Clear skies and flat seas set the tone for another good day of fishing. We left the dock with 12 people who all had derby tickets and hopes for big fish. It was a great tide this morning, a big incoming starting at 9:40am. We stopped half way out to the halibut spot to catch some Pink Salmon to use for bait. We ended up hooking 8 and landing 5 in about 15 minutes. Looks like the salmon are starting to come in thick. I hope it’s going to be a good year for silvers, catching them in the ocean is a fight like no other. Silver Salmon are known for their wiry antics and acrobatic leaps out of water.
We arrived at our big fish spot at about 9:45, right when the tide started to pick up. We put our live bait down and started chumming. Within 10 minutes we had hooked a big Lingcod and our first halibut. The bite steadily increased in the first hour landing 12 for 12 of our big fish. All the halibut ranged from forty to seventy-five pounds. Fish this size are a perfect balance of weight and quality and most Alaskans are happy to catch them.
All though the big fish were easy to obtain, the under 29″ halibut proved themselves, as usual, to be more of a challenge than expected. We tried in the mud flats in about 230′ of water but all we could catch was 30″-32″ halibut. After about an hour of catching and releasing, we moved to an area closer to home that’s known for tiny fish. We ended up limiting the boat by 4pm and caught a nice 12 pound King Salmon right at the last minute.
Looking forward to tomorrow’s trip, it’s the last day of the halibut derby and some big fish have been hitting the docks daily. Hopefully tomorrow it will be ours.
