Each season for a short period of time our guests who go out halibut fishing in Cook Inlet will have a chance to engage in one of our salmon/halibut combo trips. From the end of April through most of June there are king salmon migrating along the beaches of Cook Inlet in the area where the halibut charter boats are launched from. Many of these kings are heading for local streams, the Anchor River, Stariski Creek, Deep Creek, and Ninilchik River, to engage in spawning and then die. Other kings which are larger in size are Kasilof River or Kenai River kings migrating along the shoreline on their way back to their own home waters spawning grounds further north.

This concentration of salmon provides a window of opportunity to harvest some of these fish by trolling herring or lures around the incoming high tide before fishing for halibut. Once the tide is near peak the boat will then head off to the halibut grounds perhaps 20 miles or more from the beach and anchor up for bottom-fishing the rest of the trip. We never know how the day will turn out on a combo - some days large numbers of salmon are in the area and fishing is very hot, other days the entire fleet may be scratching all morning before heading out for halibut. But none the less its a great trip because it provides the opportunity to maybe tie into a bright saltwater king to add to your bag of halibut taken later in the day. Its a very popular trip but as we mentioned, the salmon are only available for saltwater trolling for a certain length of time and those periods often are the first to be booked in May and June. Contact us for further details if your selected dates may overlap this period when combo trips are available. The prize king in the photo was obviously destined for the Kenai River before this lucky angler changed its destination plans!