Alaska Part VII & VIII

[Angus]

After surviving the storm I focused a lot of my attention on a certain gal that worked in the kitchen, I chased her all summer and spent a lot of $$$ on her in the bar but got no where, end of the season rolled around and we went our separate ways. A lot of crew come and go every year and I didn't really expect to see her back the next year, to my surprise she was back, to her surprise I was no longer interested, figured why waste my time and $$$. After ignoring her for 2 weeks she cornered me and asked if I had a problem with her, which I didn't, just told her I tried hard the year before and she didn't seem interested so I was back to playing the field (with a lot of college girls its a good field to play ). She immediately invited me to dinner in Craig and things snowballed pretty fast from there. We got married at a place called Pirates Cove the following summer which is about 20 minutes by boat from the resort, we've been together ever since and have 3 kids.

The following year the resort started dumping the fiberglass boats and went to aluminum, it took a few years to get the whole fleet to aluminum but it was finally done I think in 1999, with a few boats replaced in about 2007. The new boats were bigger, 25' Almars with Volvo diesels with full Furuno electronics packages in them and it really opened up our range and fishing opportunities. We were going farther offshore and finding places the local charter fleet wasn't fishing.
1 of the new spots we started fishing was an island 20 miles offshore, the commercial guys have fished out there for decades but I don't know of any charter or private boats that were going out there before we did. We mainly targeted bottomfish at first with a very nice grade of halibut as well as monster lings and reds out there as well. We caught an occasional salmon out there but no one ever tried real hard for them, well, not until 1 of our rookie guides ventured out to the west side of the island, we normally fished the east side, and found a bunch of trollers working a big area. What he found would go down as the most epic 4 days of fishing the resort had ever seen or probably will ever see. The water was 350-400 feet deep and you literally couldn't get to the bottom, the silvers were swarming thick down to 150', a lot of times huge schools would be on the surface circling the boats, and these silvers were much bigger, on average then what we normally see, many running close to 20 pounds. Then if you were somehow able to drop fast enough to get past the silvers and down to 150' the kings were biting full speed, and again, these were solid kings into the low to mid 30's not the typical 15-20 pound cookie cutters we are used to seeing on most fast and furious king bites which we see a lot. For 4 days we all went out there and every boat was usually back to the dock by lunch with limits of kings, silvers, halibut, lings and reds, our fish holds were stuffed and a lot of times we had fish on the deck. After 4 days the resort manager put a stop to us, we were killing the fish cutters who were so busy they were working all night and going to bed as we were getting our boats ready in the morning, normally their done by midnight. We were also burning a lot of diesel going out there. A week or so later when we got back out there it was over and we haven't seen it like that since.
Be back in a while.


   

[sumbeech66]

lol.

I can just imagine the story that rookie tells today. " its my rookie season and I showed all those oldtimers where the fish were"

Good fishing stories

[Angus]

lol.

I can just imagine the story that rookie tells today. " its my rookie season and I showed all those oldtimers where the fish were"

Good fishing stories

To be honest, rookies actually find alot of new spots, veterans have their spots and know the places that produce year after year and don't do much exploring.

[Angus]

Besides the fishing, money and interesting people I guide every summer (more about them later) another thing that drew me back every year is seeing my second family, mainly, my fellow guides. There are 25 of us, many of which have been there for 10 years or more and a couple that have over 25 years under their belt. As you can imagine with that many guides, not everyone gets along all the time and there can be some drama at times, never saw anything come to blows but there were some close calls. The resort also didn't have any rules on alcohol as long as it didn't keep you from showing up for work the next day and it was handled responsibly, which it was for the most part . We had our own bunkhouse and a room (we called the salt room) for the guides to relax and tell war stories at the end of the day and there were a lot of great stories told there, many of which can't be repeated but needless to say, we had a lot of laughs. The drink of choice was Black Velvet and though I was a light drinker, it wasn't uncommon for 1 or 2 bottles to be sacrificed most nights.
1 of the traditions we had was to have a dock party every time a 50lbs. king was brought in. The party always started with a bottle of Crown Royal usually supplied by the lucky angler and often followed by a few more bottles (1 bottle doesn't go far among 25 guides ), along with that the guide had to take a swim for his first 50 and then every time he broke his personal record over 50.
I think it was 1998 when I had a day off mid-season and took some crew members out fishing, it was prime time for big kings and we headed straight to my favorite king spot. On our 1st pass down the kelpline I got slack lined on the drop, reeled up the slack and set the hook hard. I knew it was a good fish and having an inexperienced crew with me, I was chasing the fish on the kicker and fighting it at the same time, took about 15 to 20 minutes and a few attempts by 1 of the kids on the boat to net it but we finally got it in the boat. I knew it was close to 50 but thought it might be a little short.
I always said if I got a 50 it was going on the wall.
We fished until noon then headed in for lunch and to see if I had my 50. We threw it on the scale and it went 50.1lbs, those .2 lbs cost me $1000 but I look at that fish on my wall everyday and I know it was $$$ well spent.
Since I had the afternoon off before the rest of the guides got in and it was a beautiful, sunny day I decided to start drinking early, big mistake, that was 1 miserable night which is about all I remember about it.