2026-06-27 Marguerite Bay Trip

My oldest daughter Jennifer and my grandson Hayden are in town for about a month.

Jennifer's jobs are all work from home so she can work from anywhere as long as she has WiFi access. Hayden is 11 now and really enjoys fishing & boating so they decided to come up and visit us in Alaska for a while.

Jennifer wanted to make a recipe that called for shrimp, so I decided to make another trip to Marguerite Bay since that's the best place nearby that I know of to get some shrimp. Marguerite Bay is in Traitors Cove, which is in Western Behm Canal. Behm Canal encircles the island that my hometown of Ketchikan is on.

Here's a map snippet from my Garmin InReach that shows our track out there and back.

My slip in Bar Harbor is at the bottom, marked in red. Our destination is up at the top. It's about 26 miles one way to get there which takes my slow boat about 3 hours.

On the way out we stopped briefly in the entrance to Clover Pass to pull down the 2 shrimp pots and get them prepared and baited and ready to drop.

Once we got into Traitors Cove, I dropped our 2 shrimp pots out in front of Marguerite Bay in about 310' of water. Here is a map snippet that shows the area. The area marked with an 'X' is where I dropped the shrimp pots and the area marked with a 'Y' is the approximate location of the USFS dock. The 2 shrimp pots are on a single ground line.

These USFS docks are first come first served, so you never know until you get there whether you can get a spot at the dock to tie up. In this area there is also a mooring buoy that is nearby to the dock so that is usually Plan B. If the dock is full and the mooring buoy is already taken, then Plan C is to drop the anchor.

As we approached the dock, I could see the big work barge was tied to the float on the left side. I recognized the boat tied up on the front as belonging to a friend of mine. The tie up spot on the right side of the dock was open so I went in there and got tied up at a little before noon.

I had a brief chat with my buddy who owned the boat tied up on the front of the dock. He was there with one of his grandsons and a couple of his buddies, but they were just leaving. Once they pulled out, we had the dock to ourselves.

After lunch I deployed the raft and Hayden went out for several rides in it.

Hayden began "dock fishing" using a 6-hook herring jig. It has 6 very tiny hooks on it, and it is an excellent rig for catching the little fish that hang around the dock.

Here's a photo of one of the dozens of these little fish that he caught. He never seemed to tire of catching them.

We did a little research and determined that most likely these fish were "Shiner Perch."

After a bit Hayden and I pulled down my one remaining crab pot and baited it. Then we took it out in the raft and dropped it out in front of the lagoon. I usually carry 2 crab pots but on my last trip I was unable to pull one of them and had to leave it there. I may be able to get back there later in the summer and if so, I can make another effort to pull it.

I always like to have multiple diversions and activities for the kids when I bring them out to places like this. I had gotten Hayden a BB gun recently and he enjoyed shooting at the empty Gatorade bottles filled with water. He's just about ready to move up to a .22 rifle.

After dinner I set up my fire pit on the dock, and we had a nice fire. I had brought an artificial fire log as well as a bundle of firewood. I also scavenged some additional firewood from up on the logging road. The weather was nice and Jennifer & Hayden roasted marshmallows. For anyone that might be concerned about damage to the dock, I put a small piece of plywood and also a small piece of 1/4" stainless steel under the fire pit to prevent any damage to the dock.

We had a quiet night there on the dock. "Quiet" is a relative term. The ramp there at the dock makes a loud booming sound at certain stages of the tide, where metal grinds against metal. You sort of have to live with it if you intend to stay overnight at this dock.

In the morning after a pancake breakfast, Hayden and I geared up and walked up the logging road to the first bridge and the outlet from the lake. He wanted to try some fishing up there.

This little map snippet sort of shows the layout here. The spot marked with an 'X' is the approximate location of the dock. The spot circled in blue is the approximate location of the first bridge, where the water from the lake flows out on its way down to the sea. It's about a mile up the logging road to the first bridge.

There are many trout in the lake, but it is difficult to fish it without a skiff or a boat of some kind. One of my buddies has a small skiff hidden in the brush up here but it is much too heavy for just Hayden and I to wrestle into and out of the water.

There was a small skiff there at the outlet of the lake, but it was mostly full of water and was just too big and heavy for Hayden and I to launch.

On the way up to the first bridge, you pass the cut off that goes down to the bear & fish viewing platform. It is currently closed as they are rebuilding it. A lot of the tools and building materials are visible at the place where the trail cuts off from the logging road.

They've got a couple of cool looking mechanized wheelbarrows which I assume they use to transport gravel and maybe some tools up and down the trail.

After lunch one of my other fishing buddies arrived from town in his boat. He had a couple of guys with him. They had a bunch of crab pots and shrimp pots with them.

They started by unloading everything onto the dock. Then they set up and baited approximately 15 crab pots, getting them ready to set.

Jennifer, Hayden and I joined them to run back into the salt chuck to set the crab pots.

Here is a map snippet that shows the salt chuck and the "skinny" entrance to it.

The area marked with a circle is the entrance to the salt chuck. It is very shallow there and there are several rocks in the entrance. You can only go through there at certain stages of the tide when the water is calm. It can be life threatening to attempt to go through at the wrong time as the current gets extremely strong. You have to have a fast boat and local knowledge to go back into this area. I can't go through in my very slow boat.

The area marked with a 'Y' is where we started dropping the crab pots.

Once we had set the crab pots we went back to the dock and started preparing the shrimp pots. Shrimp pots are set much deeper than crab pots and they are set with multiple pots on the same ground line. We went out in front in the same general area where my pots were set and dropped their pots. While we were there, we pulled my pots and we got a mediocre haul of about 3 dozen shrimp.

Then my buddies left to head back to town and once again we had the dock to ourselves. We had intended to stay just the one night but now that we knew they were coming out again the next day to pull all the pots we decided to stay an extra night so that we could participate in pulling the pots.

We had another fire on the dock that night. I was out of "processed" firewood, but I went up on the logging road and scavenged enough wood to eke out another fire.

We had another relatively quiet night on the dock, except for the occasional booming of the ramp when the tide was moving.

In the morning my buddies arrived again about 9 AM, this time with a couple more people aboard. Hayden and I joined them on board, and we first went back into the salt chuck again to pull the crab pots.

Hayden helped on deck with pulling the pots, measuring the crabs, coiling the line, stacking the pots and helping in any way that he could. I helped (a little) by maneuvering the boat into position for pulling the pots.

As you can see, we got a pretty good haul of crabs in here.

After once again successfully transiting the entrance of the salt chuck we went back to the dock briefly to reorganize all the crabbing gear. Then we went out and pulled the shrimp pots. The crab pots are set in relatively shallow water, less than 100', so they were pulled by hand. The shrimp pots are set pretty deep, typically 300 - 500' of water, so a mechanical puller is used to pull them up. We had multiple pots set so it took some time to pull all of them. Hayden once again helped on deck in any way that was needed.

Once we got back to the dock we had to pop the heads off the shrimp. Hayden helped with that process as well. There were some pretty big shrimp in the baskets!

Once all the shrimp were processed and bagged my buddy gathered his gear and they pulled out heading back to town. In his fast boat it will take him about an hour. In my boat it takes about 3 hours.

After they left were went into high gear departure mode. We gathered up all the gear we had on the dock and got everything on board ready for departure. We pulled away from the dock at about 2:15 PM.

It was a very calm ride home, at first. Somewhere around the middle of Clover Pass it started to get pretty rolly. By the time we rounded Survey Point and Point Higgins it was genuinely rough. I was piloting from the flybridge and Jennifer & Hayden were down in the cabin.

When we got inside the speed limit zone in the Narrows near the airport I switched to the lower helm station to pilot into the slip. The lower cabin was a mess with gear and stuff thrown about everywhere.

We got into the slip without any issues at about 5:40 PM after logging 53.6 nm for this trip.