Fishing Report Week Ending 7/1/18

We're back in business.

The Kenai River reopened today for king salmon fishing. I was out this morning with Dan Meyer and here's the report: in the two hours we were out the fishing was slow. We did bring a small king up to the side of the boat, and we did watch another boat do the same, but that was it for our morning. Sure, there are other people fishing other parts of the river, but where we were at it was slow. But, hey, we were fishing and it felt good!

Even when the fishing is off, there's always something interesting happening on the water. Here's an example from this morning. The guy on the left got his fishing lines tangled into his prop. If you've ever done this before you know you have to shut your motor down and take the line out. Not a difficult task on a lake, but when you're free drifting on a fast river, bad things can happen. The boat on the right saw the disabled boat coming his way and luckily maneuvered to avoid a collision.  Based on their conversation, I don't think either operator was happy with what happened. 

I forgot, did I mention the river opened up to fishing again? It was good to see others out enjoying the beautiful day.

The only other area fishing report I can give is for the Russian River. The run has seen it's peak, but with effort, sockeyes can still be caught.

Here's a limit caught by my friend Francis. Thanks, Francis, for sharing your report and photos.

I never get tired of seeing things like this. Here's a moose doing what a moose will do.

Here's another snacking on fiddlehead ferns and wild rose bushes. All of this happened in our front yard.

And, while driving on Bridge Access Road, I saw this small herd of caribou grazing in the tidal flats.

I'll end this post with a quick recap of the early Kenai king run. Not that I want to dwell on the past, but the graph above represents the last four years and 2018 is represented by the red line. As you can see, it wasn't the worse run, but it still fell short of the minimum escapement goal of 3900 fish (the official count was 3000). I've been told by the ADFG biologist that the early run is often an indicator of the strength of the late run, but considering how off the biologists were on their 2018 preseason forecast, I'm cautiously optimistic the second run will be better than the first. If not, and the king fishery is restricted, you know we're geared up to chase sockeye salmon, dolly varden, and rainbow trout. Kings are the priority, but if Mother Nature throws us a curve ball, we've got a heckuva Plan B in place...

See you next week for the first full report of the second run of Kenai kings.






Beaver Creek Cabins & Guide Service