For warmth, Jim Stogsdill clamped his free hand around a steaming cup of coffee, while using the other to steer his 22-foot Hewescraft to depart his home-away-from-Soldotna-home in Little Tutka Bay.
Heading out into the marine waters of Kachemak Bay, overhead muted light came from gray clouds in an even grayer sky, while underfoot water lapping against the aluminum hull resonated up through Stogsdill's Xtratuffs as he set up his downrigger.
Just after the turn of the tide and out near one of his favorite spots — vaguely described as in the area of Yukon, Cohen and Hesketh Islands — he dropped a herring plug to his preferred depth and began trolling. Stogsdill knew what he was looking for, and motored till he found it — a huge shoal of thousands of herring, swirling and churning just beneath the surface.
In piscatorial parlance: a bait ball.
Within seconds his reel gave a shrill scream — not the kind made when hooked into a cod or halibut. The line stripped out at speeds only produced by one thing: a sea-strong king salmon making a literal run for its life.
"Winter is a prime time to catch kings. I've been several times and limited almost every time. There are a lot of fish this year. It's to the point, if you aren't catching fish, you just don't know what you are doing," he said.
Liberal bag limit
The kings — immature fish in Kachemak Bay to feed rather than spawn, as they do in summer — are still growing, so they're not the size of the fish that swim up the Kenai River in July.
"They're not 40 pounders, but they're healthy fish, typically in the 8-to-15 pound range, with an occasional 20 to 22 pounder. Nice fish, fresh, and good tasting," he said.
And anglers can catch quite a few of them, since according to Alaska Department of Fish and Game regulations, from Oct. 1 through March 31 in the salt waters south of the latitude of the Anchor Point Light, king salmon harvested don't need to be entered on a harvest record and don't count against the Cook Inlet annual king salmon harvest limit. The daily bag and possession limit is simply "two kings of any size."
Stogsdill isn't the only one capitalizing on offseason chinooks. Captain Josh Brooks of the fishing vessel Huntress has been guiding in Alaska more than 20 years, and he said the fishery in Kachemak Bay is in rare form this year.
"We are seeing pros, novice anglers, weekend warriors, and local fisherman alike all having success with these … once elusive salmon," he said. "Each year is better than the last, thanks to our hatchery programs up and down the west coast, and it's becoming a more popular fishery for sure."
Catching a mix of wild and hatchery salmon, Brooks knows that some fish come from as far as Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. He gleaned this information by taking part in tagging studies conducted by Fish and Game.
Tracked by tags
Carol Kerkvliet, a Homer-based state fisheries biologist, said studies of Kachemak Bay kings are a long way from delivering a clear picture.
"Historically we haven't attempted to estimate the stock composition of feeder kings harvest in Kachemak Bay during this time of year. What we do know has been derived from code-wire-tag recoveries," she said.
Code-Wire-Tags, or CWTs, are tiny pieces of stainless-steel wire injected into the snouts of juvenile kings. Each tag is etched with a binary code that identifies the release site of the fish. To identify a fish with a CWT, the adipose fin is clipped as a secondary mark.
"Heads of all adipose-clipped fish recovered are sent to the ADF&G lab in Juneau where the CWT is dissected from the head and decoded," Kerkvliet said.
"Additionally," Kerkvliet allowed, "the number of volunteer samples submitted over the years is less than 1 percent of the total harvest … and is not sufficient … to detect all the stocks that may be found in Kachemak Bay. The vast majority of feeder kings caught have adipose fins and are likely wild kings of unknown origin," she said.
Fish and Game also tries to track how many winter kings are caught through statewide harvest surveys mailed to sport fishing license holders and designed to estimate effort in angler-days and the number of fish caught and harvested by location.
The Lower Cook Inlet Winter Salt Water King Salmon Sport Fishery Management Plan includes a guideline harvest level of 3,000 kings by sport anglers. From 2002-2013 the average harvest estimate was 2,018, Kerkvliet said. Last year, though, the 3,000-fish level was exceeded.
"The 2014 estimated harvest was 3,173. The increase is primarily attributed to the favorable winter conditions over most of the 2014 season," she said.
With another warm winter on tap so far, it's possible the harvest could be exceeded again. Consequently, the Board of Fisheries will closely review Lower Cook Inlet fisheries when it meets in November 2016.
There's also always the chance the weather could turn cold for the rest of this winter, which could self regulate the harvest that is largely weather dependent.
Stogsdill agreed. Even though he likes fishing for winter kings, he's not keen on extremely cold days.
"Once I start getting reels and lines icing up, it's too cold for me," he said.
Brooks added, even in a year as superb as this one, winter kings still take time to catch. "When you factor in that, as well as bad winter weather and freezing harbors, the chips are definitely in these winter fish's favor."
Joseph Robertia is a freelance writer living in Kasilof with his wife, Colleen, and daughter, Lynx, where they operate Rogues Gallery Kennel and have run several mid-distance mushing races, including Colleen running the Iditarod and Yukon Quest.