Alaskan Offshore Charter Fishing is Faster and Easier With Yamaha Outboards, Here's How

Meet Colby Witt, a Native Texan and life-long child of the sea with decades of fishing experience under his belt. He's the part owner and operator at Reel Alaska Fishing Charters. Based out of the Pacific Northwest rainforests of Ketchikan, Alaska, this team of two boats run by Colby and his buddy Scott makes the mystifying task of offshore Alaskan fishing look routine, almost second nature.

As a supplementary treat of sorts after a day riding Yamaha UTVs across the vast Tongass National Forest, the team at Yamaha wanted Colby and Scott to take a group of journalists out on the water to get a real taste of Alaskan sea fishing. When he's not at his real job as a Merchant Marine, Colby spends roughly four months of the year out on his boat, making between 80 and 120 fishing expeditions per year, hauling everything from Alaskan king crabs to some of the freshest, most delicious wild salmon you've ever laid eyes on.

When we tell you Colby's boat, in particular, is something very special, it's not even slightly hyperbole. Feast your eyes on this 2022 North River Seahawk Offshore XSL. With dimensions of 29 feet long minus the engines and a 9.6-foot beam, this all-aluminum hull didn't have to travel far to reach Ketchikan, with its maker calling Washington State its home.

By historic offshore charter fishing standards, this North River is nothing short of fully loaded. We're talking about an all-aluminum hull that's so lightweight that Colby claims it at least feels lighter than fiberglass to his mind. But it's strong enough to bash against Pacific waves with ease, day in and day out.

Optional goodies like a heavy-duty metal sliding door separating the cabin area and the rear deck, crab pullers, four heavy-duty reels, and a Garmin navigation, sonar, and comms suite run via a cabin center screen, inspire confidence in the Colby and his customers.

For the slightly eye-watering price of $2,300 for an eight-ish-hour jaunt of between ten and 20 miles off the shores of Ketchikan, you get to try your hand at a combination of a few distinct styles of offshore fishing. One half of the day is devoted to catching a few different types of wild Alaskan salmon, halibut, lingcod, rockfish, and maybe even a small shark or two if one swims past your line.

You can also try crab trapping in combination with either salmon or sea bottom fishing if that's more your thing. But let's be real; that's a good chunk of change for what's effectively an experience-based excursion. A great chance to get a deal on cheap wild Alaskan fish, this definitely isn't.

Regardless of the specifics, no part of the Reel Alaska Fishing experience would be possible without some considerable muscle at the back. This comes in the form of two 4.2-liter V6 Yamaha outboard engines, which, as Colby himself noted, are motors he'd trust like no other on the market.

"I've been running Yamaha since I built my first boat when I was 14 years old. It was an old 70-horse two-stroke on the back of my 18-foot flat-bottom boat out of Texas when I was a kid. I've never had anything else," Colby said of his steadfast loyalty to Yamaha outboards.

It goes without saying that charter fishermen have a very specific set of parameters that need to be maintained to have any hope of financial viability. As Colby explained, these Yamaha V6s do wonders in helping keep these criteria right where they need to be.

"We're looking for high horsepower and high speed at low RPMs for better fuel economy. With these Yamahas, I feel like the twin 250s that we have give a good fuel burn with the low RPMs and the aluminum boats that we run." Colby said of that killer combo of a strong, light boat and a roaring suite of engines.

"We were getting anywhere form 1.6 to 1.7 MPG on the higher end. So for us as charter fisherman, we always want to get more bang for our buck. Of course we want to go faster and have more time out on the water, but we also want to save on fuel. We're always looking for the best profit margins we can get, and Yamaha provides that for us," Colby noted. With its new lightweight cowling and plasma-fused sleeveless cylinder walls that are harder than steel, as you find in some sports cars, there's some real engineering know-how behind these engines.

"We were only running 4,300 to 4,400 RPM when we were out on the water. Maxed out, you're getting up to 5,400 RPM if you need something to get you where you out of a situation that you could get into in a rough weather situation." Colby said of the sheer engine power available to him over the ocean.

"It always feels like there is an extra 30 to 40 percent throttle left if you need it; it's just always there." But sometimes, it's not the twin 4.2s jutting five feet past the rear of the boat, but rather the 432-cc, 25-horsepower, high-thrust kicker motor that helps save fuel in the open ocean.

"We use the kicker motor every day just about to keep up the profit margins higher because we're not putting as many hours on the mains. We do all our maintenance under warranty at an authorized dealer." Colby remarked about the unique relationship between Alaskan charter fishermen and their Yamaha engine suppliers. "I've personally talked to our Yamaha dealers even about the routine little things about maintaining the boat. They can always point you in the right direction, and they're always there for you when you need them."

So far as Colby says, a combined 500 horsepower between the two main outboards is more than sufficient for his purposes. But he would be curious to see how the slightly-tuned 300-horsepower variants improve performance. Even so, it's safe to call Colby's boat and engine combo right in the sweet spot of speed, profitability, and reliability.

With such a light aluminum hull and fuel economy that's actually pretty decent for an 11,000-ish-lb boat, favorable power-to-weight makes up for any perceived lack of power. Even loaded with fuel, water, and humans, this boat's optional extra wet storage bays for added fish storage stay chocked full of sea loot over 100 times per year and in the span of only four months.

"With North River, you look at the quality of the builds, and I think they have some of the best-built boats out here. There are other good ones, of course. But bar-none, their finished product is better, in my opinion." Colby said of his utmost confidence in his North River boat.

"They started out with smaller boats, 12-footers and such, and now they do custom builds for the Lucky Boy team up to like, a 45 or 47-footer with quad Yamaha 425s on the back. They're absolutely amazing boats, and the sky's the limit as far as I can tell." Colby plans to go through as many sets of Yamaha 4.2s every 1,500 to 2,000 operating hours as it takes to keep this boat running long-term.

It'd take a pretty penny for him to part with this North River. After a surprisingly pleasant and smooth trip out in the North Pacific, where it felt like the rockfish were biting before the line even hit the bottom, we can say that Colby doesn't need a bigger boat, unlike in Jaws. Quantifying how many flash-frozen one-pound fillets we all went home with is hard. But I personally stopped counting after about a dozen. With better macros than most of the store-bought stuff, I should be strong enough to wrestle a grizzly pretty soon. It also tastes awesome, to boot.

But is an expensive but undoubtedly unique and special fishing charter like this worth it? Well, it got me to get over my trepidation about failure when fishing. Nowadays, I find myself looking at fishing charters in my neck of the woods. Only then did I realize just how good of a deal Colby and his team offered up in Ketchikan. I'll be back. It's only a matter of time now.

Many thanks to the Destination Yamaha PR and Reel Alaska Fishing Charter team for allowing me this incredible fishing opportunity. As a lovely little side-adventure to our business in the forests of Ketchikan, it couldn't have gone any better. I only wish my body didn't think it was still at sea for about 12 hours after we disembarked. But hey, that's on me, not them.