Alaska is no folly!

[JBeaver]

North to Alaska! A fishing buddy and I waited almost 9 months to fly north to begin our Alaskan fishing trip. We planned to spend 4 days at McDougall Lodge on Lake Creek, then afterward take a full day sporting fishing trip in Seward, AK.
Alaska! A fishing buddy and I waited almost 9 months to fly north to begin our Alaskan fishing trip. We planned to spend 4 days at McDougall Lodge on Lake Creek, then afterward take a full day sporting fishing trip in Seward, AK.

At 6:30 a.m. on August 12, we flew from San Diego and arrived in Anchorage at 1:30 p.m. To get to McDougall Lodge you have to take a float plane about 55 miles northwest of Anchorage. The lodge is owned and managed by Dave and Leslie Manners. We arrived at the lodge around 6:00 p.m. and immediately were sent to the dining hall for a great meal. As soon as we finished eating our guide asked if we were ready to go fishing. Hell yeah! It can’t get any better, San Diego in the morning, then fishing on a prime salmon stream in the evening.


Heading upstream on Lake Creek we stopped to fly fish for chum, sockeye and silver salmon. This fishing is quite a bit different than anything I’ve tried before. The salmon don’t feed when heading upstream to spawn, so the only way to catch Sockeye, Chums and Pinks is to snag them. Occasionally one will bite, but not often. It’s still a thrill landing one of these hormonally deranged brutes regardless how it is hooked.



For the next 4 days we had excellent silver salmon fishing using salmon eggs as bait. We fished drifting salmon eggs under bobbers and bait divers. It’s thought the salmon pick the eggs up to take them back to a nest, not to feed. As soon as the bobber goes down, set the hook. It sounds easy, but we missed many fish. All tolled we had about 50 pounds of salmon fillets by the time we left Thursday morning for Anchorage.



We flew back to Anchorage Thursday A.M. After getting our rental car, we began the 125 mile trip to Seward. The highway leads around Cooks Inlet for about 40 miles before turning into the mountains. Since we weren’t in a hurry we stopped at stores and pullouts along the way to sample the local scenery and hospitality.


If you’re ever making this drive stop at a store named Diamond Jim’s Liquor and Gifts in Indian, AK. The proprietor, an older woman is quite a treat. She lived and worked in Portage when the 1964 earthquake struck the area, basically sinking the whole town 10’ below sea level. Soon afterwards, she moved the store to Indian, AK. She is full of stories and personal experiences to tell customers. Her story of being chased by a grizzly bear sounded like a tall tale, but then she showed us the newspaper clipping with the headline, Fleet-footer Woman Outruns Grizzly. She then told us all about how the grizzly chased her, nipping at her heels until she made in inside. She was quite a character.

After a very leisurely 3-hour drive we arrived in Seward. The town sits on Resurrection Bay and is surrounded by mountains, shrouded in low clouds that can form in a minute or two and roll up the valleys to obscure the mountains totally from view.



On Friday we boarded Crackerjack Sportfishing’s boat Voyager with Captain Andy Mezirow at the helm for a combo halibut/lingcod trip.

What a great combo trip and crew! Capt. Andy engages everyone on the boat telling stories and explaining how to fish the Alaskan waters. Best of all he does it with humor. The Voyager is a comfortable and fast boat that cruises at about 21 knots. We covered around 60 miles in 3 hours to hit a halibut ground where fish must have been stacked one on top of the other. Bait hardly hit bottom when you felt the unmistakable “butt” tug. Cranking up from 200 feet wasn’t a problem until you landed about a dozen of these flatties. Then you began to feel the burn. We didn’t find any “barn doors” but the chickens were biting nonstop and provided plenty of fun. The largest were in the 35# range and none were smaller than 20#’s.


After everyone limited on the halibut, we traveled about 10 minutes to some pinnacles where the lings were hanging. Several people hooked up within 2 minutes and we caught a monster 60-pounder.


We moved to another area to pick up a few more, then at our last stop, 5 people hooked up at the same time with lings to fill-out our limits.

Thanks to a great crew all these were landed. As a matter of fact, I can only recall the boat losing 2 1/3 fish once they were hooked. One fish was lost by Jeff, a deckhand, after he tried to land a silver with a net that had a hole in it. Jeff really caught shit from Capt. Andy and everyone for that “gaff”. Actually it was pretty funny watching him try to net the fish not once, but twice with the net. Ooops, why does the fish keep going through the net?

We lost the tail on one flattie to a 10’ salmon shark. Just couldn’t get it to take the whole thing.


When it was all done, we brought home about 200#’s of vacuum packed silver salmon, halibut and lingcod frozen fillets.

We took Saturday to play tourist in Seward and Anchorage, but I won’t bore you with the details. It was a nice ending to a terrific trip.

There are lots of places I still want to fish, but I will go back to Alaska.

[GUERO]

cool report bro, love AK, gotta get back

[fishnfool]

Great report Jan. Looks like a bitchin' trip. Looking forward to hearing more of the story. See you soon? I may be fishing Friday...haven't committed yet, but I'll be in the shop tomorrow, and Saturday. Nice catching!

[umoa]

holly fucking shit!!! awesome!!!!!!

[SSUfish]

Seward is a beautiful town. Congrats on the trip and nice lings!!! Those were my favorite to fish for when working up there. Sure looks like you had fun, it makes me want to quit my job to work up there for a summer again...

Edit: I had one day off in 1.5months of work, and the tourist thing in Seward is well..."memorible" haha, thanks again for the report!!

[markalico]

bitchin bro, i really want to do an Alaska trip like that

[LTBOLTMAN]

awesome post...on my to do list

[daniel-neill]

Awsome report!

Bye the way, What did it cost to ship the fish back?

[Mots]

Insane report, thanks. Looks like you had a great trip.

[Ali]

Awesome Report!

I can't wait to get back up there.

Did you notice any BD stickers up there?

[popeye]

We just came back from Sitka on Aug 16 the limit for halibut was one fish under 31 In
and one fish over 31 In is the limit there Seward different then Sitka ? how many people were fishing? There seem to be a lot of Halibut on the deck.

reguards POPEYE

[paralabrax]

Outstanding! Thanks for sharing.