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Picture Of The Month



SD2OR with a trophy fall walleye

Topic: Valdez/Hinchenbrook Before the Sharkfest, July 13-22  (Read 6527 times)

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polepole

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July 13, Friday
I took the morning flight from Seattle to Anchorage.  Called Otto the boat owner from Anchorage and received the news that the boat, Bold Eagle, had blown an engine and that we’d be delayed a couple days.  That’s fine because I didn’t feel like I was quite ready to leave first thing Saturday morning.  Got into the Valdez in the early afternoon and walked the docks while waiting for Troy, YakontheFly, to get back from a day charter for halibuts.  It didn’t take long before I saw my first salmon sharks hanging from the docks.  After seeing them close up and in person my fears quickly subsided and I really started thinking that it wasn’t going to be a problem to land one.  The jaws and teeth were a lot smaller than I was dreaming about.  I watched the sharks being filleted and even got a hunk of meat to take home for dinner.  Troy arrived at the campsite a little later.  He had caught a nice ling and a couple of chicken halibuts.  We were staying at the Eagles Rest campground right in the middle of all the “action”.


polepole

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July 14, Saturday
Otto was so gracious in making up for the delay.  He had arranged for us to float the Robe River with James, the captain of the Bold Eagle.  It was going to be an afternoon float so we decided to head over to Allison Point and fish for pink salmon on the high tide. We hitched a ride with a couple from the campground.  Within minutes of getting there we were hauling in pinks on every cast.  The standard lure of choice is a Pixee Spoon in various colors including pink, orange, and green, but I decided to use a small pink buzz bomb, which is what we use in WA.  The run of pink salmon is estimated to be 30M returning to the hatchery at Allision Point.  Yes, that’s 30 MILLION!!!  Troy messed around with a fly rod and had his share of fun.  After about an hour we had kept 5-6 fresh bright silver ones and let go twice as many that were turning color.


polepole

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Otto then called and he was on his way to pick us up.  We drove the short distance to the put in at Robe Lake and were on our way.  A nice couple joined us on the trip and we were on our way.  The Robe is a small stream about 10 feet across in most places and knee deep with a few deeper pools holding salmon and trout.  All 5 species of salmon are in this river and in fact we saw them all as well as Dolly Varden Trout.  This is a fly fishing only section of stream.  The upper mile or so is wet grassland before you enter the forest area.  We didn’t spot much in this upper section as the water was low and the fish hadn’t pushed up yet.  About 2/3 of the way down we hit a series of pools holding salmon and trout and started hooking up, mostly on dollies, but some nice ones up to 24-25 inches.  At one point I hooked a small king salmon that I had on shortly before it threw the fly.  We spotted sockeye, pinks and chums in the pools as well.  This short float was definitely a highlight of my trip and I did it all of 3 times.  I was told that later in the summer this river loads up with large silver salmon up to 20#.

The lowlight of the day was hearing that that Bold Eagle would not be ready to go tomorrow.


polepole

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July 15, Sunday
Otto left us with a truck to use and we decided to hit Allison Point again. We hit a school of mostly colored up males.  The school was so big that  many were getting snagged.  Fished until our arms were tired then called it a day.  Saw a kid stick a hook through his palm.  Had to push the hook through, then clip it and pull it out.  The kid toughed it out all right.

The update on the Bold Eagle was that is still would not be ready tomorrow.  Tuesday was looking likely.

July 16, Monday.
We were getting antsy now as we wanted to get out to the island.  Decided to hit the Robe again.  More of the same although some pinks had managed to push their way up to the upper section.  This time “the pool” was holding a couple of early silvers as well.  I hooked one and managed to land it after a nice fight on the bug wand.  Luckily I had snagged an old net on up the river a ways as it came in handy at the end.  I also caught a nice large dolly.

The Bold Eagle is ready and we’ll be hitting the water tomorrow.


polepole

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July 17, Tuesday
Loaded up the boat in the morning and were under way around 6:30.  We were to be dropped off before the rest of the boat went shark fishing.  One of the other party had Down’s Syndrome.  We heard later that he got his shark.

We got to the mouth of Shelter Bay on Hinchenbrook Island at about 9:30.  The passageway into the bay was too shallow for the Bold Eagle so we got dropped off a ways offshore and paddled in.  Troy had a large cooler which weighed him down a bit in the back and he sort of looked funny paddling, but we made it in just fine with all the gear we had.  We were paddling Wilderness Systems Rides and the other yaks (Ocean Kayak P13’s) that we had shipped up for the sharkfest had not arrived yet.  At low tide the passageway actually becomes somewhat of a salt water river.  We couldn’t paddle up it so we pulled our kayaks up the ~1/4 mile section.  At high tides, the inlet was paddle-able both ways.  The pic is across a peninsula to the cabin.  The cabin actually sits right on the bay.  The bay was loaded with pinks waiting for a rain to bring up the small streams in the area.  There were also dollies and sea run cutthroat in the bay.  We quickly unpacked as we were anxious to get fishing.  Stopped off a hit a few pinks before getting bored of that then made our way out to the salt.


polepole

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Troy hooked up shortly on a chicken butt and we were pretty constantly hooking up the rest of the day on some nice lings (34-44”) and chicken butts (from 14 inches up to 17-18 pounds).  I also managed a ~60 pound skate.  Unfortunately the skate fried my TLD15. . Luckily I brought a backup reel.  My cheap Shimano spinning reel was also fried after reeling in dozens on pinks.  The sheer numbers of fish sure were hard on my gear.


polepole

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We ended up keeping 4 lings at 39, 40, 43, and 44” and a couple of the larger chickens.


polepole

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July 18, Wednesday
On our way out we were treated to quite the show of feeling humpback whales in shallow.  At one point I sneaked up to within a couple hundred feet of them to try to get some video.  When all of a sudden one decided to check me out and came up within 10 feet of my yak.  It made me feel pretty small.
   
More of the same on the outside waters with consistent action on large lings and chicken butts.  We kept one butt and released the rest of the fish.  At one point I caught a 17” greenling and sent it back down on a pair of 10/0 hooks and managed to catch a 44” ling on it.  I pulled the bait out of the ling’s gut and sent it down again for another monster ling which felt a lot bigger, but unfortunately it came unbuttoned.  We even kept the greenling for dinner.

I was fishing a large glow in the dark curly tailed worm most of the time looking for larger butts.   But we also used large horse herring, and Troy was on fire with a Spro hair jig and a Williamson Speed Jig.  He even managed to hook a couple of silver salmon on these jigs, but both came unbuttoned at the boat while trying to land them.

The lings were fat and feisty.  They had been feeding on salmon.  Yes, salmon.  One of them had a nice silver salmon tail hanging outside of its mouth and it still decided to hit my lure.  They must have been very hungry.

We tried every thing we could think of to catch larger butts.  Most of our fishing was in relatively shallow water (60-90 feet).  Every time we ventured deeper we got mobbed by large arrowtooth flounder.

The weather was outstanding for us with calm winds and sunny days.  Certainly not what I was expecting, so that was really nice.


polepole

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July 19, Thursday
Today was our pick up day.  I wish we had a few more days to hunt large butts.  We fished the big boat with 3 other guys that came out on the charter and caught a limit of chicken butts up to 30 pounds.  We also caught limits of larger black rockfish running 5-8 pounds as well as half limits of yelloweye rockfish up to 10 pounds.  Also caught some of large lings as well as some Pacific Cod.  Needless to say we were very busy at the cleaning stations.


ZeeHawk

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AWESOME! :o  What more can I say? Fish fish FISH!!!!

Z
« Last Edit: August 06, 2007, 02:10:31 PM by Zeelander »
2010 Angler Of The Year
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polepole

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July 20-21, Friday and Saturday.
Try left on Friday, but I hitched a ride on the Bold Eagle for an overnighter.  I was the deck hand for the day and spent the time baiting for the clients, dropping anchor and all the other chores a deckhand does.  I had a really fun time doing this and we had a great group of 4 from Dawson.  We caught near limits for 2 days of butts, blacks, yelloweyes, and a couple large lings including a 51 incher.  We were also treated to a very nice sunset.   Left the rods out all night and awoke to a 90# butt on the hook.  Nice!!!

Captain James really likes his jobs.  He would get bug eyed whenever it was time to gaff a fish.  Here is a pic of all of us trying to do the bugeye!  Captain James is the big bearded guy in the back.


polepole

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So that was the "warmup" before the real action ...

Who wants to go next year?

-Allen


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