Fishing Update / Doc Warners - Alaska Fishing Adventures

Fishing Updates

August 20, 2007

After the clouds covered the bright sunshine, and the showers came, fishing reverted to more normal for this time of the season. When you added low tidal currents because of small tides you ended up with lots of fish and many happy anglers.

Guests caught a few incidental kings but none of the lunkers like the previous week. Most were undersized, less than 28", and therefore not legal to keep.

Silver fishing has been good and the catching steady. Obviously, the run is building. For the past three weeks the total catch has been 492 (3 weeks ago), 341 (2 weeks ago and lots of sunshine), and 703 for last week. Walking around the dock when the guests bring in their catches it is easy to see why this time of the season is so popular. The silvers are big, beautiful fish. Lots of 10-13 pound fish with a few 16 and 17 pound fish mixed into the catch. Stories of hard strikes, large jumping fish, and broken tackle fill the conversations at the dinner table. Even those who tend to be a little negative were occasionally caught smiling.

Chum fishing stayed steady with 56 fish taken. Guest are releasing a large portion of the chums now as they begin to "color-up" prior to spawning. The Excursion River is full of chums and some of the guests and staff have been on the river with fly rods.

There are still lots of pinks, but few are kept as they, like the chum, are progressing into spawning condition with deterioration of the meat. Guest caught 298 pinks.

This is dilemma time for halibut. The catch was up from the previous week, 246 to 385, but the effort was down. Since catch often reflects effort the total halibut take for the week isn't necessarily an indication of halibut abundance. The silvers are just so fun to catch that people have trouble leaving the silver fishery and going to catch the halibut they promised to their spouses and friends. I've thought about hiring a councilor to help those, who late in the week, have still not caught their "promised" halibut. It's confusing to see grown men crying late in the week because they don't have the halibut they promised, then to see the tears disappear immediately, with no sign of remorse, at the next silver strike. I guess the solution is to promise to "try" to get some halibut rather than to promise fish. We did catch three nice halibut on Thursday, 123-, 126-, and 174 pounds. All we caught inside and close to the lodge.

Just a few weeks to go and the emphasis will continue to shift toward silver fishing. We expect the run to continue to build.

— Doc

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