This report covers the charter portion of my recent trip to Thorne Bay, Alaska, guests of Gary and Victoria Anderson of Anderson Lodge. My previous report focused on the cool “self-guided” options that they offer. This trip, however, was to focus on big halibut in big water off the west side of Prince of Wales Island.

Thorne Bay is on the Inside Passage, but to get to the outside waters is an easy drive of about an hour and a half. We (I, Rob, Paul, and Bruce) loaded up our gear into two vehicles as Gary and Victoria drove us and their beautiful new 27 foot North River boat to a remote launch on the other side of the island. And when I say remote, I’m not kidding. Bear doo-doo on the road leading to the launch? Cool!

After launching we worked down a narrow passage with the most amazing scenery I’ve seen, only to break out into the bay and find even more amazing scenery, not to mention whales and otters playing all around us. Gary had a few “secret” halibut holes to try out. We were in the search for one hundred pound halibut. Now, I now you’ve heard the stories - big halibut are tough, they are full of worms, etc, etc. Well, I can tell you both those observations are false, at least in this part of Alaska. I can attest that our fish had no worms, and the meat was juicy and tender, yumm!

We set were set up for drift fishing big 12 ounce jigs tipped with curly tails, herring, and octopus. Our fishing depths ranged from 180 to 300 feet depending on the underwater topography. I looked at the GPS map of the area Gary had us fishing and it got be salivating just looking at all the pinnacles and flats that would be likely spots for halibut to dwell.

We started our first couple drifts catching giant quillback rockfish – not the kind in Washington, but the big kind in Alaska. The daily limit being one pelagic fish we released these using safe deep water releases to preserve the resource. We also moved because Gary knew there were plenty of other spots to hit that would hold the halibut (and yellow eye) that we wanted to catch.
Our third spot I dropped my gear to the bottom and almost instantly the rod slammed violently downward – that was no rockfish! The battle was on. The fish came up fairly docile, until he saw the boat, at which point my halibut let out a king-like dragging screaming run that took me totally off guard. I did not want to lose this fish! I worked him back to the boat and Gary made the decision to harpoon him. Way cool, I had never seen this done before. Gary skillfully drove the tip home and through the fish and he thrashed around as Gary cut the gills to bleed him out. A few minutes later we had our first Alaska halibut in the boat, a very respectable fish in the 50 pound range.

We continued to explore various points of interest and picked off fish at each spot, including some impressive yellow eyes. The regs allow one yellow eye per angler per year and we each got one (and safely released several).

The big fish of the day came for Rob, another big brute. After battling him to the surface we looked in amazement as this fish came very close to that 100 target. Gary again put the harpoon to the fish. The halibut violently ran, pulling Rob’s jig out of its mouth. The harpoon was attached to a large float which this fish dragged under the water in its 20 yard sprint. It was like the scene from jaws where they add another barrel and the shark just keeps going! In this case, Rob’s fish did come to a stop and we chased him down with the boat. After bleeding him it took a couple people to pull him in. The fish was right around the ninety pound mark, best guess. Rob looked pretty worn out, but won’t you know, got the next one as well, a small 35 pound “chicken”.

We lost a couple more halis and it came time to go or we’d find ourselves stranded on a low tide boat launch. Returning to Anderson Lodge we were all tired from a great day of bottom fishing. We didn’t get our 150 pound monster, that will have to wait for another trip and adventure to Alaska.

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