The intrepid crew:


The conditions (blame Endsley for the stickers - they won't come off):


The anticipation (little guy eats laffy taffy and craps blood - he's pretty hardcore):


The first victim:


3/4 of the haul, plus one wayward red that hit a 6" tomic:


The weapon of choice: 5" tomic with olive back and scale sides:

Good looking crew you got there!
It'd be fun to ride in that swing or hammoc running when it was rough.........

Nice!

You're definately raising the kids right.

I need to get some pointers from you regarding connecting with salmon in PWS.

Very nice! How many did you get on the tomic?

Our kings are growing down here. Tripled up 2x today.

Btw, that variegated king looks awesome! My favorite kind. Melts in your mouth.

Been wanting to scratch up a few myself, but my boat is in the shop...........

I'm sworn to secrecy on the location. But I'm happy to offer generalities.

So far in the last four years, I've hit kings in Harris Bay, Aialik Bay, Resurrection Bay, Day Harbor, and at a couple of undisclosed locations outside and inside PWS. They are where you find them. I've only caught them in the same place more than once, at one location. The fishing at that one location, within the correct timeframe, can be either white-hot, scratchy, or nonexistant. Outside that timeframe, they're not there or there are too many pinks. Last weekend was scratchy, the weekend before white hot. That one day last season in Harris Bay was white hot. I fished the same weekend the seasons before last in the same Harris Bay spot and got only silvers (which was why I was over there in the first place when I got kings last year).

The popular silver spots get hit too hard with moochers for there to be any kings worth chasing. I've not caught any worthwhile kings at Pony, but I have really loaded up on silvers there. I caught a really nice king at Fox Island, but that was in mid-May 2008. The harris bay spot outstanding for big silvers in 2008 and 2009, but last year there happened to be kings there, and we got our limit of four in 45 minutes, plus three big silvers.

Point being, feeder and transient kings can be about anywhere. Therefore, when targeting silvers, or when prospecting, always tow gear that will catch feeder kings, and tow it where the feeder kings like it. Your troll speed for the king gear must be compatible with the troll speed for the silver gear. In a few weeks out of Seward, I'll be towing some sort of flasher and hoochie up high and a 5" tomic or a flasher/spoon down low. The 5" tomic gets a lot of big silvers, and will get a king if they're around. Troll fast - 2.5+ kph water speed. Make sure your spoon choice doesn't spin or tumble at that speed. 4.0 and 5.0 coyotes work great, but their hooks suck. Replace with mustad stainless beaked siwash hooks. Tomics like to go fast. I plan to do some high speed tomic experimentation this summer for silvers at speeds up to and over 4mph.

If you're targeting kings, run all of the same thing, be it spoons, plugs, or hoochies. Keep many rigs ready and switch them up as you prospect. Default king prospecting rig for me is a 11" hot spot, a 6' leader of 40# line, and a 4.0 or 5.0 coyote in pearl or cop car. Subtle color/pattern differences in spoons or hoochies are fine.

Got four on that plug, one more on a different color 5" tomic, and the balance on a UV/prism hot spot flasher and chrome with UV chartreuse scale "sonic edge" spoon (first fish on that kind of spoon). Plug fish were all larger than the others.

We used to fish Harris and Thunder Bay quite a bit, some amazing country out there. Shark, ling, halibut, coho's....never thought about paying attention to kings!

Used to be some killer halibut fishing just over the moraine in Harris, and some amazing ling fishing off of the west side of Granite.

We used to play on the long sandy beach next to the entrance to Harris when we needed to stretch our legs a bit.

Those pics bring back lots of memories of our 15 years of boating out of Ressurection.

I'll have to pick your brain when we get a boat back in the water. My used-to-be hot spots in Seward have dried up over the last couple of seasons. The one trip I made out there this year didn't give up a single halibut. In year's past, we'd limit out quickly with nice, fat fish. I don't know what changed. ???

Nice pics, Vek! That's a hell of a haul from PWS! Might have to pick your brain too!

Dan,

I've heard the dogfish have been in heavy and early this year in Seward.