Our first week of the 2011 season started off with a bunch of hard core king fishing guests looking forward to the freshest and hottest kings of the season. The anglers may have caught a few bows and a handful of chum this week as well, but they really came all this way to get a tug from the hottest piece of chrome king in western Alaska.
We had multiple return anglers from this week in 2010. Klint Borozan, Rob Elam, Chad Foster and Peter Tronquet all decided to join us again. These guys along with the rest of the new anglers made for a great group on the water. These guys have a lot of experience and patience which would pay dividends on the water. Overall the king fishing was good this week, though each guest had to work hard for them. Chad Foster got into a couple of the best fish this week with one tipping the scales to about 30lbs. A lot of jack and small adult kings were landed this week along with the first chum of the season. Justin Dawson, Bill Abshagen and Robert Sheley, who were all first timers on the Kanektok, each landed Kings this week. Justin Dawson just could not get enough and ended up staying another full week.
All our anglers were pretty vigilant in only using spey rods for kings this week, but we did have a couple guys break out the big single-hander’s for some slough fishing. Early season water levels dictate the king fishery a bit. If it’s really high the kings will be in the sloughs and the best fishing is on the single hand rods. If it’s low then the spey guys will be rocking the bars. And if it’s in between then you better have the arsenal if you want to have the best of both worlds. This year it was a bit on the lower side, so overall the bar fishing was the best option, but not the only one!
We also had a few anglers that fished the Arolik for some early season exploratory trout and grayling fishing. The river was in fine shape and the trout and grayling were pretty eager. The fishing was pretty good overall with some good upper river sight fishing. They were probably the first anglers to fish the river since some of our guests fished it last year in late August. Needless to say the fish they saw were grabby!
Our weather this week was pretty nice for early June. This time of year can be really awful, though most the anglers never mind since they are fishing. The temps this week were between 40 and 60 degrees, some rain through the week and a bit of wind as well. We had just enough sun to make it something special!
For a gallery of pictures from this week, have a look at our June 12 – 17, 2011 gallery on Facebook.
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