About 6 months back some friend from California called and asked if I wanted to go on a three day fishing trip to Sitka, Alaska. It was a combo trip for Salmon, Rockfish and Halibut. It didn't take me long to say, "I'm in". The outfit is 'Alaskan Reel Affairs Charters', owned and operated by Tim and Octobre Twaddle. They have three fishing boats and are a genuine first class operation. I haven't flown comercial in about 15 years, so there were a lot of changes to the process. The first leg of my flight got canceled first because of weather, then because of mechanical problems with the aircraft, so I missed all of the connections and had to stay in Seattle overnight. I got to Sitka a day late, but we had planned a sightseeing day and so did not miss any fishing.
The morning I arrived, Octobre picked me up at the airport and took me to the Westmark Hotel to meet the rest of the party. There were three other adults and my friend's nine year old son. We got all of the fishing licenses taken care of, and she provided us with boots to wear on the boat.
My friend's son wanted to go see ?Fortress of the Bear? a bear rescue organization that has five brown bears and three black bears. Link:
http://www.fortressofthebear.org/ It was worth seeing. After that we went to the downtown area, and it was getting near dinner time. It would have been nice to see some of the other attractions such as the Raptor center and Sheldon Jackson Museum. Hopefully I'll get up there again.
We were on a 30 foot boat with a Captain and Mate. They provided the rain gear, lunches and all of the coffee, water and soft drinks we wanted. The first day of fishing was actually kind of slow. The weather was bad and the seas were choppy, so we trolled for salmon and picked up a couple kings and some pinks. It wasn't for lack of trying though! The second day was a little better. We got a few more king salmon and more pink salmon. Non residents are allowed one king a day, and four out of five of us got one. The high point of the day was my friends son hooked into a 42.5lb king salmon and played it into the boat. It turned out to be the boat record for the year so far! I don't know who was happier, the little fella or his dad. The third day we we started catching kings pretty good, all of us scored and we got into some coho salmon as well. We went out to the big water for halibut, fishing in 420 feet. The wind came up and the anchor started slipping, but not before we boated four halibut. All of them were small, (still legal) but we kept them. The first mate took care of all the bait, downriggers. netted and dressed the fish, quickly got them on ice, and kept the boat spotless.
When I got to the airport, one of the Reel Affair employees was waiting on me with my fish fillets boxed and frozen, helped me get everything checked in before he went back to the marina. Granted, I paid for the trip, but their customer service was top notch. If you are interested in a fishing trip in Sitka, itd be worth your time to check out Reel Affairs charters. You can find them on the web-
http://www.reelaffair.com/ and they have a Facebook page also.
