Summer in Alaska
I love Alaska in the summer. Sun sets there nearly at 11:45pm and rises again at 4:00 am, and in between it never technically gets dark. One can play outside as long as you want until you are tired. Landscape is alive with lush green and flowers in the lower elevations and plant and animal life buzzes with nearly continuous sunlight. Rivers are high, and often that spectacular glacial teal colored. There is no covid there, and depending on where you are, there are usually more fish than human, and last I checked, fish are immune to covid :)
Fishing in Alaska
First of all, I am no fisherman. I fished occasionally, when I was a graduate student, mostly during my field work days in Idaho, Wyoming and Montana. I fished to eat fish. As that was easy and nearly free. However, than was nearly 12-15 years back. Later I fished occasionally as well, mostly near home, with a spinning rod, but it was never as satisfactory as with a fly rod, and also in the south, I never found fish to be that interesting. So rather quickly I stopped fishing. I still own two fishing rods and multiple boxes of tackle and bait, but mostly the rod remains in the attic, and the tackle box is a plaything for my daughters!
Fast Forward to my summer vacation in Alaska: Mind you, this is not my first time in Alaska, and also I travel most frequently to the western United States mountain, where fishing for trout is mostly excellent and that is the type of fishing I enjoyed the most. But I never really fished during any of my vacation until this year. I didn't even plan this vacation as a fishing trip. With my family, few things can be planned! Even fewer can be executed!!
But somehow I rented a house in Sterling, AK in the Kenai Peninsular, and this house is right by the Kenai River, which is a spectacular river famous for Salmon fishing. However, even then, I thought....wel maybe I will fish just from the platform next to the house, and play with my daughters and teach them a few knots and stuff. If we catch some fish, great, but won't do anything serious. When, I arrived at this house however, the owner, Ron, turned out to be a avid fisherman. He said, man, you must FISH! He said, I will hook you up, and he did! He provided rod, reels, tackle, fly, net, anything and everything we need for all four of us...all for free. He essentially let us borrow essentially $5000 worth of fishing gear!! What a great guy! Happens to be, in the Kenai River, we were between two Salmon run, so it was slightly lean. Ron recommended a fishing guide, Joe, who took us to Bing Landing (which is a state park, and a boat launch area). So basically, you park your car there for $5 a day. Then take a boat to whereever you like to go on the Kenai River. That's the idea. The picture above is the posted sign at the parking lot, as you can see, people mostly catch Salmon and Trout there.
Joe got us into the boat, and then he got everyone geared. We were fishing for trout using a spinning rod, just as you see above with my younger daughter. We used a while fly, called dolly llama, and life was simple! You cast, reel, and catch Rainbow Trout!
And that's about it. A happy five year old with her first Rainbow Trout! They say, “If you give a man (a kid) a fish, you feed him/her for a day. If you teach a man (a kid) to fish, you feed him/her for a lifetime.”...I hope its correct.
We did a lot more fishing in the area after that. Many exotic ways, and even more exotic locations. If I find time, I plan on writing some of that later :)
I have always wanted to visit Alaska, but my wife thinks its too cold there. Maybe one day I will talk her into an Alaskan cruise or something. It looks amazing there. That is a nice sized rainbow your little girl caught. It's about twice the size of the ones I catch here.
That five year old caught 7 fish that day alone! And that was not the biggest. I was too busy catching fish, so was light on doing photography :)
Do visit Alaska, it was 60 degrees there with sun out.
7 fish? I am lucky to catch 1 a year. I suck so bad at fishing. I am trying to decide if I should spend the money on deepsea fishing while in Mexico in about two weeks. At least then I will be guaranteed to catch something.
Wes, the ratio of fish to human is very different in Alaska :)
Not much skill in needed to catch fish in Alaska. You just catch it :)
The fish there swim against the stream and there are so plenty that bears can catch them almost effortlessly. Only saw pics and heard stories from a friend who visited Alaska lately. Now is defently the season.
Oh! Thank you so much for sharing your Kenai trip! I grew up in Southeast Alaska (dad was a timber faller/uncle is a fisherman), and your recount sent me down fond memory lane😊
You can totally tell that your daughter is having a blast! Isn’t it just the greatest landing fish after fish? Growing up that way has ruined me for fishing anywhere else lol!
Glad to hear you all had such a marvelous time, Alaska truly is a magical place and I hope we get to read more installments of your fishing adventures!
Yeah, I don’t much like fishing in the southern US. Nothing compares fishing in Alaska. On top of that, fishing almost becomes an afterthought….you intuitively do it without thinking about it, while at peace with your surroundings. It’s a surreal experience.
It really is...until a bear steals your boot😉!
Joking aside, I truly miss it so much, you are so right about how surreal it is. Walking through the muskeg to the riverbank and landing silver salmon for hours, or just wading into the water and plucking one out with your bare hands (the bears are onto something with the way they fish lol, of course I never bobbed for a salmon like an apple), how can fishing ever be the same for someone after that?
I'm so super glad that you are getting to enjoy some of that fantastic Alaska existentialism!
Write about crescent lake dada. From all the vids ive watched, that place made an impression on me. Craxy adventures and no less pretty! Special the fishing without any bait. That to me still sounds like fairy tale😅
No problem. That’s coming up.
Excellent :D
Nice to hear about your vacation, you didn't miss much (apart from a raft of curation and a hardfork :) ).
Yeah, I am glad I missed that!
I was reading some of it from you guys, and it was scary :)
I would have rather been fishing!
Both required patience, but the fish will leave a better taste in the mouth :)
no patience required in Alaska :)
That's a really nice fish for a first catch. Nothing more fun than seeing a kid catch a big fish! I grew up in Northern California and spent a lot of my time as a teenager fly fishing for trout in the streams and rivers there. I taught the kids to fish also. My son now lives in Fairbanks, Alaska. Every time I call him and ask him what he's doing, he replies, "Fishing." It is heart-warming to know a legacy will be left behind.
Yeah, I am not much of a fisherman as I mentioned multiple times in that write-up. Mostly because, in South Texas, I can't motivate myself that much to fish. So I haven't really fished fore 10 + years. I enjoyed fishing in the mountain streams of the west a lot during my grad student days. This recent trip showed me how much I liked it and forgotten it. I hope my kids remember some of it and pick it up at their teenage and beyond.
Looks like great scenery for a day out even if you don't fish. Is it that easy to fish the trout? And did you have to release it back in the river or did you guys have a trout feast that evening?
In Alaska, it is infinitely easier to fish for virtually everything. Fish are plentiful and humans are few. You are only competeting against bears :)
There are various release/keep restrictions of various fish. It varies from place to place, river to river, lake to lake, and even changes sometime by the week! In this case we were allowed to KEEP anything smaller than 16 inches, RELEASE anything larger. This is for rainbow trout only and only on this river.
We had fish every day. :)
Still having fish everyday.
Thats odd, why release the large ones and keep the small ones? I thought it'd be the other way round? 🤔
Man vs bear is a tough one. Little girls vs bear even tougher, your five year old did well!!!
Oh, bears don't bother you if you don't bother the bear. There is more than enough fish.
For a lot of fish its the other way round. But for Rainbows in the famous river, they want them to grow to 'trophy size'...
Wow, you're really in Alaska! Thanks for taking time last time for that case. Enjoy your staying!
I was there for 18 days. Came back last Monday.
This one time I had this big huge one there, massive! Drug the boat backward against the engine. Got away.
Oh well! There is always the next one!
Good old Joe!
Teach a man to fish...
I love that one. Looks like a fantastic break and win for the young un!
Yep, people are generally simple there. I like it out there. I have forgotten how much I enjoyed fishing!
I shall have to give it a bash again. It has been many many moons since I fished!!
Yeah, so did I. I forgotten how to tie a hook using a clinch knot! But then I remembered! :)
But how many did you catch??
brought back home about 35 pounds total, Salmon...
Vac Sealed and frozen now.
Ate all the Trout there, the one we kept :)
Nice. Very nice.
Alaska seems awesome. I remember fishing in my youth when camping. Did you clean and cook the fish yourself? My sons would love that state. They're always happy when the sun is out. They get sad when the sun goes to sleep (4 and 3 years old). I would seem like a perfect fit for them.
I did some, but I had a fishing guide multiple sometimes, and they did most of the work. I know a few people there, and they don't let me do any dirty work :) Life is easy there for a tourist. Not so easy for the locals though.
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That are really long days, would like to visit one day!!
Hi @azircon, it looks great to fish and Alaska must be a very beautiful place especially for having perpetual days.
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Great post!
Yeah, me neither, but I highly recommend the visit