Fishing Updates

August 14, 2006

We were saddened by the report that our friend Doug Miller passed away on Sunday, August 20.  We had enjoyed having him fish with us in early July and appreciated his ability to see the beauty and tell the story.  Doug's cause of death was listed as a massive infection caused by problems in his large intestine.

The fishing for this past week was good to great.  The silver salmon are here in large numbers, and there are many large fish among them.  We had two fish weighing over 18 pounds and lots weighing 14 to 16 pounds.  Several boats limited almost every day.  Preferred method of fishing was to drift in the wind and current.  The fish obviously are in schools as indicated by guests finding the "bite on" for several hours following by several hours of slow fishing.  For those who stayed with salmon fishing the results show their great rewards.  The number of silvers caught jumped from 616 the previous week to 1053 this past week.

When silver fishing is this good, and the days are getting shorter, something must give to compensate for the limited amount of fishing time.  Halibut fishing took the hit this week.  The catch dropped from 420 the week before to 242 this past week (these numbers include fish that were released).  Often when the chase boats reported the whereabouts of the boats only 3 or 4 would be fishing for halibut and the rest were chasing silvers.  I don't think the halibut fishing success declined, just the effort declined.

The pink salmon run has gone past it's peak and the catch was reduced by almost 50% from the previous week.  More and more of the pinks that were caught were released because they were past their prime.  The bears know the fish are moving into the stream and a black bear sow and two cubs spent some time at the lodge on Friday entertaining guests and catching pinks in the stream.

The average weight of fillets per guest was up slightly from the previous week.  Guests took home an average of 83.4 pounds of fillets each.

We continued our siege of rain.  It has rained almost every day for the past month and the forecast is for more rain.  Fortunately winds have been mostly in the light to moderate levels and so fishing could continue.

— Doc

Previous Reports:

• August 6, 2006
• July 30, 2006
• July 24, 2006
• July 16, 2006
• July 9, 2006
• July 2, 2006
• June 25, 2006
• June 19, 2006
• June 11, 2006
• June 4, 2006
• May 28, 2006
• May 8, 2006
• May 4, 2006
• 2005 Fishing Season