Fishing Update / Doc Warners - Alaska Fishing Adventures

Fishing Updates

August 13, 2007

This week was all about weather. Whether you like the weather or just wanted fish regardless of the weather was the major indicator of whether you thought this was a good week. The sun shined warm and bright through Thursday and the salmon quit moving and went deep. Thus, we went from a super week the first week in August to a very slow fishing week the second week of August. The clouds came Friday and the salmon catch improved.

Many of our guests this past week were here primarily for the silver fishing and did not spent a lot of time fishing for halibut. The halibut catch dropped from 453 the previous week to 246 this past week. Those who did fish halibut found fish available in most of the areas. This is the time of year when we begin to see what appears to be larger halibut moving inside and taking positions near stream mouths.

There are still lots of feeder kings in the area and we caught 4 small ones and one dandy. On Friday one of our guests landed a 46.5-inch king that weighed 56 pounds. There we lots of us on the dock willing to have our pictures taken with that fish. It has been seven years since we caught a king that large.

The chum catch dropped to 52 and pinks dropped from 1350 the previous week to 739 this past week. The pink catch decline resulted both from the sunshine and the pink run that is past its peak. About 1/4 of the pinks that were brought to the dock were discarded because the meat was beginning to deteriorate.

In spite of the bright sun the silver catch was OK. We dropped from 492 fish the previous week to 341 this past week. About 30% of those fish were caught on Friday after the clouds and rain returned. The reports on commercial catches in the outside waters are mixed so we don't have a good indicator of what to expect. Also, the commercial fishery had it's annual closure this past week so that impacted the harvest numbers we got from the cannery. The coming week is forecast for more normal weather and that should give us the information to know how strong the silver run will be this summer. Early silver fishing reports on Monday were good.

— Doc

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