Week 3 at Alaska West welcomed back quite a few return guests along with some newbies to keep things fresh!
Andy Jensen stayed for another week so he could meet some of his friends like Frank and Yvonne Ogden, Tom Cook, Mike Scott, Joe Dudra and Gordy Phillips who have all been with us before. We also welcomed back George Cook (Spey Guru), Jon Magnusson, Phil Hinton, Phillip Walker, Stan Ratzlaff and Bill Whitfield. Our newbies this week were Adrienne Comeau, John and Andrea Warner and Lori Nicholson. Tom Pak also joined us again after a hiatus of many years.
The weather this week made us hold out for summer even longer. It stayed cold and cloudy most the week with some serious rainfall to the point that the river came up a bit during the week. It did not however hurt the fishing too much. Our guests stayed warm though since they all paid attention to our packing list, which mentions you should always bring the fleece along. Temps this week rose a bit and ranged between 50 and 60 degrees. River temps ranged between 47 and 55 through the week which is just about right for this time of year.
The fishing this week was a bit temperamental, but still quite good by most angler’s standards! We found the kings to be working the incoming tides to gain access to the river. This made the lower river high tide fishing a whole lot of fun. Quite a few very large kings were landed this week – some at tidewater and some up the river, even past the camp. Normally by this time of the season we are catching the kings throughout the river and this year was no exception. We also started to make the transition to targeting more of the other species coming up the river. Sockeye, chum and pink were all available this week; it’s just that some were in larger numbers than and easier to catch than others.
We also fished the Arolik the whole week with some really great days had on rainbows and even some kings were landed by those who tried. The upper river was gin clear and the bow bows were super hungry so using mice and sculpins was the name of the game. Quite a few gorgeous bows were brought to hand after attacking the happy mouse that went floating by. The fishing was very steady even though the weather could have been better. Our guests had a big part in why they kept catching fish in the tough weather – they just kept at it!
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