Over the past few seasons, mild winters and reasonably dry summers have made for some low water conditions on our home river at Alaska West. However, this year we’ve been experiencing significantly higher water levels of late, and we really dig it! Due to a few substantial rain (and even hail) storms, we’ve seen a couple…
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Rapids Camp
Watch Your Fingers!
Just a friendly reminder, the next time you’re handling a whole bunch of silver salmon, watch those fingers! Most anglers are aware that certain species of Pacific salmon (especially chum salmon) can have some pretty gnarly teeth during certain phases of their lifecycle. However, contrary to popular belief, all five species of Pacific salmon actually have…
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Flesh Hatch
The flesh fly is a staple in any Alaskan trout fly box. Throughout the majority of the summer, our trout love to gorge themselves on chunks of salmon flesh – Big flesh, small flesh, fresh flesh, dead flesh.. You name it, there’s a time and place for each. That’s ‘matching the hatch’ in our neck of the…
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Alaska Mini Gallery – Abe Blair Edition
Every once in a while we like to run a mini-gallery of photos here on our blog – A small collection of photos, some with a theme, some not so much, but generally somehow related to fly fishing. However, it’s been a while since we’ve put together a mini gallery, so today we right that…
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Fighting Fish – Make ‘Em Earn the Reel
‘Tis the season for fighting fish! August in Alaska brings fast paced action for big feisty fish, and that means there’s no shortage of practice for fighting (and hopefully landing) fish. During this part of our season we see hundreds (yes, hundreds) of fish fought each week, and with that we’re able to get a good idea…
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Happy Hump Day
It’s hump day today! And, it’s a humpy year here at our lodges. So, naturally we felt it necessary to present you with a cool photo of a humped out pink salmon caught by Alaska West guest, Worth McAlister. Pinks return to our rivers in force every even-numbered year. We get a few here and…
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Whitney Gould’s Silver Swinging Rig
When it comes to fly fishing for silvers, it’s hard to argue against the effectiveness of stripping ridiculously colored streamers with a single handed 8-9 weight fly rod. However, one of our favorite things about silver season is that we’re fortunate to be able to target fish using a whole bunch of different methods, thus…
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Bring on the Mayhem
Silver mayhem that is! Over the last couple weeks we’ve started to see the first signs of our annual run of silver salmon at both our Rapids Camp Lodge and Alaska West operations. From here on out, each day brings more and more fish into our systems, and it won’t be long until our rivers are…
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The Ready Position – Alaska Style
Fly fishing for bonefish means always being ready, and those of you who have joined us at Andros South know exactly what we’re talking about. In fact, we’ve written many times before about the importance of a good ‘ready position‘ on the flats – an ample supply of line on the deck, a decent length off the…
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50 Shades of Grayling
Today we present you with a pretty cool photo of what we think is one of the most under appreciated, yet most stunning fish in Alaska, the Arctic grayling. If you thought grayling were nothing more than a drab gray fish with a big dorsal fin, think again! It’s been a while since we showed…
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