Old Mans Kodiak Report

[big musk411]

My Dads write up of our trip to Kodiak in Sepember. This was truly the fishing trip of a lifetime!

The sign on the door certainly grabbed our attention! “Be careful after dark. Bears have been seen in the parking lot”. We had just arrived from Minneapolis for a week of fishing from the Kodiak road system. It had been a six hour flight from Minneapolis to Anchorage. After an extended lay over, it was an hour’s flight from Anchorage to Kodiak. We planned to fish for silver salmon in the rivers accessible from the Kodiak road sys-tem. The next morning we parked at the American River shortly before dawn. (You don’t want to be on the water before you can see the bears!) I rigged up Matt’s nine weight with a purple egg sucking leech. He was onto fish immediately. The pink salmon(humpies) were running and very aggressive. We were fair catching fish on almost every cast. Purple egg sucking leeches, fuchsia bunny flies, and pseudo pink pollywogs were all working. This was a great introduction to fishing Kodiak Island! As the hours and days passed pinks became passé, and somewhat annoying as we tried to catch silver (Coho) salmon. The silvers were running a little late and were pretty few and far between. The silvers would lie in deep pools. It required heavy flies and heavy lead-ers to get down to them. Often when stripping our fly for a silver, we would snag a pink. When hooked, a silver was all that they are advertised to be. Mine jumped a couple of times and then broke off (23 lb tippet!)after wrapping my line around a tree. Matt managed to land four. These ended up ongrills in Mt. Home AR and Minneapolis! We fished four major rivers, The Olds, the American, the Russian, and the Buskin. The Olds is about 30 miles form town, the American about twenty, the Russian about 10 miles, and the Buskin was right behind our hotel. These are not big rivers. They are not deep and not fast. They are quite clear; there aren’t any glacier fed streams on KodiakIsland. Alaska salmon streams are not elegant; this is not the sport of kings! It is not wilderness fishing either. We could tell where the action was by the cars parked by the road. But it was not combat fishing either, and if we walked a quarter mile or so, we could be on our own. The streams are full of fish, living and dead. There are dead salmon in the water, along the shore, and hanging from the low limbs of trees. There is a constant background smell of spoiled sea-food. We used 9 wt rods. Mine was a fast action salt water rod from Orvis. I built Matt’s rod. It was much a slower rod. We think that the slower rodworked better on these small streams. Matt, who is generally a philistine, also brought his spinning gear. He used it for about a ½ hour total. He found that he was much more able to control his presentation with the fly fishing gear.The streams were also full of trout. We heard of big rainbows, but didn’t see any. We did see, and catch, a bunch of Dolly Varden trout (char). I took trout tackle (5 &6 wt) with me, but didn’t bring any trout flies. The first dolly’s were caught on what I still had in my drying patch from the WhiteRiver. I caught my first dolly on a Y2K. But the third one broke me off and that was the only one I had. After further experimentation we found that partridge and orange softhackles were the ticket! We found the last package of partridge feathers, some #12 Eagle Claw hooks, and orange thread in the fly section of the local sports shop. I tied abunch of flies. We used every one of them. The town of Kodiak is good sized and it's population is about 10,000. There are two sporting goods stores with substantial fly fishing sections. There were plenty of decent restaurants, but they were expensive. Everything getting to Kodiak must arrive by plane or boat. Almost every evening we bought our lunch for the next day at Sub-way. The weather was cool and damp. The lows were in the 40s and the highs were in the50s. If the sun was shining, we didn’t need a layer. If it was not, we did. We always worefleece under our breathable waders. It rained for most of one day. Matt had nightmares that first night after seeing the sign about the bears. The fact that he watched 3 hours of bear horror stories on the Discovery Channel the night before we left probably contributed. But wenever saw any! Everyday people would say“The bear was just here! The bear ate a guy’s fish! The bear was over there.” Perhaps we were disappointed that we didn’t see one. Or maybe not! -Mike Tipton