I spend roughly a month in Alaska each summer, usually chasing rainbow trout and salmon in the creeks and rivers. All told, I’ve spent nearly three years of my life fishing in Alaska. On a few occasions, I’ve gone offshore to fish, and it’s quite a bit different from my home waters in Florida.
My first offshore trip on the Bering Sea was out of Hoodoo Lodge’s outcamp in 2013. I was with my friend Tony Weaver, and we didn’t know what to expect. We fished in shallow water (less than 60 feet) on a small aluminum boat they had stored next to a shack and caught a strange collection of bottom-dwellers I’d never seen before. We also caught halibut, rockfish and lingcod, but nothing of any size. We fly-fished and caught a few small halibut and rockfish on lead-eye flies and 800-grain sinking lines. I really didn’t appreciate how difficult that was until years later. It was a fun adventure, but quickly forgotten when we got back to chasing salmon.
Pat Ford
A few years after that first foray offshore, I found myself with Weaver and Capt. Andy Mezirow, a…
