Commercial Fishing

[Skillet]

My crew, Tyler, and I fueled up and left town late morning of the 14th, headed 130 miles out to the West Bank of the Fairweather Grounds.   We had great weather on the ride out, and with my blazing fast 7.5 knots, arrived in the East Bank about 5 am of the 15th.  I took advantage of the extra day to drive around and scope out the bait situation to see if I could find anything that would keep me off the West Bank on opening morning.  Saw a lot of bait, but nothing that was better than what the the West Bank usually offers up. That place is pretty consistent, so we steamed over there and we're not disappointed.  I wish I had thought to take a picture of the sounder, it looked like it was on display mode at Cabela's 

I checked the drift, shut everything down, made a good dinner and we settled in for our last good sleep for a few days.  Fishing light comes at 3:45 am up here in mid May.

[Skillet]

Day 1 was pretty busy.  The wind was lighter than I expected overnight, so our drift was off by a couple of miles. Not to bad, it's a big ocean.  I fired up and steamed back over to the West Bank and we put the gear in. 

I don't have a lot of pics or vid of that day.  We did ok, with 96 ling cod and a few halibut.  Our lings for the trip averaged 15.5# round pounds, halibut just shy of 40# dressed.

This is a decent vid of some fish and the train trailing back behind the boat.

Perfect weather day out there on Day 1.

PS - I know the boat looks like crap now, but I won't paint the deck until after dinglebar and longlining is over.  Just way too hard on a painted deck.

[Skillet]

Day 2 was more of the same, but with weather. The wind rounded to the NW and was brisk at 20-25kts, and we had an 8' groundswell from the SW.  Made for eccentric boat motion.

We decided to head in the evening of the 2nd day.  We had the fish we needed, we had a crazy hydraulic failure that slowed us down (my pressure guage ruptured) and the weather was going to go back to the SE and stronger in Day 3.
Considering my luck with this fishery in the past, I decided to call it a success and steam for town.  We pulled in the evening of the 17th and unloaded early the next morning.

Here's a few more pics of the trip, thanks for coming along 

[Bango skank]

You should hire me.  Ill work for yelloweye fillets.

[Skillet]

I'll put the skiff in and pick you up if you run that tug too close to me this summer 

[Bango skank]

Dont tempt me.  Id probably make a beeline your way.  We dont get to do much fishing.  The barge makes it kinda difficult.

[Skillet]

You might never get on the boat then.  Anytime one of those big rigs is pointed my way, I give way.  Fast. 

[carpsniperg2]

Great stuff!!!!

[Bango skank]

You might never get on the boat then.  Anytime one of those big rigs is pointed my way, I give way.  Fast. 

liar!  Absolute bs!!  I can say confidently, 99% of fishing boats go out of their way to put themselves on collision courses with tugs, generally in the worst possible locations, while not monitoring 16, 13, or when in canada, any traffic channel!    I know your games, you guys do that crap on purpose, and sit there laughing when we call you on the radio.  Hooligans!

[Skillet]

In the top pic of the last part, you can see the mountain range pretty clearly. That is the Fairweather Range, and MT Fairweather is a 15,325' peak.  The summit is a border marker between to he US and Canada.  I was 48 nautical miles from shore at that point. Beautiful day on the Fairweather Grounds.

[Skillet]

You might never get on the boat then.  Anytime one of those big rigs is pointed my way, I give way.  Fast. 

liar!  Absolute bs!!  I can say confidently, 99% of fishing boats go out of their way to put themselves on collision courses with tugs, generally in the worst possible locations, while not monitoring 16, 13, or when in canada, any traffic channel!    I know your games, you guys do that crap on purpose, and sit there laughing when we call you on the radio.  Hooligans!

 . You figured us out, I see.  But you'll never get the secret handshake out of me

[Sitka_Blacktail]

Besides all the Covid rigamaroll, season has started off really weak of the Copper River this year. First opener I was skunked. Couldn't even tell you the last time that happened, if ever. Second opener was one sockeye and one King. Not much better. Finally caught a few on the Monday opener. 10 Kings and 38 sockeye. But that is still poor, especially this far into the season. We have already had two openers cancelled, last Thursday's and tomorrow's. Next scheduled opener is Monday. If that one doesn't produce and numbers past the in river sonar counter don't improve, we may be getting an even longer shut down.  Never seen a year like this and I've seen some bad ones over the last 50+ years. 

But before I get feeling too sorry for myself, my sister in law manages a salmon plant in Kotzebue. This just happened yesterday. River ice came down into Sound. Looks like they will have a lot of work to get the plant ready for the coming season there.  They have a huge chum fishery there.

[Skillet]

Sorry to hear that the openers have been so thin SitkaBT.  Are you seeing any differences in the PWS water conditions that might indicate a later than normal return?

[Sitka_Blacktail]

Sorry to hear that the openers have been so thin SitkaBT.  Are you seeing any differences in the PWS water conditions that might indicate a later than normal return?

Yup it was a colder than normal spring and water temps were down.  A few fish showed up offshore last period so maybe they are still coming.

[jmscon]

Wow, that ice flow looks crazy! I hope everything can get straightened out enough to process!

One year in BB we delivered a load of sockeye that temped at 38* dry. The pack ice had lasted into May! The fish were pretty lethargic and weren’t jumping much or hitting the net hard, like they usually do. If we were running to a spot to make a set and saw one jumper we would stop and set on it, usually a lot more fish there than it seemed. We also fished near the flats, on the incoming tide, when the sun would warm up the beach and the water coming up on the warm sand would give the fish an energy surge. Also chased a lot of fish into the net when changing ends, they would just hang off the net and wait instead of trying to push through it.
I don’t remember the timing being off.

In comparison, the last time I went was 2015. The water out in the bay was 60* and our RSW could barely get the fish cold. The run was 9 days late that year and one of the biggest on record.

Only the fish gods know when the run will happen, hope it works out for you guys out there!