halibut and silver 8/10-13 and other summer doings

joefurgerson · Aug-24-2009, 07:27 PM

This year was our fifth year doing a long range halibut and silver salmon trip out of Homer with Travis Larson of Alaska Premier Sportfishing. Travis runs a 65 foot boat, the Venturess, and fishes the north kodiak islands - Shuyak primarily as well as Afognak - and around Shuyak not seeing another boat is the norm. We fish halibut during the day and Travis unloads his zodiac to fish small estuaries for silver salmon at night. What it really reduces to is about 14 hours of fishing a day.
We did a 4 day/3 night trip.

Got going a bit late on the 10th, one of our party is a fedex pilot and was late getting back from China and took the first flight into Homer in the morning. About a 6 and a half hour run, targeted Afognak first. Only fished halibut for a little short of 2 hours, got a pretty good grade, 3 or 4 50 to 60 pounders and a 90 pounder. Headed into an estuary, Travis dropped us off and we got at it. My friend got a couple silvers on the fly, got a couple on spinners, I picked up a nice dolly varden on the fly, but it mostly was a lot of pinks.

Woke up the next morning and Travis motored over to another cove to try for silvers. Lots of silvers and no pinks, but the silvers were pretty spooky. Kept at for about 3 hours, not a lot landed but a lot of fun chasing them. Picked up and ran about 45 minutes to hit the halibut holes, funny day with the tide transitions and current not being much. We landed lots and lots of 30 pounders, but not a lot of big stuff. Made the run to Shuyak that night, pulled up in the near dark in a cove, watched Team America - most people went to sleep after the sex scene.

Next day was the bomb on both halibut and silvers. Travis started the engines before dawn and made about a half hour run to the holes. We fished a sequence of shallow holes. Got 6 halibut over a 100 that day, biggest was 185, grade of other halibut we kept was great. Constant action, great quality. Pulled in for silver fishing and it was fantastic. Tides were too high for flies to work well, but guys were killing them on spinners, and we got some nice pigs and a great grade overall. Travis came and got us for dinner, took us back out, and we fished till about 10 o'clock. Highlight was a bald eagle pair on the nest about 30 yards from us, one parent brought in a silver salmon, 2 fledgings spend a half hour tearing it apart without noticing us one bit.

Next morning we had about 3 hours for halibut before having to head in. Picked up 2 over 100 and filled out our dance card with quality fish. About 1200 pounds of meat at Coal Creek.

Pictures below. Other pictures are other trips in alaska over the summer. We go to Alaska King Salmon Adventures on the Nushagak end of June. Great trip, they bought land on the Nushagak and set up a permanent camp. They always do a great job anyway but the permanent camp is on a bluff and is a great setup. Run was healthy, action was constant. Got some jack king salmon swinging on the fly. That is Beaver 4957 (prettiest Beaver in Alaska) taking off from the Nushagak. Some family tourist photos below a rapids on the Susitna.

Overall a great summer. We also rebuilt a log cabin on Lake Hood where we keep the Beaver to be a state of the art Man Cave and world headquarters of Babe Magnet Enterprises. Starting to smell like Puerto Vallarta time, rumor has it Manny is going to have a new ride with air conditioning.