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Mark Knapp

8 days in the salt near Sitka

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Earlier this month I was tying flies for an eight day trip Sitka. Well as it turns out, our 8 day trip turned into 2 1/2 days of fly fishing, 1 1/2 days of conventional fishing, three days of waiting out the weather in the cabin and returning to Sitka early due to forecasted gale force winds.

 

The trip wasn't a total loss for us, in many respects it was our best trip ever resulting in my buddies first halibut on a fly and our best one since we started fly fishing for them. On our first day we landed a 92 halibut and a limit of rock fish.

 

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A limit of black rocks, a vermilion, a quill back, a yellow tail and a copper rock fish with the 92 pound halibut all caught on fly fishing tackle and a 20 pound tippet. We harpooned the halibut after it's forth trip to the boat which would have disqualified the fish for IGFA records if it had been a record fish. The current IGFA record halibut in the 20 pound tippet class (the heaviest) is 139 pounds.

 

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The 57 inch, 92 pound halibut after we got it in the boat. It was hooked in 65 feet of water and made four runs into the backing before we landed it. The fight lasted 25 minutes.

 

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The fly is a cone head variation of my "Non-pelagic Squid", my most productive fly.

 

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Lings, rock fish and halibut bit on all the flies I tied for the trip, however, the Non-Pelagic Squid out produced all of them as it has done for the six years since we started fishing this way.

 

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For fun, I put on one of the jigs I bought from Capt. Bob (I added the eyes). The rock fish ate them up. This one a quill back.

 

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I only used the jigs for a half hour cuz, in the strictest sense, it's not really fly fishing, but the rocks really loved them. This ones a black rock.

 

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Here's a yellow eye.

 

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The second days limit of rocks and lings. We brought home 200 pounds of frozen, vacuum packed fillets for the winter. All in all, a pretty good trip. I've got lots of video to edit, but it takes me a while to edit these things.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I'm interested in the line and set up you took the halibut on. Fast sinking heads or full lead core lines???

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How did you make that fly? And what weight of rod were you useing?

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I'm interested in the line and set up you took the halibut on. Fast sinking heads or full lead core lines???

I make my own lines. I weld or lap and whip thirty feet of t20 to 90 feet of t17 the t20 is attached to the tippet and the t17 is attached to the backer.

 

When fishing, we set up the drift so that we are drifting toward the structure. We cast toward the structure and as we drift toward it we mend out line until we are just tickling the top of the structure. We typically fish in 60 to 120 feet of water.

 

The IGFA only allows you to mend 120 feet of line from the reel (More than that disqualifies that fish from the records) They call it stripping line from the reel but in fly fishing nomenclature, I believe they mean "Mend". Sometimes we fish deeper than 120 feet but It just so happens that we have 120 feet of fly line so we always know if we have exceeded to limit set by IGFA.

 

With the fly lines made the way I do it, the fly sinks straight down as you drift toward it. The first thirty feet is recognizable by the transition between the fly lines. I mend out 2 feet of line with each strip, so I can tell to a certain degree how deep I need to be according to what the graph is showing us. These are mostly bottom fish so it's important to be as close to the bottom as we can be.

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How did you make that fly? And what weight of rod were you useing?

I believe there is a tutorial for that fly on my fly tying blog (akflytyer.blogspot.com). I will search it out and post it. The halibut was caught on a ten weight. I mostly used a 9 wt. on this trip but I also have a 12, a 13, and a 16 that I use when I am strictly targeting large lings and halibut. The lighter wt. rods are so much more fun to fish with.

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How much are they (The 10wts)?

You can spend anywhere from $80.00 to $800.00 or more, depends what you buy. I buy my ten wts. for this kind of fly fishing at garage sales because it is very hard on rods. I have broken a few doing thing this. I save my expensive rods for other things.

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Could you tell me if Sportman's warehouse has any good haulibut rods?

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How did you make that fly? And what weight of rod were you useing?

Here's the link to the tutorial for the Non-Pelagic Squid.

 

http://akflytyer.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-flies-of-sitka.html

 

and here's the link to the whole blog if you want to check it out.

 

http://akflytyer.blogspot.com/

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How much are they (The 10wts)?

I'm sure they must, they have a lot of good rods there. I get most of mine on eBay or garage sales.

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Tier,if you can't find a good deal on a used one I reccomend checking out outlet sites like Sierra trading post or steep and cheap, often times they'll have mid grade or higher gear marked down to a lower price than cheap stuff is a retail.

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Also don't forget you can fish streamers with standard gear, just add some split shot on your leader or another style sinker a couple ft from your fly, I got onto a good number of fish doing this in fl unfortunately all the big ones broke me off.

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Looks like a good trip Mark, we have lots of the same fish here, I don't really have a way to get to them so my ocean fishing mostly just gets surf perch.

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I'm interested in the line and set up you took the halibut on. Fast sinking heads or full lead core lines???

I make my own lines. I weld or lap and whip thirty feet of t20 to 90 feet of t17 the t20 is attached to the tippet and the t17 is attached to the backer.

 

When fishing, we set up the drift so that we are drifting toward the structure. We cast toward the structure and as we drift toward it we mend out line until we are just tickling the top of the structure. We typically fish in 60 to 120 feet of water.

 

The IGFA only allows you to mend 120 feet of line from the reel (More than that disqualifies that fish from the records) They call it stripping line from the reel but in fly fishing nomenclature, I believe they mean "Mend". Sometimes we fish deeper than 120 feet but It just so happens that we have 120 feet of fly line so we always know if we have exceeded to limit set by IGFA.

 

With the fly lines made the way I do it, the fly sinks straight down as you drift toward it. The first thirty feet is recognizable by the transition between the fly lines. I mend out 2 feet of line with each strip, so I can tell to a certain degree how deep I need to be according to what the graph is showing us. These are mostly bottom fish so it's important to be as close to the bottom as we can be.

Ah, the first pic made me think you were shore fishing.

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My understanding is:

Stripping line out is taking from the reel to increase the line "in hand" or towards the fish.

Stripping line in is making fast, long pulls to move the fly in long, straight "flight" motions.

Mending is when you have line out that is being pulled downstream (or downwind) and you flip the line to get it back upstream without re-casting and with minimal movement of the fly.

Just a response to your post #4, Mark.

 

 

Now, as for the trip. WOW !!! Nice haul of fish. That Yellow Eye is gorgeous. I've never caught a Halibut, but my Dad caught one about 85 pounds. He said that the first 10 minutes, he thought he was hung on the bottom. The son-n-law kept telling him he had a fish on. Only after that beginning did he feel it start moving and fighting.

I can't imagine reeling in one on a 1:1 ratio fly reel.

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