Alaska's fishing charters come of age.

• Author: Schneider, Douglas
• Position: Fishing boat chartering for sport fishing - Industry Overview

... And experience the growing pains of competition and outgrown facilities.

Anchorage insurance salesman Ron Sayer loves to fish. Every summer, Sayer and his father Drew, from Salmon, Ida., visit Homer, the self-proclaimed Halibut Fishing Capital of the World, to search for the lunkers that lurk on the bottom of lower Cook Inlet. This year they caught a whale.

"I knew it was a big fish when my dad caught it," Ron Sayer says. "He's 76, you know, and it was too much for him, so he passed the rod over to me. We've caught halibut before, but never anything like this."

Whale is fish jargon for really big halibut. The Sayers' whale weighed in at 307 pounds on the scales of Silver Fox Charters, a longtime saltwater guiding outfit on the Homer Spit.

A whopper by any measure, Sayer's trophy halibut was among the largest flatsides landed on sporting gear in Alaska this summer. And had the Sayers purchased a $5 Homer Jackpot Halibut Derby ticket before leaving the dock, they could have won thousands in cash as well. The 1991 derby winner, Lonni Crum of Anchorage, claimed the $18,434 jackpot with a 304.75-pound halibut.

Alaska's unrivaled fishing opportunities play an important part in the vacation plans of many of the 500,000 people who come to the state each summer, according to the state's Division of Tourism. A large number of these vacationers find their fishing adventure aboard the rolling decks of one of the state's 500-plus charter boats.

But the part played by the charter industry in the state's tourism economy is not well understood, largely because tourism officials have never studied it. No one knows, for example, how many people actually take fishing charters in Alaska or the industry's worth.

"We don't have the level of knowledge on the charter industry that we would like," says Pete Carlson, development specialist with the state Division of Tourism. "There's probably a lot of people who take charters that come to Alaska on tours, cruise ships and the like. People visiting relatives and friends in Alaska, and Alaska residents also are a large part of the charters' business."

While statistics on the charter industry remain as elusive as this summer's king salmon run on the Kenai River, what is clear is that the charter fishing industry is growing. "It's like any business opportunity, you can't keep it a secret," says Douglas Coughenower, an agent of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Sea Grant Marine Advisory Program who keeps tabs on Homer's charter fishing industry.

Taking to Water. Coughenower estimates that since he last surveyed the industry in 1986, more than 30 new charter boats have come to Homer, bringing the total to more than 100 vessels. Seward, Valdez and Ketchikan also report increases in the...