So a friend of mine booked a Salem house with PortAvilla on Upper Red, and we were told at the time of the booking no guides were available. He, my step-dad, and I arrived on Thursday just before 1 pm. We checked in at Roger’s and were taken out to the house after paying for a road pass and buying bait. We ended up marking 3 fish all afternoon/evening. We set up the rattle reels before bed and had an uneventful night.
We marked nothing Friday morning from the house, so I took my portable out and set up on a pressure ridge about 1/4 mile from where the shack was set. There were 2 groups of people jigging and running tip ups on the pressure ridge that wound up limiting out. I ended up with a few and missed a couple, and got my first taste of some URL action. My step-dad and buddy chose to stay in the shack due to the cold temps (step-dad is almost 60, buddy is 68 and just don’t handle the cold well anymore), and when I got back they had caught 2 fish. Nobody from PortAvilla had checked in with them, which I thought was strange. Someone came Friday afternoon and moved the Salem parked next to us, but once the house was moved (about 50 feet) they were gone.
Saturday morning I went in to Roger’s for a shower, and when I got back there was a guy named Dan who had stopped to see how everything was going. We told him that the fishing in the house was slow, but we had managed to scratch a few. I told him about the two groups that had limited out the evening prior and that I had caught a few at the pressure ridge. He offered to try and come back and move us and try to get us on fish, and we explained that we were going to pack up and leave a little early due to the extreme cold rolling in. We told him that we appreciated the offer, and that he was the first contact that we’d had with anyone from PortAvilla since we were dropped off. He said that someone was supposed to be stopping by every morning to empty the crapper (which after 2 days of use was nearly full), and ask if we were catching any fish. We explained that the only people we saw were younger kids just adding fuel to the generator, but nobody asked us if we needed anything or even so much as checked on us. We asked him about the Otter Train, which was advertised to be included in the cost of booking the shanty. He said that there were Otters set up, and that they would have been offered if anyone had bothered stopping and talking with us. Dan was more than a little upset, and shortly after he left someone came by and emptied the crapper.
I hitched up the Otter and headed back over to the pressure ridge where I had experienced some success the previous day. The temps were much colder, but that didn’t hamper the bite at all. I ended up catching my limit in about an hour, and threw 4 fish back. I returned back to the Salem just before dark and packed the truck and trailer up. As we were packing, we noticed the generator throwing some sparks, and the guys who were staying in the Salem right next to ours said that their heater wasn’t working. They had attempted to call PortAvilla, but nobody answered or called back. I tried calling, and both “emergency” numbers went unanswered as well. Temps were expected to hit -36°F overnight with the wind chill, and having a malfunctioning furnace in the shack was down right dangerous…
I’ll never book with these guys in the future. The impression that I got from the experience was that PortAvilla only cared about booking the shanty, and that actually serving the clients wasn’t important. Has anyone else had similar issues?
