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Posted

This trip consisted of 3 groups of friends and family coming up and spending time in SW Alaska with me.  First, John Johnson from Kingfisher, OK brought his contengent of friends, 15 in all, up for a week starting June 24th.  Most of his group come to Taneycomo every February.

Ths sockeye are generally running by the last week of June but they had other plans this year.  They trickled in all week, not giving us very many chances of catching.  The hope is to catch enough to bring a 50 lb box home but most of the guys had to buy fresh salmon from one of the commercial fishery places in town.  But the rainbows and king salmon fishing was very good so they had fun.  Most flew to Brooks Camp to see the bears.  The river we're on, the Naknek, was too low to get the big boat across the lake plus the wind was bad most of the week.  The weather was cold and rainy most days.  It didn't get out of the mid 50's, low in the 40's. 

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The rainbows were feeding of baby salmon schooling down the river from the lake to the ocean.  We threw a gitzit at them and they crushed it.  They also took an 1/8th ounce black jig pretty good - you know who was throwing that!  They liked the sculpin and sculpin/ginger too.  John Moore from Springfield caught the biggest rainbow - 31.5 inches long.  We had one just under 29 inches too and several 25-26 inchers.

They trolled for kings down river, also boating up into Big Creek where they thew big spinners and big streamers.  Several 40-pound-plus kings were caught and released.

The next group was a good friend and his brother, Paul and Walt Crews.  They came in early Saturday and left Tuesday.  The sockeye made an appearance starting Sunday but in a big way Monday when an estimated 225,000 came up the river.  We limited (5) each day they were there, using the old chuck-and-duck method with a 7 wt fly rod.  They also fished for the rainbows and did well.  We flew to Brooks and saw bears all over the place.

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On Tuesday, my daughter Megan and her husband Jimmy arrived.  It was their first time to Alaska.  Arriving with them was the sun and warm, dry weather.  Sunny and 70 the rest of the week.

We also caught our limit of sockeye each day.  Megan was the queen of sockeye, hooking twice as many salmon as Jimmy - they are very competitive.  But Jimmy landed more.  Megan kept putting too much pressure on the fish as it headed towards the net each time.  She had a string of 5 casts and 5 hookups at one point.  We had a lot of fun!

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We boated to Brooks Camp on Thursday.  The lake was glass going over - it was amazing.  35 miles across and we were probably the only boat on the huge lake.  There the bears were waiting.  The bridge across the river was closed because of a family of sleeping bears so we headed through the marsh and up the river to the falls platform, only us fishermen can do in our waders.  We dodged bears looking for salmon and got to the falls. 

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We got right on the upper platform and spent some time watching one bear catching and eating fish, then another wondered in.  After we got our fill of the bears, we walked to the top of the river and Brooks Lake.

Megan went with James and showed her how to throw a dry fly - an elk hair caddis.  She caught a couple of rainbows right off.  I tied on a streamer Duane had tied for me - a salmon smolt pattern.  I hooked up quick and landed my biggest Brooks rainbow - about 21 inches.  Then Jimmy hooked his first and it was a beast!  Probably measured 24 inches and much heavier than mine - almost looked like a sockeye.

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We made our way down the river to the falls.  We watched a mother bears wrestling with her 3 cubs in a pool off the river.  That was cool!  Didn't get a good video of them though - my gopro doesn't do well with distances.

We walked around the falls and ended up skipping the lower half because of the time - and there were way too many bears to fish around.  We did see another mom and 3 cubs chasing fish, then bolting when they came around the corner and saw a big bore walking towards them.  They snorted just like a deer would at trouble.

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We ended the Naknek fishing trip out in front of camp catching rainbows late in the evening.

Sunday, we flew to Anchorage and rented a car and droved to Whittier.  There we went out on a 4 hour cruise to view some of the glaciers in that area.  Gorgous area, lots of birds, a few seals and lots of history.

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Overnight flight out of Anchorage, delays getting into Chicago put us back in Springfield at 8 pm Monday.

Here are a couple of videos I've posted so far.

 

 

 

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Posted

Phil

Sounds like a great trip, fishing, and time spent with friends and family! Thanks for posting a great report. I'm sure that I am not the only one a bit jealous reading this post.

Posted

Amazing!  And I'm definitely super jealous!  Awesome report there buddy.  

Man you guys were close to those bears in the second vid.  Crazy seeing that big one run off the others.  Did they even acknowledge you were there?

I get what Duane says about being ruined for a bit when you come back home to those little dinky 20in rainbows in Taney LOL!

Beautiful country and glad you were able to enjoy it with your fam!

 

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