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| A Trip to SE Alaska, |
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| the Land that Seldom Changes... |
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Every year my hope and highlight of the summer is that I will be able to re-visit my favorite location in Southeast Alaska, Fireweed Lodge at Klawock on Prince of Wales Island. Just to be there to fish and enjoy the company of new friends and revisit old adventures with old friends is like opening a bottle of very fine wine. There are old well-aged flavors to enjoy, and the comfort of finding that nothing has changed from the first tasting years ago.
Fireweed offers just such an experience. Bob Anderson, owner and keeper of the crew that always makes one feel at home, seldom changes any thing except to make it more comfortable and fun. New cottage-type rooms that face the bay are the latest additions. They offer a porch or deck to spend a relaxed hour or two before calling it a day.
Tim Marshall, my old friend and guide from Tillamook, was at the float plane dock in Craig to meet our group of anglers on their first trip to that part of the world. The float plane ride from Ketchikan was a first for many, and additional firsts awaited most of those who fished.
The lodge has added new docks that are the most stable I've ever been on and made walking to and from the boats a trip of joy. Bob has added new 300hp Mercury motors to all the boats, making for a faster trip to and from the fishing grounds. Thanks for that Bob--more time to fish and a better ride to boot.
The Alaska State Fish and Wildlife folks waited until all the lodge and charter operators in Southeast Alaska had booked their season to announce the roll back in bag limits of both salmon and halibut. The cut in salmon came about from the treaty that the Feds made with Oregon, Washington, Canada and Alaska. This treaty resulted in cutting the daily bag limit for Chinook from two fish a day to one fish per day and three in possession.
The cut back in halibut was first announced as going to one fish per day and a bag limit of three. The old limit, and the limit when most lodge owners booked their clients, was two fish per day and 6 as the limit. Well, a lawsuit was filed and the lodge operators won at least a reprieve for the summer but look for some sort of cut back for next season. The Chinook bag limit will be only one fish for the rest of the season after July 15 and that big boy must be 48 inches long. So far the Coho bag limit remains unchanged for this fall.
Cutting the bag limit to conserve the stocks of halibut seems foolish to me as the guides would stop targeting the smaller Halibut, around twenty pounds, and go after fish over fifty pounds, and some of these would be spawn- sized female fish needed for future generations. It also follows that the fish saved by a smaller bag limit would be allocated to the commercial industry.
Our fishing was diverse and spotty with each day offering a true mixed bag of both rock fish and ling cod which now have only a five-inch window of size in which they may be kept. Chinook were hard to find as the really big schools had not left the Sitka area and moved south yet. Coho had arrived and were near ten pounds at this point. The most unusual catch was a wolf eel, which with the sound effects supplied by young angler Tyler Bradshaw, scared the guide enough that he dropped the Eel and jumped back. This proved to be quite the joke in the guide quarters later that day.
The big Chinook for the trip was forty-two pounds along with several over thirty and many in the mid-twenty class.
During this trip, the humpback whales had moved into the region and their spouts and sounding along with jumps, made fishing even more fun. I will share a photo or two of some of the breaching that we were blessed to watch.
All on this trip went home with what I cherish on every trip to Alaska--lots of memories to add to those of the past. Bob, with the blessing of the powers that control events in life, we all hope to return to the land that seldom changes...
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