Alaska fishing guide, part II

[Angus]

A couple that didn't get away,

   Back to my rookie year. I got hired in January of 90 and did not have a Coast Guard license, I responded to an ad in the PI for a resort looking for guides and decided, what the heck, can't hurt to call and ask some questions. After a 15 minute conversation with the head guide and telling him about my fishing and construction background he offered me a job. Told me to enroll in a sea-school in Seattle and get licensed then come up and spend a couple months doing construction before the season started then he would put me in a boat. I tried to get into a school but due to my work schedule and no night classes available it looked like I was outta luck to be a guide. I called the resort and told them my situation and they offered me an opportunity to come up and bang nails for a couple months then they would get me into a school that was being held in Ketchikan at the end of May, I hung up the phone, packed my bags and tools and drove to Prince Rupert B.C to catch a ferry to Ketchikan 2 days later, I was living the dream!
   I spend the next 2 months framing, roofing and building docks and loving every minute of it, even in the lousy weather. Around the 20th of May they send me to another lodge that had been using unlicensed guides for years and the Coast Guard cracked down on them and made them get everyone licensed. The lodge brought in a crusty old salt that put us through a gruelling week long class that normally takes 4 weeks. We studied from 6am to 10pm everyday with just a couple 1 hour meal breaks, then the CG showed up and spent 3 days testing. Very stressful tests but I aced all 4 of my tests first time around (you get 3 chances at each section) and headed back to the resort with license in hand.
   I got back to the resort on the 27th and the manager told me he would have me deck hand for the head guide for 2 weeks to learn the area better and get a feel for things. I headed out the next morning excited to deckhand with a guy who is a local legend in the area and couldn't wait for the next 2 weeks to be over with so I could run my own boat. We had a good day with limits of kings and halibut and headed for the dock. The resort manager was there to meet us and ask how my day went, told him we had a great day and I learned alot and he says, "great, here are the keys to your boat, you have a trip in the morning"


   After a sleepless night, morning rolls around and its time to meet my guests and hope they don't see the fear in my eyes , at breakfast I meet a gentleman from Seattle who tells me he's saved for this trip for 10 years and he'll be the only 1 on the boat. Though there isn't much money (guides work for tips) in fishing a single, I was very happy to just be fishing him, he was a real cool guy and knew it was my 1st trip and didn't care, we hit it off well right from the start.
   We head out and follow 4 or 5 other resort boats to the spot I fished the day before, on the way my guest tells me he really doesn't care about catching alot of fish, he would just like to catch a fish bigger then his biggest Puget Sound king which was 25-30 pounds. Okay, we have 4 days and there are alot of kings around, mostly 15 to 25 pounders but I like our chances of breaking 30. We get to the spot and drop the downriggers, back then guides could fish with guests on board so we had 2 rods fishing and motor in along the kelp beds. We made 1 pass down about a half mile of shoreline for nothing but saw nets flying from the other boats so we went back for another pass. I no more then get the 2 rods down and bouncing bottom when 1 rod pops off the clip and the line starts peeling off the reel, at 1st I thought we hung bottom but then the fish turned and headed the opposite direction and the chase was on. I cleared the downriggers while weaving around a couple other boats and finally were out of the crowd and giving chase. The fish took us in a big circle and after about a half hour we were back in the crowd and finally got a look at the fish, it was huge, biggest king I had ever seen and after another 10 minutes I was able to scoop it into the net. After some hooting and hollering and high fiving we head for the dock to see what it weighed. It was 57 pounds and the very 1st fish of any kind I put in my boat in my guiding career. That king was a good warmup for the 1 that would come 7 weeks later...............................

[Bigtine96]

I really enjoyed that read

[Angus]

   Around the 3rd week of July I had my first couple days off of the season coming up and invited a lifelong buddy to come up and go fishing with me, the resort allowed us to bring family/friends up to fish for just the price of fuel burned.
   The king fishing had slowed down considerably while the silvers were coming on strong, it wasn't uncommon to get a 30 fish boat limit of silvers in an hour.
   When my buddy arrived we decided we weren't going to waste time looking for kings since very few if any were coming into the resort that week, instead, we decided to use light tackle and target silvers. We were using our 9' G. Loomis steelhead rods with Bantam reels. He was spooled up with 150 yards of 8lbs. Maxima UG and I think I was using 10lbs.
   We were fishing the same area the 57 pounder came from and we had a resort cook with us. As soon as we got there we were into fish and they were pretty respectable 12-15 pound silvers. We were motor mooching them with an ounce or so of lead and 6' leaders and herring in about 60-70 feet of water. We had been there maybe an hour when my buddy hooks a bigger fish, it headed deep and hung for a minute or so then he started gaining and after a 10-15 minute fight we land a nice 33lbs. king, after a few high fives and pictures we get re-rigged and got back to fishing. My buddy dropped his bait to the bottom and decided to put the rod in the holder and go in the cabin and drop a deuce, while he was taking care of business I notice his rod is getting hit and that's when it happened.
   I set my rod down and grab his, reel down and set the hook, it was solid but I felt the headshake so I knew it was a fish, not the bottom. I holler at him that he has a fish on and to come get it, It was heavy and I figured it was a big halibut that he would never get off the bottom on that light gear. He finally comes out and I hand him the rod, its been hanging straight down for a couple minutes and I never gained an inch on it. After watching him pull on it for a few minutes the cook and I started telling him to cut the halibut loose so we could get back on the silvers, he wouldn't do it, he was sure it wasn't a halibut even though he had never caught 1.
   After staying straight down for 20 minutes this fish had finally had enough and took off, it was smoking line off his little Bantam reel and finally came to the surface and jumped, it was a king every bit of 4 feet long and he wasn't slowing down, now the chase was on.
   We hooked the fish at 2:15 and after a couple hours of not making much headway, I got on the radio and started talking to another guide in 1 of our boats that was close by, asking him if he had any ideas how to get this fish in, he didn't but we talked back and forth on a VHF radio that anyone in the area can listen in on. Finally, after seeing the bottom of the spool numerous times and chasing this fish about 2 miles we can finally see it under the boat about 20' down, still took us another half hour and at 8:00 I was finally able to slide him into the net. Took about 40 minutes to get back to the resort and we were met by about 200 people from town that heard us fighting this fish and had to come see it, we got him on the scale and it was a twin to my first king, 57lbs. which at the time was just a couple pounds shy of the line class world record.
   Amongst the crowd was a reporter from the Ktown daily news and the next morning my buddies picture with both kings and story were on the front page titled "Young man and the sea".
   We went back the next day after getting a late start from the hangovers, this time using salmon gear he caught a 45 pound king

[sumbeech66]

Good stuff.   

wonder what it weighed before the 6 hour fight?

[HntnFsh]

Great stories Angus! Amazing memories. Thank you for sharing.