Nice quiet weekend with dollies, butts and lings.....

[DocSpotty]

After last week’s great fishing on the Kenai River I headed down there again on Friday. Unfortunately it had been raining heavily for 4 days straight and the Kenai had risen more than 2 feet and was flowing just below flood stage……wayyyyy to much water to float the Kenai Canyon comfortably….or even uncomfortably. So Dennis thought we could motor across Skilak Lake to the outlet of the Kenai River and move around looking for the big dollies. This necessitated me driving 15 miles down an old dirt road to meet him at the upper Skilak boat launch. I was only a mile or so into the drive when I rounded a bend and found this young black bear sauntering down the road:



Obviously I was the first one down the road in the morning. Nearly ran over a bunny a little while later and their were numerous “stupid chickens” (an Alaskan grouse which is none too bright when it comes to getting out of the way) on the road giving me their blank, brain dead stares. A few more miles and there is another blackie moving down the road:



I’m beginning to feel like I’m in a strange Alaskan version of Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds”….and all the animals are just waiting to peck my eyes out…..great old movie for you young guys….not scary at all by todays standards of horror, though. The great lookout view came up next….Skilak Lake where the Kenai River (on the right side) dumps into the lake with glaciers at the head toward the south end.



Dennis was just launching the drift boat at the ramp so I geared up and hopped in. The view over the lake was fantastic……this is Mount Redoubt, an active volcano:



We spent 75 minutes motoring over to the mouth of the Kenai to find an absolutely torrential flow of water….floating trees and wood were everywhere. Motors are prohibited on this stretch of the Kenai so we were forced to try and row up into the river….a task that proved nearly impossible. We did manage to get anchored in the wake of a big treefall and tried that for a few hours. Dennis managed two very nice dollies but all I could catch was miserable, spawning sockeye….several of the beasts. About this time our resident brown bear “greeters” (Walmart has nothing on these guys) showed up like last week…..mama and her cute little boy…..who seems to have put on 50 lbs or so, since last week:



They rummaged around eating delicious, moldy, fungus harboring, disgusting salmon carcasses with great relish….no accounting for taste with these guys. Dennis managed to find a small braid of the river he rowed up about 500 yards….it was full of spawning reds and my hook seemed to find nearly all of them…..not fun. We spent like four hours up there with absolutely nothing in the way of trout. We fished back down to another large braid we couldn’t get up at all due to the current but Dennis managed to get us anchored into a nice seam below a log jam. My first cast upstream resulted in my first non-salmon strike and I managed to get my only dolly to avoid the insidious trout skunk:



After that…..nothin. We were anchored up under another big treefall when the anchor broke loose from it’s rope……great…..just great. Dennis marked the tree so he could look for it later after the water came down. We were fishing just below that area when the massive tree marking the lost anchor came floating by……hehehe……the luck of the damned was following us everywhere. Another fruitless hour of fishing and I suggested we head back to port. Got back about 4pm and I headed back toward Seward where I was to go halibut/lingcod fishing on Saturday.

This drive necessitated me driving by my favored little Quartz Creek…..and even though it was not too good (the dollies had spread out due to most of the salmon having spawned and died) a week or so ago I couldn’t resist my inner fish demon calling for me to wet a line. Of course my resistance to such internal suggestions is very poor and the next thing I knew the car was parking itself at the Crescent Creek campground and I was grabbing the 5 wt and walking to Quartz Creek. It was a foot higher than the previous week and flowing a bit off color, something I had never seen before. Surprisingly there were more reds around spawning. It only took me a few minutes of observation to start picking up some dollies moving around the reds….yeehawwww.

My outfit was rigged up with a mottle tangerine bead….my universal starting point on Quartz. I cast to several dollies for nearly an hour and only managed to find 2 who picked it up:



After losing my bead on a sockeye’s tail I decided to look for eggs in the water and found some. With this observational knowledge my bead color was changed to a mottled roe color closest to the natural eggs I found. Wooohoo did this set the fishies off. I managed 3 out from under a fallen tree:



And then popped into only my 2nd rainbow of the year on Quartz:



Most of these dollies were colored up spawners. I never get tired of just enjoying the beauty of these little suckers at this time of the year:





Fished up river a while an managed several more nice dollies….all on the new color of bead:





All told about 15 or so dollies feel victim to my inner fish demons when I packed up and left for Seward after about 3 hours on the creek. For now I felt satiated. Drove down to Seward and spent a great nights sleep until heading for the cattle boat for halibut fishing at 0630 Saturday morning.

We lucked out with a lull in the weather and managed to get to the good fishing grounds after a 2 ½ hour boat ride. By this time of the year the majority of halibut, especially the bigger ones (over 50 lbs.) have headed way out into the ocean and deep water. We fished hard the the first half of the day and managed several halibut including one near 100 lbs. But my only fish was a chicken I released of about 10 lbs.

We moved to an area with more, but smaller halibut, and inside of an hour or so I had managed to jig up a couple of decent halis in the 20 lbs class. I kept these are the halibut we were just about out of halibut time and had a few hours to hit the lingcod.

On the first lingcod drift I managed a short one (under 35 inches) and then was buttoned onto a nice halibut about 40 lbs….this was a hoot as I was using my salmon gear. Next drift the boat managed several nice lingcod and I got my first legal size one. Then 2 more very nice halibut in the 30 lbs class…..where were these halibut earlier??? Anyway it was time to head in so we headed back to Seward. The bottom fishing day had been great with 9 strangers who were truly enjoyable to fish with…..most of them from the lower 48. Due to it raining most of the day I put the camera away and took only this one picture of the nicest fish hanging up back at the dock:



Since we were only one of a few boats that went out we had quite a group of looky lou’s when we got in. The fish were filleted, tips offered to the boat guys, and I was off towards home with a nicely satisfying smile on my lips. When I got home my adoring and loving wife whispered those special little words in ear……..”You stink…..get in the shower.” It was so nice to be home.

Brian

[simijab]

Man you are living the life. One day I will be up there. They don't happen to be hiring at your local water depart. I would sell my house in a minute to be up there. Great report as usual

[Reellady46]

Thank you for sharing! Looks like a beautiful place and GREAT fishing! WGT!!

Reelady

[bassjedi]

What did you stick in the bellies of those lings? Those are some toads.

[Karyn]

Looks like you had an awesome trip! Great photos! thanks for taking the time to post : )