July 05, 2007 - Skagway King Salmon Fishing and US Customs Report (from George)

Well, it’s time to put (virtual) pen to (equally virtual) paper. I’ve known Dennis for a couple years now and even though he strives for work/life balance I know that work often takes a priority over fishing (and writing about it). So, in an effort to allow Dennis to wor…I mean fish more, I thought I’d scribe an article for FishOnYukon to relieve some of the journalistic pressures the young man faces.

I had the opportunity to do some king salmon fishing in Skagway last week thanks to a generous invite from my friend Gary. Gary spends a fair amount of time fishing the harbor in Skagway and I was confident that he would put us onto fish. He had headed down a couple days earlier with his boat, a 16’ closed bow aluminum, and RV. All I had to bring was myself, my Alaska fishing license with King Salmon Tag and some extra anchovies for bait. A quick stop at Sports North the day before and I was set to go.

Well 5:30am hit sooner than expected but after a quick stop at Tim Horton’s I was fueled for the trip. It’s actually quite peaceful driving the South Klondike Highway at that time of the morning. I only came across one other person heading my way that I had to pass. Well, didn’t have to pass, but they were between me and my fishing trip. About midway on Tutshi Lake I came across a couple rabbits, hares actually I guess, and thought to myself this must be an up-year in the population. Don’t know for sure but it seems that they are everywhere this year. The only thing I’ve seen more of this year is bears… and go-figure, round the next corner and there is black bear meandering in the ditch beside the road. Seemed unconcerned about me approaching – I really should have stopped and snapped some pics but fishing, of course was more on my mind.

So I continue on my voyage and hit the south end of Tutshi Lake – look over at the a couple more rabbits by down in the ditch by that brown rock, brown fuzzy rock, brown fuzzy rock staring me as I go by. This time the bear was a grizzly, always impressive but I was more impressed with the rabbits frolicking so close to large carnivore. Think again about stopping and taking some photos but remember I’m on a fishing quest.

Next stop, US Customs – now if someone can tell me why the Skagway Customs Officers all seem to have a solid pine 2x4 inserted into what should be an exit point in the human body I’d appreciate it. At no other customs crossings I’ve been through over the years are they as anal about letting a Canadian guy just looking for some fish into their land of the free. After a third-degree interrogation including providing all possible documentation, questions on “what is the name of the boat you are going on” (it’s a 16’ foot aluminum boat, it doesn’t have a NAME – why can’t you figure that one out), I was finally allowed to proceed.

I meet up with Gary and we head down to the small boat harbour to hit the water for Kings. We wander the docks awhile looking at boats as we wait for the US Coast Guard zodiacs to leave first. Now, sitting in small town Alaska and seeing these zodiacs head out into the harbour with full machine guns mounted to the front of their bows is an intriguing site, but perhaps this just influenced by my more Canadian senses.

So anyway, on to the fishing part of this. I should preface this with stating the fact that I’m much more of a shore/belly boat fisher than a troller. It took me a bit to get my sea-legs but it wasn’t too bad and I remained onboard and didn’t have the opportunity to test my pfd.

We started out and Gary briefed me on the anchovy setup. Pretty much the same as a standard herring rig I’ve used at Tagish for years. The weather was agreeing with us and the harbour was calm. It is kind of surreal trolling among the cruise ships for Salmon.

The little aluminum really does look small compared to these behemoths.

About 5 minutes into it Gary got into the first fish of the day. I played net-man as Gary brought the fish to the boat. One quick whisk and the fish was in the boat. A nice 18lb king. It looked like the day was going to be full of fish. Mental note: never believe those thoughts.

The next one was to be mine – little did I know that it would take hours to get to that point. Well, not exactly – I did hit a small jack or a dolly that spit the hook at the boat. Small and silver, that’s about all we say of it before it was gone. At least it was some action.

The next few hours were quite slow – although the fish finder was showing a lot of fish cruising around 20’ down – they didn’t seem to be hitting. After awhile we decide to troll out further down the inlet to see if our luck would change. We’ll it didn’t although the boat trolling in front of us picked up a king after only a couple minutes out – that was frustrating to watch.

Following this, we head out to check Gary’s crab traps – guess what – no crab. It wasn’t looking like it was going to turn out as great a day as we expected.

We decided to pull up the downriggers and head back into the harbour. Getting back in near the cruise ship docs I discover that the downrigger cable is tangled – welcome to the latest forced learning experience – how to disassemble and rebuild a downrigger system on the fly. Good learning experience and now I know when putting it back together the brake handle goes on the right hand side, and that disassembling the second time to move the handle is not as difficult as the first time.

In the meantime, as always happens when you’re busy with something else, my fish hit. Finally!

Being my first Skagway King it was a nice one. With Gary’s help at the net it was quickly in the boat. A nice fish pushing 30lbs. The skunk was over! But hey, I learned something else – the Skagway runs of Kings contains white-fleshed Chinooks. There is a genetic variety of king with white flesh (“white king”), that is much prized and entirely different than a mature king with white or light pink flesh.

We cruise the harbour a bit more and pulled in one more jack before heading back in so I could head back into Whitehorse.

After a pleasant conversation with the CANADIAN customs agent I returned home. Thanks for the trip Gary.

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