Heading to Alaska

[NJNewbie]

August 4-10 heading to Ketchikan with some college buddies to do some halibut and salmon fishing. We are staying outside of town, and renting a boat for 4 days. 

 

Monday is the only day we dont have anything scheduled. Plan is to take a rental car and hit the local rivers for salmon. From my research should be a good run of pinks and silvers at that time. Tuesday doing a half day charter for salmon, the guide is supposed to give us some advice for the rest of the week. 

 

Weds, Thursday and Friday we rented an 18ft fishing boat to do self guided trips. plan is to mainly fish for halibut and rockfish. I have zero experience with halibut, but I'm assuming is should be like fishing for trophy fluke. The biggest problem I foresee is that we cant anchor the rental boat. So we will need to drift structure, which makes sense to me, but from what I've read online your chances are better on the anchor. 

 

I have been putting together a bunch of flies that should work for the rivers, and I ordered some massive bucktails for halibut/ lingcod. If anyone has any experience fishing here please feel free to share. I'm sure we could use all the help we can get. 

[JHbowhunter]

good luck - I will be touring Kenai peninsula first week September.  All day float trip out of Cooper Landing on the Kenai river, and a halibut trip out of Seldovia. 

[Rusty]

Sounds like a great trip,  best of luck and have fun!   

[Timbuk2]

Best of luck I hope you catch a lot of fish enjoy yourself

[JJoe]

For the silvers, Dolly llamas in blk, blk/white, pink, chartreuse.  For pinks, bright clouser minnows and egg sucking leeches are good. Dollys work too. 8wts work best..

Never fished the salt, only the inland rivers.. Bring the best rain gear and waders you can get. Dress in layers for mid 20's to 60's. Don't be afraid to bring a hat, gloves and light facemask either.

Good luck!

Edited May 31 by JJoe

[tjfslaughter]

You don’t need to be anchored for the halibut.  Watch the tides.  If I remember correctly there can be a 19 foot tide swing in that area.  Best fishing is 1 hour before slack tide and 1 hour after.  Make sure you have plenty of weight to stay on bottom.  If you are not on bottom you are not catching fish.  If you want really big fish use a pink head as bait.  Also when fishing halibut you will get 3-5 bumps.  Do not pull up to set the hook.  Allow the circle hook do its job and when the rod tip goes down with a steady long pull slowly pull up on the rod.  Good luck.  My first halibut trip in Alaska was 1985…

[tjfslaughter]

4 hours ago, JHbowhunter said:

good luck - I will be touring Kenai peninsula first week September.  All day float trip out of Cooper Landing on the Kenai river, and a halibut trip out of Seldovia. 

Just north of town there is a fly out service for awesome silver fishing.  When you say all day out of cooper landing are you doing the canyon which requires a permit (not on your end).

[JHbowhunter]

3 minutes ago, tjfslaughter said:

Just north of town there is a fly out service for awesome silver fishing.  When you say all day out of cooper landing are you doing the canyon which requires a permit (not on your end).

They said it's all preserve waters, where permit is required.   Hoping for giant rainbows.   Silvers should be around.  Sockeyes will be nearly spent and full red color. 

[tjfslaughter]

55 minutes ago, JHbowhunter said:

They said it's all preserve waters, where permit is required.   Hoping for giant rainbows.   Silvers should be around.  Sockeyes will be nearly spent and full red color. 

Thats a the refuge permit.  The outfitters can only roll through there so many times per summer.  

[jumpthestring]

Watch out for those Grizzlies.  

[Merkel]

Good luck! We were in Alaska a few years ago.  Had the opportunity to fish salmon in Ketchikan in August. Best fishing of my life. 

Edited May 31 by Merkel
Typo

[Relocator]

In June 2019 we went to Kodiak, my brother is in the Coast Guard and was stationed there.

He rented a R&R boat (23ft aluminum walkaround) and rods from the CG station. I thought like big fluke, so bought 12in Mr Twisters and 12 and 16 ounce jigheads, looked at my Navionics app to find some structure. 

We caught all the halibut and lingcod you wanted, and plenty of rockfish too. We outfished all the boats using bait around us.

Great trip!

[tjfslaughter]

12 hours ago, Relocator said:

In June 2019 we went to Kodiak, my brother is in the Coast Guard and was stationed there.

He rented a R&R boat (23ft aluminum walkaround) and rods from the CG station. I thought like big fluke, so bought 12in Mr Twisters and 12 and 16 ounce jigheads, looked at my Navionics app to find some structure. 

We caught all the halibut and lingcod you wanted, and plenty of rockfish too. We outfished all the boats using bait around us.

Great trip!

Back in 1999 I had to rescue one of those R&R boats.  I was 20 years old and it was my first search and rescue case as a boat coxswain.  I was stationed there from 98-2000

[hammer4reel]

12 hours ago, Relocator said:

In June 2019 we went to Kodiak, my brother is in the Coast Guard and was stationed there.

He rented a R&R boat (23ft aluminum walkaround) and rods from the CG station. I thought like big fluke, so bought 12in Mr Twisters and 12 and 16 ounce jigheads, looked at my Navionics app to find some structure. 

We caught all the halibut and lingcod you wanted, and plenty of rockfish too. We outfished all the boats using bait around us.

Great trip!

We bucktailed the same ones we fluke deep water with here .

using 8-10 buck tails we crushed halibut .was using 6” gulp as 8” hadn’t been made yet .

sometimes a strip of octopus .

was a ton of fun .

IMO with the 8” gulp it would be even deadlier  .

 

[MikeStaten]

We also did well with regular diamond jigs for lingcod, rockfish, yellow eye etc..  fishing out of Seward.