It sure is! The mighty Kanektok is incredible all season long, but it’s the month of July that sees the greatest biomass increase of the year. By early July the river literally has fish overrunning every inch of it. Kings, chum, sockeye, pinks, sea-run dollies, resident rainbow trout, and grayling can all be caught consistently on the fly through the entire month of July. We also have silvers showing up consistently by the 25th of July, but most years we catch the first one between the 15th and 20th.
With silvers in the river by mid-July, anglers have a very good chance of catching a Grand Slam of salmon during the back half of the month. The Grand Slam consists of catching all five of the pacific salmon that enter the Kanektok. If you are really up to a task you can add in rainbows, dollies, and grayling for a Super Slam.
The Kanektok is a very user-friendly river to fly fish, especially in July, when the perfect storm of good river conditions coincides with the massive influx of salmon entering the system. The Kanektok should be at the top of any novice to the expert anglers bucket list. In just one average day of fishing in July, most anglers will have caught more fish than they have at home in years. You will learn a lifetime’s amount of fly fishing knowledge in just days fishing the Kanektok in July.
Fly fishing on the Kanektok at any time will accelerate your learning curve immensely, but the variety of July will give anglers a more rounded experience and on average a very high success rate for the target species, which is all of them!
Top-Water fishing is fantastic the entire month of July. “Mousing” for rainbows, dollies and grayling is a blast and extremely visual. Not much better than floating the upper river while pounding the banks and runs with a nasty mouse pattern. Another Top-Water activity we join in on is Popper fishing for chum, and it can be absolutely incredible at times, with consistent chases and grabs from chrome bright, fresh from the sea chum. By the end of the month we are catching silvers on poppers as well.
Spey rods welcomed! We love the spey rods and we are confident in catching fish with them throughout the season. July is great all month for targeting fish with a spey rod. We only need to adjust tactics and tackle per species to have consistent catches of multiple species on the big sticks. We use everything from micro-spey trout setups all the way to the big boys for kings.
July is also known for having the best weather of the summer and it also coincides with the best river conditions of the season. Nice weather and perfect river greeting the arrival of literally millions of salmon make July a special time at Alaska West. and we would love to make you a part of it.
This is why Alaska West has clients who fish with us year after year, season after season and we would love to make you a part of it. Contact us at info@deneki.com or call us at (907) 563-9788 for availability.
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