August 1 – 8, 2014 : Who Needs Energy Drinks :: WEEK 7

We get some pretty driven customers from all walks of life, but non compare to the high tech crowd and especially an entire lodge full of Silicon Valley type folks! The energy they exude is contagious for sure, but at the half way point in our season we can barely keep up to say the least.

The fishing program this week was balanced between Salmon Hops on the Nushagak searching for the thus far elusive Silver Salmon, our famed Lake Hops and Rainbow Trout missions. The Salmon hops were crazy with fresh Pink Salmon choking the river. According to the State of Alaska there was supposed to be over 300,000 Coho [Silver] Salmon in the Nushagak River. But talking with all the other lodge outfits who fish there with us, none of us agreed with those estimates. According to the biologist, the sonar is never wrong [insert your best John Belushi BS cough here]. So hey, after thirty seasons fishing that river, what the heck do we know? After all, we are only flying it every day and looking into the low, clear water with our expensive polarized sun glasses.

We hit Moraine Creek a couple of times and decided that it was like Jekel and Hide. One day it was game on, the next turned stone cold. Part of that was the sudden change in the weather up there. The days it was working good, the fish were very plentiful and jumping all over the place.

The Lake Hops we did this week were great overall and the Lake Trout kept getting bigger and bigger with the new all time record being shattered with a 18.8 pound hen! Way to go Rob! The Arctic Char starting to disappear from the edge of the lakes as they started to chase the spawning Sockeye Salmon up the various creeks.

The weather started to shift during the week and we are hoping it brings some much needed rain to stabilize these very low rivers. Our boat mechanic was even caught secretly doing ‘rain dances’ out in the shop. Low water equals a lot of rock filled motors.