It’s not just a cruise-ship destination anymore

Story and photo By J.D. Richey

From a fishing standpoint, Juneau often gets a bum rap. While anglers swarm other Southeast towns like Sitka, Ketchikan and Yakutat, Alaska’s Capital City often gets dismissed as being more of a port of call for cruise ships than a fishing Mecca. But is that reputation really deserved? To find out, fellow reporter Khevin Mellegers and I headed down there in mid-August to have a look for ourselves. Our mission was a tough one: Fly to Juneau and explore as many fishing opportunities in the region as possible and then report our findings back to Fish Alaska headquarters . . . in a week.

Once we started looking into things, we found tons of fishy-looking water and quickly realized that there was no way we could scratch the proverbial surface in a year, let alone seven days. After thoroughly scrutinizing the map, we narrowed things down and picked a couple places that looked interesting and hopped on a jet. Our itinerary called for two days of fishing the Juneau road system (see accompanying article), a couple more in the Icy Straight/Glacier Bay neck of the woods at a self-guided joint and then a lightning-quick stop to sample the waters of Angoon at a luxury lodge. [emember_protected custom_msg=’This content is available for subscribers only.’]

Icy Strait

Stop number one was at a do-it-yourself lodge, South Passage Outfitters (SPO), which is located right in the heart of a fishing wonderland in the southwestern corner of Icy Strait.

Kings are available here from May until September, though June is when the largest concentrations of fish pass through. Coho start to show in July and peak sometime in August or early September and there are also good migrations of humpies, chums and sockeye in June, July and August.

Halibut are present all summer long, though they start to move into the shallows in July and become very accessible to light tackle enthusiasts as the summer progresses. There are also numerous humps and reefs within striking distance of SPO that produce off-the-charts rockfish action throughout the summer season.

What’s really cool about the area is that there are enough protected coves and bays that you’ll be able to find some calm water to fish no matter what the weather looks like. The area immediately surrounding SPO is protected from the swells of the open ocean and on calm days – like the ones we had – you can skiff around to all the inside spots like Indian, Shaw and Lemesurier islands, Quartz Point and Point Adolphus (just to name a few), or venture out into Cross Sound and hit Three Hill Island. When things are really flat, there’s also some incredible fishing to be had along the coast at places like Cape Cross or Icy Point.

There are also plenty of freshwater streams begging to be fished in the region that have populations of Dollies, humpies, chums, coho and sockeye. According to SPO owner, Dennis Montgomery, some of the local streams even have runs of steelhead seasonally.

SPO caters to folks with a good sense of adventure, and some boat handling skills. There are no guides here – they feed and house you and give you a skiff and send you on your merry way. With the self-guided approach, you are your own boss and can fish wherever you want and for whatever tickles your fancy. During our short stay, our basic instructions were “come back in before dark.” While some of the lodge guests opted to get up and eat a leisurely breakfast around 7 a.m., Team Fish Alaska would get up at the crack of dawn, wolf down some cereal and be gone before anybody else had even begun to stir.

Montgomery, who has been a commercial fisherman in the area for decades, instructed us to fish the leading edges of the islands on the incoming tide for silvers. He told us about a good bite that had been occurring on the southwestern edge of Lemesurier Island, so that’s where we headed our first day. Sure enough, the silvers were there but they were stacked up 180 feet down for some odd reason. We gave the deep-dwelling coho a shot but then quickly decided to try something different. The boats from the lodge that didn’t mind the deep mooching got fish, but we changed up and went after halibut.

For flatties, Montgomery suggested we head for a sand flat in Idaho Inlet. With his good directions, we quickly found the spot and the halibut started climbing on our rigs pretty regularly. While traditional halibut fishing calls for sitting on anchor in deep water with dead bait and brontosaurus-sized gear, we rigged up with 7-foot jigging rods and yo-yoed white/blue 9-inch Mad River Outfitter swimbaits on 12- to 16-ounce lead heads. We’d start on the top of the flat and allow the current to push us over the edge and down the drop-off. Most of the flatties were hard-scrapping 20- to 30-pounders, though we did get one in the 70-pound-plus range that smacked a 16-inch Godzilla Jig. For the couple days we were at SPO, the halibut fishing was easy and we caught as many as we wanted. We were playing catch-and-release, though we did keep a couple to dine on at the lodge.

Over the next day and a half, we wailed on the halibut, caught a few salmon (though we didn’t put much effort into it), saw tons of whales and found a couple rock piles that were absolutely loaded with just about every type of rockfish imaginable. There really was too much stuff to do and we figured we’d need a month of solid fishing to even get a glimpse of what the area had to offer. We also pulled up to a couple creeks and saw lots of humpies milling around, but the allure of those hungry halibut proved to be too strong so we never made a cast in freshwater.

For something a little different, we skiffed over to the tiny town of Elfin Cove one afternoon and absolutely drooled over the super rocky outside shore that just screamed “trophy lingcod,” but we didn’t have enough time to try it out. We also took a quick walking tour of the town, which was well worth the time, and were even taken in by the friendly folks at Eagle Charters, who warmed us up with coffee and fresh cookies.

After two and a half great days in Icy Strait, Montgomery was nice enough to run us to Gustavus, where we hopped on an Alaska Airlines jet for the 14-minute flight back to Juneau. The next morning we found ourselves on a turbine Otter, bound for Angoon and Whaler’s Cove Lodge, which was to be the final stop on our little fact-finding mission.

Angoon

Only 59 miles southwest of Juneau on Admiralty Island is the village of Angoon, situated on what is perhaps the most exceptional piece of real estate in the entire state. One of the things that makes the area so unique is that the weather is decidedly un-Alaska-like Across Chatham Strait, the mountains on Baranof and Chichagof islands soak up most of the storms coming off the Pacific and leave Angoon in a rain shadow. For comparison’s sake, Angoon sees about the same amount of rain annually as Seattle, while nearby Sitka gets over twice as much precipitation.

It’s the area’s incredible fishery, however, that makes it a one-of-a kind destination. The local waters are home to one of the largest concentrations of herring in the world. Of course, where you have tons of herring you’re sure also to have zillions of salmon – and that’s definitely the case near Angoon. There’s also a prolific salmon hatchery at Hidden Falls in nearby Kasnyku Bay that augments the local wild stocks so there never seems to be a shortage of salmon in the area.

The fishing begins in early June when spring kings pass through the area. Coho start to show in July and you can get a good mixture of both species then. The silvers really go on the warpath in August and last into the fall. There are also some bonus kings that come around again in the late season, and halibut and rockfish are available throughout the year. Several of the lakes and streams in the immediate area also produce excellent trout and salmon action in the summer.

The day we arrived at Whaler’s Cove Lodge, which is a full-service, 4-star resort on Killisnoo Island just minutes from Angoon, our host and guide Marlin Coulombe told us that the lodge boats had been experiencing white-hot coho fishing all month. The day before, one of the six-pack charters landed their limit of 24 coho in 93 minutes of fishing and he told us to expect more of the same.

On the short 5-minute ride to the fishing grounds at Danger Point, Coulombe rigged us up with “popsicle” hootchies and herring strips behind green/silver herring dodgers. We clipped our lines into hand-crank downriggers and dropped them to 60 feet. In short order, we were into our first coho. And our second. And our tenth. And so it went. When the dust cleared, Mellegers and I must have caught and released 30 fat silvers and a beautiful 20-pound king in a few hours time – all while getting a tan in the 75-degree weather.

On the second day, the weather kicked up a bit but it didn’t slow the fishing down at all. The two of us took one of the lodge’s do-it-yourself boats out and began the morning by jigging up a bucket of herring. The massive balls of bait were not difficult to locate and some of them extended from just below the surface down to 80 feet.

After making bait, we trolled plug-cut herring on light steelhead rods for a while but that technique was so deadly that the fish came too easily.We switched to jigging 1-ounce spoons and tossing swimbaits, and after another 20 silvers, we changed yet again to try to make it more challenging. We tossed a variety of bass lures at the marauding salmon and got bit on all kinds of goofy stuff like Rat-L-Traps, white plastic worms, drop-shot rigs and gold spinnerbaits. In fact, I don’t think we found anything that the coho wouldn’t hit.

Once we had our fill of silvers, we decided to give halibut fishing a shot. Since the herring were so thick at Danger Point, we couldn’t see moving anywhere for the halibut. We reasoned that the flatties, like the silvers, would be drawn to the bait – and we were right. Without even starting the engine, we stowed the salmon gear and dropped the same jigs we’d used in Icy Strait. The halibut action was, in a word, unbelievable, and we rarely had to bounce our jigs on the bottom more than three times before a fish would climb onto them. Most of the ‘buts we caught were in the 15- to 30-pound range, though we saw fish to 90 pounds-plus brought in by guests fishing on the guide boats each day.

On our third and final day we opted to forgo the epic saltwater fishing and get a little taste of the local freshwater action. Lodge owner Dick Powers was our guide that day and he took us to a beautiful clearwater stream that was absolutely choked with salmon – coho, humpies, chums, reds and even a few kings – and huge schools of 12- to 18-inch Dollies.

After anchoring the boat at the stream’s mouth, we grabbed a couple stashed canoes and headed upstream. Big schools of salmon were stacked in every slot, hole and run in the creek and we caught them on pink leeches using fly gear and by tossing Blue Fox spinners and purple marabou jigs on conventional tackle. The fishing was amazing and the scenery was just as good.

There was a tall cascade about 2 miles upstream of the mouth and that’s as far as we went. It was one of those magical spots where you could easily spend a few days – the pool below was loaded with fish and, every few seconds, we’d see a couple salmon try to leap the falls. By the time we reached the cataract, however, it was late in the day and we didn’t get much more than about 30 minutes to take it all in before turning back. I can say that the stream fishing alone was worth the trip, even if the salt action had been nonexistent (which was obviously not the case). With our tight schedule, Mellegers and I didn’t get a chance to see any more of the area’s freshwater on our trip, but we’ll make sure to do more of that next time. Apparently, the stream we visited was just the tip of that particular (and proverbial) iceberg.

Unfortunately, it was all over way too soon for us. We could have continued exploring the supposedly “un-fishy” waters around Juneau for the rest of the summer but we had to get back to real life.

The Juneau trip was a real eye-opener for us. There is so much good fishing to be experienced in and around the state capital that it’s hard to figure out just how the rumors of it not being a world-class angling destination ever got started. Hopefully, more anglers will now start to take notice of this Southeast gem. We know we’ll be back!

JD Richey, a salmon and steelhead guide in his native Northern California, as well as on Alaska’s Nushagak River for a month every summer, is a contributing editor for Fish Alaska, where his work regularly appears. [/emember_protected] [emember_protected scope=”not_logged_in_users_only”]

[/emember_protected] [emember_protected scope=”not_logged_in_users_only”] [/emember_protected]