“Thanks for tuning into KSL Outdoors, I’m Adam Eakle and welcome to beautiful Alaska, we’ve brought my beautiful wife Tonya, my neighbors Rosemary and Steve and Lane from Camp Chef. We’ve brought the four rookies we are calling them because they’ve never been to Alaska up to our friends at Pybus Point Lodge and we are headed out on a super Otter.”
(Ward Air employee) “Alright everybody load in, watch your heads on the way in. Fill the front seats first.”
Our five day Alaskan excursion begins with a 45 minute float plane ride over the scenic snow capped islands of the inside passage. My wife thought the ride in was impressive, I couldn’t wait for her to experience Alaska for the first time.
Located on the south eastern shores of Admiralty Island, Pybus Point Lodge is the only commercial operation on the island.
The only way to get here, is by boat or by float plane.
(Scott) “Welcome to Pybus.” (lane) “thank you very much.”
(Scott Jorgensen, Owner/Pybus Point Lodge) “What i want people to do is come up and experience one of the last of the pristine places on the planet. The marine life, the wildlife up here is relatively unfamiliar with civilization. And so at Pybus Point lodge our remote location gives us the opportunity to expose people to what it’s like to see things that were probably more common 100-200 years ago. That still exist here today.”
(Captain Dan, Veteran Pybus Point Captain) (Matt on radio) “Hey if you go for salmon, let me know how the water is. (dan) yeah i will Matt.”
Dan has six seasons under his belt, he says the scenery, the wildlife, the fishing, never gets old.
(dan) I don’t think there is anyone who I have fished with who hasn’t fallen in love with Southeast Alaska.
nats downrigger
Since Rosemary and Steve are here celebrating their silver anniversary and my wife and I are both approaching ours, it’s only appropriate that we target the silver salmon as our first catch.
(Dan) “ok we are going to go ahead and fish with some Hoochies and flashers and on the downriggers. We’ll have two line out and another one out he back with a diver.”
(Steve Mitchell, Riverton) “It’s just like fishing for kokanee, only everything is bigger.”
The ocean, the boats, the wildlife, the fish, the excitement, yeah, it’s all bigger.
(Dan) “THERE YOU GO REEL, REEL! (steve on rod) (dan) “oh it looks like we’ve got one already.”
(Dan) “oh there he goes. (adam) “fish on!” (dan) “get him.” (dan) reel down on him, ok, he’s hooked, good job.”
(Dan) “now just go ahead and lift up and come my way, keep him coming. (net) “there we go, first fish of the morning, good job.”
(Dan) “now life up, you could be right, another nice, nice pink, big pink.”
(adam) fish in the middle, fish in the middle. (laughs) triples again.”
(Adam) “fast and furious.” (dan) “the way we like it. (steve) “they are some fighters.
The inside passage of Alaska is a fishermen’s paradise. The girls are gearing up to show us boys` how to catch the silvers.
(Rosemary hits fish) hit him, bam. One more time, ok now get the line tight. (stripping line) “oh good fish, we like that!”
(dan) reel down one more time, it’s a silver, pull him up and in, yes! nice.”
(dan) reel down, set it again. Bam, there you go.”
(Adam) “alright Rick you’ve got to represent. Two girls against one. (rick) oh he just got off.” (adam) Oh!, the girls are showing us up man!”
(net fish) (rosemary) woo hoo. (dan) another one right side, tonya!, tonya! (steve) Oh boy.”
(dan) “reel down one more time, it’s a silver. Ok, pull him up and in, yes. (net) Nice.
(Tonya) fish on! (steve) another one? (rick) what the heck guys? (tonya) girls 3, boys zero!”
(adam) nice silver rosemary!” (rosemary) “woo hoo.”
(dan) Lift up on the rod tip, little silver I think. (tonya) woo, yeah baby there’s our silver.”
(Tonya) Fish on, yeah baby! (adam) yeah rub it in. So how many have the girls caught? (tonya) we’ve lost track. (adam) maybe one or two. (tonya) whatever.”
(Dan) That was about two and a half hours and we probably have about, almost 40 fish.”
(Steve) “i’ve been smiling ever since we’ve been here.”
(adam) Rosemary double silvers, pretty sweat, that’s what you came here for? (rosemary) that’s right. (adam) and we are not done yet, a ton of adventure on the horizon, big fish coming up next. We are going to go target some halibut, that in just a moment, but first tonight’s quiz question.”
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(Dan) fantastic fishing, weather, scenery, good people. Can’t get any better than that, it’s just beautiful on this first day here.
Dan guides our 28 foot custom built aluminum boat over to one of the many halibut humps. Using a 16 oz jig, a scented grub, tipped with a chuck of salmon belly, we lower our rigs to the bottom, some 300 feet.
(Lane) somebody has hooked into something, I’m not sure who has who here.”
(adam) look at him strip line, wow…nats line going out (dan) that’s what we are here for…woo!.
the hundred pound braid and heavy rods are put to the test.
(steve) Oh, (laughs) taking a little line.”
All of us are into good fish,
(adam) He can’t strip line but he’s trying, he thinks he’s tough.”
(lane) “who’s going in after here when she gets pulled over the front there? (tonya look of death) (screams)
but once again, it’s the girls showing us boys how to get it done.
(ADam) it’s like child birth, once you do it once, you don’t want to do it again. (tonya) yeah.
(tonya) It’s heavy!
(lane) I thought fishing was supposed to be relaxing, oh that’s funny.
(dan) Yeah it’s got a big head shake, that means it’s a good sized fish. (fish taking line) (tonya) you get back here. (line stripping) (tonya) “NO! I just pulled that in! (laughs)
After many runs back to the bottom, my lovely wife, finally gets the upper hand on her biggest fish to date.
(Dan) Yup i see color. (tonya) You see him? Thank goodness.
(dan) at a glance, 70-75 pounds probably. wow
with a shake of the head, the big fish lumbers back to the depths.
(tonya) that was fun (adam) tired? (tonya) yes I’m tired, didn’t you hear me breathing.
Tonya’s big barn door was right around 60 inches, right in the slot the Alaskan fish and game has set that allows chartered anglers one fish per day. Either one under 45 inches or one fish over 68 inches. The regulation is designed to protect prime spawning halibut between 50 and 150 pounds. We all caught nice halibut every day. I think the 40-45 inch fish, which still weigh about 45 pounds, are the best to eat.
(Scott) here at Pybus one of the things that we pride ourselves on is the variety of fish that we have.
(Scott) of course we target the halibut and salmon but we also target and are successful in getting ling cod which is a very good game fish.
(steve) what the heck? (adam) Ling cod. (fish splash)
(Scott) It’s a big fish, it can be a 60-70 pound fish on a nice fish.
(Scott) We also like to take advantage of the yellow eye that are in our area. It’s a rockfish that is a really nice white mild meat but firm grained and beautiful fish to catch.
The yellow eye is just one of over 25 different species of rockfish you can catch in Southeast Alaska. The fishing here is no doubt some of the best you’ll ever experience in your life. But it’s the other amazing sights mother nature has to offer that will keep you coming back.
(Scott) Fredricks sound which is our main body of water that we are fishing between us and the north end of Kupreanof island is the highest concentration of humpback whales in the summer time. It’s their feeding grounds.”
(whale breach) wow! Did you get him? (steve) I got him! Sweet!
(Scott) As well as orca, sea otters, sea lions, seals.
(Lane Peterson, Lehi) you don’t see hardly any boats, you don’t see any other individuals, you are out there one with nature.
(Diane Peterson, Lehi) we debated a little over a year ago between this and a cruise and I would much rather experience Alaska this way.
(Scott) to me it’s building the memories and this is where you come to build memories. It’s not just a fishing trip, it’s a trip to build memories. So for families that want to come build memories that will last a lifetime here in AK, this is a great place to do it.
(Diane) “it was more than we could have dreamed of.”
(Adam) good job guys a limit of halibut, a limit of pinks, 8 silvers and we just got here. (steve) I’m just dropping it. (adam) a lot more coming up here on KSL Outdoors and Pybus Point here in Alaska, beautiful scenery, the wildlife the food, all coming up in just a second, but first lets go back to the guys at Fish Tech for tonight’s Fishing Report.”
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Welcome back to Pybus Point Lodge here on Admiralty Island, I’m Adam Eakle joined by Lane Johnson and John Diamond, the Head Chef here at Pybus Point and guys, you’re going to come up to Alaska, you’re going to catch some salmon, you got to learn to smoke them and so we’re going to show people at home two different ways to do it. And John you’re going to do a dry? Lane you’re going to do a wet. Tell me a little bit about a wet.
Lane Johnson/Campchef: “Okay a wet brine is essentially that, it’s wet. I’m going to use water, I’m going to use a brine mix from High Mountain Company and essentially, I just dump in their brine mix, mix some water to it, put the salmon in it, let it sit over night and then smoke it the next day.”
Now just to be honest, you didn’t catch this fish?
I wish I had, but I caught twenty more just like this one.
John Diamond/Pybus Point Lodge: Okay, I’m going to take 2 cups of brown sugar and put that in there and I’m going to put a cup of kosher salt, you have to use kosher not iodine salt, and how we’re going to dry this is up is we’re going to add it in to a bag as we do it. I do what’s called, on the dry, a double so that means that I want to brine it on both sides, the skin side and the fleshy side and whenever you do it together, you want to go flesh-on-flesh or skin-on-skin so if you’re stacking these with a bunch of fillets, that’s how you do it. Once it’s refrigerated, we want it to be overnight. It’s going to incorporate all down inside the flesh there, it’s going to soak up inside there. You can actually take this, I’ve got another way of doing this. Cut this in 1 inch strips and then what you do is in the smoker you put a toothpick through the top of this and then hang the strip down through the racks. So that’s the dry and I’m going to close this up and that will just set like that.
For how long?
We’re going to do it overnight and smoke it tomorrow.
Good deal. Good thing you brought a Campchef smoker.
Absolutely!
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