24hourcampfire: Found a few fish

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#2317046 - 07/17/08 01:41 PM

Found a few fish

458 Lott
Campfire Tracker

Registered: 01/29/01
Posts: 6542
Loc: Conundrum, Alaska

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I went out with a couple of co-workers and my youngest son. Splitting operating costs 3 ways makes a day of fishing a bit more palatable. South Central AK has been pretty well scudded in with clouds the past couple weeks, well it seems like the whole summer. To access the port in Whittier you have to drive through a tunnel that only has openings every hour, when a train isn't going through the tunne. We left home at 5:30 am, departed Anchorage at 6:15 to make the 7:30 tunnel opening, under another grey day.

As we approached Portage you could see the sun trying to break through. When we finally made it through the tunnel we were greeted with a blue almost cloudless sky, and almost glass calm water. After the launch, park, hike back to the launch drill we were under way at about 8am. Hardly anyone there, combination of mid week and high gas prices. The plan was to test the adage of the worst day fishing is better than the best day working.

We motored out to the south end of lone island. An area that supposedly produces halibut. I snagged one irish lord that I threw back, but other then that the two drifts struck out, so we motored further out to the South end of Naked Island. We drifted a few times, then I anchored up with a chum bag hoping we'd build up a decent scent field and the tide change would ring the dinner bell for the buts. No such luck, just a 9 y/o boy saying let's go to disk island. Last summer we'd fished a pinnacle to the E of Knight/Disk island and done pretty good with rock fish. After striking out again, we pulled anchor and headed for the pinnacle.

Several drifts, a good snag or two, not a single bite. Well, I knew of another rock pile in the passage between disk and knight island, so figured for sure we'd get something. A drift, anchored up, not a single bite. Man, this was looking pretty grim. Well, there was a spot I noted on the charts that seemed it would be good to give a go, don't know why I never noticed it last year. So we figured we'd try one more spot.

We started drifting over the shallow point of the pinnacle, from 70' off into the abyss, and by the time we got into 300-400' we'd motor back over the high spot. Finally a spot that produced. I managed the first fish, a decent sized yellow eye (pictured). Then my co-workers started pulling up yellow eye and other rock fish. On about the 3rd drift I had something slam my jig, and start stripping line. This was a real fish, I cranked, it stripped line, I maxed out the drag, it still stripped line. I finally got it about 10' from the surface, noted a good sized ling cod, and at the same time it decided to sound. Another fight and we had it in the net. If my spring scale at home can be believed it was a 40 pounder (44” long, pictured). Then on the same drift, bam, I had another ling on. This one was smaller, didn't fight so much, but man when we had it on the deck it was all over the boat. At the end of the day we ended up with 7 yellow eye, a few misc. rock fish, and the two lings.

We got back to port about 8:20, and then it was the mad dash of get to the dock, run to the truck, hope the trains aren't blocking the road, get the boat on the trailer and head for the tunnel. We got to the tunnel at 8:50, just in time for the 8:55 opening. By the time I dropped off my co-workers, got some grub, headed home, relayed the adventures, cleaned and bagged the fish, and cleaned myself off it was 2 am, long day after a 5am start.

Beats the heck out of work, but, I'm still beat. Hmm, I here the salmon are running on the Kenai so I need to head down with my net.

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I'm not a gunwriter, that's 458 win. I'm just a gun-nut in Alaska.