Aurora Charters — Local services in Seward

Worst fishing trip ever. I booked a halibut and silver salmon trip for three. We arrived on time but there was no Captain when it was time to depart. Captain Carl showed up 15 minutes later. He told us it had been a while since he had taken a group out but he would try. No apologies for arriving late. We pulled out and took a 2 hour and 40 minute ride to Montague. Captain Carl said the current would be ripping but the fish should be in the area. We dropped down with 3lb weights and they wouldn’t stay on bottom. The deck hands (Gabe and Tyler) tried to put down a jig but no way it would work in the current. Captain Carl had the hands start to switch out to 4lb weights. Unfortunately, there were only a few in the boat. So we took a long boat ride to fish in a strong current and no one thought to bring weights heavy enough to fish the area. We stayed in the area a lot longer than we should have and only picked up a few fish. One of the other guys in our group and at least one other person on the boat were smokers. My buddy asked before lighting up where would be the best place to smoke. Gabe told him some of the captains allow smoking but he didn’t think Captain Carl would allow smoking. My buddy politely asked Captain Carl if he could smoke away from the other passengers and was rudely told “non smoking boat.” There weren’t any No Smoking signs on the boat. We checked the website and there isn’t any mention about no smoking on the boats. The other smoker in our group said he was told by a crew member that the companies insurance didn’t allow smoking. The next issue was equipment. There were more fishermen on the boat than there were rod holders. Several of the rod holders aren’t securely mounted to the rail and I almost dumped a pole when the halibut took the bait. We finished halibut fishing (got about 1/2 of our quota) and we’re about to leave for silver salmon. Gabe asked Captain Carl if it would be ok if they went ahead and filleted they fish. We were still 4 plus hours away from home at this point. Captain Carl asked Gabe if there was any ice on the boat to ice down the fish after filleting? Of course there wasn’t. Captain Carl told then no but that they could start when we finished silver salmon. I just wondered if the other Captains had been allowing this crew to fillet fish all season early in the trip without icing them down. The next issue involved one of the hands brining in fish. Tyler is an inexperienced high school student. He had trouble netting fish and blamed the customer when he lost fish netting. Everybody misses fish while netting. But the big issue started when he began trying to show off and tried gaffing salmon. It wasn’t because he didn’t have a net. He reached past 2 nets to get a gaff to stick the fish. One again, he tangled the gaff in my buddies line and lost the fish. Captain Carl came out and talked to us towards the end of the trip. He told us that he started the company 30+ years ago. I thought WOW! This is the owner of the company and this is all acceptable. My buddy was very disappointed in the trip as was I. He asked what I was going to tip and I told him my usual 20% but that I’d never fish with Aurora again. Then the final straw. Tyler started pulling fish out of the box and told us to get our pictures. He pulled out 2 halibut, a couple of salmon and a ling cod. We kept waiting on Tyler to pull out our fish but he never did. A few minutes later Gabe began to fillet a halibut. I told Tyler to hold on with the filleting because we hadn’t gotten our pictures. He said he told us to get our pictures and that we didn’t. I told him we were waiting on him to get out our fish. He said, “All the fish are the same, just get a picture with the ones we pulled out.” Completely unacceptable. I have NEVER not tipped the crew or left a negative review about a fishing trip. Until now. I looked at the reviews of Aurora Charters and most are positive. I’m glad a lot of fishermen had a better experience than me. I just want to say...

From Lost and Found Pets Alaska page on Facebook: "Owner Tony from Aurora Sportfishing in Alaska is pictured with one of our Californian Pit bulls called Brady. Brady belong to Angels N Paws in Devore Ca. He was delivered by the owner of the rescue group Royce Bordes.

April 25th the small island of Ketchikan awoke to the news of a missing dog named Brady, who had only arrived 36 hours earlier. He was reported as having "run away" from his adoption placement.

There's been no sightings on Brady and no clues surrounding his disappearance except for those offered by his adoptive family.

Brady was approved for adoption to a single woman in Ketchikan, Alaska and was hand delivered by a rescue after a lengthy five month background check and communication with the adopter. The adoptive woman claimed to live alone without any other pets and stated sometimes her son and granddaughter visited. Oddly, both the son and granddaughter were present at the time of Brady's arrival.

By the following morning, the woman who adopted Brady cited numerous problems between Brady and her son and granddaughter, neither of whom were professed as living in the home but information indicated later that both spent a substantial amount of time in the home.

Brady was seen out the night of his arrival with the son of the adopter by themselves. The son was not listed as a home occupant nor is he but immediately seemed to be with Brady 1:1 and that's when "behavior problems" began to reveal themselves despite never being a problem in Brady's entire history with the exception of a very honest for war statement that he will growl when approached as a statement to say "stop, let me see who you are" before immediately easing up and being excited about a friend.

This low growl "stop, I am nervous about you" was disclosed to the adoptive woman numerous times and explained as being an indicator of nervousNess and not aggression.

The morning after adoption the adoptive contacted the rescue citing that things weren't working out and her son had said Brady needed to be returned for his safety, citing that her son had said if Brady growled at his daughter one more time, he would shoot Brady.

That afternoon the son is said to have decided to take Brady for a walk and claimed Brady ran away despite Brady never running. His story about where he walked Brady has changed and so have the circumstances regarding his disappearance. The son was the last one seen with Brady, the Same son the adopter cited concerns about him shooting Brady earlier in the day.

Gone without a trace... no c itings in one week. The last one seen with Brady was the one person the rescue was told earlier the same day by the adopter that she feared he might shoot Brady.

Three years in rescue. Five months of communication prior to placement. Three day ferry ride to hand deliver Brady.

And VANISHED the next day in the hands of the one person who threatened Brady with death.

WE NEED ANSWERS AND WE NEED...

My first ever fishing charter experience was an awesome one aboard the Polaris with Aurora Charters.

We departed Seward, Alaska early in the morning and cruised 3 hours out through the Kenai Fjords to a primo spot for both rockfish and halibut. After catching rockfish for a while, the big boys started to bite. I was the first to land a halibut on the boat, but I certainly wasn’t the big winner. Mine was about 60 lbs, but before long some whoppers showed up... some 100+ pounders (which put them into first place for the month in the fishing derby/tournament), and a monster that weighed in at 163 pounds! The weather was awesome, the captain and first mate did a great job, and pretty much everybody maxed out their limits for the day!

The one thing they could improve is communication. I think they make the assumption that everybody going out has already done a fishing charter in Alaska (which was true of almost everybody else on the boat), but this was our first time, and for noobies like us, we needed more specific instructions and explanation. For example, they didn’t give us details about the current catch limits allowed, nor did they tell us how to pick a fishing rod and stake our spot on the boat, so my father and I ended up not being next to each other -- not even visible to each other, stuck on opposite corners of the boat. It would have been a little more comfortable at the beginning if they had explained some of these things to us since we had never gone out before, but these kinks were worked out before too long, and overall we had an...