Printed with permission of:    Scott McKelvey

Salmon Fishing:

The art of successful salmon fishing here in Alaska comes in many forms, but what I’ll talk about is what seems to work the best for us. The tackle we use are G Loomis 1025C rods matched with Shimano Tekota 500LC reels. What really makes or breaks the successful angler is proper rigging of their bait. The bait we use are herring that are between 6”-8” long. Making the perfect “cut-plug” herring is something that takes a little practice, but the idea is you want your baits to spin as tightly as you can get them. When done properly, your bait will act like an injured baitfish as it spins, and this same spinning action produces a flashing action, to help attract a bite. To achieve this action, you want to cut the herring’s head off at a fairly blunt angle just behind the gills. You want to have a slight angle in your cut, but the more angle in your cut, the wider your spin. The wider spin works well for Coho or Silver Salmon but for the Chinook or King Salmon the tighter the spin the better. As for the way you want to rig your bait, we use a leader that is between 6’-8’ long that has two 4/0 hooks snelled at one end. You start by threading the bottom hook in the blunt cut by the spine and out along the lateral line. Follow the top hook through the same hole you made with the bottom one. Take the bottom hook and just above the anal fin push the hook through the skin following the lateral line. Next take the top hook and place at a 45 degree angle just behind the hole you exited by the lateral line. Be careful not to place the hooks to deep into the herring as you are just placing them below the skin.
Next comes the actual fishing techniques. The form we use is called “motor mooching” or “power mooching”. We either drift or slow troll depending on conditions and drop our baits to the bottom and retrieve at a medium speed. The idea is to work the whole water column. We find this works better than just trolling or using downriggers, as we’re able to cover more water and not work one certain depth. When you start to get a bite, the hardest temptation not to do is setting the hook immediately. The most important thing to remember is REEL! Usually, a salmon will grab the bait like a dog holds a bone, sideways. If you swing immediately, you’ll miss more than you hook and many you do hook will be barely hooked. With patience by reeling until the rod is loaded, you’ll hook and land many more salmon.
Halibut Fishing:

The same rigging techniques as I spoke about for salmon above can also work for halibut as well, the difference is instead of retrieving your bait after dropping, just leave it on the bottom. Usually, we’ll break out our heavier tackle, which consists of Seeker 660XH rods rated for 60lb line and matching Shimano TLD20 reels loaded with 100lb spectra line. As we are fishing in 200’ to 350’ of water, we usually are using 16oz. weights and salmon heads, salmon backbones, or larger herring for bait. These baits are hooked onto a Mustad 16/0 circle hook. Oftentimes, we encounter halibut larger than 150lbs when using these larger baits. In these cases, we inform our clients on how all halibut above 90lbs are female, and produce large quantities of eggs. Many will release these spawning fish, but many wish to land their dream fish, which we gladly help them do. Some of our fishermen also find excitement in the fast action which can be had by using the lighter tackle and smaller baits, like those used for salmon fishing. Most of the time these halibut will be less than 40lbs. But, action can be as quickly as you can hit the bottom, you’ll have a bite.

Lingcod and Red Snapper Fishing:

The techniques used for these species are the same. The best fishing comes from finding a large rock or pinnicle and using large lures or large baits along the bottom. In most cases, when we find an area, we’ll fish for ling cod on the top of the rock and as we drift off the edge, we’ll catch the reds. We’ll find the lings in as shallow as 45’ but most of our time we’re looking in 150’-200’. For the red snapper, we don’t usually expect to start finding these until 250’+.

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