Alaska Part 3: Fishing in Valdez

We arrived in Valdez in the late afternoon and after a quick and delicious dinner at the halibut house we headed around to the far side of the Port of Valdez to look for Pink Salmon.  It didn’t take much looking before we found schools and schools of fish all trying to find there way back into the Valdez fish hatchery. 

A brief biology aside for those who are interested.  The life cycle of pacific salmon is kind of a funny thing they spend a year or two in the creek they are born in then head out in the ocean for a few years where they mature then head back to the exact same spot they were born in order to spawn. In the process of spawning the fish use all of the energy they have stored up while out in the ocean and then some, there body slowly reabsorbs their stomach and body tissue so they manage to have just enough energy to get where they are going and spawn and then they die. 

So back to Valdez and the fish hatchery.  The hatchery raises and releases tons of fish every year, far more than it can take back for spawning.  So come spawning season the spillway leading into the hatchery and all the shoreline near it is chock full of fish trying to figure out how to get back to where they were born to spawn.  A certain number of fish are let in but the hatchery can only take so many so the rest swim up and down the shores near the hatchery in huge schools spawning in the rocks or trying to find their way in.  It’s an amazing thing and makes for fantastic fishing. 

So back to our fishing.  We drove along watching the water for schools of jumping and splashing fish close to shore.  When we found a good spot we got our gear ready and scrambled down the rocks to the shoreline.  The Pink Salmon were in and they were in hot and heavy.  The schools are so thick that it takes effort not to snag them.  Over the course of the next couple days we fine tuned a technique that didn’t necessarily catch a fish on every cast but was much more likely to catch the fish in a much more sporting way in the mouth.  It was important that we got some good footage for Scott’s television show of fish being caught “properly” since snagging has no place on TV (even thought it is perfectly legal where we were fishing).  So anyways enough jibber jabber time for some pictures.

Swimming upstream…

A nice male pink salmon

 

Mo’s Got one on

Look at that smile… I think Jess likes fishing…

Uh oh this ones not made for TV

 

A big male pink salmon and a good clean catch

Fish On!!!

 

After a few days of wearing ourselves out catching pinks it was time to move on to halibut.  So the guys headed out into the gulf of Alaska while the ladies spent the day on a whale watch and glacier tour.  We had a beautiful calm warm sunny day out in the gulf of Alaska and came home with a nice fish well full of fish.  Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures to share from on the boat since I left that up to Scott but the pictures from back at the dock tell the story pretty well. 

Scott got the catch of the day with this 149 pound halibut

I was runner up with this 91 pounder

All in all we ended up with 11 halibut and 8 yellow eye rockfish.. not a bad day at all..

After pictures it was over to the fish cleaning stations to process hundreds of pounds of fish.  After cutting up all the fish we took it across the street to the easy freeze where it was flash frozen and shipped home.  We wrapped up an awesome but long day with a fresh halibut feast cooked in our dorm rooms around 11:00 PM

Fishing in Valdez is simply amazing.  From the halibut and rockfish in the depths of the Gulf of Alaska to the schooling Salmon in the port there are few other places I’ve been where the fish are so big and so plentiful.