Ketchikan’s wild fishing observations June 19, 2024
June 20, 2024
this report is a direct copy I wrote to a local fish biologist in Ketchikan today regarding the true fishing conditions currently in Ketchikan, Alaska. I would say the current salmon fishing results are baffling and Bizzare. As a student of our local ocean for over 30 years I find it quite perplexing in many ways but I feel that much cooler and wetter conditions have moved the fish towards spawning much earlier than usual
Barbara, the full moon creates a nasty weather pattern ALWAYS. The big tides bring in big weather every month. With the big weather this brings out the flotsam from the beaches and also causes the bottom fish to hunker down. Not that you can get where you want to be in 6’ seas on a 2 second period anyway.
On a side bar this fishing season is already one of the most jacked up I’ve ever seen and I can’t put my finger on it yet. Today June 19, 2024 I ran to the “pinnacle” known by fishermen for a very long time to the north and west of west rock. When got there it was a dead zone. Typically I would see 20-40 humpback whales. Today we saw 3 we could keep and eye on. The significance to this location is that it’s a shallow spot laden with bait fish. In my two hour survey there were NONE. So I trolled to further survey at 2.4 knots towards west rock to see what I could see. This has happened before. My spot for charter halibut is almost exactly half of the 9 miles to west rock. We dropped the anchor and caught our 28”-36” halibut is a reasonable timely manor. I then picked it up and made a run to west rock circumnavigating the entire area yet again under troll and saw ZERO bait and this took us about 1.5 hours and zero salmon with nothing credibly marked. At this point I decided that the kings may have moved in further towards the creeks due to the heavy rains and unseasonably cooler weather we’ve had thus far this season. Next stop Percy point roughly 12 miles. I dropped in to make the drag and immediately got a hit on the same gear that’s been working in the mountain point area, at first thinking it was a shaker I realized we had an ocean bright pink. Say what?! As I continued my drag we pulled another quick 5 pinks and my mind was boggled. I decided the day was about over minus a couple crab traps on the way home. At that point I sent out the bat signal to my cronies and much to our luck we had spread wide and far today. From East island to the pinnacle, no bait no kings, no 4th of July silvers. To stone rock bay from the pinnacle usual hotspot 25 miles, two shakers, two pink and two silver. To Dall head 26 miles from the pinnacle. Two kings, two pink, two silver. To vallenar bay 42 miles from the pinnacle mixed results but quite a few kings bagged from multiple guides. To mountain point 37 miles from the pinnacle quite a few kings were landed mid day which unusual between the hours of 10am and 5pm because these fish are trained robots and typically trained to be fed twice daily in the morning and evening. and the pinks have already shown up in small numbers which is a full 5 weeks early to years past.
This concludes my synopsis of my observation. It appears that we are going to have an early season all the way around. If you would like more updates as the season travels on I’m happy to share it from my perspective.
