The third week at Alaska West started out by welcoming back a bunch of great friends to the Kanektok.
Photo: Cameron Miller
Guys like Jon Bengtson, Bob Davids, Jon Magnussen, Gary Thayer, Joe Dudra, George Cook, Raz Reid, Frank Ogden, Jim Gilmore and Paul Leslie-Smith. About half of our guests were new to the Kanektok, but it did not take long before they became part of the family. Kevin Hull, Bill Powell and Martin Malmsten were among the new guys who experienced life changing events while fishing this week.
Bill Powell’s first king to hand was a spotless 30 pound fish that he released back to the river so she could finish her journey. Martin landed a 40+ pound king that he may never surpass, no matter how hard he tries. Kevin Hull caught all the available species of fish on the Arolik along with quite a few rainbows on the mouse. He was speechless after his week of fishing, but his smile said everything.
The weather was quite nice the whole week though we would have preferred to have a bit more cloud cover to keep the king fishing more consistent. Temps ranged from lows of 50 to highs of 70 towards the end of the week. We had very little wind through the week which made for some comfortable spey casting for the new guys, but it did bring the bugs to the forefront which heightened our bug dope consumption.
The fishing was quite good through the week with kings caught on spey, single hand and back trolling gear. The sockeye started the push upriver this week as well so quite a few of the guests took advantage of the sunny afternoons to put a few of these beautiful fish in the box. Along with the sockeye parade we had tons of chrome chum, a few pinks and the uncountable number of dolly varden right along with them. Fishing a bead through the salmon would produce some really large dollies for anyone that wanted to take a break from the salmon. The trout fishing also took off this week with some really nice upper river fish being landed on sculpins, leeches and a few with mouse patterns as well. The Arolik produced the best trout fishing with some epic days of mousing for the famed ‘leopard bows’.
George Cook ran the new guys through the paces of “Spey Casting 101″ while tuning up some of the guys that have been doing it for a while. Most everyone was in the game from the start, so along with learning they were catching some fish as well, which is exactly why they came this far. We hope to see you all again next year for some more fun on the Kanektok (and the Arolik).
Our week 3 haiku:
Tough fishing today
Salmon do not like the sun
Hey! Maybe some trout?
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