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Picture Of The Month



SD2OR with a trophy fall walleye

Topic: Whiskey Gulch 8/4 - 8/6  (Read 1845 times)

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TALL FORCE

  • Perch
  • ***
  • Location: Anchorage, AK
  • Date Registered: Dec 2014
  • Posts: 65
This post is pretty late but the trip itself was my most productive yet. Kept 4 chicken halibuts which made this trip my first one where I limited out. Another reason this trip is memorable is that it was the first one where I used an anchor from my kayak. Other then donating it to the bottom of Cook Inlet, I was messing with it when a fish hit and I bumped it off my kayak, it worked great.

I used a pretty small anchor, with only had about 20' of line. I connected the end to a diver's reel. This gave me an additional 270' of line. The divers line is thin. The plan in case a real big kelp bed or log caught ahold of my anchor line would be to release the diver's reel to keep tension off the kayak until I could cut the line. The line is super easy to cut. I learned through research that you want anywhere from 2x to 3x of slack as the depth of the water. I slid the anchor through the rudder "tie" to keep the anchor near the back of the kayak, this kept me pretty close to 90 degrees to oncoming waves. Using the anchor allowed me to have a little chum bag with a couple salmon heads in it. Overall I was able to get pretty consistent action while saving my knees and lower back.

The weather was great and for the most part the inlet was glass. I did call it an early day on Friday when the swells started to pick up. I already had my daily limit and was simply sport fishing at that point.
"You will not catch anything with your hook out of the water, well nothing worth keeping anyway."


easyyakker

  • Lingcod
  • *****
  • Location: Soldotna, AK
  • Date Registered: May 2016
  • Posts: 229
Nice. Congratulations. I got all the parts to try anchoring this year. Never got around to it though.


Klondike Kid

  • Lingcod
  • *****
  • The Eagle Whisperer
  • Alaska Outdoor Journal
  • Location: Kenai Peninsula, AK
  • Date Registered: Sep 2016
  • Posts: 488
I was just talking to my good friend in Homer that runs a charter year round. He passed on some observations that got us chatting about the future for Anchor Point and Whiskey Gulch fishing.

This year the kelp around the AP area has exploded in growth. There is also a noticeable expansion into other areas where it is getting a literal foothold. Places where he never had problems navigating through without so much as a strand on the surface has become jungles this summer where there is often no passage through and requires back tracking. Halibut fishing in some of his secret sweet spots have almost become unmanageable this summer with continuous tangles with bottomfast kelp fronds and mats of loose drifting kelp requiring constant attention to gear. It took them over 30 minutes the other day to land a 100 pounder because it was wrapping on kelp frequently in an area that use to be clean bottom. There is a lot of stringy sea grass growing this summer too that sinks to the bottom on slack and then turns into a storm of junk constantly fouling the lines as the tide begins to run and is a big problem trying to troll.

The plus side is there may be a significant increase in rockfish and greenling over time as these areas provide shelter, protection from predators and attracts prey species of food. Time will tell. And it just might encourage the spring run of herring up the Inlet to short stop and begin spawning on this much more favorable substrate than the barnacle covered rocks of upper Cook Inlet and Turnagain Arm. That would be a genuine attraction for big early season halibut.

The bad side is for kayakers considering anchoring this could be a veritable nightmare as loose fronds and bull kelp and sea grass foul the stationary fishing line and of more concern foul the anchor line with a mass that has some momentum during tide movement. Its something to think through as to your preparation and response for a worst cast scenario. Shane was marking new kelp forests starting to establish in 100+ feet of water this summer where it never was present before.

Hard to say if this is some repercussion from the record El Niño event of 2015-16 or a change in nutritional sources that encourages this new production. And the last variable is this was a cold water year below average which might have sparked the explosion if that is what the kelp prefers. One thing we do know, it wasn't a result of above average SUNSHINE this summer.  >:(
The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

Take a Kid Fishing and Hook'em For Life!  ~KK~