6 Days Ocean Fishing & Camping in Alaska

For the next six days we'll be camping in one of the most beautiful places I've ever been to in my life. We've rented a boat and for the first time I'll be running it on the ocean myself. Our goal is pretty simple, explore the waters of Prince William Sound, harvest some fresh fish to bring home and experience as much of Alaska as we can. We have six days ahead of us, a boat waiting at the harbor and absolutely no idea how this will all go. So sit back and relax as our adventure now begins in Valdez, Alaska. We got one on the big bait baby! We put a half of salmon on this rod! We got a fish on! I'm tired boy. We have just arrived at one of the most beautiful places I've ever been to in my life. We are on the shoreline of the Prince William Sound. Across the bay is Valdez, Alaska and we're going to establish our base camp here right on the coast to get started with this adventure. Now from what we've read there is a really good chance we could have grizzly bears come through this campground at any given time so we're going to have to keep an extra eye on the dogs. We're going to have to make sure we keep a clean camp and there is no telling what we could encounter on this trip. So we're going to get started here. We're going to get our camp set up and folks welcome to Valdez, Alaska. We're gonna go see some bears shake their fur off. We're gonna go get our campsite paid for and get our occupied sticker so that way we claim this one. We just had a massive something come up right below our camp. I'm not sure what it is. There's a salmon swimming on top of the water right there. Oh my god. Oh he's got a salmon. Oh my god. Look they're just below the water. Oh my gosh. That was insane. We're setting up camp. I heard all hell breaking loose down below here. There's a bunch of sea lions chasing salmon. Well we have a beautiful camp established here and now we're going to take a drive into the city of Valdez and go get stocked up on some fishing equipment for our upcoming adventures. It's 3 p.m and I'm still drinking coffee. We're getting crazy today. Well we're all set up here and ready to go. We have a beautiful huge craft to run on the ocean for the next few days. I have my rods all put together and I've been tying rigs and putting together these rods for the last three months as I've been preparing for this trip in Michigan. So it's quite surreal that we're here right now but tomorrow morning we'll be headed out and I couldn't be more excited. Before we do anything we're headed to the coffee company. Bread, brownies, and breakfast sandwiches. Look at this guy. Look at this guy. This is the first time Nicole, Ollie, and Maya have ever been on the ocean so it's a big day. Here we go. Well we're going to have about a two-hour boat ride this morning. Our goal is is to get out near where the sound starts to open up toward the Gulf of Alaska and we're going to start off by targeting halibut and rockfish. We're definitely going to troll for salmon at some point today but we would love to get some halibut. The scenery is absolutely incredible. We're pulling off for a second to look at this mountain. There's a glacier on top of it and a massive waterfall pouring down. Absolutely beautiful. I thought this was stuff that only existed in movies and it seems like a miracle and I don't know how else to describe it. It's so beautiful. I'm gonna get the chum bag ready. We'll get the anchor down and then we'll drop some lines. It's just a big bag of stinky herring. Chum bag. We're gonna drop down this rig here with a pound and a half weight, a big circle hook, and hook some herring on it. Let's put two on there just because. We're dropping down the meat sandwich. We only can fish with one line per person so we're gonna have one rod with cutbait on the bottom and then we're gonna jig with one as well. Our traps are set and now we wait. Our first fish of the day. Look at that. It's just a baby. Ollie, stay in the boat. First bite was pretty slow. We had a couple bites but not much to show for it. We're gonna get on the move. Do we go shallow or do we go deep? Okay, we're gonna try shallower now. There we go. That's a fish on, baby. That's a fish on, baby. Oh yeah. There's some head shakes. Look at that. Nice halibut, baby. Gaff me. There we go, baby. Nice halibut. It's no barn door but we have our first keeper halibut. Fish on the bait rod. Fish on the down rod. Ollie, stay in the boat. Let him run. Let him run. Let him run. Let him run. He's going back to the bottom, baby. There we go, baby. And he's in the boat. Nice. First halibut and Ollie's growling at the fish. I'm honored to catch this fish. I know we'll enjoy this with each other and our family when we get back home. Really exciting. There he is. Got him that time, baby. Oh yeah. Got him that time, baby. Nice. Coming in. Coming in. We got another fish on right here. Right here. Right here. Right here. Okay, we got chaos going on. Okay, you take the fish. Okay, we're gonna keep this one. This will be our limit. Oh, there it goes. Almost had him. Just wasn't ready yet. There we go. Nice halibut, baby. And that's our limit of halibut. We limited out on halibut on our first day. Wow, yeah. In the box you go. We're all on our own out here. There's not a boat in sight. We had to fish a couple spots, but we found some beauties and now we're gonna go try to troll for salmon. We almost hit a salmon. A big whale just came up right in front of the boat. I think we're gonna set up right here. This is our first salmon on. We're gonna fight. It's going berserk. Keep it low. Keep it low. Oh, there we go. First salmon, baby. This is exactly the fish that you would hope to catch and this is just so exciting. Fish, fish, fish. Diver, diver, diver. Fish on the diver, baby. Ollie's in the game. Yeah, buddy. There you go. Nice net, girl. We don't even have our stuff out of the net yet. There you go, right there. Good net job, girl. We got one hammering the diver. Nicole's fighting a big fish. Oh, Nicole, this is a big one. Nicole's got a screamer on. I'm going on like 10 minutes of trying to fight this fish, though. This is a big silver right here, I think. This is either a nice king or a big silver salmon. I'm not sure, but this fish is good size. Oh, look at that. Oh, and he's in the net, baby, and he's off in the net, too. Ollie, we got a dandy. This fish is absolutely beautiful. Look at this thing, just gorgeous. Oh, we got one. Look at the rigger. Look at the rigger. Oh, it's a nice. Oh, my gosh. Look at that. Oh, my gosh. And get ready in case this fish runs. This is a nice king salmon here. Oh, big king salmon. Big king salmon. Yes. Look at that. Oh, you've got to be kidding me. Big king with the cut plug. And I almost wasn't going to get a king stamp. Oh, my God. Never fought a fish like that before, but to see it come to the surface and then net it was just such a treat. Words can't explain this experience and how I feel right now. There's one. We've got a double going. We need two more silvers for our limit. Go back down and jump under the water. Oh, no, it's a coho. Nice. And that, folks, is our limit of coho and king salmon. Very good. We have our limit of halibut, king salmon and silver salmon. So we're going to go try to get some rockfish now. We're just driving around and trying to mark a school of rockfish right now. We're going for rockfish. As soon as it hits the bottom, you want to get it off the bottom because there's rocks here, OK? If you feel any more weight than what you got there, it's fish There's a fish. Come on, be a rockfish. What is it? Oh, oh, oh, it's a huge rockfish. Yeah, get the net. Net that thing. Net that thing. Oh, it's a massive rockfish. I think it's the biggest rockfish I've ever caught. Oh, my God. Look at the size of this rockfish. He's huge. Nicole's got a fish. Oh, Nicole, it's a big yellow eye. Oh, big yellow eye, baby. Nice big yellow eye. So vibrant and beautiful. The eye on it is just kind of freaking me out, to be honest. I think we're going to call it a day after that yellow eye. We have a lot of fish to clean and we have a lot of chores to do to get ready for tomorrow. So that's the plan. We're getting fueled up for the morning. We have this cooler that I'm carrying overflowing with halibut. I have a bag of king salmon, a bag of coho. Nicole has a backpack overflowing with halibut and salmon. And right now we're trying to take it down to a processing center, which closes in 10 minutes to get it all frozen, vacuum sealed and shipped back to our families so we can pick it up when we get back to Michigan in the fall. It's just past 11 right now. We just finished reorganizing, cleaning the boat, and we're going to be back here at about 530 tomorrow morning. So we're going to bust back, get some sleep, and we'll see you first thing in the morning. We're looking for a big halibut tomorrow. That's the goal. Let's go get them. I have a hot coffee I'm trying not to spill. I'm getting towed by a golden retriever. I have about 10 pounds of herring in this box and a cooler full of sandwich meat. We're ready to hit the water. We're about an hour into our ride out this morning and behind me are massive chunks of glacier that are floating off from a glacier that's up in this next bay here. It's absolutely incredible. This is one of those special Alaska experiences when your eyes just can't make sense of what you're looking at. There are massive chunks of glacier floating all throughout the sound here. There's clouds drifting through the mountains, snow caps all around. Absolutely incredible. We still have about an hour left until we reach our fishing grounds, but what a start to the day. We're going to grab a chunk of ice and throw it in our fish box. This ice that's melting sounds like our halibut that's going to be frying up in a couple days. We have a chunk of glacier, now we need groceries. It's been a bit of a stressful drive. We've had blanket fog, but now it's just starting to lift and we're marking fish all over the place, so we're going to get set up here. 79, 80 feet. I don't think we're going to target salmon. We have plenty of salmon from yesterday and throughout the course of our trip out west, we're going to be targeting salmon a lot, so we're just going to really try to dial in on the halibut and rockfish. When the fish aren't biting, you make sandwiches. We're waiting for the tide to pick up. We don't want to give up on this spot yet because we've had no tide current so far today. We're hoping once the current starts to come through, it'll begin to drip the scent from our chum and our baits across the bottom and it will draw fish in. We're just going to be patient, see what happens, and hopefully we'll get into some action here today, but pretty slow start for sure. That's a good pickle, meat, and cheese ratio. Silver's all over the place chasing our cut bait. There's one. Oh, so I'm gonna see if I can get him on my jig. Oh, oh my god, he missed it. Oh, oh, he's dive bombing it. Oh, look at him. He wants it bad. Oh, I got him. I got him. Oh, he came off. There's one. Look at that. Hey, everybody, silver salmon, baby. Decent halibut, and we have our first halibut of the day. Yep, yep, yep, yep. Okay, good, good, good, good. Good job, babe. Good job. Good job. Nice. The day's turning around. Oh, fish, fish, fish. The tide finally started kicking, and we're starting to catch some fish. We sure have waited this spot out today, but it's starting to pay off. Nice. There we go. There we go. They didn't come easy, but we have our limit of halibut. We were hoping to wait for some bigger fish today, but the way the bite started off and how slow it was, we decided we would just keep our limit of some nice eaters, and now it's on to the next. Let's see what this is. New spot, a lot of ice floating around. We're limited out on halibut, so we're going to have to throw him back. I got a fish. I got a fish. Let's see what we have. Oh, it's a salmon. There we go. We're trying to find some rockfish, but we're picking up some salmon along the way. It's a nice rockfish, baby. Nice yellow eye. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Nice. We got a yellow eye. Our tide has died once again, but we're just picking away at some fish, and we're happy to have them. We can catch one more non-pelagic rockfish today, and I see some color, so I think we're going to get our limit. Oh, beautiful rockfish, and we are limited out on non-pelagic rockfish. They're little rock stars of the ocean, man. Oh, it's a cod. We got a cod. Looks like another cod. Nice. We'll take them. Well, good morning, and welcome back, folks. We're going to have some foul weather today. I've been checking the buoys offshore near where we fished the last couple days, and it looks like there's big waves and strong wind out there, as well as heavy rain. As you can see, it's raining right now, and we're not going to be able to fish where we fished so far, so let's go be safe. Let's go have a good day and see what we can do. It's looking pretty foggy out here. Set up for halibut here. Oh, yeah, that's going down. I just stuck a big one on a jig. I just stuck something on a jig. Oh, it's coming up. It's a skate. We got a skate. Look at this guy. Look at that thing. We got a skate. You liked that salmon belly, didn't you, buddy? We got a fish on, baby. Ollie's in the game. We're hooked up. Oh, big yellow eye. And we have a nice yellow eye. Oh, here we go. What do we have? What is it? Oh, another big yellow eye. Beautiful yellow eye, baby. All righty. Look at that big chunk of meat. All the commercial boats are fishing far inside the sound where we are right now, so that tells me we made the right decision and that it's very rough farther out in the sound. So we set up for halibut and we just caught those two nice yellow eye rockfish, which is our limit of that species. So now we're looking for other species, but we are on fish, so that's a good sign. And we're just going to see what happens and wait it out here in the rainstorm. We got fish on big bait, baby. Fish on the big bait, baby. Oh, oh, babe, we got a good one on. We put a half a salmon on this rod. We got a fish on, woo! Fish, baby. Oh, he's going to the bottom. He's going to the bottom. Just keep it tight, okay? I got to get this harpoon. Okay, getting the harpoon going. Okay, push out, push out, push out. Nice halibut, baby. Just let it run, let it run, let it run, let it run. Did I get it? I got it, I got it. Hold on to that rod. The fish is on the harpoon now, baby. Now we're going to gaff him. Okay, now bring him up. There we go. Okay, there's a good fish. First time I've ever harpooned a fish. Easily our biggest on this trip so far. Going to have a lot of great meat and I'm excited to have him. I got to put him down, he's getting heavy, but we have a good one, baby. They get bigger, but that's a good one. Okay, we're putting more salmon head out. That's what that fish bit on, salmon belly, tipped with the salmon head. Thanks, let's get a bigger one. Well, after we caught that big halibut, the wind kicked up, the tide kicked up, and we haven't been able to hold our anchor spot with our chum bags, so a little frustrating, but we're going to make a move here and see if we can capitalize on another spot. Dropping back down, we're going to see if we can go for another. We got a big fish on, baby. Big fish, big fish on, baby. Oh, he's taking drag. This is a big fish. Oh my God, this is a big fish, guys. No way. Okay, honey, we're going to have to, you might have to fight this sucker for a minute, okay? This is going to be another harpooner. This is a real fish. I think it's going to dwarf the other one. Just get ready because we're going to have to maneuver and do the dance. Oh, he's going back to the bottom. I'll just get him set. My God, my God, this is the one we've been looking for. Okay, I'm going to have to get the harpoon. Okay, I got the fish right here, hon. Just keep it tight, okay? Just keep it tight. I'm going to get the harpoon ready. We're going to have to harpoon this one. That's okay for now. Yes. Okay, harpoon engaged. When he gets close to the boat, we're going to put it right in that holder. Oh my gosh. Oh, here he is, coming up. Yep, coming up. It's a monster. We're going to have to harpoon him, so come here. It's freaking huge. I'm trying to put it in the rod holder. Okay, Nicole's going to get on the reel, okay? I got him with the harpoon. Okay, just hold what you got, okay? Stuck him with the harpoon. Now we're going to get the gaff. Okay, all right. I got him with the gaff coming in, okay? Watch out, guys. This fish is going to go magic. Watch out. Yeah. Yeah, baby. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No way. Yeah. I'll tell you why. We're baiting up and going right back down. I'm going to try to hold this beast up. I can barely pick it off. It's got to be 80 to 100 pounds, though, easily. Look, we got a big monster. Holy ----. Oh my ... The ocean, baby. Yeah. I cannot believe what just happened. We got a good one earlier. Had to move spots, insanity. It's just been an incredible day. The rain's beginning once again, and I think we're going to call it after that halibut, so we're going to start making our way back to port. We've just tallied up all of our fish from the last few days. We have over 150 pounds, and we figured if we were to buy that fresh frozen in a market, it would cost well over $4,000, so we're very happy with what we've done. It is time to get the wood stove fired up for the first time of the year. It's going to get down to about 38 degrees Fahrenheit tonight, and it's a real damp air, so this nice dry heat is going to feel really nice. The sea lions are going bananas down on the ocean right now. We have a stray dog running around outside of our tent. Apparently our neighbor said there's been a bear sniffing around about every night. I don't know what's going on right now. I have bear bangers underneath my bed. Nicole has the bear spray. We're just going to hope for the best tonight and look forward to a big day tomorrow, so we're going to get some sleep, and we'll see you first thing in the morning. Our first to-do on the chore list today. Laundry. We stanky. Smells like a halibut. I have to say it's been really nice to have a slow day today, to have slept in and really been able to just take a breath and reflect on the last few days on the ocean. Our first time ever running a boat ourselves. I couldn't have asked for better results. We just had an incredible experience, and now we're looking over the inlet here. We have a nice bonfire going, and straight in front of us there are glaciers and snow-capped mountains peeking through the clouds. We're going to do fresh pan-seared halibut with fried rockfish, and we're really looking forward to this. First up, we're going to make our homemade tartar sauce. I'm going to use this chicken tender mayonnaise style ranch dip, and we'll do half and half with that and regular helminths. Throw some relish in there with a squeeze of lemon. This is going to be good. We're going to get our rockfish going first, and we're going to coat it in an egg wash and panko breadcrumbs. I'm just going to bust these up a little finer. Now it's time to prepare our fish. We have our rockfish here, which was the yellow eye, and then we have two halibut steaks. Rockfish first. We're not breading our halibut. We're just going to bread our rockfish, and that's what we're going to get started with. Into the egg and into the panko. At last, it is finally time to enjoy the fruits of our labor out on the Pacific Ocean. This tastes like the best fish ever. I have to say, this rockfish has been absolutely incredible, and we've had a lot more rockfish than what we anticipated, so we've decided that we're going to wait until tomorrow night to cook our halibut because we want to be hungry when we eat it, and we don't just want to eat it for the video, so we're going to wait until tomorrow night for that. We're going to enjoy the rest of our rockfish and then enjoy our camp. All this meat is such a special catch. We want to really savor it, so that'll give us something to look forward to tomorrow evening. Sounds like the RVs have the generators fired up this morning. Coffee's on. Right now, we're just waiting for some of the mountains. It's actually very unique. There's some commercial fishing boats just out in front of us, and it looks like there's a big cruise ship coming into Valdez as well, but this morning, we're gonna make big slammer breakfast sandwiches. This might be some of his best work ever. Throughout our days on the ocean, I was really missing a home-cooked breakfast, so this is really hitting the spot. Well, that was a great breakfast, but now we're gonna take a drive up into Thompson Pass. We're coming through the Keystone Canyon right now, and the waterfalls flowing out of the mountains are insane. The views up here on the Thompson Pass are just absolutely incredible. Everywhere you look, there's rugged snow-capped mountains. I can see multiple massive glaciers. There's waterfalls pouring off of them, and it's truly an incredible experience. It's one that you can't put words on, and you just have to experience it yourself. Going on a little bushwhack here. We're gonna go see if we can get up and touch this glacier. We were hoping to make it up to the base of the glacier, but straight in front of us, we have a lot of loose rock that leads down into steep holes with lots of ice, and then on our left and on our right, it looks like we get clipped out from here, so I don't think it's the safest decision to proceed any farther. However, this is a beautiful vantage point that we have right here, and although we're pretty worn out after the last few days still, it feels really good to have pushed ourselves to experience what we're seeing right now. Nicole didn't want to climb this far, and I don't blame her. It's been sketchy. I'm a little freaked out right now, but look at behind me. We have a beautiful cave going right into this glacier. I'm not going to stay here too long. That's a good example of why you have to be extremely careful at any given time. A big chunk of this ice could collapse. There could be a landslide. There could even be an avalanche for all I know, so I'm going to get heading back now, but what an incredible experience. I'm going to put the camera away and get back safe. I made it back to the safe zone. That was an incredible and exhilarating hike, and now we're going to head back, see our doggies, and go make some hell of it. We're on our way back to camp right now, and we stopped off at the hatchery here in Valdez, which is just a couple miles down from where we're camped at, and there is a feeding frenzy going on. Let's go check it out. It's quite the scene down here right now. It's high tide, so there are millions of pink salmon that are pushed up to this hatchery. There are dying salmon that have already spawned. There are salmon that are currently spawning, and there's fresh run salmon as well, and with this massive food source, it has all these sea lions and seals pushed up right in this hatchery feeding on all the salmon. I really think we made the right call saving our halibut for tonight because I am hungry and really looking forward to this meal. Now right here, I have some fresh lemon slices, some onion, fresh cilantro I chopped up, and our two halibut steaks, and all I'm going to do is just slowly pan fry this in the cast iron with a little bit of butter, and that's all it's going to take. And then the asparagus, and somehow some bits of gouda cheese found their way in there. First bite. I've never had fresh halibut before, but it's going to be hard to beat for the rest of my life. There are sea lions roaring behind me. Our plate is all finished here. I'm so grateful for this meal. I couldn't be more thankful for how this trip turned out. It'll truly be a memory I'll cherish the rest of my life. We have our halibut and we're going for our first bite. I don't have anything else to say right now. This is so delicious. We're going to enjoy this meal and then hop in the tent because that fire is rocking. It's nice and toasty and it's getting chilly out here. Are we going to Homer? Are we going to Kenai? Huh? Is that where we're going? Well, it's a bittersweet day. It's time to leave the Valdez area. I hope you all enjoyed this episode. From here, we'll be headed to the Kenai Peninsula, and that's where our next episode will be from. We'll also be filming for our 90-day movie Along the Way, which will be posted sometime this winter, and that episode will feature our travels from starting in northern Michigan all the way out to Alaska and back. So make sure to stay tuned for that, and if you're not subscribed, feel free to go down below here and hit subscribe. It's totally free and allow you to see each and every adventure video that we post. But for now, we have a lot of work to do to break this camp down, and we have a long road ahead of us. So we're going to get traveling and we will see you in our next adventure video.