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

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.  

Pine Island Sound Redfish: Tougher Than They Look

So far the weather, and subsequently the fishing this summer has sucked ass.  It feels like it is a million degrees in the sun and in the water.  I’ve seen tarpon sweating blood, snook dying of dehydration, bonefish wearing sunglasses, and permit…well they haven’t really been around that much. It is hard to get motivated to crawl out of the cave and get out on the water.  Maybe I was just that bored, but we went fishing the other day.

The task at hand was to take advantage of one of the three good weather days all month to try to get some footage for a web project for my friend John Stark.  He had been on some nice tailing redfish for a couple days previous, so we decided to head north and try our hand at the nearly impossible.  To really validate the day, the object was to get a red to eat Willy’s crab fly.  I had no doubt that they would eat it, and eat it they did.  We had three eats, one I stripped the fly out of a big red’s mouth, the second was what we like to call an “action rod set”, and the third came to hand.  Not the biggest fish, but it fulfilled our goal.

Hurricane Gustav Hits West Of New Orleans: Fly Fishing Will Get Good

At 5:00pm last night I spoke with Capt. Gregg Arnold who lives in Uptown New Orleans.  He told me that he had sent his wife Nancy out of the city, secured his Hell’s Bay skiff and planned on staying at home.  He told me the City was silent, and only a handful of his neighbors remained behind.  Fortunately for those who live New Orleans it appears that the levees will hold, and thanks to local government efforts, most citizens have evacuated the area.  Hurricane Gustav officially made landfall at 10:30am in Cocodrie, La.  Unfortunately it looks as though Terrabone Bay, Port Fourchon, Grand Isle and north to Houma, Morgan City and Lafayette will be taking the brunt of the storm.  The question is, what will happen to the fishing? Well, It will depend entirely on how much erosion occurs.  Because the storm is moving relatively fast, and it’s occurring during the incoming tide, the surge will be fast and high.  This might actually help to protect the marsh.  The grasses will be underwater quickly which may make them a bit less susceptible to prolonged wave action. Hopefully, all of this happens very quickly to minimize the damage.  The fishing grounds of Cocodrie to Venice including all of Barataria Bay will be most effected by the Storm.  I know Brian Carter, my old boss at the Uptown Angler, Rich Waldner and Kirby LaCour who all fish these waters.  I wish them the best in getting back on the water and on with life after this storm.  Other areas such as the Biloxi Marsh may be less effected.  Although the storm is not a good thing at all, I bet that in the immediate aftermath the fishing will be great!  There will be significant saltwater intrusion which is terrible for the fresh water bass fishing, but I have a feeling that the redfishing is going to explode.  Assuming that the city of New Orleans survives somewhat unscathed and tourism can return as normal, the fishing should get really good.  And the guides will certainly be appreciative of the business.  There will certainly be destruction to the west of New Orleans, we can only hope it’s minimal compared to Katrina.  We will keep you posted with a fishing report just as soon as we dodge this next one… Hanna.  

Things To Do In Key West: Toast-O-Matic Brings Down The House!  

“Reginald…They told me you were dead!”  Said the mother of the 1/2 dead redneck metro zombie in the opening line of Jolly Benson’s outrageous new comedy, Toast-o-matic.  The Studios of Key West second annual One Night Stand kicked off last Saturday night with a packed house.  Conceived by local artists, this event is a creative and collaborative project that pairs writers with actors, directors and set designers and gives them only 24 hours to produce and preform a short play.  Each team is required to use the same opening line, the same closing line, as well as a common prop.  Everything in between is completely original.  Five plays were preformed by some of Key West’s most notorious stage talent, but in the end no one could deny the gut wrenching humor of zombies, rocking trailers and white trash!  Written by World Angling’s Jolly Benson and Nick Vagnoni, directed by Chris Schultz, set design my Mike Hawkins and starring Quincy Perkins, Shawna Wynd, Mark Crow and Robin Deck, Toast-o-matic brought down the house with it’s unintellectual, raw humor.  Using the common prop, a bag of Atochan gold coins, as a means to cheat death, the zombie hero saves the day as the play’s climax ends in a pool of redneck love electrified!  Sponsored by Bender & Associates, Toast-o-matic will hopefully be preformed this fall as a short at the Red Barn Theatre here in Key West.  People were coming up to me after the play just to say “Will, your brother is one funny dude” and “I laughed so hard I almost cried.”  I couldn’t agree more as I was cheering him on while he and his team won 1st place in all the categories.  I know my bro has talent, and you won’t believe me until you see it, but Toast-o-matic is one funny play and the ending certainly ” isn’t what I had in mind.” 

Tropical Storm Fay: WorldANGLING Gets Whacked

On monday Tropical Storm Fay blew into Key West and dumped an impressive 8” of rain flooding my entire property, tackle room, Rathole Studio and screwing Mike Allen out of yet another scheduled fishing day.  And then…it sucker punched Dave up in Naples.  Not that he’d know as he was passed out after a long day backing up way too much computed crap.  Not to worry because he’s back at it after a quick phone call with me to discuss the entire future of World Angling, and few small things we should do to the website.  So… look for an entirely new homepage and layout sometime before the Drake Film Festival on September 14th.  We are planning on releasing our film on the website right before we head to the theater, so if you can’t make it out to see us in Denver you can certainly catch us right here at www.worldangling.com .
Speaking of catching… lately we’ve been catching up on some well deserved time off. Denny and I went to Chicago to connect with Gannon and see Rage Against The Machine, John Butler Trio, Nine Inch Nails, Gnarles Barkley, G love and lots of others at Lollapalooza.  Since Key West doesn’t really attract those kinds of bands, it was great to get a chance to see them live in concert.  Capt. Bill Houze and I have been heading out spear fishing lately and we are working on putting together a film about what fly fishing guides do on their days off… Head out as far as the little skiffs can go and Kill Fish!   Besides sleeping in, shooting guns, and raging at concerts, I’ve also found some time to squeeze in a bit of the old buggy whipping.  Mike Allen and I stuck our redemption permit on Friday, a hefty 28# fish.  Finally the monkey is off our back as we turn our attention to the redbone.org Superfly and SLAM tourneys where we will be defending our title in the 1 day / 1 fly event, and looking to capture the overall grand championship title using only fly rods.  I had a very relaxing yet ultra productive day fishing with Rick Orcutt on Saturday.  Rick managed to catch his first ever grand slam!  After releasing a 20+ pound permit to complete the slam we both just stood there looking at each other thinking…did we just do that?  It was hard to believe considering that we didn’t see as many fish as you would think.  Congrats Rick!