Posts from the fly fishing Category

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Landing a Whopper!

It requires a lot of effort to reel in a sailfish… even more to get it in the boat for a photo!

Boots, boats and planes… roadless Labor Day Weekend.

No cars were involved this Labor Day weekend. What a nice feeling it was to take off in a small plane out of Anchorage and see everyone scrambling to get out of town for Labor Day Weekend. One stop and two hours later we touched down in Port Alsworth, AK – about 170 miles southeast of Anchorage. It is on the border of Lake Clark National Park. Our friends have a place on the lake there and we had a fantastic weekend fishing, eating, boating and enjoying to cool fall weather. What an amazing place that sees so few people. One weekend was not enough. You could spend years exploring this area and still not see everything. We’ll definitely have to go back. Some photos from the weekend:

Fly fishing for pike in Lake Clark, Alaska

Stalking pike in the reeds while fly fishing in Chulitna Bay on Lake Clark, Alaska

Fly fishing for Pike in Lake Clark National Park

Bear tracks in the sand on the beach on Lake Clark, Alaska

Waves crashing on the beach near Port Alsworth, AK.

Wetlands surrounding the Chulitna River near Lake Clark, AK

Sunset on Lake Clark from the porch of the cabin.

Fishing my way home

Last week I had to drive from Fairbanks back to Anchorage for work. Beautiful weather and what better way to break up the drive – stop and fish Troublesome Creek. The fall colors were starting to come out as well. I met a friend at the pullout and we walked down to the mouth for some fly fishing for coho and rainbows. A few days prior I stopped to fish here and it was raining like crazy and I was harassed by a black bear – this time the sun was out and didn’t see any bears. Denali was out and I caught a handful of rainbows and two silver salmon. No bad days!

View of Mount McKinley from south of Cantwell

Fall colors were in full force around Broad Pass

Fly Fishing at the mouth of Troublesome Creek

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Fishin’ on the Fourth

Went down to the Russian River after work on the 3rd for some fly fishing. Fished all night and brought some fresh sockeye salmon for the 4th BBQ. Got home at about 5:30 a.m. and got some sleep before the 4th festivities began. Not a bad way to kick off Independence Day! Here are some photos taken from midnight to 2 a.m.

Buddy fly fishing for some sockeye salmon around 2 a.m.

Russian RIver right below the falls. Got kind of dark at 1 a.m.

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Caramel Day on the Owyhee River

Earlier this year I had a ski trip fall through and I ended up not taking a vacation day at work. The weather was fantastic – so good that I decided to go fly fishing on the Owyhee River instead of backcountry skiing for a mental health day. I went fishing with my dog (Moose, who is a Pudelpointer). He was pretty good, but would only stay on the bank for 15 minutes at a time. After that he came crashing into the water looking for whatever was swimming around. Overall a great day in the middle of winter and not a bad week because I got to backcountry ski, mountain bike and fly fish all within 6 days. Oh yeah, I worked a bit in the middle of all that!

Here are some of the photos I snapped on the river:

Owyhee River runs through an amazing desert valley

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Gotta Love Idaho

All within a week, I have been mountain biking, backcountry skiing, snowmobiling and fly fishing. Idaho is one of the only places I know of that you can do that. Here is a photo from Wednesday, fly fishing on the Owyhee River. Moose was doing his best to scare away the fish!

Moose doing his best to scare all the fish away.