Saturday, June 29, 2013

#2013-33 Emergency Fishing Order Flop

On June 26th the Alaska Fish and Game issued an Emergency Order opening up a section of Silver Bay for King salmon sports fishing.  Luckily (not), Alex just happened to peruse the AFG website and discovered the 3-day old Order. This order was unique because any King salmon landed did not count towards a fisherman's annual limit.  The current annual King limit was 3, dropping to 2 by Jun 30th, then just 1 by July 15th.  Silver Bay is just a 30 minute run south of Sitka, keeping us close to port.  So with visions of landing countless King salmon, we shoved off at 6AM for a full fishing day.  We began trolling just after 6:30 surprised not to see a gaggle of sports-fishers choking Silver Bay.  

This was not Whale Bay fishing.  The first 3 hours were biteless.  It took until near noon to land a fish, and it wasn't a King.  We struggled through to 2:30 finally giving up.  

Realizing we were spoiled, we headed into Sitka to provision for another Whale Bay expedition.  We were off the dock again at 5:30PM and made it into Still Harbor at Whale Bay by 10PM sunset, enjoying flat seas the last 7 miles. It had been a long day, the crew was ready to sleep in.
The Sitka to Whale bay route runs through narrow passes with
 flat waters for 25 of the 32 mile run, the last 7 miles in open ocean.

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