Our captain appeared to be hungover the morning we had our charter. He said aloud over the radio to one of the other captains that he woke up seven minutes before he arrived, he smelled like shit, he seemed to avoid showing his face to any of the paying guests, he could barely keep his head up and at one point early in our initial three-hour voyage to the first fishing location (which seemed wasteful given that we didn't hit all of our limits) he made one of his deck hands helm the boat so he could go outside, where he didn't seem to be doing anything in particular.
With the anchor finally down at our first spot, one of the crew gave us a meager 45-second lesson that covered both how to use a fishing pole and the nuances of halibut behavior. As someone who hadn't fished at all in 20 years, I dropped my line and mostly figured it out for myself. To their credit, the deckhands were quite helpful once we had our lines in the water, replacing bait regularly and helping us watch for the subtle movements in the rod that would indicate curious prey.
After some time at Spot #1 with only a few bites and even fewer halibut on-board, El Capitan declared the location a bust and we shipped off to Spot #2, where he said we'd hit our halibut limits, but probably not with any trophy-sized specimen. Thankfully, we did. My party and I were lucky to catch some of the bigger halibut on board (still only between 10 and 15 lbs.) and in the absence of sufficient colored tags for tracking ownership of each fish, the crew simply slashed the flesh of our fish with a knife.
Speaking of slashing fish, several people on our boat ended up with stingrays on their line and I couldn't help but feel slightly disturbed at the sight of our crew stabbing these creatures with a hook even though they would be released right away. Maybe that's normal fare for professional fishermen, I don't know; it seemed more lazy and disrespectful than anything.
After each team taking their halibut limits, we set course for Spot #3 to reel in the all-too-gullible rockfish. This part was pretty fun. They were plentiful and easy to catch, and with a limit of four rockfish per licensed fisherman or woman, this was the most action-packed part of the trip. I wish I had only good things to say about this spot, but I have to mention that the crew didn't keep track of who caught which rockfish, and because my old man caught one of the biggest on the boat, we definitely took home less meat than we caught.
With only a few hours left of the charter, we quickly filled up on rockfish and started cruising for salmon, but the salmon gods were not looking upon us favorably that day. We headed back to shore with only three salmon on board, none of which were ours! Perhaps anticipating the embarrassment of the day's harvest, the captain told his crew to start cleaning the fish while en route back to port, forgoing the traditional photo op at the dock with our bounty on display. It took about an hour to get back to Seward and it was nice to relax and enjoy the majestic Alaskan coastline, despite the barrage of chewing tobacco flying out of the captain's mouth onto the deck floor.
When all was said and done, I had a great time and I felt lucky to have this experience, but it would not be without one last slap in the face! Another charter left J-Dock at the same time as us that morning and they were hanging up their fish as we arrived back at port. In a cruel-albeit-comical twist, the guests on the other boat caught a fantastic amount of humongous fish, with one of the guys we talked to describing it as "the best day of fishing in my life." Hung up for photographs under the dock sign were displayed a marvelous array of halibut, each longer and fatter than any of ours, bookended by a monstrous collection of various rockfish, and leaving no room for the twenty-five-or-so salmon that they could only fit in-frame on the ground below.
I can't wait to return to Alaska to fish again, but with 100% certainty I will make my arrangements with a company other than J-Dock. The dedicated un-professionalism of our captain presented too many negative variables for me to feel confident that our relatively small take was just "bad luck" and I couldn't help but think that the only reason he was captain of a fishing boat is because he auditioned for a band of pirates and didn't get in. read more