Fish Happens

Most tourists travel to Sitka to fish. Fishing was definitely on my list of things to do. If you do a web search for “Sitka fishing charter” Google will return enough results to keep you busy for quite some time. So I figured I didn’t need to book anything ahead of our arrival in Sitka. Not so… When we left the ferry last Sunday I started calling around, only to find every charter jammed for the entire length of our stay in town (for most of the summer, to tell the truth). What I didn’t realize is that it was peak king salmon season and people from all over the world fly into Sitka in June to hook into what many consider one of the world’s best eating fish. I left messages, sent emails, shot off texts. And crossed my fingers.

Sunday afternoon I received a call from Jeremy Downie – the number two best skipper in town according to the guides at Sitka Sound Ocean Adventures – with the offer of a spot aboard his boat the next morning. “I have one spot tomorrow morning. Be at the ANB Harbor dock at zero five hundred. You will need your fishing license and king salmon stamp and cash. I don’t take checks. I don’t take credit cards. If you’re one minute late you’re not going fishing. I’m not waiting. Understood?” I knew I was going to like Jeremy.

I actually had a nightmare leading up to the charter, that I’d set my alarm for 5:20AM instead of 4:20AM and missed the zero five hundred pickup. The gates to our campground at Starrigavan were locked from 9PM to 7AM, so I had to park the truck on the road the night before and run the half mile down to it at 4:30AM to head to the harbor, the entire time making as much noise as possible in the pre-dawn hours with the hope that any grizzlies in the area would hear me coming! I made it to the dock and Jeremy’s boat pulled in at 4:59AM on the dot. Pleasantries were exchanged and we were off.

I shared the charter with a couple of fellows from New England – Mike and Bucky – as well as a father and son – Kent and Grant – from Salt Lake City, whom we collected from a small island cottage on our way north out of the harbor. Jeremey gave us the strict lay of the land on our passage north: you will get yelled at on his boat, you will get reprimanded on his boat, you will hear about it if he has to tell you something twice, but you will return at the end of the day exhausted from fishing and with as many fish as is possible given the conditions. Good times.

We motored out of Salisbury Sound into the open ocean around 6:30AM, a fleet of other charters from Sitka tailing us to the area where the kings come in from their winter ocean swim to return to their spawning rivers in Southeast Alaska. By the time we had our trolling gear in the water we could see 10-or-so other boats in the area, all trying to hook their own Chinooks. I pulled in our first king (which was undersized so went back in) within a few minutes of beginning trolling, and from there it didn’t take us long to hit our limit of one king per person. They all put up an awesome fight on the way up, lots of hooting and hollering as the nets went down to pull each one into the boat. Talk about adrenaline!

They weren’t huge by Chinook standards – 13-15 pounds/6-7 kilograms a piece – but were a nice size and no one on the boat was complaining. Everyone onboard who pulled in their first ever king – “king virgins” as described by Jeremy – had to eat the fish’s heart (which was often still beating when Jeremy cut it out). Young Grant even gulped it down, although it went straight back into the ocean along with his breakfast a few minutes later! One of the Chinooks we pulled up was a female, out of which we ate the almost-fluorescent orange colored roe. Absolutely delicious! All the other boats in the area were mooching and I only saw one or two salmon get pulled up on another boat by the time we’d hit our limit and were headed out into the deeps for halibut. Trolling was the ticket for sure. Like I said, I knew I was going to like Jeremy.

We motored west about seven miles/11 kilometers from the mouth of Salisbury Sound into the open ocean, some magic conditions with glassy water and hardly any swell. Jeremy’s GPS guided us to one of his favorite halibut fishing holes – fondly referred to as the “but-hole” by our skipper – where we dropped our lines baited with gigantic hooks and half a pink salmon each to depths of more than 500 feet. The onslaught began pretty quickly, yelloweye (the crazy looking orange fish I’m holding below) and lingcod coming up thick and fast. It took some time for us to clear out the rock fish before the halibut hit, but when they did the hooting and hollering started again, welcome back adrenaline. Most of the halibut weighed in at around 40 pounds/18 kilograms according to Jeremy’s trained eye, a hell of a lot of work to reel in those bricks from a depth of 500 feet! My shoulders sure felt it the next day. By 11:30AM we’d limited on halibut and headed back into Salisbury Sound to fish in the shallower water for black bass.

Jeremy is a navy special operation combat veteran, born and raised in Sitka and is now semi-retired to Florida. He spends his summers in Sitka running his fishing charter – Fish Happens – and thoroughly enjoys taunting the captains of all the other charters that may be within earshot of his boat when his passengers are pulling their limits of king salmon or halibut. He even had special soundtracks to taunt other boats, which he’d blast out across the ocean with the express purpose of razzing up the other skippers. He also had some amazing stories from his time in the navy, defending tankers from pirates off the coast of Somalia and making rigs to pull mahi-mahi the 30 feet from the water to the super tanker decks he was charged with protecting (all the while wearing combat gear and toting an assault rifle). He was a wealth of information on everything Alaska and especially everything fishing, I could not recommend a better skipper if you ever find yourself looking for a charter in Sitka. It was without question the best day of fishing of my life.

We stopped in at Sitka Sport Caught the next day to collect my processed fish: 35 pounds/16 kilograms of individually packaged king salmon, halibut, lingcod and black bass. Awesome. It just fit in the trailer’s freezer. Should definitely see us through Alaska!