After missing last year’s Alaska fishing trip, I was really looking forward to this trip with friends Dennis Keeling and Steve Mayfield, who had made the trip with me before. We also had two more of Dennis’ friends Tom and Ben joining us. I arrived 12 hours after the rest of the group, giving them time to scout out some of our favorite spots north of anchorage 90 miles. Dennis and Steve stop by our usual spot where we take newbies to get a taste of salmon fishing. Sheep Creek is easily accessible from the parks highway and always loaded with pink and a few chum salmon. After they caught a few each they moved on to Montana Creek where the silvers were starting to stack up, plus a good number of pinks and chums. They could see the silvers but did not have much luck catching them.
That evening they picked me up at the airport and we changed our plans of going south to return north to give Montana Creek a couple of days, which turned out to be productive. On one of the return mile walks from the mouth of the creek back to the camper you have to choose between walking through a tunnel or over the rail road tracks. Ben who was concerned about bears the whole trip decided to use the tunnel which was full of water and a bit slower. As the rest of us waited on Ben to emerge from the tunnel, Dennis made a soft growing noise that really did not sound much like a bear to the rest of use. But to Ben he was convinced that he was going to be eaten. Afterward most of us had a good chuckle at Ben’s expense.
On our way south we stopped by a meat processer that offers freezing services. We got some great summer sausage and some of the best breakfast sausage I have ever had. We left three coolers with all our salmon fillets with them, to freeze and store until we came back to retrieve them.
Everyone enjoyed the scenic drive south along the ocean and through the valleys. We arrived at the Russian River with plenty of time to get to the river and fish. The sockeyes were thick, but too far gone to be eaten. Locals call them tomatoes at that stage. The bears don’t seem to be quite as picky, gorging themselves on what they could catch. This up close interaction did not make Ben any more comfortable. Everyone caught a few tomatoes and we managed to get a few silvers and more starting to show up as it got closer to dark. The next morning there were even more silvers and Dennis and I caught our limits before the rest showed up. These fish were bright silver and as hard fighting as I have ever caught. Steve and Dennis both had fish break 30 lb. test.
We left the Russian River that afternoon to head to Seward were we had a combo charter set for the next morning. We set up camp right on the ocean with a million dollar view. I think everyone enjoyed the evening off from fishing and the supper that Tom had prepared. Knowing that we had a big day coming, we all turned in early after fitting our ear plugs. Some of us had a snoring problem and this was the only way to tolerate it. After a few days of using the ear plugs you sort of get use to them.
We left port early and after two or so hours we were at the first spot where we were going to catch herring for bait and silver salmon. Within an hour we had our limit of salmon and 30 herring for bait. We drove for another hour and started fishing for halibut. It took about an hour before we got our first fish – it was a nice 40 lbs. and then 4 more the biggest being 83 lbs. that Tom caught. We moved to another spot to catch our limits of rock fish. In about an hour we had a mix of quill back rock fish, black rock fish and one yellow eye rockfish that Steve caught. We started our return trip with one more stop to get the rest of our limit of smaller halibut known as chickens. After getting back to the dock we got some pictures and had the fish cleaned. We packed the 250 lbs. of fillets into the coolers and headed back to the Russian River. Some of us fished for dolly varden , a type of char and the rest tried to catch more silvers. That afternoon we headed to Homer to do a little flounder fishing from shore. About dark we got to a friend’s place about an hour away from Homer. We saw the only moose of the trip and it was a huge bull during this leg of the trip. We camped there for the night and left early the next morning to get to Homer. When we arrived at Homer the tide was low and in great shape. We had twenty starry flounder and Alaskan Pollock in short time and taught a visiting family how to catch them. We stopped by a fish cleaning station and got them ready to cook. We drove to the Homer overlook and cook some of the fish and they were exhalent. We had tried to bring some of the flounder home before and it did not freeze well and becoming mushy. We once again camped at the Russian River and fished the next morning. The next two days were the only days that it did not rain and it was sunny, drying up everything. At lunch we cooked up the rest of the flounder and headed back north stopping by some of the more touristy spots like Whittier, Portage Glacier, and Alyeska. We had a late supper and rolled into a relatives place to spend the night.
The next morning we visited and got everything ready to get on the plane. We returned the RV and were glade we opted to get the windshield insurance because within the first hour of driving a stone bounced up and cracked the glass and later another did the same.
After getting home and giving the fish time to defrost and us to rest, the three locals met at my shop to clean up the fish and vacuum pack it up. We have learned if we wrap the fillets in plastic wrap before vacuum packing it, the fish would last for a long time and they would be in great shape when ready to eat. When we were all done each of us had about 50 lbs. of salmon fillets and 50 lbs. of ocean fish fillets.
Take someone fishing
Greg
