Be careful what you wish for. We all did our various rain dances, chants and such for the past month and it finally paid off. Big. Too Big. We got rain all right and lots of it. It brought the rivers up and in a couple of cases a little too much up. Morraine Creek out East was almost un-wadable by all but the biggest anglers. Mule Creek got colored up and high, as did the upper Nushagak River. Nothing really blew out per say, but we now had plenty of water after watching our bay nearly dry up.
Fortunately, the effects of all the rain were short lived and all of the rivers settled back in by weeks end. What the extra flush of water did do, was bring the Silver Salmon to all the various fisheries, giving us extra targets of opportunity. Rainbow Trout were again tough to come by as the Sockeye Salmon were still vigorously jockeying around for spawning position, fighting off anything their size and bigger – aka the big ‘bows. There was talk of the Rainbows being gone, until one of our guests donned a dry suit and swam with his GoPro on one of the more popular trout streams. His footage was both a relief and a point of frustration as plenty of sizable Rainbow Trout swam by his lens. It is only a matter of time, which is no consolation if you have just gone home.
Fishing for the other resident species; Dolly Varden, Arctic Char and Arctic Grayling was actually great with some really big fish landed all week long. Once again some new names were added to the trophy board at the bar. Sorry to say that the Silver Salmon record will fall over and over the next couple of weeks.
It was truly like old home week with lots of returning guests who were joined by a couple new faces. For the staff, this weeks flies by too quickly as we have so much fun enjoying the company of such great guests/friends.