King Salmon on the FLY in Alaska!

Greg Scheer Aug 7th 2017

Great year for fishing king salmon in Alaska once again. Every year calls for different river conditions, this year the water stayed low with no big rains to raise or muddy the water. We fished more with our fly rod this year than in past years. These are some of the things that stuck out has we tried to hook these big beautiful fish.

I tested a variety of RiverBum flies. The leech patterns worked the best from simple purple egg sucking leechesto a large articulating black leech or pink bunny leech.

We also tied some large yarn egg patterns which we waded down and fished with an indicator, worked well. (Landed my biggest one on the fly rod at 30 pounds this way.)

We had our best success finding places on the river where there was a bend or we could wade out far enough to just hold my rod in one place and get my fly down in the fish zone where the fish were holding and moving. This means holding without casting for up to 15 min. It seems at times when the fish are not biting hard and more interested in just moving up the river you need to dangle that fly in front of them until they get pissed off and bit it.

With the river conditions low you could site fish. Mainly in the afternoon when the sun gets high you can see the fish better in the river. Once again throwing a lot of casts by these fish did not produce a lot of results. Getting ahead off them and holding your fly in front of them letting the fish come to the fly still worked the best.

When fishing gets tuff go small. Use a simple small egg pattern with a trailer hook. Its amassing these big fish will take that small egg. The hard part is keeping them hooked and landing them. You normally need to move to a smaller hook when fishing this way.

King Salmon fishing with a fly rods is hard, period. We always catch more kings with or bait cast rods because it is so much easier to keep your flies in the fish zone with them. Also when you hook one it’s easier to fight and land the fish. I use a heavy 9 fly rod and hope I hook a fish no bigger than 20 pounds to get it landed.

The rules and regulations change in different areas of Alaska. Many areas have gone to catch and release days. Make sure you follow the rules in the area you are fishing if fishing unguided.