Every year we seem to get booked up quicker than the year before and this year is no exception. If you are considering a fishing trip in 2017 please call or email so we can try to find a time that works. Here are a couple of photos from last summer to get you excited about coming up:

A great day salmon fishing in mid-summer 2016

 

A nice group of Salmon and Halibut

 

Some nice Pink Salmon from mid-summer 2016

 

A great day fishing in July

 

 

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Ko’olina running out for a Halibut trip in July

 

Our new boat has been all over the Pacific Northwest since it was built in the year 2000. From what I understand, it was originally sold to someone in Hawaii as a charter boat over there. The next owner bought it and had it shipped to Sitka Alaska (just 185 miles North of Ketchikan) where it lived for several years. The next owner was the man i bought it from who shipped it down to Anacortes Washington and brought it to Alaska on several occasions for fishing trips.

 

She is currently powered with 260 HP Volvo Diesels running ZF gears to straight shafts. Although she is not as fast as Miss Parker, she is steady and smooth even in rough water. I was amazed many times during the 2016 season at how well this boat runs when the waves start to pick up. Whether it is flat calm or 3-4 footers, you can run the same speed and not notice much of a difference.

 

Enjoying some crab on an all-day charter

 

Our cabin has many of the amenities that our other boats were lacking. We have enough seating for 10 people without feeling like your in each others way. The head (bathroom) is spacious and comfortable (unlike most of the boats I have owned). We have a propane stove where we have cooked fresh fish on several occasions and a fridge to keep the drinks and food cold. One of the highlights for many people this summer was going up on the fly-bridge where you can watch friends and family catching fish and also look around at the amazing scenery.

Halibut fishing as seen from above while rafted to another boat.

 

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We made some big changes in 2016, most notably was buying another charter boat. The KO’OLINA is a 32 foot Sea Sport Catamaran that we purchased in Anacortes Washington and had shipped up to Ketchikan in May. She is 13 feet wide which makes for an incredibly comfortable and spacious fishing platform.

Koolina in its slip in Anacortes

 

The Ko’olina has proven to be a very fishy boat, here are a few fish pictures from the 2016 season:

A nice group of late-season Cohos

 

The first salmon trip of the year we scored this nice King!

 

A great day fishing in July

 

A nice late-season Halibut

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Thank you to everyone for supporting us with booking for the 2015 season! We have a prime spot still open for a group of all-days if anyone is interested:

July 28th – August 1st

This should be a fantastic time for Silvers, Kings and Halibut if anyone is looking for some longer trips.

 

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We took advantage of some perfect calm sunny weather to sneak out and do a little fishing today and it was awesome! Captain Moore and I trolled for a couple of hours and ended up with this dandy little halibut, a smaller legal King Salmon and we lost another much larger King Salmon (I dont know how big but it was definitely a larger fish than the one i caught). Overall it was a fantastic day, we got some much needed sun-time and managed to burn through a pack of herring (always a good day in the winter when you can use 12 herring).

Nice little Halibut we found while trolling Always good to see this on your deck Nice legal March King Salmon

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I took the kids out to the dock and we caught a bunch of small herring the other night – what a blast! The kids loved it! They were pulling them in 3, 4 and 5 at a time on the sabiki rig and just grinning from ear to ear.

We ended up with a nice bucket of bait herring for this summer and more importantly the kids had lots of fun, thats what its all about.

My sons catching herring off the dock The kids bucket of herring

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We had a absolutely perfect day (glassy flat calm, sunny and 55 degrees) so captain Clayton and I snuck out in my boat to go fishing/scouting for Mtn Goats. We were having a blast but not seeing much in the way of fish or bait even on the sonar. I saw one fish mark at about 70 ft, Clayton adjusted his downrigger and a few moments later we found this beauty! Talk about being excited! It was like we don’t do this every day for half the year – we were giddy. A fantastic March King Salmon:

Winter King Salmon fishing in Ketchikan

 

Captain Moore’s March King Salmon

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We have been out 4 times (half days) in the last few weeks and it is definitely not great fishing for Kings at this time of year. We had 2 trips with no Kings and 2 trips with 1 keeper each (we were super excited to see them both!).  We have found a few halibut and a bunch of different rock-fish and other bottom dwellers while trolling for Kings (one day we got completely inundated with Kelp Greenling everywhere we went). At this point in the year we are really looking forward to the summer Kings returning to spawn so we can start having some more consistent fishing trips. Here are a few picture highlights:

My little 28 inch King from late February These guys overwhelmed us on one of our fishing trips, we would catch them anytime our bait was close to bottom.

 

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Captain Clayton and I were able to get out for a few hours last Sunday and try to troll up a King Salmon. We fished for about 4 hours and ended up catching 2 Kings (both short and had to be released) 1 halibut and 1 Ling Cod (both out of season and had to be released)! It was super fun to catch them all  and nothing beats getting out on the water on a sunny day in January!

Fighting a small King in January Clayton fighting a small King in January Had to release this guy as it was out of season This feisty little Ling Cod was really fun to see so close to town, he was released back to the deep

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I have been spending alot of time out fishing for Winter Kings this year with some mild success. It seems like most of the time when I invite someone to go with me they end up catching a King which is awesome but for some reason all I can catch are these stinking halibut (bad problem right?!).

Here is the bigger one that I caught recently:

 

Ketchikan accidental Halibut

 

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My brother-in-law Jay the MacDaddy Johnson and I were able to go out for a few hours on Christmas Eve and troll a Herring around in the water. We were mainly interested in hanging out and drinking a beer but we were both very excited when this bad-boy hit about 45 minutes into our fishing trip. Jay laid the smack down and fought the monster up to the boat in no time!

 

Winter King Salmon fishing Ketchikan Alaska

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Ian and I were able to sneak out with our friend Ken and fish the best window of time (an hour on either side of high tide) for King Salmon and we scored again! This guy hit just after tide change, we were dragging a whole herring behind an Abe-N-Al flasher at 100 feet deep on the downrigger in about 100 feet of water. As far as i know it was the only King Salmon bite we had all day and we were super excited to see him!

Winter King Salmon fishing in Ketchikan Alaska

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We have been out playing on the water trying to find Winter Kings quite a bit recently with some success. Here are the results of 4 fishing trips, approximately 12 hours of fishing time:

1 legal King to the boat (over 28 inches)

4 large shaker Kings to the boat (25-27 inches but just not quite big enough)

10+ small shaker Kings released

Here is the 1 legal fish we caught, I had my son Ian come pose with me for the photo:

Winter King Salmon fishing in Ketchikan Alaska

 

If you look at the numbers it probably makes no since to go out in the freezing cold weather and try to catch these fish but we do it because we love it and it is sooooooo much fun when you connect with a winter chromer. Most of our action each day was within a 30-45 minute window around tide change and one day we tried a spot that was somewhat of an unknown and we didn’t catch anything for the entire 5 hours we were out.

 

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2014 was a REALLY good fishing season for us. We had a record King Salmon run this year (thank you Oregon, Washington and British Columbia for letting us catch a bunch of your King Salmon before they could get back to you) where we were able to keep targeting King Salmon all the way through June, July and August. We caught lots of beautiful King Salmon and on one charter we hooked, fought and lost a King that will haunt me for many many years. I was able to see him at the side of the boat 3 different times and he was a beautiful monster. Oh well, maybe next time. (note to all of you fishermen that come up here after big King Salmon: do NOT try to lift a big fish out of the water so I can net it, something is going to give!)

Our halibut season was consistent and as usual we were able to catch fish for almost every client. Unlike some years, we didn’t catch any really big halibut this summer. The biggest charter halibut we pulled up to the boat was probably in the 70-80 pound range. Like always, we try to keep halibut in the 15-30 pound range for our clients as these are best eaters and are very plentiful.

Coho fishing was really good this year from the 1st week of July all the way to the end of September. We had brief windows where they would seem to disappear which required us to put more miles on the boat trying to find them. Several groups this summer came during the in-between times where we had to fish alot of different spots to try to find the Silvers. Although these days can be discouraging, its just part of fishing and some days you have to work for it. Thank you for being understanding during the moments when we are doing more fishing than catching!

Pink fishing was good like it is most summers here: you can usually catch about as many Pinks as you want to. We had trips where we limited very quickly as some Pink trips where we just caught them consistently for 4 hours and ended up with a full box at the end of the trip. If your looking for almost non-stop action then Pink fishing in July and August might be the thing for you.

One of my favorite trips this summer was an all-day trip down to the Pinnacle (about 30 miles from town) with some of my favorite Texans. We were using a lure that was especially good this summer (chrome/UV apex) and catching beautiful silvers whenever we let it down from 20-50ft. The bonus that day was whenever we let it down from 60-90 ft we were catching big beautiful King Salmon which really made for an exciting trip and some wonderful salmon fillets for the Texans to take home to the 2nd largest state in the US 🙂

Texans vs. AK 2014 pinnacle trip

 

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2015 is already shaping up to be a busy season for us, so if you are interested in getting out for some salmon fishing then you need to get your time blocked off. We are hoping for another year with King Salmon like we had last season where we caught them for most of the summer. Whether you are coming on a cruise ship to Ketchikan or flying in for a week of serious fishing, now is the time to get your plans put together before you miss your chance.

 

 

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We’ve had a great time trying to catch Kings, Halibut and Crab this off-season. Here are some of the highlights in photos:

This awesome winter King was caught in February, just outside of Ketchikan

 

Unfortunately, most of the winter Kings I have caught have been too small (like this one) and we had to release them back to the wild.

 

My son Ian with his very own winter King (this was released shortly after the photo op)

 

Captain Clayton couldn’t remember that we were fishing for King Salmon this day

 

Or this day…….

 

We had mild success attempting to catch Tanner crabs this winter

 

A nice Tanner crab and a nice Dungeness!

 

You have to love to fish to go out in the winter here, we had to break the ice to get out of the harbor this morning

 

Were looking forward to another great season this summer catching halibut, salmon and crabs in Ketchikan!

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Well…..you can really tell when the season started to get so busy that we began to neglect the website updates. Here is a summary of the whole season with a few picture highlites:

May: Slow as expected, we had 2 good days and several really slow days. May 14th was an unusually good day for that time of year where we got really lucky and found a couple nice kings. This was the biggest one:

A beautiful King caught on May 14th in Ketchikan

June: King Salmon fishing was just plain WEIRD in 2012. We expect it to be slow until sometime in June when they all show up and then to have a couple weeks of really good fishing; Thats how it’s supposed to work. This year, however, it was different. We had a great day followed by a couple slow days, then another great day followed my more slow fishing, it was really frustrating. Our best day of the King Salmon season we hit 3 fish on the morning trip and 5 more on the afternoon trip. Here is the picture from the end of the day:

8 King Day In June

We had several kids that caught beautiful King Salmon this season, here are two of the really memorable ones for me:

A very happy fishermen with a beautiful King Salmon

This young lady caught this right after I got done telling her that we probably wouldn’t catch any King Salmon as it was a little bit too late in the year (shows what I know!):

This young lady reeled in this beautiful king salmon all by herself, she did a fabulous job!

 

July and August: We were happy to have a very healthy Pink Salmon run this year that made for many happy fishermen and lots of dead fish. Although we had a couple of slower days, it was a rare exception and most passengers during this time frame caught about as many fish as they hoped for. The silvers were spotty on most of our 4 hour trips as they didn’t come within range of our shorter trips until well into September. On our 6 and 8 hour trips we were able to get out to the halibut grounds and find the silvers as well most days. Here are a few pictures of this time frame:

A happy fishermen with a beautiful slot-limit halibut Lots of fun catching halibut and salmon in Mid-August. A great day halibut fishing with some bonus salmon as well! One of the numerous triple digit halibut we caught this summer and had to throw back due to the slot limit restrictions. One of the many species of Rockfish that we catch in Ketchikan (they are very tasty!)

 

 

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FINALLY!!!! We have been waiting (not so patiently) for the King Salmon to start showing up with more numbers and today was the first day that I have seen it. We’ve caught a few here and there up until now, but today was a fabulous fishing day and it was a big relief to catch a few.

On the morning trip today we caught 2 nice kings (in the 15-20 pound range) and saw several other caught including the boat in front of us hooking up 3 at once and getting all of them in the boat! (way to go Clay!)

On the afternoon trip today we went back over to where the fish were this morning and although it started a little slow (with one small King salmon in the first hour or so), it really picked up as we got closer to high tide. We hit a double on beautiful twin 19 pound Kings and then a little later hit a triple (with 3 people, all 3 rods had big kings on at the same time) and were fortunate enough to get then all in the boat. We ended up with 8 Kings total in the 2 trips and it was just a really fun day. Here is a end of the day results photo:

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We were blessed with a beautiful sunny day today and so we went just a little further in search of halibut than we normally go. The guests were troopers and fished hard for the whole 6 hour trip and they caught all kinds of interesting sea-creatures both big and small! Here is a list of what they caught:

-2 Pacific Cod, 2 Rock-Fish, 2 Big halibut that had to be realeased (one 60 inches and one 63 inches), 2 small halibut that went in the ice-box, a very large Skate (like a sting ray kind of), a plethora of Turbot and to top it all off, 2 cephalopods (octopus) one that was about 5 feet long and one that was about 3 feet long.

It was a really fun trip, the girls hooked the big halibut and the boys hooked the small ones (as usual) and we just had a great time.

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Today we fished HARD for 4 hours without a single bite! It was even more frustrating because due to our extreme tides lately, we had all kinds of seaweed and kelp in the water and I was clearing the lines almost non-stop for the whole trip. Just as a lesson to anyone who is coming here to King Salmon fish: we fished for 4 hours without a bite and everyone lost interest and quit watching the rods. As I started the main engine to warm up before we left, I heard a noise and when I turned around, one of the rods was bent over with line screaming off of it. We were super LUCKY and it didn’t get escape before we managed to get to the rod and the boys tag-teamed it in to the boat. It ended up being just shy of 30 pounds and was a really nice high note at the end of a hard trip. The lesson is, that its not over until its over!

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Today we fished halibut out of Ketchikan with a group of 2 and had a absolute blast! We got set on our anchor just perfect and from the time we started fishing the action was almost non-stop with Rock-fish, Pacific Cod, Turbot, a Red Snapper, and multiple halibut until we found the ones we wanted. It was a real relief as the captain to have a day where we didn’t have to work very hard to find them, we just got lucky and stopped right on top of a pile of fish. I hope this is a sign of things to come this summer!

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This year my family and I have been fishing the derby as much as we can with varying levels of success. Just to help people see what King Salmon fishing can be like here I wanted to give a quick rundown of how many hours we have fished each day and how many fish we have caught.

Night 1: Fished for 4 hours – Caught 0 fish

Day 2: Fished for 10 hours – Caught 1 fish (17 pounds)

Day 3: Fished for 12 hours – Caught 0 fish

Day 4: Fished for 8 hours – Caught 3 Kings/Lost 2 more (10 pounds, 15 pounds, 22 pounds)

Day 5: Fished for 4 hours – Caught 2 Kings/Lost 3 more (12 pounds, 24 pounds)

As you can see, there is very little rhyme or reason to how many hours you must fish to catch a King, sometimes you work hard all day and do everything correct and just dont find them. Some days you drop your bait in the water right in front of them and cant seem to do anything wrong – THATS FISHING!!!! Just because your fishing in Alaska doesn’t mean that its not fishing anymore, some days are GREAT and some days STINK!!! All you can do is keep trying.

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Today we had alot of fun with a group of Southerners and even managed to find some fish. They were close, but in the end Kyle’s was just a little bigger than Morgans! I hope that today was a sign of things to come and the fish will continue to show up in greater and greater numbers.

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Today we fished for Kings and tried a different spot that usual (mostly out of desperation that the normal places have been so bad) which paid off nicely. We were extremely fortunate and landed 1 legal King (27 pounds) and brought 3 other Kings to the boat that were just barely too small (between 25 and 27 inches). It was a beautiful day on the water and I feel lucky more than anything else to have stumbled across those fish at this time of the season. Here is a picture of the big one:

 

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Today I took out a absolutely fantastic family group and we just had a great time fishing and having fun on the boat. The halibut eluded us (despite our best efforts and hard work) and at the end of the day I think all we brought to the boat were about a half dozen flounders and 1 truly incredible Sculpin. See guys, I told you this picture would make the webpage!

 

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We had a really fun time taking the Hollanders out today, and even though the fishing was great – the catching was terrible! The Kings just aren’t showing up in many numbers yet (this isn’t a terrible surprise for May, but we always are hopeful). We had a nice day on the water and enjoyed watching all the wildlife that Ketchikan offers.

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We fished with a great group of guys today for halibut and even though it is still s bit early for the really good Halibut fishing that Ketchikan has a reputation for, we were able to catch one nice But and a whole box full of tasty Pacific Cod. One gentlemen on the boat caught the first 3 fish of his life today, it was really alot of fun and a absolutely beautiful day to boot.

 

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My friend Clayton and I did our annual May 4th fishing trip and had a great time. We were fortunate enough to find 1 King Salmon and almost had another one. We moved onto bottom fishing and in the afternoon and landed 1 halibut along with a handful of Pacific Cod (really good eating by the way). Its still a little too early for great salmon or halibut fishing so we were very happy with our catch and are looking forward to doing it again next year!

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We’ve been really hard at work lately getting the boats ready for the 2012 season which will be starting in about 2 weeks! Miss Parker has new front windows, new windshield wiper systems, a new stereo and new deck paint to name a few of the upgrades. She will be going in the water this weekend and our “Test Fishing” should happen next week!

In our continuing quest to keep the best new gear on the boats, we just completed a big order with Shimano where we have brand new rods and reels on both boats. For salmon fishing we are staying with the Tekota 600’s which have proven to be one of the best saltwater level-wind reels that we have ever used. We got two different salmon rods for 2012, a set of Shimano Talora trolling rods and a set of Shimano Clarus Salmon rods. Depending on the application, these rods are incredible and can do just about anything (they have even been known to land a Halibut, even though thats not what they are for).

For halibut fishing we have some beautiful new Tekota 700’s that we have paired with the Shimano Trevala jigging rods. These rods are short and powerful with great action that make them just killer for halibut fishing.

The outlaw is currently getting a full tune up, new deck paint and a beuatiful detailing job to make sure she is in tip-top shape for fishing.

 

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Just wanted to let everyone know that our other site ketchikanhalibutfishing.com is up and running. We are trying to answer some of the demand for Ketchikan halibut charters by creating this other site and putting some focus on that aspect of fishing here. We are really lucky in Ketchikan that we have such great salmon and halibut fishing close to town and we want to take full advantage of it. Please check out the new site when you have time.

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It is shaping up to be quite the year, we are up on our bookings and the fish forecasts are strong! I expect that we will have an even better year for King Salmon than last year and I am anticipating some terrific halibut fishing. If you are considering coming up this year to try your luck, you need to call sooner than later to reserve your spot. 2012 Ketchikan fishing is going to be great!

 

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This years King Salmon derby will begin on May 26th through the 28th, and then continue on June 2nd and 3rd with the final weekend being June 9th and 10th. We have really enjoyed fishing the derby the last couple of years and look forward to putting in some hours trying to find the “Big-One” again this year. If any of our charter clients are interested in fishing the derby then please mention it in an email or give us a call so we can work out the details!

 

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Were going to be making a few changes around here to the way the site looks and operates, if you find some mistakes or pages that don’t work quite right, please just check back again later.

thanks

Captain Jim

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