Alaska Fishing Trips

Alaska is the last great fishing ground in the United States. Sure, there are still fisheries on both coasts and in the Gulf of Mexico, but none of them compares to Alaska's unspoiled watery wilderness. Most Alaska fishing trips are focused around salmon and halibut.

You've undoubtedly heard the cliches - an angler's paradise, a fisherman's dream - but think about it this way: Fifty percent of the fish U.S. citizens consume comes from Alaska. The Alaskan Pollack fishery harvests two billion pounds per year - the largest fishery in the world. Fishing is the primary economic activity in most coastal villages, from the western region bordering the Bering Sea, to the Aleutians and Dutch Harbor, to the numerous towns dotting the coasts of Southcentral and Southeast Alaska. And where there's this much commercial fishing, there's plenty to satisfy the desires of sport fishermen.

While surprisingly, the most popular activity among visitors to Alaska appears to be shopping (all those cruise ship passengers), Alaska is a sport fishing mecca. A higher percentage of resident Alaskans fish than do the residents of any other state, and a full 20% of visitors to the state go there to fish (as compared to hunting, which were so small a number, it did not register in the 2006 study of tourism conducted by the state).

Most sport fishing adventures take place in the Southcentral region, where most of the population lives and fishing areas are accessible by car. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G) divides the state into five distinct fishing areas. Each has its own set of published regulations and licensing/permitting requirements, with separate regulations governing freshwater, saltwater and shellfish:

1) Arctic-Yukon-Kuskokwim
2) Bristol Bay Drainage
3) Kodiak/Aleutian Islands
4) Southcentral Alaska
5) Southeast Alaska

Alaska Fishing Regulations >>>