The life and times of an Alaskan fishing guide, part I

[Angus]

After a 20+ year career of guiding for 2 premier fishing resorts in S.E. AK. I thought I would share a fishing story or 2 that stand out in my memory and I think some here might enjoy.

  It was near the end of my rookie season of 1990, I had been fishing a group for 3 days and the weather and fishing was slow to fair at best. The weather forecast for their last day looked good so they decided to fish an area 50 miles from the resort that the resort offered a fly-out to where the guests could pay a couple hundred extra and be flown to and from the fishing grounds and avoid an hour and 45 minute boat ride each way.
   The next morning I head out at 5:30 to meet the plane at 7:45 (had to leave early to get some "test" fishing in ) I get some fishing in and found kings and silvers were biting full speed, as fast as I could get baits in the water, so I knew it was going to be a good day.
   The floatplane arrives and I load up guests and gear and make arrangements with the pilot to meet back at 3:30 and off he goes. We spend a couple minutes getting raingear on and everything stowed and start to make the 5 minute run to the fishing grounds when it happens, the most god awful sound you ever want to hear when running a fiberglass boat, the sound of wood meeting glass, I wasn't quite on step yet but was close and knew there had to be some damage. After coming to a stop we see a deadhead pop up behind us in the prop wash, it would pop up for about 3-5 seconds then stay submerged for about 10. I went up on the bow to survey the damage but couldn't see any so I went in the cabin and removed cushions expecting to see water but there wasn't any, bilge was completely dry, hmmm, maybe it wasn't as bad as I thought, lets go fishing.
To be continued

[rb2506]

I'm staying for the rest

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[fillthefreezer]

 
 

[shoot-em-dead]

waiting for more

[Angus]

Sorry, had to run an errand.

   Anyways, we head over to the fishing spot and get started, 1st spot is a salmon spot and they are biting good, mostly silvers with an occassional king mixed in, we have constant action, doubles, triples, quads and within a couple hours we have our 30 silver limit and half our king limit (5) in the box and decide to switch gears and go do some bottom fishing. Before the 10 minute run to the next spot I do another check even though I've been keeping an eye on the bilge which hasn't kicked on all morning. Everything checks out dry and we make the move. We spend a couple more hours catching halibut then decide to finish off the day with some ling and snapper fishing, after the short move to get on some pinnacles I notice the bilge pumping water for the 1st time all day, it didn't pump much so I wasn't concerned until an hour later when it started pumping again, this time a little more then the first time. We fish another couple hours until its time to call it a day and it pumped water 4 times but it never pumped very much so I wasn't overly concerned.
   We meet up with the floatplane and after getting my guests off the boat I let the floatplane pilot know I have a problem and to let our mechanic and/or head dockhand know and to stay by the radio.
   I make 1 last inspection before heading back and still don't see any excess water in the bilge  so I poor the coal to her and set out across about 20 miles of open water until I get to the other side of the strait. The crossing goes fine, the Yamaha 250 is humming along about 46-4800 rpm and cruising about 25-27 kts. and alls well until I'm about 12 miles out and I notice the tach has dropped to 4400 and as I push down the throttle I get nothing,  she's firewalled and and loosing RPM's and now Im down to about 20kts, thats when I look over my shoulder and see the deck hatches opening and closing with the surging water and the bilge pump pushing alot of water.
   After a few seconds of panic I calm myself and call the mechanic at the resort (in hind sight I should have been calling the coasties) who got the message from the pilot and was on his way out to meet me. I give him my position and were about 3 miles apart. I was running a half mile off an island and told him I was looking for a beach to park the boat on. He tells me to just keep going, don't let up on the throttle at all, which I  wasn't going to until I could put my feet on a beach or dock, and he would be there shortly. He gets there a few minutes later and circles me and says the crack is now out of the water with all the weight in the stern and I should be fine to take the boat right to the resort dock and drive it right onto the floatplane ramp, which I did without incident about 20 minutes later.
   After regaining some composure I bail out of the boat to see an L shaped crack just below the water line which was about 12"x 8".
 
    Needless to say, I didn't sleep well that night, even after a few adult beverages and it wasn't just because of what had happened on the water but what had happened on the dock the night before this trip. Normally, we don't make this trip solo because of the distance but the guests I was fishing were very good friends of the resort manager and the manager put alot of pressure on me to take them because of the slow fishing they had on their previous days. I was young (23) and dumb and against my better judgement gave in to him. That was his last season at the resort.

If anyones interested, I've got more.

[rb2506]

Keep ' em coming

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[bigelk1030]

Yes. Keep more coming please.

[sumbeech66]

I'd read another. 

[stickbuck]

Dang!! That sure would have been a pucker moment. Can't wait to read more!!

[Skillet]

Yep.  Like to read another.