End of Summer Alaska

After having to cancel a trip to Alaska in 2017, I was able to reschedule for late-August of 2018. This was more of a vacation than a fishing trip, as my daughter and I were joining my sister (who had a conference to attend) and her two kids. However, as much of the trip was taking place on the Kenai Peninsula I did have some time to get out fishing. The primary thing that I was hoping to do was catch my first Arctic Char as the Kenai Peninsula has several lakes with the Taranets subspecies (Salvelinus alpinus taranetzi). However, getting some fishing in for some salmon, Dollies and Rainbows with Valerie was also in the plans.

The first spot that we hit was a little stream where the Coho were running and it didn't take long to find a willing biter- one cast to be precise. However, with Valerie being just shy of her second birthday, we didn't spend to much time on the water as and instead redirected efforts to enjoying some streamside raspberries.

The Kenai River tributary

A first cast Coho Salmon and an excited Valerie

On our second day, I was able to break away for a bit and try my luck for the Arctic Char. I knew from the start that this was going to be a long shot as these Char usually hang out in the depths until early October, but as I was here I was going to try. 

The first spot I tried was Cooper Lake, which has a robust population of both Arctic Char and Rainbows. The conditions on the lake were beautiful and I did manage to get a couple of takes, but this was big water and I just couldn't connect with anything so I decided to relocate.

Cooper Lake

The second lake I fished was much smaller and is known to have a decent char population. However, it was accidently stocked with Rainbows destined for another lake a few years prior. This along with being shore bound proved to be the deal breaker with this lake. There were only a few spots along the shore where I could get a good cast in, and every cast resulted in a 8" Rainbow prior to the fly sinking deep enough to get down the to Char. However, you couldn't ask for a more beautiful spot and if I can pull an October trip in the future - and bring a float tube, I think that this lake will be a good candidate for finding an Arctic Char.

 

The Arctic Char lake

The final spot that we were able to fish before having to leave the Kenai Peninsula was on the Kenai River. I had fished this same spot a couple of years prior and found it to be lights out. This time the flows were significantly higher and the river was more crowded, however the sockeye were spawning and once I found a spot with some back cast room the fish were there just like before.

The Kenai River

Spawning sockeye salmon

A spawned out salmon

The Sockeye Salmon were in the river and starting to dig redds, so I fished beads imitating Sockeye eggs and just like my previous trip the first cast produced a nice fish.

 

A nice first cast rainbow - with a curious onlooker

After this first rainbow, the action did not slow down and I got a couple more smaller Rainbows before I started getting into a some nice Dolly Varden. These Dollies averaged 16-18" and while they didn't put on the same show of acrobatics that a Rainbow might, were scrappy fighters.

An egg eating Dolly Varden

Another Dolly Varden

A Dolly Varden starting to show its spawning colors

After couple of hours of fishing, it was time to call it quits and hopefully I will be able to schedule another trip to Alaska to check some more fish (2 subspecies of Arctic Char; Northern Dolly Varden and Lake Trout) off the native trout list in the future.

Fall on the Kenai Peninsula

During late September my wife Alexis and I had the opportunity to tag along on a business trip my sister had to make to Homer on the Kenai Peninsula in Alaska. Given that my sister was going to be busy with a conference, Alexis and I were able to get in a bit of fishing here and there. The first spot that we fished was on our drive out to Homer on the Kenai River. My buddy Chris had lived in Anchorage for a year and as such helped to point us to a good side channel. As Sockeye Salmon were still spawning, matching the "egg hatch" would be the ticket. Alexis had never done this type of fishing so once we found a likely spot, I did a quick cast to demonstrate how to fish a bead under an indicator. My indicator only floated about 10' feet before it dunked under the water and I had a fish on! After a quick fight, I brought a beautiful Rainbow Trout to hand.

The Kenai River side channel

A first cast Alaskan Rainbow Trout

Spawned out Sockeye Salmon

Alexis' first cast Dolly Varden

Next it was Alexis' turn and a drift through the same spot resulted in a beautiful Dolly Varden on her first cast. From here the fishing did not slow much and our only challenge was the fading daylight. However, right before we had to head out I hooked into something big, which turned out to be a beautiful 20"+ Dolly.

Hooked into a fish

My big Dolly Varden

End of the line for a for spawned out Sockeye

That Dolly was the perfect way to end a quick evening fishing outing and to start our Alaskan adventure. The next day in Homer we decided to take a boat across the bay to do a hike to the Grewingk Glacier in Kachemak Bay State Park. It was a nice calm morning, with several whale sightings on the ride over. 

A calm morning on Kachemak Bay

Once we disembarked on the boat and started along the beach, there were several sea otters hanging out along the shore. The hike was nice and mellow, traveling through a coastal forest to the lake in front of the glacier.

Sea otters

Grewingk Glacier

Alaska never ceases to amaze me as a State Park there could easily qualify as a national park anywhere else in the country. After visiting the lake we hiked over a ridge, where we were greeted with an amazing view of the bay, before descending to the dock and taking the boat back to Homer.

The bay from the ridge

The next day Alexis and my sister were spending sometime together, so I had a chance to make a solo outing to a nearby river, which has a run of Steelhead, as well as Dolly Varden. It was an absolutely flawless bluebird day and after our outing on the Kenai, I had high hopes for a good day on the water.

The river

The river was a classic freestone, with lots of great riffles and runs and within a few minutes I was hooked into a fish. By the fight, it definitely acted more like a char than trout, opting to stay deep and take a few runs, instead of showing any acrobatics. Upon landing it, my suspicions were confirmed and it was a beautify Dolly Varden, fresh in from the salt water.

A flawless Dolly Varden

Gotta love the pink spots

This proved to be one of those rare days, where the fishing exceeded my expectations. Every likely spot had several Dollies in it and the only problem was that if there were any Steelhead around I was never going to get past the Dollies to catch them. 

A Dolly starting to show its freshwater colors

I covered about a mile and a half of the river in a few hours time and while I never thought that this would happen by the end of the day I was tired of catching 16" to 18" fish, as pretty much every cast was resulting in a cookie cutter Dolly Varden. Given how great of a day on the water it had been I had no problem calling it quits on what had been an amazing trip.

A great day on the water and way to end the trip

An Alaskan Adventure: Part 2 Game On

On Wednesday things didn't quite go as planned however ,on Thursday we were able to get on our connecting plane and even though it was delayed by an hour for "technical" issues we finally made it to our destination. We got off the plane at around 1:00pm, got reunited with our waders and flies, got our rental van that would double as our tent for our stay and headed down to the river eager to make up for lost time. On the way to the river we got an Alaskan welcome by a Brown Bear that was working his way across a meadow.

An Alaska greeting...

The river

After the bear sighting, we made our way to the river, rigged up our rods and started hiking in search of some good looking water. After putting a few miles behind us, we spotted a good looking run and made our way down to the river. Upon hitting the water, we immediately spotted a few steelhead holding, definitely a good sign!! Blake got things kicked off for us and within the first half hour landed a beautiful chrome steelhead on a nymph.

Blake with the first steelhead of the trip

After Blake his fish, we hit a bit of a slow spell. The fish were there, but they just weren't overly grabby. However, Chris changed that as he threw on a big Dolly Llama streamer and stated stripping it across the pool. It didn't take long for this to grab the attention of one of the fish, about three strips as a matter of fact, and Chris was tied into a big albeit a little dark steelhead. The fish gave him a run for his money, but Chris won out and brought the buck to hand.

Chris' colored up buck

Although Chris did manage to get a few more fish to chase his fly and Blake hooked up with one other fish, things really slowed down so we decided to head upstream to do a bit of exploring. However, the rest of the day remained much the same, with me hooking and losing one and Chris getting another dark fish. Even with the extended hours of daylighting of the far north, before long we were losing light and it was time to head back to "camp," for dinner and some sleep.

Back on the trail

A great end to a great day... 10:00pm in the Alaskan spring...

With the end of the day upon us, we re-rigged our rods organized our gear and set our alarm for 4 AM to ensure that we would get our pick of spots on the river. As it always does, 4 AM rolled around very quickly and after gearing up we were on the trail again. While I hadn't landed a fish on Thursday, I was hoping that Friday would treat me a better especially being that we were the first ones on the river and there had been a good early morning tide promising fresh fish would be pushing in. After staking out our spot on the river, it didn't take long before Chris hooked into a fish. This fish was an absolute chrome rocket and didn't want anything with being hooked and tossed the hook after a short battle. As Chris recovered from his tussle, I moved into position and after a handful of casts my indicator shot under and I had a fish on! This fish was also a chromer and acted the part displaying all of the aerial acrobatics that these fish are famous for. I luckily got a good hookset and before long my switch rod over powered the fish and I brought my first Alaskan steelhead to hand.

My first  Alaskan chromer!

This same process played out again shortly after releasing this fish, with Chris tying into and losing another fish and me being fortunate enough to hook into another fish and have it stay buttoned long enough to being it in. Things didn't stop here either, as the wave of fresh fish continued to push in we continued to hook up and by 7:00 AM we had already hooked seven fish between us and I had personally brought three in and another right at shore. As the tidal push thinned out, we spread out with Chris moving upstream and getting chromer and another dark buck on the Dolly Llama and earning the nickname the "red dragon" slayer. Blake and I took turns fishing the honey hole for a while and he pulled a nice chrome fish out right before we regrouped for lunch.

Blake's chromer

Lunch was more of an excuse to rest the hole than anything else and of course it paid off with one of us hooking up within a few casts of getting back on the water, but losing the fish. There was a definite mid-day lull in the action and as such Blake and Chris decided to head downstream to try the pool below us. This move was apparently well timed as within a half hour the next albeit small tidal push of fish worked its way in. The numbers may have been smaller for this push, but the size of the fish was not and Chris managed to pull a beautiful 12 lb hen still carrying sea lice out of the hole.

Chris with a slab of a chromer

While I was pretty sure that either Chris or Blake had just gotten a fish, as I could hear all of the commotion, I didn't have enough time to figure out, as I also found myself tied into a fish. Right away I knew that this fish was bigger than others that I had gotten, and it quickly tore through most of my fly line and finally came shooting out of the water. Have just released his fish a couple of minutes prior, Chris came running upstream to help me land mine. When we got it in he had to do a bit of a double take because this fish was very nearly the twin of the fish he had just gotten. We snapped a few pictures of this beauty, then sent her back into the current and to continue her journey to start the next generation.

My big fish - note the sea lice by the anal fin

Although we did hook into a few more fish after this one, this would be the last one landed before we had to hit the trail at 3 PM to make our way back to the airport for our flight home. However, with over 20 fish hooked throughout the day and somewhere around 10 to hand I would have a very hard time complaining!

Alaska did not disappoint!

Our ride home... The salmon thirty salmon!

An Alaskan Adventure: Part 1 Juneau

This trip came into being about a month ago, when I got a call out of the blue from my buddy Chris asking if I would be interested in going up to Alaska for a three day steelhead excursion. The answer to that question was a no-brainer and as we got closer to the date Blake also decided to join us for our steelheading adventure. Once it was decided that we were going, we started gathering supplies and for the last month I have spent far more time than I like to admit at my fly vise. However, time always has a way of creeping up on you and before we knew it the trip was right in front of us.

The original plan was to fly out of SeaTac Airport on Wednesday, make a quick stop in Juneau, then continue on to our final destination giving us about two full days of steelheading. The only problem though was that we were flying stand-by and our original flight filled up so we were forced to take a later flight into Juneau and missed our connecting flight to the steelhead stream. This meant that we were stranded in Juneau for a day, which wouldn't be that bad of a thing as there are steelhead there too, except that all of our checked baggage including our waders and most of our flies continued onto to our final destination without us.

Juneau, Alaska

With no waders and only a handful of flies, we decided to head to the local fly shop (Juneau Fly Fishing Goods), to weigh out our options and see if there might be local fishing to be had. They suggested the mouth of a local stream which gets a decent early push of sea-run Dolly Varden feeding on salmon fry that we might have a chance to hook from shore without waders. So we grabbed a few local flies from the shop and headed out to the creek mouth. Here we had a bit of a lucky break. As a last minute impulse move I had tossed about a dozen sea-run cutthroat flies into my carry-on bag including a number of fry imitations. The most important of which was the Chum Baby.

Low tide at the creek mouth

When we arrived at the mouth of the creek, the tide was falling, but the only activity from feeding fish that we saw in the bay was a good distance off shore. To complicate matters the rocks on the beach were super slick and ones near the water tended to be a barnacle covered making casting a chore, due to the line getting stuck. However, the bay wasn't the only place to fish here as there was also a saltmarsh lake that floods with sea water at high tide and we could see schools of Dolly Varden going nuts feeding on salmon fry. The only problem was once again that they were off shore and we had no waders. However, that problem was quickly solved when Blake spotted a canoe at a cabin and we got permission to use it.

Getting ready to launch at the saltmarsh lake

With the combination of the canoe and chum fry patterns it was game time, and once on the water it didn't take long to get into our first Dolly.

A sea-run Dolly Varden

There were plenty of Dollies in the lake, the only problem was that they were very aggressive and we were having a hard time getting solid hooksets. We did manage to catch a few smallish fish, although I did have one on for a while that was likely 20" and even gave my 8wt a run for its money. We fished until the rain started getting a little to steady, then decided to change gears and go do a bit of sight seeing.

The Mendenhall Glacier

After fishing, we headed up to the Mendenhall Glacier to check out the impressive river of ice, then it was dinner, sleep and in the morning our plane was waiting for us! To be continued...