I was going through some of the blog posts recently, cleaning up some now irrelevant and newly updated info, and I forgot to do a breakdown on our Alaska trip of summer 2024! It was incredible, so here's the setup and the breakdown.
4 Michigan fisherman, and our video guy. Nobody's been there before, nobody has any intel or connections up there. Early summer was the decision based on everyone's schedules, and we figured if nothing else we would get in on the early sockeye run (the guys were all about this) and hoped we could find some kings and big rainbows and dolly vardens (me).
So off we went, planned about 8 days fishing, one day either side for travel. It actually ended up being MORE than enough time, given that it really never gets dark and with five guys from Michigan and two boats, we were going to figure it out fast, and we did.
Travel day one was easy, except nobody slept on the plane except for the two hangovers, so we hit the ground running on arrival. We didn't have the boats yet, so two of us sent the other two with our camera guy to a well known spot off our travel route to go and get the first experience, while myself and one of the hangovers went to get checked into our lodging, find the boats, and check out a sketchy haul out on a river that I was for sure we were going to find some kings on.
Day one ended with the fishing group guys catching zero fish, and myself with the hangover guy with no boats. Everyone finally collapsed except me, trying to hunt down the guy who was supposed to hook us up with boats.
9pm that night, I get the boats, but no motors. The rest of the group had rested and eaten, I had not, but we had boats and it was light out so we were going!
Ended up being a long night on the not the greatest stretch of a pretty good river, but we got to see Alaska from the water, bear, moose, and a few rainbows. Met a local which was helpful, and we got to finally experience the land of the midnight sun.
We crashed hard, but I was back up at five am about ready to hunt the boat guy down for some motors, which are essential for getting to your haul out on most rivers.
Still no motors by 7 am, so I grabbed two of the most lively in our crew and we hit another river, a popular stretch for rainbows and we went for it. We caught a few, nothing crazy, everyone laughed at us for not having motors. All in all a great morning.
The other two guys spotted us at the haul out so we pulled off the river around one and drove straight to town to kidnap the guy with the motors. After a friendly conversation, a handful of hats and hoodies and we had our motors. Now we were in business.
The guys who slept in felt great, but I had finally hit a wall and everyone still seemed kind of cranky so we took the rest of the day off and drove down to Homer, everyone just had to go to that one bar with all the dollar bills hanging in it. It was the right call, good food and drink, everyone got to see Homer, and we drove back up around 9 and hit a walk in river until 2 am. We landed a few sockeye, and a small king...it was low tide but it felt great to get on some new scenery and not have to deal with boats.
By the morning of the second full day and having not much of what I came out there looking for, we were on a mission from god (at least I was). We hit the banger stretch of the hot river at the time where everyone was slaying sockeye, at 830 am. The parking lot was jammed, all the guides were out, and a 1/2 mile down the stretch we had not seen a guide boat yet. Something was up. I knew if we kept going we would run into all the guides, and bank fishermen, and we wouldn't have a quality spot to fish.
One of our guys saw a few sockeye moving up in a slack spot, and they decided to stop and try for them. Myself and another one of my guys ventured on, just wanting to see where everyone else was fishing, and to try and find some kings.
We found everyone else, and they were slaying sockeye as expected. A quick call back to our group up top and they were slaying sockeye too. I wanted kings, my buddy wanted some sockeye, so we stopped for an hour and I watched him get skunked while I walked around checking out the scene.
I called the shot and said lets go and find kings, and find kings we did. As we slid down past the pack something caught my eye on an inside bend near some boulders. It was about 30lbs and red, we found them.
Buddy 1 and myself pulled up and put on a clinic as the rest of the guide train came down past us. Fish on, fish off, fish landed, fish on, fish on, fish off....you get the picture. On centerpins no less, wearing Blood Run hats and hoodies for all and god to see. It was a classic "who the hell are these guys" scenario.
We waited for an hour before we called our guys up top and told them to get down by us. Eventually they arrived, and they hooked a few but it had slowed down by mid afternoon.
We pulled out and got back to our place, drinks were flowing, a limit of sockeye and we had our king spot, it was still day two.
Day three was the same, and we literally fished the same places, late start each day, and it didn't matter because nobody was fishing our spots. Everyone looked at us like we were idiots, but there we were, 5 dudes from Michigan, fishing with centerpins, just wailing away on sockeye and kings. It was glorious.
Day four we got some really nice weather and decided to hit some high country for rainbows and dolly vardens with our Pinland trout setups. I was as excited for this as I was for finding kings. Without going into too much detail, this was a wild ass stretch of river, truck spotting, dangerous ass shit if you have never done it before. But we did it anyway, and were rewarded with trophy class rainbow trout and dolly vardens, on our centerpins, by ourselves.
Day five the weather held for us, and it looked like it might be our last opportunity (weather wise) to make the same trip up high again for trout, so we did it. Guys were a little more wary as the first time through this stretch was class four, and it takes a decent amount of liquid courage to run it. But we did, and we wailed on them even more than the day before. Incredible incredible fishing was had.
Day six was back to our king spot. A couple guys wanted more sockeye to ship home, so they stopped, and myself and one other went back down to our king spot, and they were there. Same as the first day we found them, we even busted out the fly rods and I hooked a monster on the swing, and camera guy landed one stripping.
Day seven and eight we ran the same program, and by then everyone was cashed out. Tons of fish every day, pretty much anything we wanted to catch, late starts, nobody in our spots, all on centerpin setups primarily, though we did play more with the spey rods and baitcasters just for fun.
All in all, an awesome trip. Points to be made, if you know how to fish well and read water in Michigan, you can go anywhere and get the job done. What we do in Michigan works anywhere. You cannot run bait, but we are good on the beads and fly's, so that did not matter. With a centerpin, floats, and some good flys and beads....if there are fish to be had, you can get them.
Everyone else out there ran different programs, nobody caught kings. Except us.
Totally confident we could go back out there three years from now, same locations, same time, same program and pull it off again. That's one thing about trout and salmon, they are pretty predictable if the water and weather are fairly stable.