Originally published November 2003

Fish Baranof Island Alaska From Sitka Brights to Port Alexander Barndoors Story by Marcus Weiner Photos by Wayne Norris

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One of the many factors examined at Fish Alaska magazine when we set up a new fishing trip is the variety of fish we can target. Anglers from all walks of life are drawn towards different species of fish, and in order to be universally interesting, we continually seek the adventures that provide us with a multitude of fishing techniques. The waters near Sitka, Alaska, offer angling opportunities as plentiful as those to be found anywhere else in the world.

Our adventure begins in mid-June of 2003 as we depart from Anchorage to our destination. Upon arriving, we are met by Kevin Mulligan of Fishermen’s Inn in Port Alexander. I am accompanied by Wayne Norris, operations manager and staff photographer, as well as fishing buddy and accomplished angler, and load up our gear and drive over to Kevin’s Cessna 185.

We are fortunate to have blue-sky weather, and the 40-minute flight to Port Alexander is phenomenal. Goats, alpine lakes, and scenic mountains are all part of the fare. Port Alexander is a small community on the southeast tip of Baranof Island in the Tongass National Forest and is only accessible by air or water. At peak summer times, total residents are near 100 people. This quaint, jewel of a place would serve as home base for two days of fresh and saltwater forays. Port Alexander offers several choices for lodging and fishing opportunities. Fishermen’s Inn, Laughing Raven Lodge, and Cape Ommaney Lodge are options for places to stay. Chatham Strait Charters and Father and Son Charters provide saltwater fishing opportunities and Fishermen’s Inn provides freshwater fishing.

After motoring across the small bay in a skiff to reach Port Alexander, we are greeted by Kevin’s wife Karen and their family. Nestled in the trees stands Fisherman’s Inn, a luxurious lodge with amenities like a hot tub, very comfortable beds, and satellite TV, in addition to great meals prepared by Karen. Fishermen’s Inn can accommodate up to eight guests at a time.

We quickly change into saltwater gear and head back in the skiff to the other side of the bay to meet up with Glenn Smith of Chatham Strait Charters. Glenn is a very friendly, experienced skipper who knows how to make people feel at home on the boat. It also doesn’t hurt that his wife Shanna provided us with home baked chocolate chip cookies! Glenn’s deckhand is Justin Mulligan—Kevin and Karen’s son from Fishermen’s Inn.

It is a short run in Glen’s newly re-powered Yanmar custom 33-foot boat to the open waters of the Pacific Ocean. It goes from flat calm in Chatham Strait to three-foot chop on the ocean. We are the only boat on the water and for the afternoon, it feels as if we have gone backwards in time to a day when you could fish without seeing another soul. It’s this peaceful solitude that gives Port Alexander some of its charm.

We employ Shakespeare Tidewater Ugly sticks and Penn 320 and 330 reels. We use 16-ounce steel jigs as well as bait and in total boat five lingcod, five yelloweye rockfish, 15 black rockfish, a halibut, 10 quillback rockfish, four China rockfish and five greenling. For those that have never handled Alaskan rockfish, be warned. Most have sharp spines and tough skin, and some, like the quillback, have poison in their quills. Use caution and a glove when handling these fish.

A highlight of the adventure is hooking and fighting a massive halibut on one of the jigs. Glenn hooks the fish and after 15 minutes of trying to move the behemoth, he passes the rod to me to get a breather. I fight it for another 10 minutes when the fish bites through the line. Having landed halibut up to 200 pounds, I am confident that this fish was far larger. At any rate, I leave the experience with more ammunition for fireside fishing stories.

Chatham Strait Charters provides daily saltwater fishing trips for up to six people and is open for bookings from May through mid-September. Glenn likes to target bottomfish but fishes for salmon as well.

On day two, we load back into Kevin’s floatplane and fly across Chatham Strait to fish in a small stream for cutthroat trout, Dolly Varden, and any leftover steelhead. It is another beautiful day and the 30-minute flight fills Wayne and I with anticipation of fishing in remote waters that very few have ever explored. Kevin has gone through all the necessary and rigorous steps to become licensed to guide in Tongass National Forest.
We land in a sheltered bay, anchor the floatplane, and hike about a G-mile through the estuary connecting the river to the ocean. The river is clear and narrow with pools around most bends—perfect conditions for presenting a fly to native trout. The hiking is somewhat difficult due to the large amount of downed trees and vegetation on the banks. After hiking another G-mile upstream, Kevin announces that we should begin fishing. He suggests smaller flies (#8-#14) that are black with red in them. I tie on a small black woolly bugger and after a few false casts, land the fly at the base of an overhanging tree to be met by a hungry 14-inch cutthroat trout. Most of the next three hours are like this, with Kevin, Wayne, and myself catching fish in most holes with a variety of flies. We use between 2 and 4-weight fly rods with floating line and long leaders of about 10 feet tapered to 5x tippet.

We depart from the bay and head back across Chatham Strait to fish a lake on the way back to Port Alexander. The alpine lake is surrounded by steep faces on three sides and is so clear that eight-foot waters appear to be about two feet deep. We use a variety of flies at the far end of the lake and land as many rainbows as we want in the 10 to 20-inch range. Again we use 2 to 4-weight fly rods and longer leaders attached to floating line. My fly of choice in this lake is a cerise and purple egg-sucking leech. Most of the rainbows are schooled up in a prolific logjam, and it takes some careful walking on the large floating trees to get in position to cast the fly to open water. Luckily, no one falls in the lake, but with the temperature soaring to 80 degrees and the sun scorching the back of my neck, a dip in the lake would probably have hit the spot.

Kevin Mulligan at Fishermen’s Inn provides a wide range of fishing opportunities. From fly-outs to pristine freshwater opportunities, to fishing off the floats for aggressive silvers in protected bays, so you won’t be disappointed with the choices or with fishing with Kevin. He is a good guide, pilot, and person.

After returning to Port Alexander to pack our gear and head back to Sitka, we meet Peter Mooney of Laughing Raven Lodge and get a tour of the lodge. It is a nice place and offers outstanding ocean views. The lodge offers experiences like salmon and halibut fishing, whale watching, wildlife cruises, kayaking and SCUBA diving.

Kevin flies us back to Sitka and we coordinate with Rick Birch, Regional Sales Manager for Fish Alaska magazine, to pick us up at the floatplane harbor. For the next two days, Rick, Wayne, and myself will fish with four different saltwater captains for kings and halibut in the waters surrounding Sitka. We have arranged with these charters to do a midday swap out on the water rather than spending the time to run back to port and then out to the fishing grounds again.

For the first two evenings in Sitka, we stay at one of Jo Cropley’s fully furnished rental units. The unit has all the amenities we require and the kitchen is very handy in cooking fresh king salmon after a successful day of fishing. Jo is Sonny Cropley’s wife and has 12 units available for rent in Sitka.

On the first morning of saltwater fishing in Sitka, we fish with Steve Case of Greatland Charters. Steve has been in Sitka for 20 years and has been charter fishing for five. As a retired police officer and the owner of Sitka’s Subways, Steve has a laid back approach to fishing. It’s for the fun of it, not for bringing home loads of fish. I appreciate this approach in a charter captain and much prefer it to the skipper who is in a bad mood when people aren’t catching or landing lots of fish or one who bases his or her worth on the sheer poundage of fish brought back to the dock everyday.

We fish on Steve’s 27-foot Seasport with a 265HP Volvo Penta Inboard, and run about an hour to productive king salmon water. For gear, Greatland Charters uses Daiwa Sealine SG47LC reels with line counters and Loomis GL2, 9-foot, 10 to 20-pound fast action rods. We mooch with cut-plug herring for kings. I especially appreciate the line counter on the Daiwa reels when employing this technique, because it allows us to pinpoint where we are fishing in the water column and to more accurately replicate the technique each time. In addition, with today’s fish finding equipment, one can find where the fish are holding and deliver the bait with precision.

On this morning, the rockfish schools are thick and we struggle to get the herring through them to the waiting king salmon. Finally we break the ice when I hook and land a 15-pound bright Sitka hen. Wayne is next with a beautiful 25-pounder, and Rick finishes the morning salmon catch with an early five-pound silver. In addition to the salmon, we catch and release about 50 rockfish and six lingcod. In all, it was good, fun fishing with a knowledgeable and easygoing captain.

In the afternoon, we switched boats to fish with Rey Guitterez of Sitka Rose Sportfishing Charters. Rey is a retired US Coast Guard serviceman with 18 years experience on the water. For the last six years he has operated the charter business. Rey’s custom aluminum 27-foot C-Ray, powered by a Yanmar 300 HP diesel, proved to be a very effective fishing vessel. Both comfortable in the cabin and spacious on the deck, it is clear that Rey knew what he wanted in a boat before getting it built.

We trolled between 2.8 and 3.2 knots for king salmon in the waters around Sitka. Using Scotty Depth Power downriggers, we used 8-foot, medium action, 10 to 20-pound test, Penn Power Stick rods coupled with Penn 320 reels to get the various offerings to the Chinook. In assorted spots, we varied the depth of the troll to accommodate fish on the fish finder as well as known structure in the water. On consecutive passes, Rey predicted that we would hit a king and sure enough we did. In all, we landed six fish in about five hours of fishing and kept four. The kings ranged in the 15 to low 30-pound class.

We met the next day at a bright-and-early 4:30 a.m. to fish with Paul Fitzgibbon of Alaska Getaway on his 27-foot Seasport powered by a 43 series Volvo Penta diesel. Paul has been charter fishing in Sitka for five years and in the offseason is a schoolteacher. Paul is a livewire and after 15 minutes, I knew it would be a fun day of fishing and an interesting day of fish stories, theories, and predictions. We chose to halibut fish and used Penn tuna sticks with Penn 340 reels and 80-pound Spectra. Starting in 200 to 300 feet of water, and using circle hooks baited with salmon bellies, guts, and herring, we drop the gourmet offering to the bottom with 16 and 20-ounce weights. Fishing is steady and we catch fish in the 10 to 30-pound class, as well as a nice lingcod and yelloweye rockfish. Perfect for table fare, as I rarely will keep a fish over 75 pounds. However, it makes for an exciting battle to catch and release a big fish, so we move to deeper water—in the range of 400 to 600 feet—to try and land a barn door. A word to the wise: at these depths bait checks are brutal, so use tougher baits, like octopus or salmon belly, that are less likely to come off the hook.

After 30 minutes of fishing the deeper water, I experienced what is commonly known as the “drive-by” of a big halibut. On these occasions, instead of mouthing the bait until it decides it wants to eat it, the halibut grabs the bait and keeps on swimming. The result was a rod nearly donated to the blue deep. Unfortunately, I did not get the hook set and after 10 minutes the fish was gone with a free meal.

Another highlight of the morning occurred when Wayne was bringing up a chicken halibut. At about 75 feet, it seemed as if the fish was coming to the surface faster than he could reel. At about this time, his line began to scream off the reel in a straight line away from the boat and came to the surface. About 10 heartbeats later, the line went slack and Wayne reeled in a halibut head. At 100 yards off the port side, we watched a sea lion toss, play with, and eat the better part of a halibut.

For the final half-day on the water, we connect with Sonny Cropley of Charter Alaska. Sonny brought his daughter Megan who piloted the boat for the day. Sonny has been in Sitka for 55 years and his family “goes back into myth” in the area. His 34' sportfisher with twin diesels is very comfortable, with a spacious cabin, stove, head, and all the electronics to catch fish. We spend the rest of the day trolling for kings and use three different terminal gearings to entice the Chinook. The first is simply a #7 Luhr Jensen Superior, the second is a whole herring that is custom rigged by Sonny for good action and longevity in the water, and the third is a flasher with a hoochie and herring.

Sonny is a special person, always upbeat and smiling, a captain that will make it fun to fish no matter the circumstance. Trolling at three knots off Penn Fathom Master 825 downriggers, we stack two rods off each of the two downriggers. Sonny has custom rods built for this application, both 7 and 8-foot models. It’s a great day of fishing, but after an honest effort of trolling around Lazaria, Cape Edgecombe, Biorka, and Vitskari, the kings don’t want to cooperate. Sonny feeds us well with sandwiches and snacks for lunch and makes us his special chicken wing recipe as an early evening snack.

That evening we stay in Paul’s new rental unit on the water. It is spectacular. In addition to outstanding views, the place is large, well kept, and has all the amenities. During our last day in Sitka, we visit Sitka Sportfishing and Dove Island Lodge as well as Alaska Premier Charters and Wild Strawberry Lodge. Sitka Sportfishing and Dove Island Lodge is a unique, high-end operation with their own Beaver on floats, boats at their disposal, and a beautiful lodge on its own island near Sitka. Alaska Premier Charters and Wild Strawberry Lodge is a first class operation with lodging, food, fishing, and fish processing, as well as many other amenities for up to 30 guests. The lodge is strategically located next to Thomsen Harbor.

In all our trip to Baranof Island was action-packed, memorable, and thoroughly enjoyable. We experienced some of the salt and freshwater opportunities and met some of the people that make Sitka such a worthwhile destination. Hope to see you there on our next trip to Baranof Island.

Marcus Weiner is a publisher of Fish Alaska magazine. He can be reached at info@fishalaskamagazine.com.

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