Late Season At Alaska West – 5 Reasons We Love It

Our season at Alaska West runs from the second week of June through the first week of September. The last couple of weeks of the season – from mid-August just into September – are what we’d call the late season.

Here are 5 reasons that we love the late season.

1. The fattest rainbows of the year. As you may have read here before our rainbows chow all summer on salmon flesh and eggs, and they just get fatter and fatter every day until the river freezes. If you want the fattest rainbows possible, you should come as late as possible.
2. Clowned-up dollies. The Kanektok is blessed with an incredibly prolific population of dollies, and in the late season you’re most apt to see dollies that are ‘clowned up’ in their spawning colors – orange bellies, neon spots, and leading edges on the fins that look like they were drawn on with a white marker.
3. It’s quiet! The Kanektok is a remote river by any reasonable standard, but these weeks just tend to be quieter than normal outside of Alaska West – and fewer people around is always a good thing.
4. The silvers keep on comin’. We close in the first week of September because it often starts to frost at night – but the fish don’t know that! Fresh silvers continue to enter the Kanektok after we’ve shut down. Sure, the late season silver fishing will include some colored-up fish, but numbers are still high and the chromers keep on coming.
5. It feels like fall. The days are shorter and the nights are chilly, and there’s just something special about fishing in the fall.

More Things We Like In Alaska

• The Kanektok River – 9 Reasons To Love It
• Why We Like Spey Casting
• Sage 690-4 Z-Axis – 5 Things To Like