On June 26th the Alaska Fish and Game issued an Emergency Order opening up a section of Silver Bay for King salmon sports fishing. Luckily (not), Alex just happened to peruse the AFG website and discovered the 3-day old Order. This order was unique because any King salmon landed did not count towards a fisherman's annual limit. The current annual King limit was 3, dropping to 2 by Jun 30th, then just 1 by July 15th. Silver Bay is just a 30 minute run south of Sitka, keeping us close to port. So with visions of landing countless King salmon, we shoved off at 6AM for a full fishing day. We began trolling just after 6:30 surprised not to see a gaggle of sports-fishers choking Silver Bay.
This was not Whale Bay fishing. The first 3 hours were biteless. It took until near noon to land a fish, and it wasn't a King. We struggled through to 2:30 finally giving up.
Realizing we were spoiled, we headed into Sitka to provision for another Whale Bay expedition. We were off the dock again at 5:30PM and made it into Still Harbor at Whale Bay by 10PM sunset, enjoying flat seas the last 7 miles. It had been a long day, the crew was ready to sleep in.
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| The Sitka to Whale bay route runs through narrow passes with flat waters for 25 of the 32 mile run, the last 7 miles in open ocean. |
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