Thursday, August 19, 2004
From doormats to barn doors
Bill Cochran
Recent columns
You might say that Greg Sutter’s business has gone from doormats to barn doors. We are talking fishing here.
My wife, Katherine, and I recently boarded Capt. Sutter’s 31-foot Tomahawk II at Homer, Alaska, where a 4.5-mile-long spit pokes like a crooked finger into Kachemark Bay, offering sheltered mooring for several hundred fishing boats. The locals like to say, “This is as far as you can go without a passport.”
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Capt. Greg Sutter hoists 40-pound halibut landed by Bill Cochran; Katherine Cochran caught this king salmon. |
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A 7-pound flounder will get you backslaps and a trophy fish citation in Virginia, where such a catch is called a doormat.
In Alaska, we caught halibut up to 40-pounds, a nice fish until you learn that the leader in the Homer Halibut Derby was more than 300 pounds heavier. That’s a lot of sole! The big ones are called barn doors, for good reason. Some reach up to 8-feet long.
Sutter began his guiding career on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, working out of the seaside village of Wachapreague, where a billboard proudly declared “Flounder Fishing Capitol of the World.” The quality of the fishing made that boast difficult to dispute during much of the time Sutter handled boats there, from the early ’70s to the mid-80s.
Just after that, the fishing fell on a period of hard times, but Sutter was gone by then, earning a degree in finance from Old Dominion University and moving to Hampton Roads. Later he was in California with Great Western Bank. He was a businessman wearing a suit and tie with his back to the sea, but he remained a fisherman at heart.
“Life is too short not to do what you love to do,” he said.
So he headed for Homer in 1995, where the whole world evolves around fishing, where along dusty sidewalks you can see halibut being photographed, being filleted, being cooked, being eaten, being eyed by an eagle flying overhead, being trucked away by FedEx. And there is a sign that says “Halibut Capitol of the World.”
Within two days of arriving in Homer, Sutter was working on a fishing boat; in two weeks he was guiding; in two years had had his own charter boat.
“I didn’t realize it until I got back into this how much I missed it,” he said.
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| Homer, Alaska, is the mooring site of hundreds of fishing boats. |
It is a good life, where Sutter works deep, cold water that has a backdrop of craggy, snow-covered Kenai peaks, where there are whales, otters, seals, ducks, seabirds, moose, volcanoes, glaciers, forests, fields and unbelievable tides of 20 feet -- a miniature of the entire state. And there are salmon.
The halibut and salmon are the big draw. We fished for halibut one day and silver and king salmon the next. Both offered outstanding, arm-aching fishing. Our biggest salmon was just under 40 pounds.
You aren’t on his boat long before you realize that while Sutter is a product of the East, he is an accomplished Alaskan guide, whose cell phone and radio crackle with questions from other guides.
“A fish is a fish, no matter where you find him -- Virginia or Alaska,” he said. If you have gone to school on flounder off Wachapreague, you’ve earned a degree on how to catch halibut in Alaska. Only you probe deeper water, use a lot bigger hooks, like 18/0, and carry a gun to shoot the big ones before you heave them aboard. They can break your leg as quickly as they can break 100-pound line.
“They are the most aggressive fish I’ve ever seen,” Sutter said, attempting to subdue one as it crashed about on the deck.
Sutter’s fishing season is a late April to mid-October. You ask him the peak time to come and he will tell you: “The best time to get here in the summer is whenever your plane lands.”
When Alaska becomes a cold cocoon of darkness during the winter months, Sutter heads for Florida for free-lance boat and fishing work. It sure beats a dead-end job with a bank, he will tell you.
Check Sutters “Captain Greg’s Charters” Web site for additional information: www.CAPTGREG.com.
