Alaska fishing trip 2012

[Musky hunter 82]

My wife and I landed in Anchorage around 11am on Saturday July 28th for our week adventure fishing and site seeing. After getting settled in to our hotel room and visting the Market downtown, we went to see what was running up ship creek. There were a lot of people fishing and very few schools of chums and silvers running. Sunday was our first day fishing we met up with my brother and went south to Bird creek, after a few failed attempts at flossing I finally hooked into a nice chum on my 8 weight fly rod. We managed a few more Pinks and chums before we decided to move on to Ingram creek, we saw a bunch of pinks and chums running so we decided to fish for them. The nice thing was that the pinks were bitting the flies so it was easier to catch them, we caught a hand full of pinks, chums and I was able to catch a nice char. We only had a few fly rods with us so i ended up having to use my 5' ultra light spinning rod with 8 pound mono. I broke off on 5 fish but landed 4 with it, man they fight hard with that little setup. We ended Sunday by checking out a few other small creeks but with the tide coming back in we decided to get some rest for Monday.

[Musky hunter 82]

Monday was our Halibut and Salmon charter out of Seward, we had to be at the dock by 6:30am so we left anchorage at 3:15am. The weather was rainy and the ocean was really rough but that didn't stop our captin from finding the fish. We wnet out with Pro fish-n-sea and had Kevin as our captian, we started off fishing for salmon. The first spot we pulled into had two whales breaching (cool to see), as we starting fishing around 8:30am and the frist guy had his limit of 3 silvers in half an hour. It took the rest of us an hour to get our limits, so with the salmon fishing done it was off to find the Halibut. My brother and I started off jigging and had several bites but couldn't hook anything, my wife got her first Hailbut on our first stop a nice 30 pounder. After that we moved around to a couple of different spots, my wife ended up getting her limit of two fairly quick, my brother and I both kept 1 fish each. I ended up catching 5 small ones that we let go, but they were still fun to reel in. We ended up leaving the fishing hole at 5:15pm to make the 2 hour run back to Seward.

[Musky hunter 82]

After getting back from Seward at 12:45am on Tuesday, we decided to head north to willow creek to do some more fishing for pinks and chums, with the hope of getting a silver or two. We decided to head further up river to see if we could find some deeper holes where the salmon would be piled up. We found a few holes and were able to get a few pinks and chums out of them but nothing big, until we found a nice hole right next to the bank. I pulled out the 5 weight fly rod and hooked a nice pink right away, we noticed that there were some huge chums in there as well so we kept fishing for them. My brother ended up pulling in a nice sized chum, and while he was fighting that fish I hooked into a pig of a chum it took me under a tree twice trying to shake to fly, i had to put quite a bit of pressure on it to keep it from getting tangled up as I was putting pressure on it I heard a loud "POP" and half my rod went sliding down teh fly line. I tought great I just broke my rod but then realized that the two pieces just pulled apart, so after rounding up the piece i was able to push them back together while still fighting the fish. After all of that I got the chum in and noticed that the tail was already starting to decay.

[Musky hunter 82]

[paceman]

Wow sounds like a great trip. Awesome pictures! Thanks for sharing!

[mainbutter]

Great stuff! I've never seen bird creek that empty even when it's mostly just pinks and chums there, definitely a preferred spot for me over ship creek

What kind of flies were the pinks chowing on? Next time I get up to AK, I'm bringing my 9wt to try to fly-fish salmon for the first time ever.

[Musky hunter 82]

On Wednesday we decided to head North of Anchorage to fish the willow river, the weather wasn't very nice for sight fishing but I did manage to get a few pinks and chums on the 5 weight.

[Musky hunter 82]

It was an awesome trip, all of the pinks and chums were released to fight another day. We did bring home close to 50 pounds of silvers and halibut. The pinks were hitting a pink and white fly, also I heard beads were working good. We didn't see any bears in the wild but did see some at the wildlife sanctuary. Here's a few more misc. pictures

[Capt. H (Ret.)]

Great photos and you did a real good job of putting this together!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mike

[CANOPY SAM]

Great photography! Amazing scenery, and fantastic fishing! What more could you ask for? Thanks for posting!

[mainbutter]

Just spoke to my dad on the phone yesterday, apparently he caught a "fresh" chum salmon earlier this summer and gave it a try in the smoker.. turned out awesome!

If you ever get a chum salmon that is still relatively fresh from the ocean, feel free to keep it, still very good eating. I think they are a highly underrated salmon species.

[fivebucks]

Personally I will stick with silvers or reds

[traveler]

ditto...and kings, when they come back around!

[Jmarksman]

Awesome pic's! Looks like a trip well worth it while.