Seward and Homer

Had a few days between jobs, so I made a run down the peninsula from Wednesday to Friday. Went to Seward first, since its close and just a really nice place to paddle. Put in at Millers and paddled out towards the Tonsina delta. Slowly worked my way through several places where' I've had luck in the past, but no takers. Marked a fish here and there in the middle of the water column, most likely pollock. After a couple of hours I needed to warm up my legs and feet a bit, so paddled over to shore by the creek and walked around for a bit. Beautiful day, intermittent sunshine and just over freezing.


Back in the boat, started slowly working back toward the Landing, and marking more fish. Dropped down on them with a speed jig and started getting some action, all pollock. Then I marked a bunch of activity just off the bottom. Dropped the jig on them, one lift and wham, fish on. Immediately knew it wasn't a pollock since it didn't immediately give up. A nice 19" rockfish, pretty sure its a quillback. There must have been a pretty good school of them down there from all the marks on my sonar. Getting dark, so I paddled back to the truck, loaded up, and drove that night to Homer.


Got to the spit about 11PM, pulled into Mariners Park and crashed on the backseat of the truck. Conditions the next morning were pretty decent, a decent swell and some wind, but not bad at all. Drove down to Lands End and launched. Worked my way down the beach trolling a Coho Killer but no action. Another kayaker showed up, I think it was gravesjacob, never actually got his name or handle. By that time I had moved over to working jigs for halibut and cod, but wasn't getting much action, just a few pollock. He proceeded to limit out on halibut in short order. Told me he was tipping jigs with bait, so I made the adjustment and the magic started to happen. Got into fish up even with Lands End. First halibut was about 10lbs. Next was pretty small so I tossed it. after a few cod, had another halibut hit the jig, and up came another 10 pounder. Thought about letting it go to hold out for the possibility of something a little bigger, but decided against that. Ended up being a good call. Kept fishing trying to pick up more cod, and couldn't keep the little halibut off. Caught about 5 more chicklets and a few cod, then called it a day. Back to Mariners and the back seat of the truck.


Forecast for Friday was a low pressure system moving in with increasing winds. Didn't look terrible in the morning, but I decided caution was the better strategy, so I hit the highway and ended up back in Seward for the afternoon. Water was flat calm, light snow falling, beautiful evening. Again, not many fish marked on the sounder, but I found the school of quillbacks again. So I pulled out another rockfish, paddled til it was almost too dark to see, and called it a trip. Nothing like paddling in Alaska in mid February.

Sounds like a great way to spend a week!

great report. awesome people are getting out so early. it only gets better from here!!!  thanks for the report!!!

You guys have it made up there! 

Thanks for the report, always good to hear of opportunities closer Anchor town where longer kitchen passes are not required. 

That was a good day in homer halibut bite was definantly on lost a king at the boat and maybe had another one on

gravesjacob has them dialed in down there. I don't think I would have had as much luck if he hadn't showed up on the scene. A jig with a squid skirt tipped with some bait, or a speed jig tipped with bait was getting it done on the halibut and cod. Without the bait, not much action. I really like those Williamson speed jigs, I find I get much more consistent and solid hookups with the assist hooks. I cut off they're le hook and put some assist hooks on some ahi diamond jigs and it's been a significant improvement. B&J's has/had the diamond jigs on sale, makes them a little more cost effective than the Williamson stuff.

I'm kind of a fan of the shimano butterfly jigs but I always seem to get a lot more Pollock with them I've had some really good luck with the squid and big grub presentations for halibut but the speed jigs defiantly work I noticed most of the fish were filled with crab and small cod until about 3 weeks ago im seeing some herring like fish in them more consistently lately

Yeah, one of the halibut I released had what looked like the back half of a sand lance sticking out of its throat.  Cod were definitely choosing on crabs, two that I caught still had them n their mouths, hadn't even started to swallow them yet.