Alaska bows, grayling and beads.....

[DocSpotty]

Salmon fishing has been much, much less than stellar so far this year in most of Alaska…..many emergency closures due to lack of king salmon nearly everywhere in the state. So I figured hitting the Willow River for trout might be okay even though with all our rain this summer the river is way up. We started floating about 0730 and it was only about 10 minutes and the first bow sucked up the bead:



Even though the kings were few and spread out they were right in egg laying mode which had the fish active. The action was pretty fast everytime we found a few spawning salmon. A few smaller fish and I tagged this very nice critter:



We had a really strange day with fish, primarily grayling, whacking our strike indicators (that would be “bobber” for you regular guys….haha)….I mean this happened probably 20 times….should have put a hook in the darn thing. Finally managed to nab one of these pesty graylings….



Fishing was just crazy good…..you wouldn’t have expected this with the high, slightly off color water. But the fish just kept rolling in:





We came up to a deep little pocket hole and I managed to take 3 grayling in a row from this little spot…..never get tired of looking at those spectacular dorsal fins…..normally you have to pull them up to see them, but today the little beasts had them splayed out everytime for the photo shoot:





We weren’t getting down the river very fast as the fish just kept interrupting our progress. We’d scoot down a bit farther…see a few more laying king hens and whack we were into another little patch of trout.



Then the fun really kicked into gear. We wanted to fish around this little island but as we floated in there were three older gentlemen frothing the water their….so we parked the raft and marched upstream about 100 yds where we had seen a few spawners working. Surprisingly we couldn’t catch anything behind them and started to drift walk back down to the raft when I was grabbed by “the monster”. She whacked the bed and was into my backing before I started stumbling after her over the rocks. After a 10 minute fight and a couple hundred feet of river we finally managed to beach her:



She was long and lean from having just spawned this year but measured a nice 26+ inches and gave a great account of herself. We slipped her back in for the release and she bolted off. At this point we could see the 3 guys below us were married to the best hole on the river so we just hopped in the raft and floated directly below them and would have kept going but I hung up and broke off my bead so we pulled in to retie. After rerigging we had to fish this nice back eddy…on my first came a nice fish came up and whacked my “bobber” hard. Looking down into the water I could make out a green back behind a big king…nice bow down there. After 4 or 5 casts the big green thing sucked it up and the fight was on for about 90 seconds when the hook pulled….oh crap! I looked down into the water and could see this green back sucker still sitting down there and if you can believe it 3 casts latter he sucked it up AGAIN. Good hookset this time and he was immediately airborne 3 times….woohoo….it was a very early run silver (coho) in absolutely chromer condition.



He was quickly released and then Mike and I both hit a plethora of rainbows….probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 or more during the next hour:





Even picked up my fifth grayling…the most I’ve ever taken on a single trip in this river:



We moved on and still the fishing was just great. Caught one small dolly varden charr….don’t see many of them up the Willow but that gave me a grand slam on the day!

The sun was in and out all day and the clouds were threatening to get up further wet but they held off. Came to another nice batch of about a dozen spawning kings and behind them I pulled in several bows….none real big….all 14-17 inches. Then I worked back into a small slot and the first time I got my bead down the perfect drift there was a silver flash and I was off to the races. This thing had heavy water and was well into my backing as I tried to run after it. Several minutes later and a ways further downstream he finally relented and came in…..a beautifully colored, magnificent rainbow:





All this running up and down….well, primarily down….the stream bank had my left foot just throbbing. I have a torn ligament in the arch of that foot which needs surgery but not before the fishing season is over….a man has to have standards. So I hobbled over to the raft and Mike had set up a nice lunch of coho and rice with a Coke chaser. We still were picking up regular fish but it definitely had tapered off:



We hadn’t even floated half of what we had planned on and with my foot aching Mike let me shorten up the day and we got out at the next place we could. While waiting for his wife to bring the truck around for the pull out we fished the deep whole we were parked at and caught several nice bows there. Just as she pulled up I hooked into a really nice fish and realized it was a king. It took 15 or so minutes but I finally worked him in, snapped a nice picture, released him and called it a day:



That king made it five species on the day. Caught 29 rainbows, 5 arctic grayling, 1 dolly varden, 1 coho salmon and 1 king salmon. Additionally I must have farmed at least another 15 or so fish who had the old LDR (long distance release). The drive home was very satisfying….the day exceeded any expectations I had of it…….Alaska is a fun place to live and driving through the light rain somehow didn’t seem to bother me at all.

Brian

[tpfishnfool]

I wanna be you man !!!
Great stuff..

[simijab]

I second that. If I could fish half as much as you and go to some of the places you go I could die a happy man. Once again great post great trip. thanks for the post

[troutdog]

Awesome write up Doc, awesome adventure....thanks for taking the time to post up. Those trout are GORGEOUS!!!


TD

[Troutman65]

Awesome day on the river . Wow . Thanks for posting up the report . Hope to get up that way one day ( On my bucket list ) to fish .

[smokehound]

I never get tired of your reports. Always some excellent photos.

Loved that king. Nice and red.

[Fishbones]

Awesome report and pics, your a lucky man, thanks for sharing.

[fisherman from long beach]

daaammmnnn,nice report and pics to go along with it.

[Swank909]

I always look forward to your reports, you are a fishing machine!

[Sparky70]

Wonderful thread and pictures...LUCKY YOU!