Our two weeks here in Valdez is almost up. We spent a week here in June and really liked it so we planned on a return visit for this month. We had 2.5 nice sunny days when we first arrived and that quickly degenerated into completely overcast skies and rain practically every day and night. Finally today the rain stopped and we actually caught a glimpse here and there of blue skies; it is difficult not to think of Noah and what he went through for 40 days. John was busy getting the lawn chairs dried off and stowed away, the bikes back on the rack, the tires aired up and Jane did some last minute grocery shopping. John is lamenting and a little depressed thinking about the mud/dirt/tar bath the clean coach is going to run through immediately upon leaving Valdez. The highway coming into Valdez is being resurfaced with a mud/silt/tar/gravel slurry that is designed to stick to vehicles as well as the road base. You have to be tough to live or visit up here!
You dear readers must be wondering what the heck we caught based on today’s caption. We’re talking about fish! Valdez goes nuts in August when the Silver Salmon are running; anglers from all over Alaska camp out (literally) here and make a big event of salmon fishing. We have learned quite a bit about salmon since we have been in Alaska; there are several species and John found a nice description of the Alaska salmon varieties here. Based on our experience of being in Alaska for two months, John has decided the two major varieties of salmon caught for sport are the King or Chinook Salmon and the Silver or Coho Salmon. They don’t call it the “King” for nothing – John was chatting with the guy next to us today and they were talking about fishing and he showed John a picture of the 60 pound King he caught on the Kenai River in late July. Not to be outdone John told him how Jane caught two Kings on our Kasilof River salmon charter while he looked on approvingly – wait – no, that’s not right. John was not looking on approvingly when Jane caught the second King; those were tense moments.
Sorry, we are wandering around a little bit so on with the story! We arranged for two salmon charters charters which was the price of one halibut charter (it is a three or four hour trip to the Halibut fishing grounds.) Most salmon charters are of the 1/2 day variety and cost about $125 per person. The fishing grounds (Prince William Sound) are only about 30 minutes away from the Valdez small boat harbor so quite a bit of fishing is possible after you leave the dock at 6:30 AM. The alarm is set for 4:15 AM Tuesday and we are up and at our daily routine. After our usual filling breakfast we are off to the docks which are only about three blocks away from Eagle’s Rest RV Park. We find our boat and are ultimately disappointed when we discover there are going to be a total of six charterers on the relatively (maybe 28-30 feet) small boat. We leave the dock and are soon trolling for the Silvers. With six anglers there is a system for who reels in the fish – we take turns. John manages to catch four, Jane hauls in two and the total catch for the boat was 18 Silvers. One of the charter party lands a really nice fish and the captain grabs the scale (we are all estimating the weight of that fish) and it winds up being 14 pounds. Good, but not a derby winner. We aren’t going to name the boat or the captain, but the cabin was junky looking and the marine head (potty) needed rebuilding and it smelled really bad. It wasn’t a great morning and even though this boat was recommended to us, we would not use it again.
We are only 50% through our salmon charters fortunately and the next morning at about
6:20 AM we arrive at the boat slip for our Wednesday charter on the Chinook. Things are looking up! The boat is really in yacht-like condition and there is only one other client aboard. We find out that there are only three people total on the boat – hooray! We quickly get to the fishing area and the lines go in the water. Fishing for Silvers is done with artificial lures and/or herring trolled behind the boat at depths from 20 feet to about 50 feet by the use of downriggers. The fishing is very slow for the first hour, only one was interested in taking the bait. It slowly picks up, two here and one there. Then about mid morning the fish decide it’s show time! We are keeping Rick our captain busy as we get strike after strike. We had two fish on out of the four lines in the water at one moment in the frenzy. Time passes quickly and we lose count of the fish hauled aboard. Like a switch turned off, the fish then go on an extended coffee-break. We go here and there in the sound, we change lures, change depths and after another hour of trolling, we get a strike, lose a fish, time passes by we get another strike and haul in another Silver. The fish are only hitting every 30 or 40 minutes and the time passes very slowly. Captain Rick doesn’t have an afternoon charter so he volunteers to stay out longer on our charter. The usual half-day charters are over at 11:30 AM, we fish until 2:00 PM. We are all cold, wet, and tired – it was about 50 degrees,
completely overcast with fog, and raining about 90% of our time and we are really thankful to be calling it quits. We arrive back at our boat slip about 2:30 PM and after tying up the boat, Capt. Rick unloads the fish box. We are all really amazed to see that among the three of us fishing we caught 17 Silvers, Jane and John catch their daily limit of six each and the other fellow caught five. The fish were filleted and given to the proud fisherpeople! It was a fun way to end our time in this part of Alaska and one we will always remember. The best part is that John finally caught his salmon.
Be sure and visit the photo gallery for a few more pictures of the fishing trip!