Alaska 2022, The Last Frontier
This past July my family and I traveled to Alaska where we would spend a week exploring the Last Frontier. My mom at this point was the only person in our family to ever visit Alaska. Growing up fishing and studying the amazing places that trout and salmon call home, I felt like I had been there before from the loads of information I had soaked up preparing for this trip.
Our journey begins at Charlotte Douglas International Airport where our flight was delayed as soon as we arrived. Flight delays are never fun no matter where you are headed. However this flight delay would screw up our connecting flight to Anchorage and unfortunately American Airlines at the time only offered 1 flight per day from Dallas to Anchorage. I started to stress out thinking about having to possibly cancel our float trip down the Kenai River which for some reason I thought would be a good idea to schedule the day after arriving in Anchorage. Lesson learned on this one. Fortunately though we were able to snag 5 seats on an earlier flight from Charlotte to Dallas so we would make our connecting flight to Anchorage. But the early trip drama doesn’t stop there. Once we arrived in Anchorage I checked my phone to find a text message from our guide saying “Tyler I’m sorry to tell you guys I just tested positive for Covid and will not be able to float you guys down the Kenai tomorrow.” Great. At this point I had no idea what to do and was getting discouraged. I couldn’t stop thinking about the salmon waiting for us on our drive from Anchorage to Cooper Landing. At this point it was a little after midnight and it was still daylight outside.
-Views over Alaska and the Pacific Ocean
-This picture was taken at around 10-11pm
The next morning I was ready to experience the salmon run for myself. We made our way to Lakeview Outfitters to see if we could reschedule a float trip for the next day. They hooked us up with a guide for the next day by the name of Ron Doebler. I will include his info below. The staff at Lakeview Outfitters was very helpful and even let us borrow equipment to catch some salmon on our own that day. Pictured below are some of the salmon we caught out of the Kenai River that day.
-Hope's first Sockeye Salmon
-My first Sockeye Salmon
The next day Ron took us on a float trip down the Kenai River. The section we floated had a little bit of everything in it. It consisted of Rainbow Trout, Dolly Varden, and Sockeye Salmon. We happened to be there just a week or two early for the main Salmon run in Cooper Landing. However the town below by the name of Soldotna had 100s of thousands of salmon running through it during the time we were there. This blew my mind because we were also seeing thousands of salmon ourselves. I could only imagine what the main run looked like. As we floated the river we poked a few Rainbows and Sockeye here and there but nothing too crazy. Hope did end up catching a Dolly Varden which was one of the highlights of the trip. My Dad also caught a Rainbow on the dry which was awesome to see. The coolest part was seeing bald eagles hover overhead the entire float. Every bend of the river seemed to have bald eagles nesting or cruising overhead. All in all it was a great and very memorable float trip and will forever be etched in my memory. Huge shoutout to Ron Doebler for rowing us down the Kenai that day. Below are a few pictures from that day.
-One of the stops along our float
-Hope's Dolly Varden
-Hope's Sockeye Salmon
-All the red shadows in this picture are Sockeye Salmon
-Bald Eagle watching us pass by
Later on in the trip we had the chance to fish an Arctic Grayling stream in the middle of nowhere Alaska. I had received some intel from a friend of mine on Instagram about a stream that we shouldn’t pass up on our travels through the state. This stream which I will not name in this blog was located about an hour and a half down a dirt road. How I convinced the whole family to go this route back to Anchorage I’m still not sure, but it was definitely worth it. It reminded me of some of our local streams here in Western North Carolina. This river consisted of a lot of shallow riffle water with some nice pocket water sections too. It was crystal clear water and probably around 55 to 57 degrees. This is a euro nymphers paradise. Conditions this day were bright and sunny with a mild wind. As we stepped into the river and started to fish we quickly started crushing them on nymphs. We eventually switched to dry flies to find the same result. It was as if nobody had ever fished for these fish before. They were very opportunistic and podded up heavily. Once you found 1 fish you probably found about 5 to 10 more right there beside it. Although destination trips like these are not about how many you catch, it definitely was fun to give the arm a workout that day. Hope, my Dad and myself all marked off Arctic Grayling that day and it was a blast. Below are some pictures of the river and of some of the Grayling we caught.
-Beautiful Grayling stream
-Dirt road in the middle of nowhere leading to some awesome Grayling fishing
-Dad posing with his first Grayling
-Hope with her first Grayling
-My first Grayling
This is for sure one of the most memorable trips I have ever been on. Alaska is known as the Last Frontier and I understand why now. Just in our short week there we drove approximately 900 miles ranging from Seward, Alaska all the way up to Healy, Alaska. We made several stops and detours in between and we still barely scratched the surface. A majority of Alaska is still wild and untamed which is the beauty in all of it. While this may have been my first trip to Alaska, I can assure you it will not be my last. Next time though my little buddy Ellis will be tagging along.
-Mount Denali