Heli-Fishing Offers a Unique Fishing Experience

A retired executive with more than two decades of managerial experience, Jeffery Scott Fraser sponsored a number of new business enterprises over the course of his career. Jeffery Fraser spends part of his time managing Tsaina Lodge in Valdez, Alaska, which offers a wide variety of adventures into the Alaskan wilderness. Guided activities include heli-fishing, a sport that provides anglers with the opportunity to ride in a helicopter as they travel to remote fishing locations.

Heli-fishing offers an experience unlike most fishing expeditions. Helicopters take anglers to remote and untouched regions of the Alaskan wilderness while delivering a bird’s-eye view of the country’s lush landscape. It thus enables anglers to fish in areas inaccessible by boat and too far to trek to on foot.

For detailed information about heli-fishing opportunities at Tsaina Lodge, visit tsainalodge.com/activities.html.

The Pacific Halibut

Jeffery S. Fraser is a retired executive who divides his time between Wyoming and Alaska, where he manages Tsaina Lodge in Valdez. Since he retired, Jeffery Fraser has picked up a number of hobbies, such as fishing. Alaskan waters are home to a vast number of fish species, including the Pacific halibut.

A large flatfish up to 9 feet in length and weighing approximately 500 pounds, the Pacific halibut resides along the continental shelf from Northern California to the Bering Sea in Alaska. It has a diamond-shaped body and may live for up to 55 years.

The Pacific halibut is a migratory species. The fish travel great lengths to reproduce, and females can spawn anywhere between 500,000 and 4 million eggs depending upon size. Their annual migrations take them back and forth between their shallow summer feeding waters and the deeper winter waters where they lay their eggs. Halibut larvae begin their lives upright with eyes on either side of their head, although the left eye begins to migrate to the right side when the fish reaches about an inch in length.

Pacific halibut serve as a major sport fish in Alaska, along with salmon. Anglers may engage in guided and unguided sport fishing for halibut, although they must remain in compliance with fishing regulations set forth by the International Pacific Halibut Commission and the North Pacific Fishery Management Council each year. Fishing regulations determine the number of halibut anglers may harvest in order to keep populations healthy.

Thompson Pass - Destination for Generations of Sports Enthusiasts

Since their purchase in 2011, Jeffery S. Fraser and his wife have enjoyed rebuilding a luxury winter sports lodge in the spirit of the historic Tsaina Lodge near Valdez, Alaska. The old Tsaina Lodge had served as a popular low-key roadhouse for generations of sportsmen. Jeffery Fraser and his wife preserved as many components of the historic structure as possible, incorporating them into an upscale, contemporary Tsaina Lodge designed to welcome today’s adventure travelers.

The lodge is situated in an avalanche-safe area in the north shadow of Thompson Pass, the snowiest location in the state. On average, more than 550 feet of snow falls in the pass annually.

Thompson Pass is also the gathering point each spring for many of the world’s most accomplished and daring helicopter pilots, skiers, snowboarders, and other lovers of extreme winter sports. The 2,800-foot-high pass serves as their only land entree to the rugged glories of the Chugach Mountains beyond.

For generations, Thompson Pass has drawn legions of anglers to the lakes, rivers, and streams that crisscross the lands around it. The Tsaina River is particularly known for its wild rapids.

In 1899, Army Captain William Abercrombie named the area in honor of Frank Thomson, a native of Pennsylvania. While Thomson spelled his name without a “p,” Abercrombie’s map gave it the added letter, and this is the spelling currently in use by the United States Geological Survey. The pass had already been long known to the native Ahtna people.

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