Fishing Updates

August 8 - 12, 2005

Sunshine and mid-70's temperatures were the norm for the week. Sunburns and sun screen worked against each other. If you didn't have one you certainly had the other.

Early in the week our guests spent a lot of time halibut fishing and found the schools of smaller fish, but by mid-week halibut in the 60 - 80 pound range moved into several areas. I believe these are fish that have been in deeper water and are now moving up to shallower water following the herring and migrating salmon. Saturday the 13 th we were trolling for salmon in about 200 feet of water, but only down 40-70 feet with our salmon gear, and caught 5 halibut on the salmon gear. The halibut were up in the herring balls near the surface and were feeding on the herring. The jump in weight of fillets per guest was the result of these larger halibut, plus some nice silvers that were caught. The number of halibut caught jumped from 473 the previous week to 637 this week. We had 3 halibut over 100 pounds.

We still managed to pick up 3 kings and 2 chums.

Fish and Game increased the daily bag limit for pinks from 6 fish up to 12. We had some commercial net boats fishing for pinks near the lodge for about 12 hours on Friday which quieted the fishing close to the lodge. There are still lots of pinks jumping in their migration and our catch was up about 100 fish from the previous week. The pinks in saltwater are still bright fish and are worth taking home to eat.

The silver catch jumped from 297 fish the previous week to 370 this past week. A large number of those fish came from a school we found near The Sister's Island . We had three fish over 18 pounds. The silver run has not significantly increased in the last couple of weeks. The week of sunshine didn't help stimulate the migration but the rains forecast for this coming week could help. However, the immediate forecast for silvers is not good. The commercial troll fishery in Cross Sound, that's where our silvers come through, report poor fishing and many immature fish. That either means the run is going to be later than normal or there is not going to be much of a run. I'm sorry about this not-so-good report and I'll keep you posted on this concern.

We've had lots of nice comments about our adding the travel agent to our staff. It simplifies travel when you can just make a single phone call and make all the arrangement for your next trip either to Doc Warner's Alaska Fishing or any other place in the world. Please use Peggy for your next travel adventure.

Doc

Previous Reports:

• May 29 - June 3
• June 5 - 11
• June 12 - 17
• June 20-24
• June 27-July 1
• July 4 - 8
• July 11-15
• July 18-22
• July 24-30
• August 1-5