Week 3 at Alaska West welcomed back another great group of past guests along with some first-timers as well. The two Phil’s, Phil Walker and Phil Hinton, came all the way from the UK again. Jim Jervis (Jim will be back again in August) and Rob Hess came back again. Bob Davids was able to make it back again for another go at some killer king action. Bill Whitfield, Stan Ratzlaff, Peter Laskier and George and Karl Bruce all joined us again for more shots at king madness! We also welcomed a large contingent of anglers from the UK this week which made for some very fun banter on the river and at dinner.
The fishing this week was very consistent for kings, chum, and bow’s. Most of our anglers were here to target the kings and thankfully the kings were happy to accommodate our wishes. Everyone landed kings this week with a few anglers really tearing it up! The size of fish we saw this week was above average, but the overall numbers were right about average. No huge numbers landed any one day, but it was consistent through the entire week. Chums were targeted a bit with anglers able to land as many as they would like. Sockeye were seen rolling into the river this week as well with a few of them incidentally hooked while guests were targeting kings.
Trout fishing started picking up this week with some large ones landed on the Arolik while being targeted. A couple very large bows were also landed on the Kanektok while anglers were searching for kings.
Tom Larimer of Larimer Outfitters in Hood River, Oregon was our spey guru for the week and he spent a bunch of time getting guys tuned up for the week at hand. Quite a few of the guests took him up on some training and were able to see immediate results. Tom fishes year round in Oregon and Washington and has been joining us for a few years now as the week 3 Spey Instructor. Tom is versed in many ways of the spey and guides year round so he is always in tune!
The weather this week was straight up western Alaska in late June! Bad and good all mixed together. We saw it all this week, a couple of really nice days and a couple of really not so nice days! That mixed with a couple of average weather days made for some full dry bags to stay prepared for the
varying weather.
For a more pictures from the week, check out our June 24 – July 1, 2011 gallery on Facebook.
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