Sitka Alaska, 2014

I met Jim Carlisle at John Wayne Airport early Sunday morning, August 10th, for our flight to Sitka, Alaska. We changed planes in Seattle where we met up with Basil Pappas and Al Scow for the last leg of the flight. We checked into the Westmark Hotel and had a nice dinner in the hotel restaurant then crashed for the night.

We were fishing with Ourbound Alaska Charters owned by Herb Tennell. Herb has two boats, the Jager and Micah (which Herb runs). We usually fish the Jager because it is smaller and there are only 4 of us. The other group is a party of 5.

Monday morning we walked across the street, down the ramp and boarded the Jager with Captain Clay (filling in for John this day only) and his deck hand, Riley, for our first day of fishing. John informed us that the weather was too rough to make the two hour run south to the usual spot. Instead, we were headed where the rest the fleet would be fishing. John said he and Riley would be back with us for the next four days.

Clay did a great job! We started fishing around 7 am and we had limits of Silver Salmon (24) and halibut (4) by noon, however a shark took most of the 4th halibut so it took another half hour to replace it. We spent the rest the day searching in vain for King Salmon.

Al’s “Duck You” hat.

Silver Salmon limits are 6 per day per person. King Salmon limits are 1 per day per person with a total of 6 per year. Halibut limits are 1 per day per person under 44 inches in length or over 90 inches. The halibut we caught were rather small plus only the local residents can keep halibut caught close in. Non locals must catch their halibut out in the ocean where the weather can make it impossible to fish at times.

Herb is using a new fish processor since the old one just folded up shop. The new one is Alaskan Sport Caught Seafood. At the end of each day, we had to fill out a form indicating what we caught, how we wanted it processed (fillets), how many days we were fishing and how many people the fish would be split between. In our case, we split everything evenly between the four of us.

6 am Tuesday morning we were back on the Jager and John was all ready to go. He had convinced Herb to make the long run south. John warned us it would be rough traveling but he thought we had a better chance catching Kings out there. Two hours later, he was right - we were catching Kings. We had a banner day on Kings even though we could only keep 4. We caught and released at least 16 kings. We also caught 8 silvers and 4 small halibut on our salmon rigs. We got back to town around 4:30 and the sun was out. It was beautiful in town.

Wednesday was another rainy day with rough seas so we fished closer to town around where we fished on Monday. The weather was unpleasant but the fish bit well. We managed full limits of silvers, kings and halibut by 11:30 am.   On the way in, we encountered a pod of Killer Whales. 

We went back to town for lunch.  After lunch, Jim and I took a walk and found the hatchery and a small fish ladder with salmon jumping up it.

Thursday it rained again and the fishing was still good but too rough to do any halibut fishing. Winds were predicted to be up to 30 knots over night. We managed to get our limits of silver salmon and 3 kings for the day. There are wind sailors all over up in the Sitka Sound.  They are a small type of jellyfish.  I had seen them down in Mexico but never up in Alaska.  John said this is the first time they have seen them.  We were in early again – by 3 pm. We went to the Channel Club for dinner. Unfortunately, the quality of food has deteriorated. The view was great though.

The weather for Friday, our last day of fishing, was predicted to be rough and rainy but the winds were supposed to come down in the afternoon. It was pouring down rain as we headed out to the fishing grounds. A steady rain fell all morning as we picked away at the silvers. Around noon the clouds parted and since we had our limit of silvers, plus a couple kings, John decided to try to get out to the halibut grounds. He warned us it would be bumpy but it wasn't nearly as bad as we expected. The sun came out and it was beautiful. We caught our 4 halibut including one that was our largest of the trip - it measured 43.5 inches in length. Just barely legal. The rest were just the chickens. It was time to call it a trip. What a great way to end the trip.

Saturday morning Basil and I caught the shuttle to the airport for Flight 68 at 9:47 am. The fish processor was at the airport with 4 boxes of fish for each of us. The boxes were strapped with 5 straps, were labeled and had our names and addresses on them. When we checked our bags, we were charged $200 to ship four boxes then we were told that TSA was going to open every box to inspect it because their X-ray machine was broken. This was not good news.

The next problem was that Flight 68 was delayed an hour and I only had 55 minutes between flights which meant I would miss my connection. Fortunately my next flight was delayed and I just made the flight and so did my fish. Unfortunately for me, TSA didn't re-strap all my boxes. Two were taped shut and two had just two straps and one of those had broken. When I unloaded my fish, several packages had the seal broken because TSA hadn't repacked them as tightly as the processor had so they banged together during travel. Guess we'll have to eat those first.