On day 2 or our first full day in Yakutat, the low tide was at 10:17 am. It is not rocket science to fish the tides in Yakutat both on the rivers as well as in the unique fishing off of the bridge over Ankau Lagoon. We decided we would give the bridge a shot and then fish one of the rivers later in the afternoon. I've historically had a lot of success off of the bridge using cut plug herring, a technique shown to me by Lew and the Skanska crew when I originally started going to Yakutat years ago.
We arrived at the bridge very early with the tide rolling out of the lagoon and set up our rods on the far end of the bridge. Historically I've seen a lot of people have great success working the side channel on the far end of the bridge and it is a shorter walk to the bank to land fish. It wasn't long before Ed was hooked up. Our process historically has been for the person with the fish on to loosen the drag completely allowing the fish to run out to the middle of the bay while the person hooked up runs to the far side of the bridge, down the bank, and about 60 yards away from the bridge before tightening the drag and beginning to fight the fish. The logic being that the fish (if you are patient) will hook itself pretty well with a double mooching rig and will not panic but rather just stay out in the bay while the fisherman gets in position to actually fight the fish from the bank. The other benefit of this is that by leaving people on the bridge, there is a strong chance that if there was one fish there likely more...and the other guys don't want to pull their herring and possibly miss their own opportunity.
That is all well and good if the guide (me) gives the new guy (Ed) a good reel to work with. Ed did everything right in loosening the drag, letting the fish eat the bait, and swim out into the bay. He did a great job of getting to the end of the bridge and getting down the bank without wrapping his line around a branch of any of the trees near the bridge, and successfully ran to the right spot to start fighting the fish. The problem was that the reel I gave Ed was not working properly (e.g. the drag wouldn't tighten back up) so try as he might, he really couldn't make any progress in getting the fish into the bank.
Needless to say, that first fish broke him off in the barnacles because Ed had no leverage of drag to fight the fish in. Jeff had left to get some coffee and wasn't there to see this all play out. A group of about 5 more folks showed up around an hour after we arrived and set up to the right of us. Ed was hot, with fish hitting his herring on a regular basis...but the same problem kept happening and I wasn't catching on that it was the reel that was causing him problems. Jeff showed up and literally within an hour had 2 fish on the bank, while Ed and I were still 0 for the day.
It was about Ed's 5th fish that was lost, before the guys to the right of me suggested that the reel may be bad... Ding ding ding... that was it. Additionally, Jeff was already done, so any fish from this point forward, Jeff was there to help out by keeping Ed on the bridge fighting the fish to the shore where Jeff would kindly bring it in.
I had one on the bank, Ed didn't have any yet although had I given him a good reel to start with, he would have limited out before Jeff got back from getting his coffee. Ed and I got 2 on at once and they crossed our lines, and we lost both as well as all of our mooching rigs and weight. I had been using the same weight and mooching rig for the past 4 years, so didn't think to pack enough should we all lose a few set ups in the first couple of hours.
I headed into town to purchase more herring, weights, and mooching rigs and wasn't there when Ed got his first fish. By the time I got back the group that was to the right of us had all limited out, and a new crew was in and they were doing really well. Jeff had made friends with one of the older gentlemen in this new group due to their common background of Army military service. When I arrived, the older guy taught me a new trick of rigging a full herring allowing a lot more flexibility in running herring in different tide speeds that I will be using for my remaining days. For years, I have been doing the 45x45 degree cut plug herring rigging to get a good roll. The problem with this is when the tide is turning, you get almost no movement on the herring... so it really isn't fishing. With the full herring and the slip mooching rig knots, you can add more bend or less in the bait to make it spin faster or slower depending on the tide. This was awesome!!! Ed and I both got into fish once I was back, and as Jeff had already limited, he broke out his drone and took some really cool shots of all of us on the bridge. We both needed one more fish, to limit then the plan was to take the limits to the cutters at the lodge, and then head out to fish below the bridge on the Lost River (where there had been news of a 2-year-old brown bear harassing fishermen for the past few weeks. As the tide was rolling back in the other group limited out quickly, while Ed and I struggled to get our last fish. We met a lot of different people that day...and finally got our fish in the box around 2:00 in the afternoon.
We headed back to Glacier Bear Lodge, dropped off our fish with the cleaners and headed out to finish off the day fishing the lost.
Fishing the lost was a bit like combat fishing at Reiter Ponds with fishermen set up every 10 feet apart. Everyone was fishing spinners, except for a couple of fly fishermen upstream from Jeff, another guy, Ed then me. None of the spinner fishermen (including me) was getting any action although the fish "should" have been running through there at the time as the low tide was several hours prior. One of the fly fishermen had 2 on within 20 minutes. I asked what color fly he was using. Pink and Purple. I had a box of twitching jigs and found a pink and purple jig from http://bradsjigs.com and within a few minutes of twitching the exact same area I had just thrown 60 casts with a spinner; I had a small buck on and brought it to the bank. I handed that jig to Ed and offered the same to Jeff. We stayed another 30 minutes and I missed yet another opportunity as I was talking to some guys hiking back from the mouth rather than setting the hook when a large coho took my jig on the drop.
We called it good and went back to the hotel for yet another great meal and to get ready for our charter out on Yakutat Bay the following morning. We all got into the fish, and I learned a lot of new strategies and tactics that I will be deploying from now on. Great day all things considered.
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