Unalakleet, Alaska Fishing Report: Not Too Salty, But Tasty Anyway

Posted under fly fishing media by Will Benson

Another awesome season for the books.
Matt Jones is a traveling guide/photographer who just came back from guiding in Alaska for the summer.  As he put away the fly rods for the fall and began to upload the next batch of fishing photos to his website www.mcjphotography.com , he sat down and contributed this report about his experiences this summer.
The fishing and weather this summer up in Unalakleet, Alaska was sweet.  The Unalakleet River is located 400 miles NW of Anchorage and drains into the Norton Sound.  Our river hosts King Salmon, Silver Salmon, Chum Salmon, Pink Salmon, Dolly Varden, and Arctic Grayling.   Our largest runs are Pinks at 5 million strong, and Silvers at 500,000 strong.  As most of you know, the salmon are not feeding once they hit freshwater so they hit flies out of aggression.  Pink is always a popular color along with any other brightly colored fly.  The majority of our Dollies were caught  on various colored beads or glow bugs, and they would occasionally take a salmon fly.  Arctic Grayling aren’t picky and pretty much attacked anything thrown in front of them, from beads to dry flies. With all of the rainless sunny days we had, the river continued to get lower and lower.  In certain parts of the river we were running our boats through less than 6″ of water!  Using jet engines of course!  The lower water not only forced the fish to hold in different spots, but allowed for some really exciting sight fishing!  The most exciting catch of this summer was by guide, Lee Dooley with a Dolly at 26″x14″ which we estimated to be around 8lbs and set a new lodge record.   Most of the time the weather was nice allowing me to keep the photography gear out all day, and I ended up with some pretty cool shots.  All in all, the summer was great as I look back at yet another ideal time getting paid to do what I love…Fly fishing and photography.