Tidal Charts Alaska – Indian Anchoring
June 23rd, 2008 at 9:57 pm (Coastal Bear Hunting)
Here are a couple of bear hunting tips regarding the ocean and tides. This will be helpful if you happen to be doing your black bear hunt with a boat and are subject to the Alaska tides.
A huge part of our Alaska bear hunts is the tide. Part of the reason that we chose the Salmon Lake Cabin on Prince of Wales Island, Alaska is because there is no tide on the lake….obviously. We had looked at other cabins in the Petersburg, Alaska area including, Big John Bay Cabin and the Tower’s Arm Cabin
which would have been great for a fall Alaska bear hunting experience, but the low tides would not allow a float plane to land on the date we had to leave. It would actually be possible, but the pilots and biologists in the area strongly recommended against it.
The tides are posted well ahead of time, so if you have the flexibility I recommend that you plan your Alaskan bear hunt around them. There are many places you can get tidal charts, here is one of them. You can select your area, for example, this is one of the Ketchikan, Alaska area. Just select the month and be sure to notice there are two high tides and two low tides. They occur about every six hours. Print it out and take a copy with you (waterproof it beforehand). imitrex ad teacher
On our first trip to Petersburg, Alaska we kept getting the same advice from different people and it was this. Be Patient. The tide comes and goes and you can’t do a whole lot about it. Many, many people have spent long cold nights stranded because their boat was high-centered. At that point all you can do is wait….believe me, we got high centered more than once. When the tide decides to come in and out it happens fast, so be prepared.
We did notice that the bear hunting was better during low tide though. These Alaskan Black Bears would come out and eat the long grass at that time.
There is a method called Indian Anchoring that we used to help work around the tides. Here’s how it works (this is difficult to describe without an image, but I’ll do my best. I’ll try to find or make an image later.)
1. Tie a long second rope to your anchor.
2. Place the anchor on the tip of the boat.
3. Make sure your main anchor line/chain is long enough to touch the bottom.
4. Push the boat out to the area where you’d like to anchor it.
5. When it reaches the ideal spot, jerk the second line which should pull the anchor off the boat dropping it to the ocean floor.
6. Tie the second rope to something secure and when your ready to embark again just pull the boat to you using the second rope.
Sometimes the tide is too high when you use the Indian Anchor method and if you want to retrieve the boat at a very low tide than there is a good chance you will be high centered or, if you’re lucky, you’ll be in very shallow water that you can just walk up to almost without getting wet.
Couple things to remember. On step 4 keep in mind that you need to be holding the second rope, or you’ll lose your boat. Also, make sure you have a long main anchor line or you could submerge your boat at high tide.
