Fishing Report Week Ending 6/15/14

The Russian River midnight opener was exceptionally good this year.   Most anglers got their three fish limit in short order.    The following day, which is when I went fishing with the Bangen group (Team NoDak and Montana) the action slowed but remained steady.  I was hoping for different results considering ADFG has predicted that the Russian River red run would be strong for the next couple of weeks.   Oh well, it's still fishing and you never know what it can be like day to day.

Here's the Bangen group flipping away in the early morning light.   As you can see, for such great reports it wasn't terribly crowded.   And, if you're familiar with the area, you can see the water levels are low which means the current is not too strong.   By the end of the day we released quite a few foul hooked fish and ended up with three legally caught red salmon.

Come Saturday morning it was finally time to get the dock in for the season.   This is the latest that I've ever put it in. It's not that I didn't want to, it's just that the tides were not large enough to float the dock out in April and May.    If you notice in the photo above I had an extra set of hands.  That's Dan Meyer who's helping (and swatting mosquitoes).  Dan and Mary came in Friday night and are here for a week.

Sunday morning (Father's Day) Dan and I decided to run up to the Russian River to see if there were any reds moving through.    As we were walking the trail that's adjacent to the river Dan spotted several fish jumping. On closer inspection we could see school after school of red salmon swimming upstream.   It did not take long to get our limit. In fact, we were done early enough to enjoy a hot breakfast with our wives, Jane and Mary.   Wow, what a difference a couple of days can make.

I'll close this post by updating the Kenai River king salmon early run. Right now the run is nearly a thousand fish more than ADFG predicted.  If the trend continues we should land somewhere in the middle of the 5300-9000 escapement goal.   This is definitely one time when I'm happy that ADFG biologists got it wrong.