Fishing Reports

Here’s our end-of-season summary of 2009 at Alaska West.  For detailed reports on each week, click the links on the left.

The 2009 Alaska West season saw the return of most of the crew from the 2008 season.  Rick Sisler returned as operations manager for Alaska West after spending his first season managing Andros South.  Chris Price returned to take care of management on the maintenance end of the program and Ed Ward returned as head guide. Along with those three we welcomed back most of the guides and bar staff from the prior season which really made for some great times on our little island on the Kanektok.

Alaska West again enjoyed some of the best fishing on the planet during the 2009 season which started out with four straight weeks of killer king fishing on both single and double hand rod. In many parts of Alaska, the king fishing was quite dismal and some places had so few kings returning that the Alaska Department of Fish and Game deemed it necessary to close the fisheries.  Fortunately, the king run in the Kanektok, and for that matter, most of Southwest Alaska was at least at average return levels and sometimes above.  Our guests enjoyed spectacular days on the water chasing the mighty king salmon and learning how to throw the double hand rods to boot.  Guys like Marty Herman, Mike Opitz, Jack Thomas, Andy Jensen, Gordon Phillips, David Victor and many others have been joining us for years and will all attest to the quality of the fish and the rewards given to those who keep casting.

As many of you know we have been working hard to promote the use of double hand rods for our mighty run of king salmon by inviting up some of the best Spey/double hand gurus on the planet.  Each of the first four weeks of the season, we enjoy extensive clinics on a daily basis given by guys that have become legends in our field.  Jeff Hickman, Charles St. Pierre, George Cook, Brian Niska and our very own Ed Ward all spent time giving lessons to our guests interested in learning more about this type of fishing.

As we progressed through king season, we started to see quite a few chum and sockeye marching up the river a bit earlier than usual, partly due to great early season water conditions, but mostly due to above average runs of both species.  We saw more than a million fish pass our camp and most of them were within range of a fly rod somewhere along the way.  It’s pretty incredible to think about the biomass that enters this river every year and how lucky we are to still enjoy a run of salmon so large in a river so well suited for fly fishing.

Jon Baskin joined us for two weeks and after eight days of king fishing tied into a wily sockeye and soon found himself asking why he had spent so much time working at catching kings when the sockeye were such good fighters, much easier to catch, and quite tasty.

Once we were into July and past the brunt of the king season, we started to see a huge mix of species available to the fly. Guests were catching kings, chum, sockeye, pinks, silvers, dollies, rainbows and grayling on a regular basis.  By mid-July, we had seen the first silver and the first Grand Slam (all five pacific salmon on the fly in one day) of the season.  In late July, we enjoyed meeting a great group of guests from South Africa brought to us by Tom Lewin of Frontier Fly Fishing.  They came a long way for a fishing trip of a lifetime and soon found themselves in the middle of something you might see in the pages of National Geographic.  They proceeded to catch more salmon than they ever could have imagined along with the uncountable number of rainbows and dollies.  They all left with huge smiles and gracious remarks about the experience.

In August, we were inundated with the mighty silver salmon of the Kanektok.  Thousands poured into the river on every tide and as they did the river filled up to the point of stupidity.  Fish on every cast in some spots was not a joke and until the guests saw it they could not believe it.  Silvers on poppers, wet flies, pink flies and whatever other color you could come up with put fish in the boat and into the wax box without too much effort.  The strong run of silvers continued through to September.  After a good freshet from a Bering Sea storm in early September we saw the final push of silvers for the year which made for some very happy anglers to finish the season.

Trout fishing was very good throughout the season.  We started off with better than average river conditions for early trout and it just got better after that.  By mid July, the river was quite low and most of the large holes were easily accessible with the fly.  Needless to say, the big bows were brought to hand much earlier than usual.  There was a late July storm which raised the river level quite a bit and made the trout a bit tougher for a week or so.  The river came back down in early August and it was game on again.  By late August, we had seen quite a few bows over the 29″ barrier with a couple that could have gone over 30″.  Not bad for a river not known for “Big Bows”!  For many of the guests, just catching any rainbow is a pleasure and throughout the season we had guests catch an incredible amount on all kinds of flies with the mouse caught bows always being the most memorable, no matter the size.

Overall, we had a wonderful season of fishing with gracious guests and a hardworking crew which made for many memorable moments that we won’t soon forget.  We are already talking to many of our guests about plans for the 2010 season and we look forward to seeing many of you again next year.

Thank you, from the management and crew of Alaska West!!