News

october

Posted on | by Kodie Kowitz

For the last few weeks of season, we spent the majority of our time targeting rainbow trout on the swing using a two handed spey rod with streamers.

The weather can be a questionable factor this time of year as we enter the fall season. There was a few days where we were breaking ice off of guides and while those days made for some slower trout fishing, it didnt take long for the bite to turn back around. 

It seemed like the colder days produced a morning and/or an evening bite and was fairly quiet in between. Overall, we had great success targeting trout on the swing our last couple weeks of season and we had some fantastic days that produced high numbers of trophy rainbow trout through out the day.

We spent the majority of our days fishing the Naknek for trophy trout as the salmon have spawned out of the smaller streams. 

This fishing just reminds us of why the Naknek is largely considered the best rainbow trout fishing in all of Alaska.

september

Posted on | by Kodie Kowitz

Early September still produced some good Silver Salmon fishing.

This time frame can also provide fantastic rainbow trout and dolly varden fishing in Katmai National Park and Becharof wilderness. 

Arctic Char are also showing up in a couple remote locations across Bristol Bay. Arctic Char are normally low numbers fish and worked hard for. The work usually pay big rewards as the average fish is high 20″ and 30″ plus fish aren’t uncommon. 

august

Posted on | by Kodie Kowitz

It’s a Pink Salmon year and the numbers of them entering the river is insane. You can catch as many of pinks as you could possibly ever want to in a day and THEN SOME. It’s impossible to have a slow day of salmon fishing when the pinks are here!

The Silver run didn’t last as long as it normally does and the numbers weren’t as high as last year but clients are still hooking limits. Whether they’re fishing flies or gear.

The rainbow trout fishing on the main river is a bit slower in the first couple of weeks as our clients are focused on wanting to target salmon on the Naknek and fill their fish boxes to take home. 

The last couple of weeks of August the sockeye are full spawn, beads and flesh flies both became extremely effective. Trophy rainbow trout are being caught daily.  

We are using these techniques now on the smaller streams throughout the Katmai and Becharof wilderness. These trips are mostly fly out, where we are catching high numbers of dolly varden, rainbow trout and grayling.

july

Posted on | by Kodie Kowitz

July gave us the largest in bay sockeye salmon run in history. In a world where everyone always likes to get stuck on doom and gloom it’s great to see a fishery doing better than ever. 

King Salmon fishing started strong with good numbers on both fly rods and conventional gear. As the season continued, numbers slowed down making it a below average year overall. We believe a major factor was the incredibly high rainfall and waters we had during the king season-making them difficult to target.

Rainbow trout fishing was steady throughout the month. July is a fantastic for a variety of fishing styles. Multiple species can be caught by streamers, mousing, dryfly, bead fishing, nymphing and even spey fishing. The big rivers and small creeks are all fishing really well.

Grayling were plentiful in several of the small streams we do on fly out trips. 

The pike fishing was also excellent.

june

Posted on | by Kodie Kowitz

As always our season opened with the June 8th rainbow trout opener. Our first week produced some excellent rainbow trout fishing with trophy fish coming to hand most days. 

Mid June gave us some very solid dryfly fishing for both rainbow trout and grayling. A few surprisingly large rainbow trout were tamed on small dry flies. 

Late June begins with the start of the world’s largest Salmon runs. King Salmon are the first to show followed closely by the Sockeye Salmon. We also found some fantastic rainbow trout and Northern Pike when taking a break from salmon fishing. 

Fishing Report 8/21

Posted on | by Kodie Kowitz

Silver Salmon fishing has been absolutely great with limits of Silver Salmon caught daily. Catching them has been possible with both Fly and Spin Tackle on the Naknek river and its tributaries as well as the Alagnak River.

Fly out fishing in remote creeks has been on absolute fire. Some of the most beautiful Dolly Varden and Rainbow trout of the year being caught right now. Mostly catching Fish on beads but also streamers and mouse patterns are getting the job done.

Rainbow fishing on the main river has been good to great with low numbers or Kings spawning leaving the trout torn between streamers and beads. Which leaves the fishing style up to the angler.

8/14 Fishing Report

Posted on | by Kodie Kowitz

Silver Salmon are Abundant throughout most of Bristol Bay we have been doing great in the Naknek and Alagnak Systems catching limits of them on a daily basis. Along with Silvers we have been catching an almost ridiculous number of chums and a some stray off year pink salmon as well.

Fly out have been awesome. The Dolly Varden hidden away in these streams accessible only by bush plane are starting to color up and are still very hungry making this an awesome time to catch the fish of your dreams.

Bear and wildlife viewing is still going great with the bears still eating as many salmon as they can to plump up before winter.

Main river rainbow fishing is still going great with multiple fish in the high 20 inch class and even some 30 inchers being caught. They are still being caught on streamers so leave your beads at home for just a couple more days.

7/16 Bristol Bay Report

Posted on | by Kodie Kowitz

Limits of Sockeye salmon are being caught everyday still with ease. The salmon are running in massive numbers up the Naknek River and also in surrounding systems like the Alagnak River.

King Fishing has slowed due to the weeks of hot weather but the fishing has began to heat back up with the cold weather and rain.

Rainbow fishing continues to be excellent with the smolt migration in full force with millions of year old sockeye migrating from Naknek Lake to Bristol Bay the Rainbow Trout are gorging themselves on these unfortunate sockeye.

Bear viewing at Brooks Range and Fly out streams is currently fantastic with the opportunity to see a 1 thousand pound brown bear snatching a sockeye out of the air or snorkel underneath a pile of logs and return with a mouth full of fresh salmon.

7/3 Fishing Report

Posted on | by Kodie Kowitz

The Sockeye Salmon are now barreling up the mighty Naknek River by the thousands. With the massive schools moving up stream the time to catch limits of ocean fresh sockeye is here.

Large resident rainbows in the upper 20 inch class are being caught everyday on streamers like the classic olive and white dolly llama or sculpin patterns.

King Salmon are also making their migration from the pacific ocean back to their spawning grounds. Jacks and small adults are around and very eager to bite the big 30+ are also around they are just a little harder to convince to bite and even harder to land. They have been going forclassic flies like Pink or Chartreuse Intruder style flies, using either heavy single hand rods in the 9 or 10 wt class or spey rods in the 8 to 10 wt class using heavy sink tips.

Bear viewing is going great with the Coastal Brown Bears taking advantage of all the Sockeye and other salmon moving through the system. So if your goal is to watch a thousand pound bear catch a salmon mid air now is a great time to do so. The bears will be around from now until the end of summer and they will just keep getting fatter from here on out.