Week 10 at Alaska West saw the return of quite a few long time guests. Mac and Greg Miller joined us again and as always brought a cooler full of duck and geese to add to our menu for the week. Jebb Curelop returned to put his late father’s great collection of fly reels to use, his father, Sid Curelop was a longtime guest of Alaska West and would truly be proud to know his son has kept the tradition going. John Amiro also came back again since he can never get enough of the great silver action we have on the Kanektok. Gary Davisson brought along his son Greg for a week of great fishing and meaningful father and son time. John Freeman Jr joined us again and brought along a few buddies to get in the action. Jim Jervis brought his buddy Bill Bakun, who hadnever fly fished before. Bill landed 25 silvers on the fly rod the first morning of the trip. Brian and Greg Palmer and Christopher and Grant Lee were two of the four father and son pairs we welcomed this week which made for a lot of good times for all.
The silver fishing this week was downright incredible. Tons of fresh fish pouring in on all tides added to the already massive numbers that were in the river from weeks prior. Pretty much any spot that looked even half way fishy had silvers, with some holes good enough to produce for hours. All fish were chrome and most had really bad attitudes which made for some fantastic takes on both wet and dry flies.
Most of our anglers were done silver fishing by lunch and went on to chasing bows and dollies for the afternoons. Since the chum, sockeye and pinks were in full spawn the trout and dolly fishing was very good with anglers able to catch huge numbers of dollies on beads, flesh and even dries like mice or small pink poppers. Gary and Greg Davisson were blessed with a couple really large bows this week while looking for Walter on the lower Kanektok. The lower river really started up this week with the next couple weeks being the best for large bows in this part of the state. The Arolik River also fished top notch this week with a great mix of silvers down low and great upriver sight fishing for bows, dollies and even a trophy grayling or two for those who were interested.
The weather this week was actually pretty good with some really nice days for all the trout fishing going on this week. We had some rain and wind, but the nice moments we had more than made up for them. It made doing shore lunch quite a bit easier though the major negative was that the bugs finally came out. The bugs had really been nonexistent up until this week, but we knew it was only a matter of time until the weather broke enough to let them do their work!
Check out pictures of the week’s epic fishing at our August 12 – 19 photo album on Facebook.
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