Kodiak Kaleidoscope

A North Pacific Paradise

For sport fishing charter hot-spots in the North Pacific, few locations come close to matching what Kodiak Alaska has to offer. The island is bathed by the warm waters of the Japanese Current, creating a climate that covers the eastern half of Kodiak and the surrounding islands in lush, rain drenched Sitka spruce forests and salmon-choked mountain streams.

At one hundred-miles long and about thirty-miles wide, Kodiak is the second largest island in the United States. Its streams are chocked full of salmon and several varieties of trout, while the ocean surrounding it is home to “barn door” halibut, lingcod, rockfish and the ever-present ocean-run Chinook salmon.

Whales, sea lions, otters and sea birds populate Kodiak’s waters, while the Alaskan coastal brown bear reigns supreme on land. Over three thousand bruins live here, creating a density of nearly one bear per square mile. Each year they grow fat on five varieties of salmon (sockeye, Coho, pink, dog and Chinook), which crowd the streams from late May way into the fall. The nutrient-rich streams flush spawned out salmon and endless clumps of fresh roe back out to sea, creating an abundant food source for ocean dwellers.

Halibut, a year-round resident in these waters, move in closer and closer to the mouths of these streams as summer progresses and more spent salmon and fresh roe are flushed back out to the sea. If you don’t catch a big halibut in 120 feet of water early on, you may very easily hook into a similar monster off a dock in September.

Throughout the years, Kodiak has grown to be one of the hottest spots in the U.S. for commercial fishing and continues to rank as one of the top three commercial fishing ports in America. It’s little wonder these rich fisheries also catch the attention of sport fishing anglers who come here to go out on charters, or simply work the streams and bays along the road system and beyond.