Fishing trip to Alaska taken just for the halibut

Fishing trip to Alaska taken just for the halibut

By JULI PROBASCO-SOWERS
REGISTER STAFF WRITER




Homer, Alaska - The short, fat, fishing rod bowed against the weight of the 121-pound halibut.

The angler pulled on the rod then reeled in line - reeling and repeating, again and again.

Mike Wearly of Anchorage, Alaska, braced himself against the railing of the Donna Mae, a 28-foot charter fishing boat anchored off Elizabeth Island in southern Cook Inlet, off Kachemak Bay in Alaska, about 35 miles from port in Homer. Keeping his footing was tough between wrestling with the huge fish and the rocking of the boat on the ocean swells.

He caught some nice keepers in the 28- to 35-pound range, but he was waiting for "the big one." It took Wearly more than 30 minutes to reel in the halibut, his arms tiring and sweat standing on his forehead.

I, on the other hand, the landlubber from Iowa, was amazed when I pulled in the first halibut I ever caught, about a 28-pound fish. I quickly realized I should have been lifting weights for several weeks before I went halibut fishing on a vacation with my husband, Tom.

My desire to halibut fish in Alaska was fed in part from seeing photos of fish caught by Iowans. Adding fuel to the desire was an article I wrote in 2004 about Steve Button and wife Donna, former Iowans who live in Palmer, Alaska. I interviewed Steve while he was visiting in the Des Moines area.

During the summer season, Button takes his charter boat to Homer, where he lives on the boat and takes sport anglers into the waters of Kachemak Bay and Lower Cook Inlet.

The thought of catching a big fish was tantalizing as well. The previous biggest fish I caught was a 3-pound largemouth bass on the Cedar River.

After hooking into my first halibut, reeling and pulling up the rod time after time to bring in the fish set a burn into my arms. I kept going, determined to bring the fish to the surface under my own steam.

By the time the halibut was to the boat, I was sweating and pulling off outer layers of fleece and rain gear I had put on at 6:30 a.m. Button hauled the fish on board, and my first halibut was landed.

Halibut action ebbed and flowed through the afternoon, but the 90-minute trip out to where we fished, and the slack times in between halibut bites, were filled with watching wildlife. Mountain goats and their young could be seen on the craggy, steep slopes of the islands.

As we watched the goats, one of the Alaskans fishing on the Donna Mae, Keith Lipse of Big Lake, Alaska, said eagles sometimes swoop and knock the baby goats off the cliffs to provide themselves with dinner.

Tufted puffins, black-and-white birds with orange beaks, bobbed up and down with the ocean swells, just yards from the boat. (I won't detail all the wildlife we saw, but will mention the seagull that made a deposit on my rain gear back at the dock while the fish were being filleted.)

A humpback whale came several hundred yards from the boat, blowing water into the air and diving with its tail out of the water.

Occasionally an angler would catch a different species of fish on the bait of herring - a black bass, a very spiny Irish Lord fish and a ling cod. The large halibut was caught on a red salmon head used as bait.

Seeing the scenery and wildlife is reason enough to go halibut fishing. Besides, my husband and I enjoyed the company of four other people fishing off the Donna Mae, including Lipse; his cousin, LaVonne Phillips of Trabuco Canyon, Calif.; and friends Wearly and Sean Smithson of Anchorage, Alaska.

Only three of us were novice halibut anglers, but we all got some fish. And although this might sound a bit like sour grapes, experienced halibut anglers said the smaller fish caught by Tom and I and others on the boat, in the 30- to 45-pound range, are better eating than the ones weighing over 100 pounds.

About 12 hours after leaving port, we returned with 12 halibut - two each.

Tom and I were tired and sore as we made our way back to our room.

But the next day we headed home with 90 pounds of halibut and more memories than I ever imagined.

Reporter Juli Probasco-Sowers can reached at (515) 284-8134 or jprobasco@dmreg.com

Fishing: The perfect fishing craft

Fishing: The perfect fishing craft
Bill Thompson

— Necessity being the mother of invention, it is a good bet the first guy ever to lash a few logs together for a raft was trying to get out to where the fish were. It was the second guy, the one that hollowed out the center of a log to make the first canoe, who really started the ball rolling in the right direction. Ever since these humble beginnings men have been searching for the perfect fishing vessel.

Like everything else, we have made great technical advances in both material and design in the quest for the perfect fishing boat. Today’s modern bass boat and saltwater sport fishing boats are representative of these advances. Constructed of high-tech plastics, powered by powerful motors and fitted with electronic devices, they are the epitome of the art. However, in my opinion, that fellow with the hollowed out log had the right idea.

After another few thousand years or so another bright fellow took the same principal as the log design and came up with the birch bark canoe. I am guessing, but he was probably inspired by his wife who was already making cooking utensils out of the stuff. One day he no doubt dropped one of her birch bark bowls into the lake and discovered that it floated. After several disastrous attempts she probably showed him the correct way to stitch and seal the bark. Later on she gave him the idea for ribs and gunnels.

Another thousand years went by when, what we now refer to as Euro-Americans, showed up and began to make some changes of their own to the canoe. Birch bark was replaced by canvas and eventually by fiberglass and aluminum. Around the turn of the last century some of these guys went through some kind of revolution of thought and made some wonderful changes to the basic canoe and created some of the most beautiful fishing craft ever made.

Right after the Civil War, Americans found they had some free time on their hands and started to look into leisure activities to take up the slack. For a number of years prior to the Civil War, Americans, at least in the east, had been leaving the farm and flocking to the cities to participate in the great industrial revolution of the time. Just about the time everybody got comfortable living in the cities, a bunch of different writers and thinkers of the day started a “back to the woods” movement.

Apparently cities like New York and Boston, much like they are today, were pretty foul places to live. These scholars proposed that the antidote to overwork, stress and the unhealthy conditions of the cities was a return to nature. The rugged outdoor life was just the thing to keep one healthy, fit and keen of mind. As a result of their teaching hunting, fishing, camping and canoeing became very popular with the masses.

One writer who was influential in this movement was George W. Sears or, as he was better known, Nessmuk. Mr. Nessmuk spent a great deal of time prowling around the Adirondacks in upstate New York. In his quest for the perfect boat he had a fellow by the name of J. Henry Rushton make him a small lightweight canoe-like boat. The boat was a one-man affair and extremely lightweight in order to easily portage from one Adirondack lake to another.

Rushton was already engaged in making a hybrid wooden canoe that became known as the Adirondack. With the help of the publicity garnered from Nessmuk’s book "Woodcraft and Camping," there was a demand for these boats from guides and the many tourists that were heading into the woods. To be fair, at about the same time Maine Guides were also experimenting with the same basic design and these craft would become the famous Rangeley Boat.

It is said that Rushton drew inspiration from both the Native American canoe and the St. Lawrence skiff. Rushton had traveled extensively in Canada and was familiar with these boats. A typical Adirondack boat is double-ended like a canoe and is made from wood planking usually applied in a lapstrake style. The boats can be rowed from the center of the boat or from the stern. They are light enough that they can easily be carried by means of a yoke on the shoulders of one man.

The other evening I had the great pleasure of fishing from one of these boats. We had invited a friend to fish with us on a local pond and he said that he would bring his boat. The boat turned out to be an Adirondack Guide boat built in 1929 for this gentleman’s grandfather. It was said that local Adirondack guides guided all summer and built boats all winter. Most of these craft were 16 feet in length, but this one was a scaled-down version of 13 feet. The craftsmanship was superb. To my way of thinking there is nothing prettier than a wooden boat.

My friend rowed from the stern and we glided effortlessly across the water. It was a bit tricky getting in but once underway it was a dream. It was easy to imagine a more gentler time when wooden boats ruled and the outboard had yet to be invented. It was almost a shame we fished with graphite rods; a bamboo rod would have been more appropriate. In a way, these boats catch the essence of what fly fishing is all about. Fly fishing is sometimes called the “quiet sport.” It was, after all, Izaak Walton who said, “Study to be quiet." My friend said to me, “you relax in a boat like this,” and it is true.

The introduction of the outboard motor sure made it a lot easier to get around, but in the long run I am not sure it made fishing any more fun; and in the end it may even have taken something away. Old Nessmuk was right. We do need to escape from the world we have created and return to nature. Wooden boats and fly fishing have a way of making the trip more fun.
See you on the river.

Kevin VanDam: The Face Of Bass Fishing

Kevin VanDam: The Face Of Bass Fishing

By BRETT HONE
Staff Writer



LAKE FORK - He's not as well known on a national scale as Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan or Jeff Gordon. But in professional bass fishing circles, his name is the equivalent of any of those.

For years Kevin VanDam has dominated bass fishing circuits. His resume as an angler is full of success: 10 wins and 69 total top 10 finishes in 187 B.A.S.S. events. It is a career as dominating as any champion in their sport.

Fishing professionally since 1990, VanDam started his career winning B.A.S.S. Angler of the Year honors his first year on the pro circuit in 1992. He repeated that feat in 1996 and 1999 and then dominated the FLW circuit in 2001, becoming the Angler of the Year.


That same year, he won the Bassmaster Classic, a feat he repeated in 2005. This year, VanDam is currently second in the Angler of the Year points race through three tournaments.

This week VanDam will captain one of 40 teams of four anglers from the Professional Anglers Association competing in the million-dollar Toyota Texas Bass Classic at Lake Fork.

"We've been at some phenomenal fisheries the last couple of events where there is a potential to catch giant bass at all of them, and then we come to Lake Fork, which is arguably the best bass fishing lake in the country," VanDam said. "This will definitely be fun and it will be exciting to see how things turn out."

For VanDam, the TTBC is an excellent busman's holiday.

"I'm having a pretty good season even though it is early on," VanDam said. "This week will be different, though. The most exciting thing about this tournament is that we aren't fishing for points that count toward the Bassmaster Classic or the FLW championship. This is a one-time event, it's for all the marbles and it's unique.

"For us as anglers it's time to take some chances. We don't ever get to fish with another guy so it's going to be fun and it's going to be a learning experience and I can tell you, my team is excited about this. At the same time, it's still about winning."

The Toyota Texas Bass Classic, which runs Friday through Sunday, will feature several differences from normal tournaments. Those include grouping anglers into four-person teams and putting an onboard observer on each boat to weigh and measure fish so the tournament can be held while embracing the lake's slot limit.

Each team will send two members out during a four-hour morning or afternoon session to fish. Every fish caught will be weighed and each angler will be credited for their top five weights of the day. All of the team's weights will be added together at the end of the day to determine the tournament leaders. After two days of fishing, the field will be narrowed to the top five teams for Sunday's finals.

"The format of the event is a little bit challenging in that each team member has to catch five fish and you only have four hours to do that. That's a little bit limiting, but this lake has more 4- to 7-pound bass than probably any lake in the country," VanDam said. "Consistency is going to be one of the most important things, for guys to come in with quality fish every time. I know Texas Parks and Wildlife would love to see some ShareLunker fish come in, but I think that a lot of guys are going to see that, under this quick time format, they have to take more five pounders."

VanDam's team includes Matt Reed, Dave Lefebre and Therron Caldwell. If they make Sunday's finals they will be competing for the top team prize of $250,000.

Just don't expect anything to come easy this week, even for VanDam, who enters the week trying to fight off the flu. He was told by his wife jokingly to "get up and go to work."

"I can tell you I don't think the Bassmaster Elite tour guys or the FLW guys are going to be used to what they are see here this week," VanDam said. "The FLW Tour guys have been fishing some tough lakes and had some tough fisheries already this season so it's going to be a welcome change for them because they are going to get their rods jerked quite a bit."

VanDam will bring a certain familiarity of the lake to his team. He has filmed several Bass Pro Shop Outdoor World shows on the lake, giving him a good idea of what Fork can be like in varying conditions.

"I've been down here probably seven or eight times, usually every time in the fall, and most of the guys just can't imagine the number of 4- to 8-pounders there are in this lake," VanDam said. "That's what is mind-boggling to me. We fish all the best lakes in the world and this place gets a lot of pressure from year-around fishing and yet continues to produce year after year.

"The great thing about this lake is that Texas Parks and Wildlife saw very early on that they had a very special set of natural circumstances when (the Sabine River Authority) built this lake. They kept a close eye on it from the get go and have continually tweaked the regulations around this lake, and because of that there are tons of people that come from all around the country. It's crucial that the rules are followed to help preserve this lake."

While VanDam expects a 5-pound per fish average necessary to advance to Sunday's finals, he added that with the warmer weather that estimate may be on the low side.

"This transition from cold to warm weather is perfect," VanDam said. "The cold held some fish back from running and as the week gets warmer there will be a big wave of fish move up. That's when you catch the big ones. If you could have scripted a scenario, currently with what I've seen, this is what you would want."

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