Send a bunch of cameras out every day with a bunch of guides on a river that’s loaded with fish, and you’re bound to get some pictures that are beautiful, some pictures that are heroic, some pictures that are artistic, and some pictures that are just, well, kind of strange. Garrett Sullivan and his friend…
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Alaska West
Spey Casting – Snap T / Circle Spey Basics
It’s spey casting video time. Whitney Gould makes an appearance today to walk us through the basic steps involved in making one of the most useful spey casts out there – the Snap T a.k.a. Circle Spey a.k.a. C-Spey a.k.a. Circle Cast. It’s a great cast that just happens to have a lot of names….
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Bear Highway
We actually don’t see that many bears at Alaska West. Seriously, our camp is located 6 miles from the mouth of a 90-mile river. The best fishing for the bears is further upriver on the spawning beds, where they’ve got easy access to an easy meal. But…there are some side channels and smaller pieces of…
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Photos Galore
We get lots of nice comments from our readers about the pictures on our blog. Thanks! We’re really lucky to work with an incredible group of photographers. Did you know that we’ve got dedicated photo gallery pages on our web site for each of our fisheries? Bring on the eye candy… Bahamas Photo Gallery Chile…
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Top 5 Mistakes Fighting Big Fish
At Alaska West and BC West we see a lot of big fish fought by our guests – we’re talking steelhead and king salmon here. Sometimes our anglers do a great job fighting the big ones. Other times…not so much. Fight hard, fight smart, and get it over fast! Top 5 Mistakes Made Fighting Big…
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Get It Down!
We’ve been beating the drum lately about the fact that flies that imitate salmon parts work really well when targeting rainbow trout in Western Alaska. We’ve also mentioned that dead drifts aren’t that important, but getting your fly down is. In the process of going through the 1,273,489 pictures from our summer season at Alaska…
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Getting In and Out of a Jet Boat
It seems pretty simple, but bad things can happen when people get in and out of boats carelessly! What’s the most common cause of broken rods at Alaska West? Anglers losing their balance on the way into a boat, resulting in errant boots impacting rods. By far. What’s the most common cause of (thankfully minor)…
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Tents? Cabins? Tent Cabins!
Pictured above is an ‘angler house’ at Alaska West. This is where our guests stay when they spend a week fishing with us. Is it a tent? Is it a cabin? We don’t know, so we call them ‘tent cabins’. Here are some things to like about our tent cabins. Daily housekeeping – they’re really…
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Why We Like Flesh Flies
We fish a lot of flesh flies for rainbows at Alaska West. Here are 5 reasons why. There’s always a flesh hatch. Our rivers get jammed with salmon biomass every summer, and when the salmon die, their flesh winds up in the river. It sticks around for a long time. Flesh hangs up on snags…
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Why They Call ‘Em Leopards
One of the coolest features about the amazing rainbow trout that we chase at Alaska West is their spotting. Patterns and coloration vary wildly, but it’s the massive number of spots that have earned these fish the ‘leopard rainbow’ nickname. We’ll take it. More on Alaska West Rainbow Trout Mike Mercer Caught One When to…
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