We’ve said it many times before, but we love fishing giant flies for our trout in western Alaska. Some might assume that that’s because we subscribe to the ‘big fly, big fish’ theory of fly selection.. However, in our neck of the woods, abundant food sources and a short growing season lends itself to trout,…
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Trout
Trout Fishing – Solving the Riddle
Last week we ran a post asking you, our readers, what you’d like to read about on our blog. We received a bunch of great comments and questions, one of which is the topic for today’s post: “When things (flies, techniques) aren’t working, how do you solve the riddle?“ There are an uncountable number of variables present…
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Trout Lies – Presenting to Submerged Structures
Today’s tip falls within the ‘common mistakes we see a lot of’ category. Most of us are well aware that any in-river structure (rocks, logs, snags, tundra clumps, ect.) make for potential holding lies for trout. Any object able to break up the speed of the current provides the opportunity for trout to hold comfortably in…
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Sight Fishing for Trout – 3 Tips
2016 brought higher than average water levels to our home river at Alaska West, greatly improving our opportunity to target trout in one of our favorite ways – Stalking them on foot in smaller, intimate, side channels and sight fishing for them! We’ve ran a few posts in the past on some tips for sight…
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Reading Trout Water – Fish the Transitions
If you haven’t noticed, we love fly fishing for trout, and while our trout might behave differently in western Alaska than trout found in more ‘classic’ trout streams, the fact remains; They’re still trout! Thus, they’re often found in the same types of water. Successfully reading trout water is by far one of the most studied…
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5 Advantages of High Water
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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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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Eric Robbin’s Nymphing Rig
Last week, we presented you a clever way to rig up when digging deep for western Alaska rainbows shown to us by Alaska West guide Eric Robbins (in case you missed it, check it out here!). In fact, we liked it so much that we asked him to give us all the nitty gritty details of…
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Alaska Style Nymphing with Palsa Pinch-On Strike Indicators
We love fishing dry flies for trout as much as the next guy (ahem, that means rodents in our neck of the woods), but the fact remains that the a vast majority of a trout’s diet actually exists sub-surface. Therefore, if catching a lot of fish is your prerogative, nymphing is hard to beat. While…
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3 Slack-Line Presentations Every Trout Angler Should Know
As most effective trout anglers know, a well executed drift is far more important than a perfect cast. Whether we want our fly to drift naturally in the current, or swing through the water column at a particular depth, this is best achieved by mending – That is, repositioning the line on the water after the…
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