Alaska!

Gordo Grande · 07-21-2007, 02:11 PM

Sorry for the late report.

My wife and I took a cruise to Alaska last week. Of course, I had to fit a few fishing trips into my shore excursion schedule. I booked half-day trips in Juneau and Ketchikan.
The rest of the time was spent sight-seeing with the Mrs.

It was a good thing that I booked two trips, because the first one didnâ€™t go so well. I know what youâ€™re thinkingâ€¦.Gordo can even get skunked in Alaska! J Well, fishing is fishing wherever you go, and Alaska is no exception. Conditions were not ideal in Juneau.

I had booked my trip as a single, and was matched up with some good guys from Portland, a couple of guys my age with their sons. Sportfishing in
Alaska means trolling, and trolling is not my favorite way to fish. I guess it makes sense when you have limited time, and folks on board who are new to fishing, but Iâ€™d much rather be drifting with the current with a rod in my hands. I hate driving around the ocean waiting for a fish to bite.

The problem on the first boat was their rotation system. We had six guys and six rods out. Four of the rods were on downriggers, and two were on the surface. I had one of the rods that were up high. You can guess which rods were getting hit. All of the hits were on the two outside, low rods. Once a fish got hit, that guy had to sit it out, and his rod went to the guy to his right. Unfortunately, the rod to my left was also a high rod. Needless to say, I wasnâ€™t getting hit. By the time I finally got rotated to a low rod, there was only fifteen minutes of fishing time left. Oh well, I guess it was just the luck of the draw. Another half hour and I would have scored a few, but the ship doesnâ€™t wait for stragglers.

Looking on the bright side, at least all the younger guys got fish. Our total for the day was four fish for six guys, and all the fish were quality silver salmon. The scenery was awesome, the bald eagles were flying and diving, and we even saw a few whales while we were out there. One boat even reported that an Orca stole a guyâ€™s fish while he was reeling it in. The weather came up, and we had a real roller-coaster of a ride getting back into port, but it was still good fun.

Fortunately, things went a lot better in Ketchikan. The weather was beautiful, the seas were calm, and the eagles were everywhere. More important, the skipper and his deckhand, (who happened to be his wife), were a lot more laid back. They let us decide what kind of rotation we would do. I had hooked up with a couple from Chicago that I had met on the ship, along with another family from Virginia. We just decided to set a simple rotation, and then whenever a rod hit the next person up took it. We let the ladies go first, and then they let me go after the ladies since I had been so bummed about getting skunked in Juneau.

The fish were cooperating, and it didnâ€™t take us long to find a few schools of salmon. The first fish onboard was nice silver, and after that we had a steady bite on pinks. We found a good school and just went around and through it several times. We ended up with 14 fish for 6 people. The folks from Chicago didnâ€™t want theirs, so I split the catch with the family from Virginia. I let them take the silver home since they were nice enough to let me go early in the rotation. I should get my shipment of filets on Tuesday.

I tried to get a little shore fishing in as well. I packed along a telescopic rod, baitrunner reel and a bunch of Lucky Crafts. I was hoping to toss the lure a few times when the ship was in port. Unfortunately, our port stops were extremely short, some as short as six hours. It didnâ€™t leave a lot of time unaccounted for. I did make it out once, and started tossing the old LC, but then a shipâ€™s security guy showed up and told me I was too close to the boat. I would have been ok a little farther away, but by then I was out of time and had to get on the fishing boat.

All in all, it was a great experience. Even getting skunked isnâ€™t so bad when youâ€™re doing it in Alaska. It was god-awful beautiful everywhere you looked, and I canâ€™t wait to get back there again. Next time Iâ€™m going to fly up and book some time at one of the local fishing resorts. Iâ€™d love to go up there and do some drifting for halibut or lingcod.