In planning the 2011 fishing season, I’m faced with three types of trips. Let’s call them fishing for food, fishing with friends and fishing for trophies. Assuming other Alaska fishing fanatics have similar issues to conquer before getting on the water, let’s look at the details involved in trying to balance these three needs over a short season.
Fishing for Food
This is of high importance and will outweigh the other two types of trips—especially when we fell short of stocking enough bottomfish last year to make it through the winter. We’ll also need to stock enough king salmon to insure that there are fillets for the grill all year and enough sockeye to make 12 months of salmon burgers. Basic calculations for my family lead to me to conclude that we need two pounds of bottomfish per week and one pound each of king and sockeye. Knowing that I need to harvest 50 pounds of king salmon will allow me to focus early season on putting 3- to 5 kings in the freezer. For this I’ll plan on two ocean trips and three river trips between June and July where we have a chance at Chinook. Should the ocean trips yield the 100 pounds of bottomfish as well, then I won’t require further saltwater trips, and if they don’t, then I know I need to put an August trip in place.
In addition, I’ll need to make enough trips to sockeye streams to stock 50 pounds of fillets. With an average yield of 4 pounds of fillet per fish, this will require 13 sockeye. Silvers end up as a fallback plan should we come up short on kings and sockeye.
Fishing with Friends
During most summers, we’ve got friends and relatives descending upon Alaska. This year is no exception. From late June through the middle of July, we’ll have two groups of guests. The first group is a great friend and his family, who happen to be vegetarians who eat fish (pescetarians). My hopes are to send him home with enough fish to feed his family with fish all year. So priority one will be to bring him on multiple fishing-for-food forays, and priority two will be to get his family into some angling. Knowing that sockeye fishing is generally difficult for the novice and that saltwater fishing can be rough, we’ll plan a day or two of lake fishing to get the whole family into the action. We may also try to get a day on the saltwater in a protected location, hoping to further accomplish both priorities.
The second group includes a lifelong friend and his wife. I’ve been on many hardcore fishing adventures with this friend and it’s been 15 years since he has been to Alaska, so my hopes with him are to find some big fish and lots of action. This will probably lead to a lodge trip to target kings and trout, and a long-range saltwater charter.
Fishing for Trophies
There’s still a little room to plan for a few trips for trophies. These may include kings in Kodiak in June, a long-range trip into the Gulf of Alaska for giant lingcod in July, and perhaps trophy silvers and giant halibut in Kodiak in September. Northwest Char in September and rainbows with the two-handed rod on the Naknek in October round out the year’s wish list.
—Marcus Weiner, Publisher
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