and Willie and Alex are the same age. Each of us must make our own decision about exposure risks. Personally, I rated the risk as low, and we were particularly glad for the fishing trip after months of staying at home.