King Salmon Opener Wrap Up
Hello, fish friends! Team Fairweather here, dispatching from the wheelhouse of F/V Fairweather, turning over after our first week of salmon season -- our big, exciting king salmon opener is wrapped up, and now we're preparing to head coho salmon fishing!
When we last touched base with you all, it was on the eve of the king salmon opener. We had done our diligence of getting FV Fairweather ready: freshwater filled, fuel tanks full, grocery-ed up, and blast freezer running. We spent a few days cruising the outer coast: looking for birds, whales, and signs of forage fish. Watching the depth sounder for bait balls, hoping it's actually bait and not jellyfish or just plain nonsense.
Collaborating with trusted fleetmates on other areas of the ocean: what are they seeing? How does it compare to what we're seeing? Should we run to where they are, or stay where we are? Should they come to us?
The Southeast Alaska panhandle is about 500 miles long, and our salmon permit allows us to fish anywhere along the coastline; and that's not even counting the hundreds of miles of straits, channels, inlets, and passages comprising the "inside waters" of Southeast Alaska.
All that to say: Choosing where to set your hooks on the morning is a bit like throwing a dart at a dartboard while wearing a blindfold. This opener was anticipated to last 6 - 7 days, so every day really counts. Every day must be productive.
And so, with great anticipation, we set our hooks early on the morning of July 1st, and caught... No fish. By the end of the day, we had barely scratched into double digits -- but that's not profitable enough to keep the engine running.
July 2nd brought wind and waves; we did our best to make a day of it, but by 10 a.m. it was clear that the unproductive fishing was not worth getting seasick and knocked around for. We called it a day, and anchored up.
By July 3rd, it was clear that this wasn't working. The fish aren't here, but even if they were, we were being absolutely overtaken by jellyfish. Jellyfish clogging our fishing gear has been a growing issue over the past three seasons, but this year: wow. It's absolutely unfishable. As soon as our gear enters the water, it's bogged down in thick, fibrous strands of burning red jelly sludge. These aren't little blobs that can be flicked off; they're long, sinewy strands that wrap themselves around every inch of the gear. And though the "jelly" part can be scrubbed off with a grout brush.. The hairy, fibrous part cannot. Any extra weight or crud on the fishing gear renders it useless -- it won't have the correct "action" in the water, and fish won't bite it. In short: fishing in jelly infested waters is enough to drive you insane.
July 4th, day four of our opener, was a proverbial (and literal) fork in the road. Our usual stretch of coastline is unproductive and unfishable. Up the coast, there's promise of a bite -- the fish always bite somewhere up the coast. But, weather can be an issue. There's no anchorages, so you have to drift at night. And with incoming weather, that's not a situation we're comfortable with for our nineteen month old son, Monti. So, if we can't go up -- we'll go down. It sounded like there were a few fish south, but nothing worth running twelve hours to. Ultimately though, the weather looked a little better south, so it was a better option for Monti. Our decision was made, and we stacked the gear on early to head that direction, making it in time to anchor up for a few hours before setting hooks in the morning.
The morning of July 5th was just like the past four mornings: wake up for the 2:30 alarm, warm up the main engine, make a cup of coffee, haul the anchor, and steam out to the fishing grounds. Fire up the hydraulics, set the hooks, and wait for the familiar tug at our pole tips, indicating a king salmon bite. Except this morning, there was actually a bite. And then another. And then another. And then another!!! And I'll be damned if we didn't catch more king salmon by 8 a.m. that morning than we did in the entire four previous days combined. From the lowest of fishing lows, to cloud nine! Fishing did throttle that afternoon and evening -- but it was an incredible sign of hope.
We weren't the only ones catching fish, and in the world of Starlink and In-reaches, word travels fast. On the morning of July 6th, it seemed like half the fleet had shown up! Expectations were low, given the crowd, but the ocean still produced. We caught even more fish on the 6th than we did on the 5th.
And on the morning of the 7th, even more boats showed up. And somehow, we caught even more king salmon!!! It was an incredible day. Maybe one of the best of our careers on the water. We broke our personal record for the number of king salmon landed in a day! And, the ocean was absolutely incredible, I wish you all could have seen it. Flat calm, sunny, and positively TEEMING with life. Large schools of herring fluttered along the surface; we could see them easily from the back deck. Imagine an isolated rain cloud, shooting down rain drops on an otherwise calm and sunny ocean, rippling and blemishing the surface; those are schools of herring. And then the whales showed up en masse. Diving deep, and then shooting directly up under the school of herring -- mouth wide open -- to consume the balled up school. We were living in an episode of Planet Earth. And as folks who earn a living by extracting natural resources (for better or worse, that's what commercial fishing is!) it was so reassuring to see such a healthy, robust ocean system.
We weren't the only ones catching fish, though. On day four, we thought this king salmon opener might just go on forever! And on day eight, Alaska Department of Fish and Game amounted an emergency closure, effective at 11:59 pm that night. We were really hoping for a few more days... But are thankful for the four productive days we had. We stacked the hooks on that night, and steamed overnight back towards Sitka.
Another king salmon opener in the books! It's always an adventure, and we're so thankful you'd take the come to "come along".
A Southeasterly blow has us holed up in Sitka for a few more days... We'll cut lines on Monday, and head out to... We have no idea where! Our usual, go-to coho grounds are a jellyfish hellscape -- so we're going to have to get creative and try some new grounds this summer, I think. We can't wait to tell you how it goes.
