Ketchikan Discovered
Hidden Behind The Cruise Ship Docks Is A Surprisingly Productive Sport Fishing Destination.
This article originally appeared in The Reel News April 2007
By Terry W. Sheely
It’s one of those rare late June days in Southeast Alaska, blue-sky, flat water, circling gulls. The rounded lumps of smooth rock rolling into Dixon Entrance from the south end of Prince of Wales Island are looking less like islands and more like the coils of a sea serpent—Nessie maybe, or Ogopogo.
We’re fishing just a long cast from the British Columbia border and anchored up. Morning sun is seeping warm and easy into my shoulders and 420 feet below our 32-foot boat, a halibut nuzzles a salmon belly that’s skewered onto a circle hook and held down by a pound of lead. I set my coffee cup on the bow decking, slip the Shakespeare Ugly Stik out of the rail holder and take a two-handed grip.
And that’s when it went crazy.
Feet in the air, jaw dropping, rod flying crazy.
The trip had started out like most fishing adventures, a little mysterious, a little edgy, with a lot to discover.
Rick Collins is guiding me through fives days of fishing pointing out the subtleties and background in his backyard fish pond like only a local can.
This week he is going to show me Ketchikan, his Ketchikan.
Not the cruise ship docks with their bow-to-stern lineup of horizontal 5-star excess, the flapping buntings, 49er shot glasses, wooden salmon, eagles with flash burn or the tricked out moose dolls. Not the splintered squadrons of flightseeing Beavers and Cessnas shredding the air over Tongass Narrows roaring and frothing like deranged dragonflies, or the crystal baubles and tee shirt shops that lean into Front Street which just may be the most congested piece of asphalt north of Vancouver.
Rick is bent on showing me another side of Ketchikan, the one where on a good day he can nail 20-steelhead—on the fly, where he points to a spot in the kelp at Survey Point and says with confidence, “a king salmon is holding there.”
Hidden behind the cruise ship scurry, Rick says, is a Ketchikan where orange Grunden bibs are halibut slimed, nasty ling cod draw wolf whistles from the rail leaners at Clover Pass Resort, kings and silvers and carpets of pinks grow into memories. And that doesn’t include the side trip for wild trout in the lakes cupped into vast,
unpopulated Misty Fjords National Monument.
There are three Ketchikans, Rick tells me. One makes a good living off city-sized cruise ships with names like, Oosterdam, one fishes, and one sticks around to enjoy the 16 feet of winter that falls as rain and snow.
Hidden in plain sight, the fishing Ketchikan is, I discover, where world-jaunting destination-fishermen can find all the action they can stand if they know where to look.
Rick Collins, fish guide, charter operator, teacher, coach and entrepreneur, has the credentials to understand all three and distinguish the differences. Ketchikan born and raised, a college education paid with summer jobs on black cod, halibut and salmon boats and guiding waterfront tours, then paying the family bills by teaching biology and seamanship to high schoolers up at KHS, and in the summer running a multi-faceted charter operation guiding cruise-ship escapees, destination anglers and at least one fish writer into the salmon and halibut, scenery and surprises that wait at the southern-most tip of Alaska.
The region is dominated by mountains as high as 4,000 feet forested with Sitka spruce, western hemlock, red cedar and Alaska-cedar. What’s not forested is open muskeg, alpine heather, coastal rocks, or islands.
There’s a scattering of dozens of small streams and lakes. Larger river systems are rare. The big ones from 30
to 50 miles long, extend from British Columbia into Alaska: the Unuk and Chickamin rivers flow into East Behm
Canal, and the Salmon River empties into Portand Canal near Hyder, Alaska.
Collins appreciates all three faces of his town, but he is undeniably a man in a hot fevered love affair with the Ketchikan that fishes.
And he wants the world to know why.
Ketchikan is a sport fish town, he says, with a lot more to offer than four-hour trips and downtown charters from cruise ship docks. “This is a good destination fishery,” he tells me, “it’s just that no one thinks about Ketchikan as a fishing destination. We’ve got lodges, we’ve got fish, we’ve got the scenery. When they try it, they come back.”
Five days and a well-packed box of fillets later, I’m dragging bags up the floatplane ramp toward the jetport on Gravina Island thinking Rick could be right. I’m angling toward the Alaska Air check-in line, tired, worn down by a whirlwind of fishing, and with a new respect for Ketchikan diversity.
Sixty-pound halibut from The Cape, 40-inch ling off The Rocks, 37-pound king in Nichols Pass, a flight of small June silvers in Clarence Strait, kings rolling in the sunset at Herring Cove, soloing the 22-foot Ocean Pro down Tongass Narrows with the whitecaps blowing over the roof while the GPS confirms that I’ve missed the turn to
Ketchikan and am headed either for Prince of Wales Island or somewhere in British Columbia. Add the late evening I look up from my notes in Rick’s Pennock Island cabin to see a killer whale blow through the kelp bed outside the picture window, the crabs I missed out on at Bostwick Inlet, and the floatplane flight into a wild cutthroat wonderland at Misty Fjords National Park (that’s another story).
And that is just the top of the trip.
Ketchikan’s 14,500 residents may owe their economic souls to the row of cruise ships spilling passengers onto Waterfront Promenade, but their roots are anchored in fishing going back to 1883 when the first salmon saltery opened. A fourth of the incorporated town is water and a salmon run cuts through the center of downtown and swims up Ketchikan Creek past the bead string doorways and replicated bordellos on Creek Street. A good part of the town is built on pilings planted in Tongass Narrows, and under the flooring are salmon that dodge and dart along the waterfront protected by obscurity. The visitor’s bureau (www.visit-ketchikan.com) boasts more than two-dozen charter operations, and that’s only a partial list.
Like most exceptional fishing centers, Ketchikan, is an island town surrounded by adventure and fish. It’s edged into the steep shoreline on the skinny apron where mountains spill into saltwater on the west side Revillagigedo Island, 679 miles north of Seattle, 235 miles south of Juneau and 22 miles west of the 2.3 million
acres of Misty Fjords National Monument and wilderness. Twenty-nine public use Forest Service cabins dot the area, available on a first-come basis, some fronting on prime salmon waters on Revillagigedo Island north of Ketchikan, others on remote trout lakes or salmon streams in the Misty Fjords region. (Contact Tongass National Forest, SE Alaska Discovery Center, 50 Main Street,, Ketchikan, AK 99901. 907-228-6220.)
As Rick promised and I was about to confirm. Ketchikan is a good place to power-fish until you drop. At least it was for five days last June, and 2006—by most measures—was a slow salmon year..
Rick has laid out a fishing itinerary like a piscatorial sampler platter crowded with mini fishing adventures and the order would depend on fish runs and weather.
1) Charter boat fishing splitting halibut and king salmon rod time with 5 destination anglers from Utah and California.
2) Guided small boat downrigger trolling.
3) A example of a four-hour cruise ship salmon trolling special, with a father and son from Phoenix.
4) A magical float-plane shuttle into the “Mistys” for attack cutthroat.
5) A self-guided do-it-myself sortie that included being turned loose in Southeast with a 22-foot boat, salmon
gear, and a two-bedroom remote cabin that resembles a mini-lodge, that Rick’s operation rents out on Pennock Island, across Tongass Narrows from Ketchikan.
The diverse fishery I explored is one that’s available to anyone, and that is Rick’s point.
"Wish we had time to do more,” he says, “there’s a lot of fishing opportunity we won’t have time to get to. I’d
really like to get you up here in the spring. You won’t believe the steelhead fishing we get. Nobody else round, 20 fish days. My dad got 92 last year—on the fly.”
I just shake my head..
Rick’s business, Explore Alaska Charters (www.explorealaskacharters.com) is a blanket operation that provides everything from full-service six-pack fishing charters, to small boat guided trips on his Bayliner, boat rentals for self-guided anglers, (18-20 foot Hewescraft fully equipped and outfitted with electronics, and downriggers, a
waterfront cabin on Pennock Island which can include a 22-foot Hewescraft Ocean Pro, all the electronic goodies and tackle and the inside line on a couple of Dungeness crab hot spot, and the float-plane fly-in fishing to the Misty’s.
"Four hours or all week, in your (self guided) boat or ours,” he says with a grin, “we’ve got fishing and if we can’t handle it we’ll set you up with someone who can.”
One of those someone’s is young Ben Atwood, who runs his family’s 32-foot six-pack charter boat, and who
unwittingly became a witness to THE hook set.
Pushed by a 225-horse four-stroke, we ran 1 hour and 25 minutes southwest through Nichols Pass to the halibut beds and salmon rocks at Cape Chacon on the south end of Prince of Wales Island. You can throw mooching sinkers into British Columbia from here. On the horizon there’s a blue lump, Langara Island in the Queen Charlottes.
Alex of LA shows us yesterday's action on his digital camera, frame-by-frame. Some nice kings in the high 20s, one in the low 30s and halibut lead by a 120 pounder. He grins. He and his friend Phil are staying at the Cedars Lodge downtown and they’re booked for 5 days of fishing. “We found out about the fishing here a few years ago,” he says, “and we keep coming back. Lots to do in town and good fishing out here. Works for us and our wives.”
Also on board are three anglers from Vernal, Utah. Tony George has a horseshoe mustache that frames his consistant grin, but can’t hide the spark of anticipation dancing through his eyes. His wife Sue and a 70-year-old spitfire named Karma.
Karma can run either way, I say, and then I ask "You're the good Karma, right?” "We'll see” she says, “we’ll see.” And we do.
Karma, as it turns out, is stampeding in both directions and I’m about to get trampled.
The bite intensifies, the tip bounces hard bends goes down a foot or so stays there bucking against a hard,
steady pull. I brace against the gunwale and heave up and back. (I know a hard-set isn’t necessary with circle hooks. Blame it on reflexive instinct.)
As nearly as the circus event can be reconstructed, just as I’m swinging up, the halibut plows down. My death-grip pops. The rod flies out of my hands. Momenteum flips me backward in an ungainly freestyle reverse somersault that ends in a heap piled in front of the pilot house window. My fingers are still wrapped around the rod—but the rod’s gone.
I'm stunned, disoriented and sort of upside-down.
What in the hell just happened!
Across the deck I see the rod pinned to the top railing. It’s still on board!
Just another whacky piece in this crazy circus act. As the rod shot over the rail, a loop of Polypro braid had wrapped around the rod holder, tied the rod to the railing and tension from the running halibut kept it there. But it’s slipping!. I claw and scramble across the metal deck grab the rod, free the line, get my feet under me and stand up. Incredibly the halibut is still on, nailed solidly to the circle hook.
Ben is staring, wide-eyed, mouth open. “What was that," he says, “is that how writers set the hook?”
That was a classic Barnum & Bailey hook set I tell him. Nothing special. I ‘m still in the boat. Rod’s okay. Fish is on. Didn’t spill my coffee.
What?
He's starts laughing and he’s still laughing three days later when I say goodbye.
Two hundred feet away the skipper of a neighboring six pack is laughing. And pointing. And laughing, while trying to describe the back flip, rod release, flying knot hook set halibut technique that he’s just seen. But he’s laughing too hard to get it out.
Word is, they’re still laughing,
"Color"
“Gaff.”
Sixty-one pounds of prime white fillets hit the back deck in a tail-pounding splatter. Good Karma. She grins and shakes her head.
“Don’t try that with my salmon rods, okay,” Rick says.
Okay.
It’s late evening and we’re downrigger trolling in Rick’s 28-foot Bayliner prospecting for a king salmon along the ledge at Survey Point. Yesterday a pod of killer whales ravaged the point and sent fish and fishermen scattering. Rick’s hoping the kings have started to move back in. The cabin heater feels good. It’s just a short run from the dock at Knudson Cove, five minutes maybe, yet Survey is one of the favorite salmon areas in the entire Ketchikan region.
It’s edged by a wall of rocks with a couple of promising humps, a line of kelp and a resident population of
baitfish—the right ingredients for kings.
Silvers, too, and pinks, and sometimes halibut, Rick says. You don’t get a lot of boat ride. You get a lot of
fishing here. “In July we catch pinks as fast as we can unhook ‘em. There’s silvers in August and June kings. Good spot.”
Survey is just a couple of miles around the bend from Knudson Cove, which is 14.6 miles northwest of and a world apart from the beehive at Ketchikan. Knudson’s is a fishing place.
The weather vane over the docks is a rusty cowboy sitting deep in a buckin’ saddle strapped on a rusty king salmon. A couple of guys with gray beard stubble and rounded shoulders are jigging from the docks for poggies, perch and flounder. Eagles sit on tree branches and flag poles drying wing feathers and making eagle music. There’s a smell of saltwater and kelp, of fish and outboard gas, and wet wood, and cigar smoke. Fish boats, a few commercial but most sport fishing, are tied to a lattice-work of floating docks. Joe Nichols is the owner/operator of Knudson Cove Marina, bait shop, coffee stop, sack lunches, tackle, tools and fish scales. He rents kicker boats and gear for self-guided fishing, and can book a charter or arrange a bed. Hero photos of monster fish and momentous occurrences are pinned on the wall at the doorway. This is the center of the up-island fishery. (www.knudsoncovemarina.com).
It’s where Rick bases Explore Alaska Charters, and it’s convenient to some of the best Ketchikan area salmon and halibut areas. Across Clarence Strait is the east side of Prince of Wales Island, Bond Bay, Kasaan Point and a host of other migratory salmon and resident halibut hot spots. Up north there’s a major hatchery at Neet’s
Bay that plugs up with kings.
According to Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s Region 1 office at Ketchikan, the local salmon fishery is targeted on pass-bys kings and silvers migrating past Ketchikan to major river systems on the mainland and in British Columbia, especially the Unuk and Chickamin rivers. ADFG pegs the king run at May-August and pinpoints June as the peak. A few kings are caught in the 60 pound range, but anglers can expect 20 to 30
pounders.
Offsetting the lack of natural spawning rivers is a regional complex of private and public hatcheries that has
created several local king salmon hot spots. Whitman Lake, Carroll Inlet and Neets Bay hatcheries are the largest king salmon contributors in this area, according to the ADFG, followed by Deer Mountain in Ketchikan
and Tamgas Creek on Annette Island. Fishing for kings in freshwater is rarely allowed.
Rick ticks off the hottest local salmon options: Survey Point, Bostick Point, the rocks at Seal Cove, Mountain Point, Herring Cove, Bold Island, Bostwick Inlet, Revillagigedo Channel, Carroll Point, or the rocks off Mallenar Point, Point. Higgins, and Cape Chacon.
Put a silver in the net, heft it and it’ll weigh from 3 to 20 pounds, average 10 and most years the schools are thick from July to September. Like kings, ADFG has also been building up the silver runs with hatchery enhancements returning to Neets Bay, Whitman Lake, Deer Mountain and Tamgas Creek. ADFG believes the
plants “contribute significantly to (Ketchikan) sport fisheries. Most area streams wider than 3 feet that enter salt water support at least small runs of coho,” according to the regional ADFG. There is a small runoff summer coho in late June to early July, but big fall-run fish dominate Ketchikan sport fishing.
In July and August pink salmon are thick, Rick says. The tide rips and mouths of almost every dribble of creek
water are packed with pinks.
According to ADFG surveys, the sweet spot for halibut is July and August. In the Ketchikan region hallies average 40 pounds, and range from15 to 100 pounds. A few are 300-pounders are taken, but are rare.
Steelhead duck the tourist season entirely, running in area streams from November to May, and except for the few streams with road access most are ignored. Rick takes his boat and heater and seeks out the remote streams where he can hike upstream and catch steelhead all day on Glo Bugs without seeing another boot print. I could get into that.
ADFG confirms that the Ketchikan region as one of the top steelhead spots in Alaska—bar none. Fisheries workers have identified more than 75 steelhead rivers and streams and several of the larger systems support both spring- and fall-run fish.
Spring- run steelhead dominate most areas returning from early March through May, and peak in late April.
One of the topographic distinctions favoring the Ketchikan saltwater fishery is that the region is protected from the winds and storms of the open ocean by a splattering of barrier islands. The waters around this small town are a puzzle of islands and points, channels and coves and no matter how hard it blows or gushes rain there’s always a protected, promising honey hole to duck into and fish, Rick points out.
Several lodges are set up along the Narrows comfortably removed from downtown.Clover Pass Resort is across the bay from Knudson Cove Marina. Silver King Lodge is on a nearby island surrounded by fishing water and quiet. There are others.
Tony is sitting down with his back to the rod when it pops out of the 'rigger and starts bouncing. Ben yells,
reel, reel, reel. Tony scrambles, partially confused and thoroughly surprised. He grabs the rod. There’s a long run, several long runs, thrashing, Tony grinding the reel against the drag and then the net.
At the dock the king weighs 36.3 pounds. Tony’s personal best. It slammed the 5-inch hammered 50/50, silver
and brass spoon ("When kings go on the bite, you don't need anything else") at 43 minutes before high slack.
Other rods are going down, pounding, leaking line. We’ve turned a page and this one is full of kings. Bait is stacked everywhere and shows up on the recorder like yellow and orange hot air balloons.
Phil gets a 20 pounder, Alex adds another. Karma nails hers. Fish weigh 19 to 36.3 pounds. “We have to go,” Ben says, “we’re late. We really do have to get back. Really. It’s getting late.”
“They’ll be here tomorrow. We can come back.”
I think I will need to.
By Terry W. Sheely
It’s one of those rare late June days in Southeast Alaska, blue-sky, flat water, circling gulls. The rounded lumps of smooth rock rolling into Dixon Entrance from the south end of Prince of Wales Island are looking less like islands and more like the coils of a sea serpent—Nessie maybe, or Ogopogo.
We’re fishing just a long cast from the British Columbia border and anchored up. Morning sun is seeping warm and easy into my shoulders and 420 feet below our 32-foot boat, a halibut nuzzles a salmon belly that’s skewered onto a circle hook and held down by a pound of lead. I set my coffee cup on the bow decking, slip the Shakespeare Ugly Stik out of the rail holder and take a two-handed grip.
And that’s when it went crazy.
Feet in the air, jaw dropping, rod flying crazy.
The trip had started out like most fishing adventures, a little mysterious, a little edgy, with a lot to discover.
Rick Collins is guiding me through fives days of fishing pointing out the subtleties and background in his backyard fish pond like only a local can.
This week he is going to show me Ketchikan, his Ketchikan.
Not the cruise ship docks with their bow-to-stern lineup of horizontal 5-star excess, the flapping buntings, 49er shot glasses, wooden salmon, eagles with flash burn or the tricked out moose dolls. Not the splintered squadrons of flightseeing Beavers and Cessnas shredding the air over Tongass Narrows roaring and frothing like deranged dragonflies, or the crystal baubles and tee shirt shops that lean into Front Street which just may be the most congested piece of asphalt north of Vancouver.
Rick is bent on showing me another side of Ketchikan, the one where on a good day he can nail 20-steelhead—on the fly, where he points to a spot in the kelp at Survey Point and says with confidence, “a king salmon is holding there.”
Hidden behind the cruise ship scurry, Rick says, is a Ketchikan where orange Grunden bibs are halibut slimed, nasty ling cod draw wolf whistles from the rail leaners at Clover Pass Resort, kings and silvers and carpets of pinks grow into memories. And that doesn’t include the side trip for wild trout in the lakes cupped into vast,
unpopulated Misty Fjords National Monument.
There are three Ketchikans, Rick tells me. One makes a good living off city-sized cruise ships with names like, Oosterdam, one fishes, and one sticks around to enjoy the 16 feet of winter that falls as rain and snow.
Hidden in plain sight, the fishing Ketchikan is, I discover, where world-jaunting destination-fishermen can find all the action they can stand if they know where to look.
Rick Collins, fish guide, charter operator, teacher, coach and entrepreneur, has the credentials to understand all three and distinguish the differences. Ketchikan born and raised, a college education paid with summer jobs on black cod, halibut and salmon boats and guiding waterfront tours, then paying the family bills by teaching biology and seamanship to high schoolers up at KHS, and in the summer running a multi-faceted charter operation guiding cruise-ship escapees, destination anglers and at least one fish writer into the salmon and halibut, scenery and surprises that wait at the southern-most tip of Alaska.
The region is dominated by mountains as high as 4,000 feet forested with Sitka spruce, western hemlock, red cedar and Alaska-cedar. What’s not forested is open muskeg, alpine heather, coastal rocks, or islands.
There’s a scattering of dozens of small streams and lakes. Larger river systems are rare. The big ones from 30
to 50 miles long, extend from British Columbia into Alaska: the Unuk and Chickamin rivers flow into East Behm
Canal, and the Salmon River empties into Portand Canal near Hyder, Alaska.
Collins appreciates all three faces of his town, but he is undeniably a man in a hot fevered love affair with the Ketchikan that fishes.
And he wants the world to know why.
Ketchikan is a sport fish town, he says, with a lot more to offer than four-hour trips and downtown charters from cruise ship docks. “This is a good destination fishery,” he tells me, “it’s just that no one thinks about Ketchikan as a fishing destination. We’ve got lodges, we’ve got fish, we’ve got the scenery. When they try it, they come back.”
Five days and a well-packed box of fillets later, I’m dragging bags up the floatplane ramp toward the jetport on Gravina Island thinking Rick could be right. I’m angling toward the Alaska Air check-in line, tired, worn down by a whirlwind of fishing, and with a new respect for Ketchikan diversity.
Sixty-pound halibut from The Cape, 40-inch ling off The Rocks, 37-pound king in Nichols Pass, a flight of small June silvers in Clarence Strait, kings rolling in the sunset at Herring Cove, soloing the 22-foot Ocean Pro down Tongass Narrows with the whitecaps blowing over the roof while the GPS confirms that I’ve missed the turn to
Ketchikan and am headed either for Prince of Wales Island or somewhere in British Columbia. Add the late evening I look up from my notes in Rick’s Pennock Island cabin to see a killer whale blow through the kelp bed outside the picture window, the crabs I missed out on at Bostwick Inlet, and the floatplane flight into a wild cutthroat wonderland at Misty Fjords National Park (that’s another story).
And that is just the top of the trip.
Ketchikan’s 14,500 residents may owe their economic souls to the row of cruise ships spilling passengers onto Waterfront Promenade, but their roots are anchored in fishing going back to 1883 when the first salmon saltery opened. A fourth of the incorporated town is water and a salmon run cuts through the center of downtown and swims up Ketchikan Creek past the bead string doorways and replicated bordellos on Creek Street. A good part of the town is built on pilings planted in Tongass Narrows, and under the flooring are salmon that dodge and dart along the waterfront protected by obscurity. The visitor’s bureau (www.visit-ketchikan.com) boasts more than two-dozen charter operations, and that’s only a partial list.
Like most exceptional fishing centers, Ketchikan, is an island town surrounded by adventure and fish. It’s edged into the steep shoreline on the skinny apron where mountains spill into saltwater on the west side Revillagigedo Island, 679 miles north of Seattle, 235 miles south of Juneau and 22 miles west of the 2.3 million
acres of Misty Fjords National Monument and wilderness. Twenty-nine public use Forest Service cabins dot the area, available on a first-come basis, some fronting on prime salmon waters on Revillagigedo Island north of Ketchikan, others on remote trout lakes or salmon streams in the Misty Fjords region. (Contact Tongass National Forest, SE Alaska Discovery Center, 50 Main Street,, Ketchikan, AK 99901. 907-228-6220.)
As Rick promised and I was about to confirm. Ketchikan is a good place to power-fish until you drop. At least it was for five days last June, and 2006—by most measures—was a slow salmon year..
Rick has laid out a fishing itinerary like a piscatorial sampler platter crowded with mini fishing adventures and the order would depend on fish runs and weather.
1) Charter boat fishing splitting halibut and king salmon rod time with 5 destination anglers from Utah and California.
2) Guided small boat downrigger trolling.
3) A example of a four-hour cruise ship salmon trolling special, with a father and son from Phoenix.
4) A magical float-plane shuttle into the “Mistys” for attack cutthroat.
5) A self-guided do-it-myself sortie that included being turned loose in Southeast with a 22-foot boat, salmon
gear, and a two-bedroom remote cabin that resembles a mini-lodge, that Rick’s operation rents out on Pennock Island, across Tongass Narrows from Ketchikan.
The diverse fishery I explored is one that’s available to anyone, and that is Rick’s point.
"Wish we had time to do more,” he says, “there’s a lot of fishing opportunity we won’t have time to get to. I’d
really like to get you up here in the spring. You won’t believe the steelhead fishing we get. Nobody else round, 20 fish days. My dad got 92 last year—on the fly.”
I just shake my head..
Rick’s business, Explore Alaska Charters (www.explorealaskacharters.com) is a blanket operation that provides everything from full-service six-pack fishing charters, to small boat guided trips on his Bayliner, boat rentals for self-guided anglers, (18-20 foot Hewescraft fully equipped and outfitted with electronics, and downriggers, a
waterfront cabin on Pennock Island which can include a 22-foot Hewescraft Ocean Pro, all the electronic goodies and tackle and the inside line on a couple of Dungeness crab hot spot, and the float-plane fly-in fishing to the Misty’s.
"Four hours or all week, in your (self guided) boat or ours,” he says with a grin, “we’ve got fishing and if we can’t handle it we’ll set you up with someone who can.”
One of those someone’s is young Ben Atwood, who runs his family’s 32-foot six-pack charter boat, and who
unwittingly became a witness to THE hook set.
Pushed by a 225-horse four-stroke, we ran 1 hour and 25 minutes southwest through Nichols Pass to the halibut beds and salmon rocks at Cape Chacon on the south end of Prince of Wales Island. You can throw mooching sinkers into British Columbia from here. On the horizon there’s a blue lump, Langara Island in the Queen Charlottes.
Alex of LA shows us yesterday's action on his digital camera, frame-by-frame. Some nice kings in the high 20s, one in the low 30s and halibut lead by a 120 pounder. He grins. He and his friend Phil are staying at the Cedars Lodge downtown and they’re booked for 5 days of fishing. “We found out about the fishing here a few years ago,” he says, “and we keep coming back. Lots to do in town and good fishing out here. Works for us and our wives.”
Also on board are three anglers from Vernal, Utah. Tony George has a horseshoe mustache that frames his consistant grin, but can’t hide the spark of anticipation dancing through his eyes. His wife Sue and a 70-year-old spitfire named Karma.
Karma can run either way, I say, and then I ask "You're the good Karma, right?” "We'll see” she says, “we’ll see.” And we do.
Karma, as it turns out, is stampeding in both directions and I’m about to get trampled.
The bite intensifies, the tip bounces hard bends goes down a foot or so stays there bucking against a hard,
steady pull. I brace against the gunwale and heave up and back. (I know a hard-set isn’t necessary with circle hooks. Blame it on reflexive instinct.)
As nearly as the circus event can be reconstructed, just as I’m swinging up, the halibut plows down. My death-grip pops. The rod flies out of my hands. Momenteum flips me backward in an ungainly freestyle reverse somersault that ends in a heap piled in front of the pilot house window. My fingers are still wrapped around the rod—but the rod’s gone.
I'm stunned, disoriented and sort of upside-down.
What in the hell just happened!
Across the deck I see the rod pinned to the top railing. It’s still on board!
Just another whacky piece in this crazy circus act. As the rod shot over the rail, a loop of Polypro braid had wrapped around the rod holder, tied the rod to the railing and tension from the running halibut kept it there. But it’s slipping!. I claw and scramble across the metal deck grab the rod, free the line, get my feet under me and stand up. Incredibly the halibut is still on, nailed solidly to the circle hook.
Ben is staring, wide-eyed, mouth open. “What was that," he says, “is that how writers set the hook?”
That was a classic Barnum & Bailey hook set I tell him. Nothing special. I ‘m still in the boat. Rod’s okay. Fish is on. Didn’t spill my coffee.
What?
He's starts laughing and he’s still laughing three days later when I say goodbye.
Two hundred feet away the skipper of a neighboring six pack is laughing. And pointing. And laughing, while trying to describe the back flip, rod release, flying knot hook set halibut technique that he’s just seen. But he’s laughing too hard to get it out.
Word is, they’re still laughing,
"Color"
“Gaff.”
Sixty-one pounds of prime white fillets hit the back deck in a tail-pounding splatter. Good Karma. She grins and shakes her head.
“Don’t try that with my salmon rods, okay,” Rick says.
Okay.
It’s late evening and we’re downrigger trolling in Rick’s 28-foot Bayliner prospecting for a king salmon along the ledge at Survey Point. Yesterday a pod of killer whales ravaged the point and sent fish and fishermen scattering. Rick’s hoping the kings have started to move back in. The cabin heater feels good. It’s just a short run from the dock at Knudson Cove, five minutes maybe, yet Survey is one of the favorite salmon areas in the entire Ketchikan region.
It’s edged by a wall of rocks with a couple of promising humps, a line of kelp and a resident population of
baitfish—the right ingredients for kings.
Silvers, too, and pinks, and sometimes halibut, Rick says. You don’t get a lot of boat ride. You get a lot of
fishing here. “In July we catch pinks as fast as we can unhook ‘em. There’s silvers in August and June kings. Good spot.”
Survey is just a couple of miles around the bend from Knudson Cove, which is 14.6 miles northwest of and a world apart from the beehive at Ketchikan. Knudson’s is a fishing place.
The weather vane over the docks is a rusty cowboy sitting deep in a buckin’ saddle strapped on a rusty king salmon. A couple of guys with gray beard stubble and rounded shoulders are jigging from the docks for poggies, perch and flounder. Eagles sit on tree branches and flag poles drying wing feathers and making eagle music. There’s a smell of saltwater and kelp, of fish and outboard gas, and wet wood, and cigar smoke. Fish boats, a few commercial but most sport fishing, are tied to a lattice-work of floating docks. Joe Nichols is the owner/operator of Knudson Cove Marina, bait shop, coffee stop, sack lunches, tackle, tools and fish scales. He rents kicker boats and gear for self-guided fishing, and can book a charter or arrange a bed. Hero photos of monster fish and momentous occurrences are pinned on the wall at the doorway. This is the center of the up-island fishery. (www.knudsoncovemarina.com).
It’s where Rick bases Explore Alaska Charters, and it’s convenient to some of the best Ketchikan area salmon and halibut areas. Across Clarence Strait is the east side of Prince of Wales Island, Bond Bay, Kasaan Point and a host of other migratory salmon and resident halibut hot spots. Up north there’s a major hatchery at Neet’s
Bay that plugs up with kings.
According to Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s Region 1 office at Ketchikan, the local salmon fishery is targeted on pass-bys kings and silvers migrating past Ketchikan to major river systems on the mainland and in British Columbia, especially the Unuk and Chickamin rivers. ADFG pegs the king run at May-August and pinpoints June as the peak. A few kings are caught in the 60 pound range, but anglers can expect 20 to 30
pounders.
Offsetting the lack of natural spawning rivers is a regional complex of private and public hatcheries that has
created several local king salmon hot spots. Whitman Lake, Carroll Inlet and Neets Bay hatcheries are the largest king salmon contributors in this area, according to the ADFG, followed by Deer Mountain in Ketchikan
and Tamgas Creek on Annette Island. Fishing for kings in freshwater is rarely allowed.
Rick ticks off the hottest local salmon options: Survey Point, Bostick Point, the rocks at Seal Cove, Mountain Point, Herring Cove, Bold Island, Bostwick Inlet, Revillagigedo Channel, Carroll Point, or the rocks off Mallenar Point, Point. Higgins, and Cape Chacon.
Put a silver in the net, heft it and it’ll weigh from 3 to 20 pounds, average 10 and most years the schools are thick from July to September. Like kings, ADFG has also been building up the silver runs with hatchery enhancements returning to Neets Bay, Whitman Lake, Deer Mountain and Tamgas Creek. ADFG believes the
plants “contribute significantly to (Ketchikan) sport fisheries. Most area streams wider than 3 feet that enter salt water support at least small runs of coho,” according to the regional ADFG. There is a small runoff summer coho in late June to early July, but big fall-run fish dominate Ketchikan sport fishing.
In July and August pink salmon are thick, Rick says. The tide rips and mouths of almost every dribble of creek
water are packed with pinks.
According to ADFG surveys, the sweet spot for halibut is July and August. In the Ketchikan region hallies average 40 pounds, and range from15 to 100 pounds. A few are 300-pounders are taken, but are rare.
Steelhead duck the tourist season entirely, running in area streams from November to May, and except for the few streams with road access most are ignored. Rick takes his boat and heater and seeks out the remote streams where he can hike upstream and catch steelhead all day on Glo Bugs without seeing another boot print. I could get into that.
ADFG confirms that the Ketchikan region as one of the top steelhead spots in Alaska—bar none. Fisheries workers have identified more than 75 steelhead rivers and streams and several of the larger systems support both spring- and fall-run fish.
Spring- run steelhead dominate most areas returning from early March through May, and peak in late April.
One of the topographic distinctions favoring the Ketchikan saltwater fishery is that the region is protected from the winds and storms of the open ocean by a splattering of barrier islands. The waters around this small town are a puzzle of islands and points, channels and coves and no matter how hard it blows or gushes rain there’s always a protected, promising honey hole to duck into and fish, Rick points out.
Several lodges are set up along the Narrows comfortably removed from downtown.Clover Pass Resort is across the bay from Knudson Cove Marina. Silver King Lodge is on a nearby island surrounded by fishing water and quiet. There are others.
Tony is sitting down with his back to the rod when it pops out of the 'rigger and starts bouncing. Ben yells,
reel, reel, reel. Tony scrambles, partially confused and thoroughly surprised. He grabs the rod. There’s a long run, several long runs, thrashing, Tony grinding the reel against the drag and then the net.
At the dock the king weighs 36.3 pounds. Tony’s personal best. It slammed the 5-inch hammered 50/50, silver
and brass spoon ("When kings go on the bite, you don't need anything else") at 43 minutes before high slack.
Other rods are going down, pounding, leaking line. We’ve turned a page and this one is full of kings. Bait is stacked everywhere and shows up on the recorder like yellow and orange hot air balloons.
Phil gets a 20 pounder, Alex adds another. Karma nails hers. Fish weigh 19 to 36.3 pounds. “We have to go,” Ben says, “we’re late. We really do have to get back. Really. It’s getting late.”
“They’ll be here tomorrow. We can come back.”
I think I will need to.
Contacts:
Explore Alaska Charters.
Rick Collins
www.explorealaskacharters.com
907-225-1011
Knudson Cove Marina,
Joe Nichols, owner/operator
www.knudsoncovemarina.com
800-528-2486
Alaska Sportfishing Expeditions
Rod Thomas
The Cedars Lodge, Silver King Lodge, Clover Pass Resort
www.ketchikanalaskafishing.com
800-813-4363
Alaska Department Fish Game
Ketchikan Area Office
2030 Sea Level Drive
Ketchikan, AK 99901
(907) 225-2859
www.sf.adfg.state.ak.us/statewide/sf_home.cfm
Explore Alaska Charters.
Rick Collins
www.explorealaskacharters.com
907-225-1011
Knudson Cove Marina,
Joe Nichols, owner/operator
www.knudsoncovemarina.com
800-528-2486
Alaska Sportfishing Expeditions
Rod Thomas
The Cedars Lodge, Silver King Lodge, Clover Pass Resort
www.ketchikanalaskafishing.com
800-813-4363
Alaska Department Fish Game
Ketchikan Area Office
2030 Sea Level Drive
Ketchikan, AK 99901
(907) 225-2859
www.sf.adfg.state.ak.us/statewide/sf_home.cfm
