Another beautiful day in Seward Alaska, we left the dock with blue skies and 31 kids and chaperones from Camp Tamarack, MI. This is an annual trip we do with them as they travel through the northwest on a 47 day road trip. These kids are always fun, you can see the look of pure terror and excitement on their faces as we bleed the fish and throw silver after silver into the fish box. Most of these kids have never even seen a salmon before. We started out fishing inside the bay to see if the salmon were still schooled up over by Cape Aialik. Within a half hour we had 11 fish in the box, and the bite was way too slow to fill a limit of 93 silvers. We made a move to another spot and started drilling fish right off the bat. It was a savage bite that lasted until 2pm.
I noticed Miles was holding the king net which is usually a good sign. I ran up to the bow to see what was going on and it looked like Shane was caught on the bottom. I saw a couple of good head shakes and knew exactly what this kid had. I told him this was the biggest salmon he will ever catch in the ocean and he became so focused it hurt. He followed my instructiond and fought his fish perfectly for a good 20 minutes. The fish would not even budge at times, but when it finally surfaced we could see how huge it was, and it got everyone’s heart pumping. All the kisds on the boat were cheering Shane on until we finally got the fish in the net. When the fish hit the deck it sounded like a stadium of cheering fans – my ears are still ringing.
We had a great time, we look forward to seeing you again next year Matt, Jim and Mike. Always a blast with your group. FISH ON!!!