We floated into Ketchikan bright and early, docking at 7am. With only a half day to spend here, we had rolled the dice and booked a half day salmon fishing expedition. Our dice came up a lucky number, as we had a near perfect day. The weather was bright and sunny (we had only about one chance in 4 or 23% of having a non-rainy day – Ketchikan has 280 rainy days per year). We ended up with a great ship captain and good fishing partners (thanks to Nate and Charlie from Mansfield OH), and we caught plenty of King Salmon. Almost any day fishing is a great day, but a calm water sunny day where you make a good catch – priceless.

Most of the Kings we caught were small, under five pounds, but we caught a few that would have been keepers in the seven-ish pound range. Nothing huge, but plenty of fun. We trolled four lines at once, bait behind/below us at 80-120 feet down, and took turns

landing each strike. Here’s our new friend Nate and our captain Leif. Our young captain was a really nice kid, and he did a great job keeping our lines in the water and landing fish without harming them – we did catch and release all day. Jason Momoa and Alaska thank us.

The scenery on the water around Ketchikan was sublime. Like the most beautiful freshwater lake you’ve ever seen, only it was ocean channel. And deep ocean channel – we were in 700-800 feet of water most of the time (!).

The pictures we have can’t do the place justice, but here they are anyway. This was a place we could see coming back to for a week or more during high fishing season.