Sitka Alaska, Spring 2017

May 24th through 30th Rick and I fished the waters north of Sitka for bottom fish with some cutthroat trout fishing thrown in. This is our sixth trip in five years fishing with flies in the salt water north of Sitka.

I didn't introduce any new flies this year but I'm concentrating on refining the proven patterns. Here's the Chichagof Herring, at eight inches long it is intended for ling cod and halibut and does very well on them. It catches rockfish too but many rockfish seem to like to just swim with it instead of eat it.

The Non-Pelagic Squid, our go to fly is exceptionally good for all Alaskan saltwater game fish. Non-Pelagic because it is weighted for fishing near the bottom and sometimes tied weedless to help prevent snagging. I tie it in many different colors but white, with accents of one kind or another, is by far the most attractive to bottom fish.

We flew to Sitka on the morning of  May 24th, readied the E-Fish-Ncy and headed to camp. We took an hour to set up and decided to fit in a short evening fishing trip close to camp. The conditions weren't good for fly fishing so we used the conventional gear and caught this limit of 18 rockfish in one hour.

The weather man was calling for high seas and 15 knot winds for May 25th so we opted for fresh water in an un-named inland lake close to the cabin. In years past people had winched a boat overland to the lake, taking advantage of that boat, we paddled to mouth of a small stream that trickled into the lake at the far end, where we found the Cutthroat Trout that we heard live there. So I added a new species to my all time list of Alaska game fish caught on one of my own patterns.

My second Cutthroat, I was able to catch one on a moose hair mosquito, nymph pattern, and a small smolt pattern.

Rick got in on the fun too with his first ever Cutthroat caught on one of my Salmon River Smolts.

Later that same day, we went to one of  Rick's halibut spots in a protected bay hoping we could fly fish there, but the conditions would not let us. We went with conventional gear and I decided to try out some of my new home made lures. The water was deep, at around two hundred feet and the current strong so I went with my biggest and heaviest home cast lure. At 23 ounces, it was able to go pretty deep, even in a stiff current. I was very surprised to catch this 87 pound halibut the very first time I put this jig in the water.

Day three, still too rough to fly fish, but you can't just sit on the beach waiting for the weather to change. This is a Quill Back Rockfish that was hungry for another one of my hand painted lures.

We had a boat full of very good commercially manufactured lures that consistently catch fish but for some reason my home-made lures were out-fishing the commercial lures five to one and even ten to one on this day. You can buy the two on the right in a raw form commercially and paint them yourself which is what I did, then I dressed the hooks with fur and feathers. The third one from the left is an airplane jig that I made, it glows in the dark and it swims around in circles when jigged. The one on the right is my big one, it's too heavy to jig all the time but really works good when other jigs just won't stay on the bottom.

The third days catch. Some yelloweyes, black rocks, coppers, quills, a ling and three halibut. We are fishing two proxy licenses so half of every days limit gets delivered vacuum packed and frozen to our elderly friends that can't get out anymore.

We saw a few of these guys.

Bowhead whales, We also saw dolphins but we couldn't get the camera on them fast enough.

Forth day, some yelloweyes, quills, coppers, lings and silver grays.

On day five we were able to fly fish for about half of the day. Normally we set up the drift, make a cast toward the structure we want to fish, in the direction of the drift. As we drift closer we pay out just enough line to tickle the tops of the structure as we pass over it. I have been experimenting with sliding a Go Pro camera down the fly line to capture some of the action. If I use the Go Pro camera I usually slide the camera down the fly line after the fish is hooked. The camera makes it harder to fish because you cannot detect a bite as easily with the camera on the line. The camera also pulls the fly down into the rocks more making it much harder to fish and increasing the chances of a snag. On this occasion I made the cast and slid the camera down the string before the catch to see if I could have a look around down there, and maybe video a catch from start to finish, I was in for a surprise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKGd9mPb95A
Catching a Tiger Rockfish on a fly.

  I can't see what I'm recording until I get home and view it. When I got the Tiger Rockfish to the boat I knew what I had but I didn't know how the camera recorded it.

I had been trying to catch a Tiger Rockfish on a fly for five years, and I finally got one.

Here's the Tiger and the camera rig that slides down the line to capture it all. We don't catch a lot of these so after a couple of quick pictures we released it with the deep water release rig.

Our limit for the fifth day, the tiger and many others were released. There are strict limits on all species so when you reach the limit for that species the rest have to be returned to the ocean. In this picture we have Quill Back, Yellow Eye, China, Copper and Black Rockfish, with some Ling Cod.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUrRUZq5DM0
Catching a Black Rockfish, watch as the ling cod takes a couple of swipes at it.

 Our catch for the sixth day with the comfortable cabin in the background. Rockfish, Ling Cod and Halibut.

On the morning of the seventh day we headed back to Sitka for the trip home. We couldn't resist filling a cooler of fresh fish along the way for some friends back home. Along with those fish was this Copper Rockfish, the biggest I've ever seen.

Rick and I didn't get to fly fish very much on this trip, but that's the way it goes. I was able to add two new species to my all time list of Alaskan game fish caught on an original fly pattern though; Cutthroat Trout and Tiger Rockfish.

Thanks for watching.

Fly fishing Seward July 2017

Mike and I brought the Non-Pelagic Squid down to Seward Alaska for a week of fishing with family and friends. Different groups would be coming and spending a couple of days at a time with us fishing conventional gear but we would have one day when we would have the whole boat to ourselves for some fly fishing. The weather ranged from very bad to very good while we were there with the last two days being too rough to go out in. On July 13 we were alone and it just happened to be the calmest day of the trip and made for some perfect fly fishing conditions.

Wildlife was all around, these sea lions were on their' favorite rock.

And these guys were too.

Puffins are always around and fun to look at.

We saw whales every day.

But we didn't just look at wild life. We got some fishing in too. Here's my first ocean-run silver salmon on my own fly pattern, completing the trifecta of silver salmon, land locked, river-run and ocean-run varieties.

This silver was caught on a bait fish imitation with jungle cock eyes, a very reliable pattern.

Of course, rock fish of all varieties are always willing participants.

Mike was in on the action with conventional gear, these silvers are full of fight and great fun to catch on both fly gear and conventional gear.

Fishing in Seward "is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get" here's a nice yellow-eye rockfish Mike caught.

Another whale waves good by as we head back to port after a great day on the water in Seward. On this trip I added sea-run silver salmon to my all time list of species caught on a pattern of my own.

The last trip of 2016 Fly Fishing the Salt North of Sitka

On October fifth Rick and I headed to Sitka for our last trip of the season, five days of fishing from his boat the E-fish-ncy. We hoped to add some new species to our list of game fish caught on original flies. Our targets for this trip were Tiger Rockfish, four foot Ling Cods and bigger Halibut, all on a fly.

The rules are simple, we don't use added weight, the delivery has to include a back cast. The fly has to be carried by the line, not having the fly pull the line out. Per IGFA rules, we are trying to catch fish with 120 feet or less line out. We will not harpoon or shoot fish.

We are making our own sinking fly line that uses thirty feet of T20 sinking line attached to ninety feet of T14 fly line attached to our backer. We set up the drift so the current and the wind carry us over the structure we want to fish. If conditions are just right, we move at a rate of about 1 mile per hour. We sometimes use a sea anchor to control the drift better. After a particular piece of structure is covered we set up for another drift over the same one or we move on to another one.

On the fifth we launched the boat and found that we had dead batteries and bilge pump problems so we set out to replace the batteries, this involves removing floor boards and wall panels and contorting our bodies into shapes they were not meant to be in. One of Ricks bilge pump hoses had come off of it's fitting on the pump so it was just recycling water within the bilge whenever it came on. The back-up pump had come lose and it's float switch became lodged against something else under there which kept the pump on continuously. Rick had been having problems with the batteries anyway but the bilge pump issues exacerbated them for sure.

After getting everything taken care of we headed to camp 50 miles north out of Sitka. It was too late to do any fishing when we got in so we did some camp chores and got ready for fishing in the morning.

The seas were calm on day one, perfect for our kind of fishing. This Yellow Eye Rockfish fell for a rubber headed squid fly, new for this year.

This bait fish pattern was new for this year too. We set them up with six to eight inches of wire leader,  then 12 to 18 inches of 20 pound test monofilament attached to the sinking line.

A sea lance imitation, everything you catch spits up sea lances one the deck of the boat so ya just gotta fish sea lances.

Herring patterns have to be part of the line up too.

Rick's favorite fly, my original Non-Pelagic Squid always produces, and Black Rockfish, always willing participants, can be caught from just below the surface to 150 feet down.

Canary Rockfish are really pretty, this one liked my sea lance pattern.

We were able to fly fish all day, we caught and released lots of fish, and kept these for the freezer. The only thing really missing here is some big ling cod.

This Ling Cod is a little better, on a Non-Pelagic Squid.

The seas got a little choppy the second day, we were only able to fly fish about half the day.

These Ling Cod are toothy, it's important to to have a wire leader that they can chew on.

Every once in a while Rick even catches a nice fish.

Day two. Rick is proxy fishing for a really nice elderly lady so we actually have three limits here.

Flat seas again today, fly fished all day.

Two fish in one, the Quill Back Rockfish on a fly and the Big Ling Cod on the Quill Back.

We were catching some really big Copper Rockfish and Black Rocks on this trip.

Then, we caught a new species, I got this Yellowtail Rockfish on a Non-Pelagic Squid.

Day three.

These fish really eat everything they see. I caught this Yellow Eye on a Non-Pelagic Squid and a live crab crawled out of his mouth while he laid on the deck, with a couple of flops of his tail, a sea lance and shrimp also came out of him. We put the crab back in the ocean and the yellow eye went in the cooler.

Another nice Yellow Eye for Rick.

By the end of the trip, our gear was getting really beaten up. These fish are really hard on gear. By this time we had both broken a rod and taped them up.

 We started catching bigger Lings too.

Rick and I were neck and neck with Lings that weighed right at twenty three pounds.

Then he caught this one that weighed twenty five pounds and measured 43 inches long.

Day four.

Day five. Out of five days of fishing we were able to fly fish all but half of one day. It was a trip to be remembered.

On the way home, we had almost two hundred pounds of fillets all vacuum packed and frozen the same day caught. We have fly rods to fix and more flies to tie. It's six months till we get to go again, that might be just enough time to get ready.

MY LIST TO DATE; ALASKA GAMEFISH CAUGHT ON AN ORIGINAL PATTERN OF MY OWN.

GRAYLING on... Spruce Bud Worm Moth, Egg Butt and Egg Head Scud, Egg Butt and Egg Head Nymph, Pink Bluff Chub and Salmon Fork Smolt, Weighted Egg, Salmon River Red

RAINBOW Stocked and wild, on Egg Head Scud and Egg Butt Scud, Weighted Egg, Maggot, Weighted Flesh Fly

SOCKEYE  No name red salmon pattern I will call Noname (pronounced "No nah me")

NORTHERN PIKE Pink Bluff Chub and Salmon Fork Smolt, Innoko Pikey Minnow

SHEEFISH Salmon Fork Smolt

BLACK ROCKFISH on Klag Island Squid, the e-FISH-ency Sea Lance Fish

DUSKY ROCKFISH on Klag Island Squid

QUILL BACK ROCKFISH Klag Island Squid

CANARY ROCKFISH Sea Lance, Non-Pelagic Squid

YELLOW TAIL ROCKFISH Non-Pelagic Squid

COPPER ROCKFISH Sea Lance, Non-Pelagic Squid

SILVERGREY ROCKFISH Sea Lance, Non-Pelagic Squid

CHINA ROCKFISH Sea Lance, Non-Pelagic Squid

KELP GREENLINGSea Lance, Non-Pelagic Squid

LING COD Non-Pelagic Squid, Herring Pattern

WALLEYE POLLOCK Sea Lance, Non-Pelagic Squid

PACIFIC COD Sea Lance, Non-Pelagic Squid

ROCK SOLE Sea Lance, Non-Pelagic Squid 

HALIBUT 25 Pounder, Herring Pattern.

DOLLY VARDEN Weighted Egg, Salmon River Red, Weighted Flesh Fly

ARCTIC CHAR Gravel bar nymph.

LAKE TROUT Nymph, Minnow pattern, spoon fly

CHUM SALMON Weighted Egg, Salmon River Red

SILVER SALMON Salmon River Red, Orange and Silver Flash Fly

ROUND WHITE FISH Orange and Silver Flash Fly