Alaska is truly an angler’s paradise, with so many opportunities to pick from it seems like one could spend an entire lifetime in the 49th and still just scratch the surface. If you recall from a few months back, Tryston spent a week in the Alaskan wilderness fishing for predominantly rainbow trout and grayling. Well, I was lucky enough to be able to do the same thing this fall, except my experience was much different than his.
Unlike Tryston’s raft camping experience, I spent my week at a lodge on the mighty Naknek River. More specifically, I stayed with Naknek River Camp, a family operated lodge that’s been around since 2006. The owners, the Johnson family, have been in the fishing lodge business since 1984 and have built quite the reputation. Before I get into the fishing side of this blog, I’d like to say what an incredible experience I had with the Johnson family. They truly make you feel like a part of their family for the week, being incredibly hospitable and accommodating. Unlike most lodges where you never even get to meet the owner, Jim sits down and eats with all of his guests every morning and evening, partaking in casual conversation, but also seeing if there’s anything he can do to make your experience better than it already is. Wow.
In addition to the family, everyone who was at the sold out lodge the week I was there had been there numerous times before. Majority of them had been to other Alaskan lodges, but stayed put with Naknek River Camp upon spending time with them. It just showed how great of an operation they were running. But enough about that, I just felt it was necessary to give credit where it’s due!
I didn’t make it up to Alaska until late September, so many fishing opportunities were not available to me. For example, I had no exposure to the ravenous mouse fishing, action packed coho salmon fishing, stocking up the cooler with sockeyes, or classic dry fly fishing to eager grayling. However, I still had plenty of fishing opportunities. The late season on the Naknek is renowned for its incredibly unique migratory rainbow trout that love to eat on the swing. Although they might seem like it, these fish are not steelhead. In fact, steelhead do not have any migratory routes as far north as Bristol Bay. These fish are very migratory though, moving freely from the giant Naknek Lake, the Naknek River, and even the tidal waters down low. I also think it’s important to note that this is just one strain of rainbow trout living in the area. In the lake, the main river, and other tributaries that touch these waters reside the more “standard” Alaskan rainbow trout that most are accustomed to seeing in addition to the migratory fish.
Other than the swing game, there was also bead fishing for rainbow trout, dolly varden, and grayling in the smaller waters, targeting trophy sized arctic char in small creeks, and throwing big streamers for pike. I partook in all of these.
Day one started out with the swing game. I quickly realized that this was not at all my kind of fishing, a whole lot of fancy casting that’s much harder to comprehend than single hand casting just for nothing to happen. I understand why people do it though, there were many times where I found myself lost in the scenery just to be woken up by a bump from a fish. But it’s not an engaging form of fishing and requires a lot of patience, which I don’t have. With that all being said, I got incredibly spoiled my first morning. Roughly two hours into the first day we were working a particular run when I got tapped once, twice, and then BAM! A big fish hit my streamer on the tail end of the swing and made a big somersault on the surface. It was unlike anything I’ve seen before! This fish quickly ripped me into my backing in a matter of seconds and all I could do was just hold on.
After the initial run, the fight became a bulldog fight. The fish would dig hard and not budge much, but was certainly done peeling line. After about five minutes or so, we got the fish in the net and I officially landed my biggest trout on the fly! We didn’t get a weight on the fish to preserve its health, however we did throw it on a wet bump board where we confirmed the fish was 30.5”. With its length and absolutely astonishing girth, the fish had to be close to 20lbs. Truly an incredible fish to start off the trip and to ruin the rest of the blog, I never topped this fish. That said, it didn’t ruin the trip for me, I know many anglers feel disappointed or screwed over when the biggest or best fish is caught during the beginning. Not for me. I spent the rest of the week with low expectations (in a positive manner) and taking in and doing as much as I could while I was there.
Day two I was lucky enough to join a group of anglers from Atlanta, Georgia on a day trip to the world renowned Brooks River. In case you haven’t heard of the Brooks River, look up brown bear eating salmon on google. Here you’ll see an endless amount of photos of bears eating salmon jumping over a waterfall. Well, this is the river where those photos were taken and it is quite a popular place. In fact, Brooks Falls is one of the top ten most photographed places in the world. Additionally, there are 24/7 live cameras all across the Brooks River so people can watch the bears. It’s pretty cool, particularly when I got home and jumped on the cameras and could recognize some of the bears due to their markings and behavior. Side note, Books River is obviously famous for Brooks Falls where you can see a dozen or more bears lined up to catch salmon. But, this river is also famous because it has the highest density of brown bears in the world! There hasn't been a reason established yet that can pinpoint this crazy population dynamic, but clearly the bears are thriving. Not one of them wasn’t fat!
Fishing the famous Brooks River had some caveats to it due to the seemingly endless amount of brown bears on the water, which by the way are HUGE! The brown bears are very used to seeing people, and aside from the few more feisty bears, they were pretty tamed and uncaring of people. However, since this river is on National Park land there is heavy regulation to those who want to fish here. The most important thing is keep away from the bears, duh. But we couldn’t have food or any non-water drinks with us at all. Furthermore, if we were hooked into a fish and a bear decided to jump into the run we were fishing, we HAD TO break the fish off. There’s a strict rule on the Brooks River where you cannot fish within 50 yards of a bear. So if you pair up these rules with the endless amount of bears, your day of fishing is certainly cut up a little bit. None of us complained though since it was such an incredibly unique experience.
Aside from all that, the fishing at Brooks was absolutely amazing. Between all six of us fishing, everyone caught at least one fish that was 23” or bigger, with a couple in the 25-26” range. Fishing was pretty basic, we were fishing beads under indicators. Most other rivers in Alaska at this time of the year, the bead game isn’t necessarily over, but there are other tactics that will work just as well. Whereas on Brooks, beads were the only thing working. The Brooks River gets a particularly unique run of sockeye salmon. Most sockeye will finish up their spawn by the beginning of September, but there were still thousands of salmon actively spawning in October. A month doesn’t seem that long, but in the salmon world that’s a long time. This is just a simple observation from myself, but I wonder if the unique population of brown bears at Brooks River could be correlated with the later spawning sockeye? Who knows.
The bead fishing was easy if you could get a good drift, but also head scratching at times. You could be fishing the same color bead throughout a run and catch fish left and right. But as soon as you moved to another run, that color didn’t work. Or some fish in one run would flat out refuse a color, then someone else would throw a different color and immediately catch that fish. There was one fish in particular that the bead color stubbornness stuck out to me. There were many high-quality fish in the run we were fishing, but there was one that many of us could see that just stuck out from the rest. Two anglers before me tried fishing for this fish with no luck. I then tried my hand at it and switched my bead a few times before giving the fish a rest. Another angler, Scott, tried his hand and ended up catching a different fish that happened to be bigger sitting right below it in a deeper slot where we couldn’t see it. Then I tried for the fish again with no luck, even after switching beads multiple times again.
So my guide, Josh Laferty, Scott, and myself came together to see how we could catch this fish. I showed them the beads I used and they were puzzled as to why it didn’t eat by now. Scott went through his fly boxes and pulled out a random fly he bought years ago that gave him some success when the bite was tricky. He showed Josh and honestly he didn’t have much trust in the fly, but he said try it. So I tied on a flesh covered egg fly with a rusty hook praying that it doesn’t break if I hook something. Sure enough, my first good drift with the goofy flesh egg worked. I was hooked into a big rainbow! It was a good fight, well honestly the fish kicked my ass. The fish in Alaska fight so much harder and it really felt like my single hand 6wt wasn’t enough at times, particularly with this fish. After a crazy fight trying to keep the fish away from log jams, crossing lines with other anglers, and hoping no bears came by, we were able to land the fish. An old, very beat up, 25” rainbow was sitting in the net and I couldn’t have been more pleased.
The rest of the trip was as fantastic as it started! I spent the next day at Brooks again, but this time in the section above the falls. These fish were on the smaller side in comparison to the fish in the lower section. This is due to the fact that these fish don’t jump over the falls to move throughout the river. Instead, the Naknek Lake fish migrate into the lower section, while the Brooks Lake fish migrate into the upper section. Brooks Lake is nowhere near the size of Naknek, so their growing potential is less than their downstream counterparts. Regardless, these fish were so much fun as they willingly ate beads and streamers the entire time I was there. The bears were everywhere just like in the lower section, and with less human traffic they like to get a little closer to you. It was cool, yet super scary having bears pop out of the woods only yards from me. Although there was one situation where a younger, more aggressive bear decided to bully a group of older anglers. This bear definitely knew that they couldn’t move around quite the same as other anglers as it tried pushing my guide and I around earlier in the day. He wanted to show some dominance and wanted the spot where they were fishing, so he decided to charge them. The guide raised his net in the air and yelled, getting the bear to stop only a few feet from him. It was eerie to watch, I genuinely thought I was going to watch someone get mauled. But, the guide had no care in the world. He nonchalantly turned around once the bear went back into the woods and began doing his job again. Crazy. I understand they’re up there all summer and deal with bears all the time, but still it was crazy to see how calm he was. Even my guide showed no signs of worry or stress, just wanted to get back to business! I’ll need a few more trips before I get used to interactions like that.
After Brooks 2.0, I spent two more days on the big river trying to find another trophy. I swung, drifted beads, and even backtrolled plugs. Some fish were caught, but nothing to brag about. I was able to catch another 25” fish on a bead, but for the Naknek that’s nothing. It’s almost comical the size comparison in some environments. In Colorado and most of the west, a 25” rainbow is a trophy that most people never touch. But on the Naknek, that’s like the equivalent of catching a 14” brown.
The last day of fishing I finally had the opportunity to target the species that had been on the back of my mind, arctic char. The beauty and elusiveness of this species has captivated me for years. I’ve never had a true chance to target them, aside from ice fishing for them in Dillon Reservoir, but catching these fish just doesn’t feel the same as it would in their native environment. The weather was better than it had been and I finally had clearance to make a move at them if I was willing to deal with a bumpy boat ride. I sure was for the opportunity to catch a true dream fish of mine.
We made it to the spot after what seemed like the longest boat ride ever. My back hurt and I was freezing, but it was all worth it when we pulled up and there were porpoising fish everywhere. Initially, I thought these fish were the char but they were actually sockeye and coho salmon. This wasn’t a bad thing though since this meant the char would be sitting right behind them. The char follow the salmon in the same manner the trout do, to eat their eggs. But unlike the trout, the char spawn in the fall, so they use these areas to feed and to stage for their own spawning once the salmon are done. Amongst the salmon I noticed orange flashes and white tipped fins. The char were in fact here!! Sadly, this is about as positive as the story gets. Arctic char grow slowly and reach old ages similar to lake trout, so if they’re at great sizes they’ve likely been fished before. That was certainly the case with these fish. I saw some fish in the mid to upper 20s, but there was one that was the same size, if not bigger than the rainbow I had caught on the first day. It was a true giant! But these fish would not eat. I tried streamers and eggs without any true attention. There may have been one instance where one took a look at my fly, but it never truly committed. Eventually a coho swam into my egg and ended up getting foul hooked, and that was enough to spook these fish from the area. Dang it.
That’s okay though, I got to see the fish of my dreams and at least had a shot at them! The whole day wasn’t a bust though. Further down the lake was a great area to spend a few hours pike fishing, and boy was it great fishing. Pike interact with flies in a very similar fashion that brown trout do, so getting one to bite wasn’t very difficult since I’ve spent many hours tossing streamers for browns. We lost track of how many pike we caught! It was outright fun and was one of my most favorite parts for the trip even if we didn’t catch any monsters.
I could go on and on about this trip and how much fun I had, but I won’t. Instead of blabbing about how amazing of a trip it was, you should experience it for yourself! This year I’ll be hosting a trip to Naknek River Camp, August 16-23. The experience will be different from when I went due to the time of the year. We booked these dates inline with prime coho salmon fishing, a hard fighting salmon that yields the best streamer fishing experience someone can ask for. These fish average 24-30 inches and love to go airborne after eating a brightly colored streamer or popper. But the trip doesn’t have to revolve around the cohos as there will be endless opportunities to target rainbow trout, dolly varden, grayling, chum salmon, sockeye salmon, arctic char, pike, and a few other oddballs.
Great article and well written! If you want char you should look at Greenland and camp north through getaway fly fishing. It’ll be one of the greatest trips you’ll ever do. Send it!