You captain fishing charters for a couple of decades, and you learn the Seward seascape pretty well.  It’s actually a bit like moving to a new city.  You move and immediately start to figure out where the best lunch spots are.  Within a few days, you may know the perennial favorites, as told by coworkers or new acquaintances.  Within a few months, you know where your favorite meals are.  It takes a few years though before you know Chef Douglas cooks his best short ribs on Tuesdays from 1-2 pm, when he’s still warm from the lunch rush but not too overworked.

Fish populations are just as picky as you and I about their diets.  They don’t like to work for their food, and they fish where they will find their favorite dishes, and in ‘short order,’ to borrow a cooking term.  They go where the baitfish are feeding, which depends in large part on the tides.  At high tide, smaller fish move into shallow water, so larger fish, like Halibut and King Salmon will follow them.  Then, when the tide falls, it’s like rush hour in the narrow channels that run from the high ground out into the deeper water.

An experienced captain will know where these ‘main streets’ are, and he or she will be sure to take you to a channel as soon as the tide ebbs.  Pacific Halibut rushing back out to sea still have food in mind, so they bite like crazy.  It is almost like they went to lunch and didn’t find anything on the menu.  Your bait is the street food cart on the side of the road, which starts to look better as the day wanes.

The best captains will not know the names of the ‘restaurants’ where the fish are dining, nor who is cooking there.  But they will know where all the best lunch and dinner spots are, as well as when the fish will be stopping by, and what kind of food they will be looking for.  As far as the seascape of Seward goes, we don’t really care what the Halibut call the shallow feeding grounds, the street channels, and so on.  We just take you there.

Note – Comparison between Fishing charters and Tides in Homer, Alaska

A lot of captains in Seward like to compare the Halibut fishing here with Homer.  You can guess that it’s better here, just because the captains in Homer don’t like talking about it.  The tides are much larger there – much more violent, which means we can use about half as much weight as they do.  Plus, we can fish at all times of day.  There are times in Homer when there’s no way you’ll be catching a fish.  I admit, I’m partial, but it’s true!

I was captaining a fishing charter voyage in the waters off Seward, Alaska, looking around at the vacationers, out-of-staters and homegrown alike, when I suddenly remembered that series of diamond commercial that used to be on television.  They may still have it on… God knows it must have been effective if I would remember it years down the line.

In any event, it was one of those perfect, summer days.  Well, plenty of summer days are perfect here – in the 60s, sun shining, crystal blue sky and whatnot.  But after about mid-June, you start to get a bit pickier.  Suddenly, 60s and shiny doesn’t cut it anymore.  You could say your taste becomes a bit more refined.  But this day was, I swear, something Fitzgerald would have written about.

The anglers were landing prize-winning fish too.  Not every time, of course, but we had two Pacific Halibuts over 50 pounds, a few Silver Salmon over 20 – just really big, beautiful fish, and they were biting all over the place.  It was difficult just to keep up with all the action.  I felt like the poor waiter you feel sorry for during the dinner rush, except every little fishing tip I gave seemed to land a huge fish.

So I had Fitzgerald talking about the sky in one ear, while Hemingway was talking about the fish, in the other.  Everyone else was laughing, telling stories, and taking pictures of their catches.  This little boy, maybe 12 years old – the grandson of one of the patrons onboard – hauled in that Coho single-handedly, two hours after I taught him the ropes of ocean fishing.

The whole day just seemed like something out of a movie, and the joy and sincerity were almost too thick to believe.  So thick that eventually, I couldn’t handle it on my own and wanted to share it with someone who did not understand, already, what a great day on the sea could be like.  But the only thing I could think of was that diamond commercial, so I wrote down:

Sturdy saltwater fishing rod: $400

Grandfather’s fishing hat: $30

Reeling in a beautiful fish on a beautiful summer day: Priceless.

A few experiences in this life would break the stock market if they went public. You can probably think of a decent number yourself.

But I have more.

Sure, you’ve asked a woman to marry you, haven’t you?  You’ve got to do that!  Ever looked at your kid’s face and see your wife or your father, smiling back?  That is an absolute must.  OK.  Have you ever gone on an ocean fishing charter in Alaska?  Priceless.

Seward, Alaska – Where the fishing waters boil with Coho

The Coho Salmon that hatch and spawn near Seward, Alaska are constantly in transition.  Within two-and-a-half years of hatching, they make their way out to sea, an altogether different environment, with a new food supply.  Just sixteen months after that, they swim back to their birthplaces to spawn and die.  I suppose that would have been exciting to me as a teenager, but now it seems like a big pile of stress.  That is akin to moving from the city to the country – not to a summer home, think taking out a new mortgage – then returning within two years to have kids.

Whatever floats their boats, it brings our charters out in mid-June, when their biological clocks beckon. Coho Salmon begin to flock through Resurrection Bay past Seward, Alaska, and up Bear Creek, to spawn further inland near proverbial Grandmother’s house.  These fish, if you were paying attention before, are between three and five years old.  The younger ones weigh in at about 5 lbs.  The old guys pack a sizable punch, weighing upwards of 20.

If you are a little early in the season, you may hear your captain talk about heading toward Agnes, Bony, Rugged Island, or Eldorado Narrows, as these areas lay along the outskirts of the Bay.  Fishing charters see quite a bit of Coho, but waters are tranquil and the sky is serene.  The action is still great, and King Salmon are still out in numbers in the early Coho season, as well, allowing for some great ocean voyages.

As July comes to a close, Coho populations move further into the Bay, through Callisto Head, Thumb Coves, and Spring Creek, among some other prime fishing locales.  Tens of thousands of ocean fish, averaging roughly six pounds apiece, begin their upstream journey on the far side of this bottleneck.  As the future parents of the next generation funnel into the labyrinth of rivers and streams, the entire Bay fills with schools upon schools of them.  In fact, the Coho are so plentiful, if they weren’t in the water, the sheer numbers would be a sure fire hazard!

But even the aquatic medium does not seem to keep the heat down during prime time in Seward.  Sometimes the water is so thick with them around our boats that it looks like a boiling geyser.  Anglers catch roughly 25,000 salmon per year from mid-June through September; the strong, swift, and wise survivors go on to perpetuate the species – upstream, out of harm’s way.  I may not envy them their lives, but they still taste delectable, and the fishing experience is unmatched.

Silver Salmon, or Coho Salmon, are thick in summer Seward waters, but it is still difficult to catch one.  Think – Taming of the Shrew. These welterweights of the water (7-11 pounds) have a storehouse of explosive energy, which makes them an aggressive and sporty fish to catch.  They jump, dance, run, stop, and roll, like Cirque de Soleil acrobats, as though heated by the passion of a jealous lover.

We often see anglers wrestle with and pull in 2-3 silver salmon per day.  That is a whole lot of fishing, fighting, wrangling, cajoling, and crooning!  With the athletic feats of these coho beauties, many aren’t sure, at day’s end, if they beat the fish, or if the fish beat them.

But as the boat comes back to harbor, and you rest your arms in the bow and watch the sun shine over the open water, you suddenly remember the smell of the crisp, salty air and the peace of a day’s work finished.  The memory returns to the happy moments of the day, when a fellow angler almost fell in the water from the shock of a 25-pounder on his line, or after, when the Alaskan captain lightly made fun of the awkward and confused yelp he made when he was sure he was falling overboard.  You smile and tuck the scene in a safe place, so that you can pull it out when you’re back in the city, aching for clean air and good-spirited, relaxing company.

The motor chops up the water behind our vessel, which is the only disturbance in sight and earshot.  Philosophy does not seem so foreign in the transcendental light, not with the natural shoreline rising above the water, offering up the comfort of trees and green and brown colors of home against the dark water.

As the boat turns back to harbor, the temperature drops, giving the wind a cool, brisk undercurrent, and your empty stomach makes you peek at your catch for the day.  You think of the fire on the grill and how the fat of the silver salmon will still be bubbling when it is served.  Maybe you can imagine some of the seasonings you would want to go with it, or perhaps you would prefer to keep it like it was in the ocean when you fought it – just a light char and a lemon wedge.

Either way, the lodge seems like the perfect place to be.  Those beds, coming after the struggles of pulling in silver salmon and the comforts of eating a fresh catch, could not be more plush and inviting.  We go out every day for the thrill, satisfaction, and natural beauty to be found in Alaska’s ocean waters, and there is nothing better than seeing new anglers experience it for the first time.