Alaska features spectacular scenery as SteveT fishes for Coho in Kodiak, Alaska. All photos courtesy of SteveT, Copyright 2008
A report from SteveT
We went to fish the Kenai River for three days with a guide and caught a decent number of fat, fat, fat rainbows with the largest probably close to 20-inches. As usual the rainbows were sitting behind the sockeyes waiting for their eggs. Later we also fished the Russian River on our own where it enters the Kenai.
It rained all day during our Kenai float trip but we found one honey hole where I pulled out one rainbow after another. I could have done that all day long.
The next day we flew to Kodiak to fish for Silvers (Coho) on our own We stayed at a place call the Salmon Run Guest House.
The Silver fishing kind of sucked. We got four Silvers in five days with the largest running about 12 pounds. We only fished along the road system, which is about 150 mile long. This was a mistake. There were lots of spinning guys trying to snag Silver all day long. Not what I would call quality fly fishing. We should have done an ATV trip or tried a fly out trip to Karluk which is on the other side of Kodiak Island and is supposed to be a place for world class fly fishing for silvers.
If I have the opportunity to fish Kodiak again, I would not fly fish along the road system. It get too much fishing pressure. The Kenai River is more of a quality fly fishing experience.
The Dolly Varden fishing was awesome because nobody was targeting them. Henny caught two 24-inch Dollies and my largest was a 23-inch fish. We only fished the Dollies in the afternoons from about 2 to 5 pm but we were able to catch them consistently.
We did most of our Dolly fishing on the American Creek a little ways up from where it crosses the road. The side of the creek (it's more like a stream than a creek) has a lot of dense brush. Plus lots of bears, so you have to constantly look around while you fish. Two bear got a little close to us ( about 50 yards) but ran off once we made our presence known.
EQUIPMENT: For the Kenai Peninsula for Rainbows and Kodiak Island Dollies Henny and I used 7-weight rods and overlined them with WF-8 floating line. The most effective flies were size 6-10 egg hooks with beads. For Kodiak Coho we used fast action 8-weight rods and reels with good drag (Abel 3N and Bauer M3) with WF-8 floating line. The most effective flies were size 2 silver/red flash, purple egg sucking leech and black egg sucking leech.
