Here is a synopsis of a couple days in Alaska:
Travel:
Thursday I flew out of Denver. I flew Frontier direct and landed in Anchorage at 10 p.m. My buddy Kevin was there to scoop me from the airport and after a Kodiak nut brown ale and a little catching up with Kevin and family, it was time to go back to the airport to get the other guys. Jeff D. was delayed in Minnesota and had to hole up for the night but Warren and Scott flew in on Alaska airlines and touched down at 2 a.m. After caffeinating up with several Starbucks doubleshots we drove down to the cabin and prepared to do battle with the salmon on the Russian river. Got to the cabin at 5:30 a.m. Friday morning and drove to the river by 6:30 Friday morning.
Friday morning 7/29:
A beautiful day with temps in the upper 60's and clear skies. We landed on a few pods of reds (sockeye) at the Russian and limited out in a few hours. Warren and Scott got the hang of the Kenai flip and both caught lots of fish. I like this river because the fish keep moving up all morning. The secret is to get there early before the light is too bright. Brighter light means fish hide in strong currents or shoot up the river so fast you can't catch up with them. We parked at Pink salmon parking lot and walked down to the river and stayed in one area the whole time.
After a quick fillet session we drove back to the cabin to process our 9 fish. We ate a quick lunch, geared up the drift boat and launched at Sportsmans and floated to Jim's landing. The fishing was sparse for trout because the reds had not yet made it to the upper river yet but we managed to boat several fish. Along the way we had wildlife sightings of a brown bear, black bear, eagles, and a moose. What a great wildlife day. Jeff D. and Kevin were driving down to the cabin to meet us so around 8 p.m. we headed back to Kevin's cabin for a great dinner of barbeque ribs, twice baked potatos, salad, bread, and Alaskan ambers. Kevin's family was down as well so we visited with them and went to bed around midnight since we had been up for 40 hours already.....our motto for the rest of the trip was sleep when you are dead as we averaged 4-5 hours of sleep per night!!!
Saturday 7/30
Another early morning at the russian for a quick limit or Reds. We headed back to the cabin to vacuum seal and freeze the salmon. With all the anglers in Alaska now we headed down to Soldotna and launched 2 drift boats with 3 anglers in each. Scott,Warren, and myself in 1 and Jeff D.,Kevin,and Teddy in another. We caught fish immediately after putting in and after finding the magic fly,proceeded to catch lots of trout and dollies that day.
Warren was the first to hook a monster, behing some spawning kings. The fish surfaced three times before I saw that it was a huge trout with it's pronounced stripe. After a quick explosion the fish broke off to leave Warren shaking in his wading boots. These fish are big and hard charging so Warren got a little education on how to handle big fish. It didn't prove enough as he hooked 2 more in the 30" category without landing them. We ended up boating over 125 fish between the two boats...A banner day. The rest of the week was eventful and exciting with some injuries,mishaps,and almost missing our flight out but I will save those stories for another day.
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