Kenai Trip Report (2006), the Good, Bad & Ugly
Just got back from a trip to the Kenai Peninsula (KP) in Alaska where my son Chris and I fished from 6-16 September. Since I’ve heard a lot about the spectacular fishing here, I wanted to check it out and compare it to the fly out fishing available in the western part of the state, as I have traveled and fished extensively in AK since the 1980’s. As can be expected with a drive-to fishing destination, there is a lot of good, bad, & ugly to say about the KP, and I am going to start with the “ugly” since very few people seem to mention it!
The “ugly” part of the KP is since access is available via numerous roads, the fishery has very heavy fishing pressure and the associated problems that go along with way too many people fishing a particular water. I never expected to be alone on the KP, but I also never expected the waters to be more heavily pressured than California! And that’s no lie! If you think Putah Creek, Feather River, Trinity River, American River, Mad River (etc!) gets a lot of fishing pressure, then don’t go to the KP because there are more people floating the Kenai than the lower Sac on a busy weekend! The walk-in fisheries are even more crowded than any I have ever fished in CA, including Putah & Hat. While walking some distances does help, the short lengths of quality stream available limits the ability to “spread” anglers out. We walked 2.5 miles on the Russian River from the trailhead and still saw/passed on average about 10-20 anglers even that far in! With that much fishing pressure comes the inevitable “combat” fishing theme. If you have to chase a fish downstream, expect some one to take your place when you return! Dave likes to talk about trampled vegetation and bank erosion as a huge problem in CA due to overuse by anglers (and maybe it is), but Dave better not go to the KP! It’s a good thing the local authorities have put in “board walk” style trails with stair access to the rivers because there wouldn’t be any stream side vegetation left. Another big “ugly” that I never expected to see was that 90% of the fish over 12” had hooking wounds all over their bodies, but mostly around the mouth. Quite frankly most of these fish have been caught and released many times, and most fish were missing significant portions of their jaws/lips. Just look closely at some of the big fish pics coming! Not very aesthically pleasing for me to see a 28” rainbow with half its lip tore off! But then again, if you believe that C&R angling along with the associated “trophy” picture taking and mishandling really does kill a significant number of fish, don’t include the KP in your study because these fish are handled to death and still thriving! My last “ugly” has to do with snagging of fish, including snagging of salmon, trout, and char. I expect bait/hardware anglers to actively snag fish, but the number of people holding fly rods with a 1 ounce sinker on the end and doing the “Kenai Twitch” almost made me sick.
Now on to the “bad”! I had booked four float trips on the Kenai with Troutfitters in Coopers Landing. I will be honest and tell you that I will never book any additional trips with them in the future. On the first day the guide was 45 minutes late, didn’t have any gas in his car, and we had to drive all the way to Sterling for gas. With an 8:00 AM starting time, we finally got to the put-in at 10:45 AM. We pulled off the river about 6:00 PM. The second day went fine with no issues. On the third day, we were supposed to float the “canyon” but the guide never got the word and didn’t bring a motor so the float was changed to the “upper” without our knowledge. I complained, and fortunately we had an open date later in our schedule so we were able to switch dates. Unfortunately, due to the late starting time of that float (10 AM) that effectively meant we “lost” a half day of fishing time as it blew the whole morning by the time we could return to our RV on the Russian River. Our next guide date went fine with no issues. Our last guide date was even more messed up, with people meeting at different places at different times, to the tune that we finally didn’t hit the river until 10:30 AM (again with an 8 AM start). We again pulled off the river around 6:00 PM that day. For $500 a day (for two anglers) I expect better than that amount of fishing time and we spent an awful lot of time “hanging out” when I would rather be fishing. I will contrast Troutfitters with Matt Duncan from X Stream Alaska Fishing who we fortunately ran into (read about Deep Creek) and he met us at 6:15 AM and left us at 6:30 PM on the one date we had open on the Russian River.
I’m done with the “rants” and its time to talk about the “good”, and there is plenty good to make up for all the “ugly” & “bad” on the trip! First off I will make the following statement: I have never experienced the quality fishing we had at a drive-to fishery any where in the USA that we had on the KP. IMNSHO, the KP is most likely the best drive-to fishery available any where! I will break the report down into the specific streams we fished. All trout/char fishing was done with 6 weight fly rods with floating lines and beads were used exclusively to simulate the salmon roe. When swinging for silvers we used 8 weight fly rods with floating lines and added split shot whenever needed.
Quartz Creek: After picking up our RV rental in Anchorage, getting all the needed supplies/fishing licenses, driving to the KP, we still had enough time to put in about four hours of fishing on Quartz Creek. Quartz Creek runs adjacent to the Sterling Highway and offers excellent public access with numerous turnouts large enough to accommodate an RV. Access while on the water is a bit difficult due to extremely brushy conditions, so you will do a lot of “bush whacking” through prime bear habitat (but we never saw one), but once you find spawning sockeye the wading/fishing is relatively easy. There were not a lot of sockeye still actively spawning, so you had to walk a bit to find them, but when you did, whoa nellie, the fishing was excellent. In a single 100 yard stretch of the creek that had actively spawning sockeye (although we had to walk/search over a mile of water to find them) we landed over 60 fish! The biggest went 22” and weighed about 4.5 pounds, and around 20 of those were over 18”. All fish were dolly varden char, but rainbows are reportedly also present in the creek. This was very fun fishing on a small stream with sight fishing to dollies eating eggs below the sockeye. Fishing pressure was relatively light (by KP standards) with only about 20 cars fishing the five mile stretch of creek, mostly down lower where the rainbows reportedly are caught. We did not fish this lower stretch because all the pull outs were full of cars.
Quartz Creek
Chris With Nice Dolly From Quartz Creek
Big 4.5 Pound Dolly Sight Fished From Quartz Creek
Sockeye Salmon Holed Up In Quartz Creek
Middle Kenai River Float; Skilak Lake to Bings Landing: This is a float section of the river that features very large rainbow and dolly varden trout. Wading access is almost non-existent in this stretch and all fishing is done from a drift boat, mostly while side drifting. We floated this stretch twice for two of our days, and had our biggest rainbows from this float. Fishing was unusually slow over the two floats, as we only landed about 35 fish, but almost every fish was over 20”. We landed two 28” (~ 10 pounds), one 27”, one 26”, two 25”, and two 24” rainbows, along with numerous rainbows in the 20-22” range. There were also a few dollies in the 18-22” range, but about 85% of the fish were rainbows. These were extremely healthy and fat fish. Most of the big fish were caught near the outlet of Skilak Lake. Fishing pressure was very heavy, with about 30-50 boats doing the float. Most of this pressure was concentrated in the upper portion near Skilak where the motorized boats do repeated drifts over the most productive areas like Rainbow Alley and The Washboard.
Some Nice Trout From The Middle Kenai Floats
Sunrise Over Skilak Lake
Upper Kenai Float; Coopers Landing to Jims Landing: High winds forced us to cancel our float in the middle section of the Kenai on this day. This is quite a common occurrence at this time of the year so you need to be prepared for switched floats. Winds gusted up to 50 MPH and made for a tough day of fishing, but we still managed to land around 60 fish. Most of the fish were small dollies under 14”, but we did get a few nice fish including a 22” rainbow, and a 20” dolly. Several larger fish were hooked by our boat mates but were not landed. There were quite a few dollies in 18” range. Most of the bigger fish were caught from the braided section of the Kenai below the Russian River. Wading access is fair to good in this stretch but you will be competing with the drifters for the prime spots. This is one of the few spots available for the foot angler. Get there early and fish it hard in the AM if you’re on foot and beat the drifters to these spots. There were a lot of boats on this stretch, it was far more crowded than the Lower Sac during prime time, and on one hole I counted 15 boats!
A Nice Fish From The Upper Kenai Float
Upper Kenai Float; Coopers Landing to Sportsman Landing: Again, high winds and rain forced us off of the canyon stretch so we got stuck with this float. This is a “numbers” float, primarily for small dollies. We landed around 100 fish, mostly small dollies under 12”, but did get a few nice rainbows and dollies up to 20”. There are a few spots available along this stretch for the foot angler, but again, the drifters pretty much park on every available wading spot. I really wouldn’t waste my time on this stretch as the Kenai below Sportsman has much better wading access and bigger fish.
Anchor River, Ninilchik River & Deep Creek: We were only in AK for one weekend, and due to the crowded conditions around the Kenai we went south about 100 miles to try and avoid the weekend crowds. Our plan pretty much worked as there was surprisingly little fishing pressure on the Ninilchik & Deep, although the Anchor was fairly crowded with about 30 cars throughout the just over one mile stretch of water that is open to salmon fishing. Above the North/South Anchor confluence there was very little fishing pressure. We went to these streams to fish primarily for silver salmon, although the run was just about over, and steelhead. We fished for only a half day each on the Anchor, Ninilchik, & Deep. We got skunked on the Anchor and didn’t see a single fish landed by anyone. We only caught one dolly on the Ninilchik, but only spent a few hours fishing it. The Ninilchik is a very pretty small stream with fantastic access and easy wading and we didn’t see another fisherman. We did better on Deep Creek as we found a small pod of silver salmon (~10) in a small hole and I caught one silver on a swung Popsicle. Unfortunately, that fish spooked out the entire pod of fish and that was it for silvers. But the real prize awaited us, as Chris got a chrome bright 26” steelhead while swinging a Popsicle for silvers at the tailout of the hole. This fish was fresh from the ocean, in beautiful shape, and had sea lice still crawling at the base of each fin. Chris was feeling pretty good about himself until we rounded the bend to the next hole and saw guide Matt Duncan from X Stream Alaska Fishing 907-223-0381 madmattduncan@alaska.net absolutely slaying the steelhead! We watched for a few minutes while several chrome bright steelhead were landed and chatted with him for about 15 minutes. Now most guides I run into astream must be related to Bill Crist, with their “Kalleeeefornieyuh go home” attitude, but not Matt. He was friendly, very energetic (not surprisingly he drinks Red Bull by the gallon!), kind, very talkative, and helpful to the point of showing us how he was rigged up and where to go and what to use for steelhead. I was so impressed with him that I booked a guided trip with him on the spot, for a few days later. If you ever want a knowledgeable hard working KP fly fishing guide, especially someone who really knows the steelhead scene on the KP, you need to book this dude! Unfortunately, we were running out of time and only got to fish for another hour so we didn’t get any more fish. Fishing pressure on Deep was relatively light, with only about five cars working the entire stretch, public access is very good, the wading is easy, and if I ever go back to the KP I’m definitely fishing Deep for a few days!
Chris Hooked Up With Steelie On Deep Creek
Chromer Steelie from Deep Creek Caught By Chris
Guide Matt Duncan Scoring Steelie From Deep Creek
South Fork Anchor River
Chris Fishing The Ninilchik River
A "Silly" Pink From Deep Creek
Russian River: The Russian is Alaska’s most heavily fished stream and it shows lots of “ugly” scars as discussed above. But I must say, over the four days we fished it, it was my favorite river of the bunch. Chris got his first silver salmon ever, on a swung Popsicle, and I hooked a ton of silver’s on swung Popsicles and Volcano’s. The silver run was in full swing on the Russian and the fish were still surprisingly bright even though we were some distance from the salt. But the big surprise on the Russian was that we got more silver’s while dead drifting beads than on swung flies! Matt Duncan guided us to an over 100 fish landed day, on our own we averaged over 75 fish a day, with the bulk of the fish being rainbows (~90%), and the rest dollies. The average size of these fish is incredible, as we got several rainbows up to 24”, and an incredible number of fish in the 18”-22” range. The fishing was so ridiculous that we didn’t even bother taking pictures of any fish unless it was over 20”! Very few fish were hooked under 14”, with the bulk being in the 14”-18” range. The Russian is a small clear stream with lots of sight fishing opportunities, but many portions are very fast riffles that you fish blind behind the spawning sockeyes. Access and wading is a bit tougher by AK standards as there is some faster rocky stretches but it is not too bad for a reasonably fit person. Crowds and snagging were intense in the campground sections of the river, as 100-200 cars were parked in the various campgrounds/parking lots and these poor fishies are fished over a bunch. There is an excellent “boardwalk” trail from the campground to the confluence with the Kenai River with stairs to access the best portions of the river. The key is to avoid the campground stretches and hike upstream as far as the falls (~ 2.5 miles), for relatively uncrowded fishing, although you will still encounter between 10-20 anglers a day that far up. The only place we saw bears was the Russian, and we got “chased” off a few holes by brown bears that were fishing, but they posed no real threat and ignored the stupid humans that were getting way too close taking pictures. Except for the idiot who tried landing a sockeye with the bear about 50 feet away! That bear was on the thrashing fish on the end of the dudes’ line in a flash and got it! Rule #1 in AK is you never fish with a bear nearby!
Chris' First Silver Ever
Some Nice Silvers Caught On A Bead From The Russian
Some Brown Bears At The Kenai/Russian Confluence
Chris Fishing The Russian River
Some Nice Rainbow Trout From The Russian River
Why Do I Fish Beads While In Alaska? Here's Why!
Ptarmigan Creek: We didn’t fish this creek as we were late on our return trip back to Anchorage and the fishing was so good on the Russian, but we did stop by for a look. Nice little stream with a lot of spawning sockeye salmon and dollies eating eggs beneath them. Quite crowded with about 20 cars in the parking lot, but I’m sure if you hike a bit upstream the same good fishing as the Russian would happen.
Ptarmigan Creek
We were in Alaska for 13 days and fished a total of eleven days for a total cost of around $4,000 for the two of us. The bulk of that was guide fees (five days) and tips which totaled ~ $2,600. The cost of the RV was quite low, with a base rate of $75 a day plus mileage @ 17 cents from Great Alaskan Holidays RV (highly recommended). Airfare was free as I have a ton of frequent flyer miles. Take away the guide fees and you have quite an economical two week fishing vacation for two guys. I am already thinking of returning next year and booking Matt for a few days of steelhead fishing!
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