Fishing Update / Doc Warners - Alaska Fishing Adventures

Fishing Updates

July 16, 2007

The catch for the past two weeks has been consistent both in terms of fish caught and amount of fish each guest has taken home. The weather continues to be excellent for fishing and only differences in the amount of tide seems to have a significant impact on the catch. When we have larger tides, like this past week, the guests spend more time fishing for salmon. When the tides are smaller the guests spend a larger amount of their time fishing for halibut. We had big tides early in the week so the halibut catch went down and the salmon catch went up.

The silver catch is nearly doubling every week. A week ago we caught 97 and this past week it increased to 177 fish. The size of fish is getting larger. We expect this trend to increase.

We heard an interesting report on the radio which said Fish and Game believes that the water temperatures in our area are 4-5 degrees colder than normal. As a result they are predicting that both the pink salmon and chum salmon runs will running slower and be later than normal. We have already had a great chum run and the catch this week jumped slightly from the previous week (87 fish to 112 fish). I’m not sure the increase in significant. The pink harvest went up from 783 a week ago to 1171 this past week. The salmon fishing is very good right now. Boats are taking limits of pinks in less than two hours. Then, when you mix in about 2 silvers for every 10 pinks you can see why the action is so fast.

The halibut catch dropped by about 30 percent from the previous week, but I believe that was mostly the result of high tides. We did see a few more fish in the 30 to 50 pound range and the number of smaller fish has not decreased. We are now reaching the time of the summer when guests struggle with what to fish for. The salmon are so fun to catch, and so plentiful, that the guests have trouble leaving the salmon to go try for halibut. However, they have promised their wife and friends that they will bring home halibut. Thus, they have the dilemma of where to spend their time. Life sometimes makes up make hard choices.

— Doc

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