By Pete Gray
One of the greatest places on earth for anglers is Alaska. Such incredible variety of destinations and waters to fish. One of the best is Sitka, and certainly the finest operation there is Kingfish Charters. This was our 24th year with Kingfisher, and even during these trying times, they did not disappoint.
Entering Alaska, you needed to have a negative Covid 19 test within 72 hours, which is a bit of a challenge. More realistic was the fact you can get a test withing 5 days and then re-test at the airport in Sitka and be fine to go fishing the next day. No one in our group had any issues with this, and the procedure at the airport was quick and smooth. As always, the Kingfisher crew was there to greet us and help get everyone settled into their comfortable 3- or 4-bedroom apartments- each room with their own bathroom. These units are super comfortable and have a large living room, dinning room and kitchen all with a fabulous view of Sitka Sound. Owner Seth Bone and his staff worked hard to abide with social distancing regulations and other procedures to ensure everyone stayed safe. A couple of the changes was you had breakfast and dinner delivered and served in your apartment. The food was as always, amazing quality and all you would want. We missed the comradery of the dinning room being able to interact with the rest of our group, but it was sur
e nice having your food delivered!
My fishing group was Steve Pinard from Dana Landing, my friend Larry Grine and Dan
Carrier. We fished with Heath Bone who is always on the fish. This happened to be his first charter of the season since Kingfisher got off to a late start due to the previous 14-day quarantine that was lifted just a w
eek before our trip.
The general fishing program at Kingfisher is breakfast at 5am, in the van by 5:45 for the short ride to the harbor, then fishing from 6am to 4pm. June is a prime month for king salmon, and this was another great year. We had limits each day, though the average size of 15 pounds was a bit smaller than previous years. We did have a couple in the 20 pound range too. After we caught our king salmon, we were off to the halibut grounds. The first day Captain Heath picked a spot that was 625 feet deep, hoping to get some bonus black cod as well as halibut. Unfortunately, this spot only produced several large ling cod and yelloweye rock fish that all needed to be released, and j
ust one keeper halibut. It was good action, but we needed to finish our halibut limit. We moved to another spot that was quite a bit more “user friendly” at 300 feet and wrapped up our limit, along with more ling cod and rockfish.
The next day we had to work a bit harder to get our salmon limits, but wrapped that up by 10am, then off to the halibut grounds. Fortunately, that night they changed the halibut slot limit from 38 inches to 45 inches, a big difference in size! That day we landed 2 at 42 inches that we would have needed to release the day before. Plenty more rock fish and ling cod kept us busy through the day before he
ading back to the dock.
Day 3 was the best of the king salmon fishing- limits very quickly which gav
e us more time with halibut and other species. We managed a nice limit of halibut including a 44 inch fish that fit the slot nicely! We still had plenty of fishing time and we headed north into the bay to fish shallow water ling cod and rockfish with plastics and light gear. What a great time we had, we kept several black rockfish and even had 2 keeper lin
g cod in the narrow slot of 30-35 inches. We pulled on fish until our arms were sore! Heath chose to go around an inside passageway back to the dock that was a bit longer but super smooth and scenic.
Kingfisher Charters has always done a top-notch job of processing and packaging our catch, that is all included in the price. We all went home with a couple of boxes of high-quality salmon, halibut and rock fish.
There are several resorts in Alaska that were not able to open this year including Katmai Lodge and Whalers Cove Lodge, so if you want your “Alaska Fix” this season, give a call to Kingfisher Charters. You will be in for a great experience! Normally they are totally sold out, but this year they actually have spots available. Call 800-7278-6136 or check their web site www.kingfishercharters.com you can also click the Kingfisher Charters banner on the front page of www.letstalkhookup.com and be directed to their site.
Our dates for next year are June 13 to 17, 2021, Book now as our trips always fill!
