Week 4 at Alaska West brought us some international flare with guests from all over the world showing up on our doorstep!
It’s kind of funny that this week we had more guests from other countries than our own as we were about to celebrate our own Independence Day. It worked out just fine though, because we were joined by quite the group of gentlemen.
Joining us this week were guys like Brian Niska and his wily crew of veteran anglers from around British Columbia and other parts of Canada. Brian has been kind enough to join us for the last few years and offer his expertise at spey casting to all of our guests who are interested. This week was his first of two that he spent at Alaska West, and that’s after spending a week at BC West slaying Kings on the Dean River. We were also joined this week by Hayden Fish from the UK with a keen group of anglers looking for the “Big Pull” which is theKanektok King Salmon. The two Phils, Walker and Hinton also showed up this week for the first of two weeks chasing silver, of which they always seem to see a lot.
Our weather this week was questionable at times, but in the overall scheme of things it turned out to be pretty good, especially for chasing Kings. Temps ranged between 45 and 60 degrees most of the time with a lot of cloud cover and a bit of rain just to cleanse things. This is the kind of weather we would prefer for salmon fishing in these parts so we had nothing to complain about this week.
Fishing for kings this week was pretty good, but the guys did have to put in some casting time to keep the catching steady. The anglers did put some serious slabs on the beach this week and they were all covered in sea lice and chrome as can be. Kings are a tough animal to crack and it makes it even tougher when the river is inundated with record numbers of chum and sockeye right in the middle of the run.
The multi species fishing was off the charts this week due to the record runs and anyone that took advantage of it had some killer action. Many of the guests have Brian Niska to thank for the success they enjoyed on the water this week. Due to his endless patience he has brought even more guests to a higher level of fishing competency and it shows in the catch rate.
Trout fishing on both the Kanektok and the Arolik really started picking up this week with many an angler landing nice ‘bows during the week. Many were brought to hand with mouse patterns and leeches which made for some visually stimulating fishing! We also started to see a crush of dollies coming in with the salmon, all chrome and ready to smack just about anything put in front of them. From here on out most of our guests will spend at least some of time on the water chasing ‘bows and dollies.
Leave a Reply