This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below: Password: The post Protected: Bristol Bay Contest appeared first on Fish Alaska Magazine ..read more

When is it the right time to use flesh flies? Some years it seems you can use flesh from opening day in June and continue to use it all the way through October. But on the other hand, some years I never pull out my flesh-fly box. I have this constant struggle when guiding trout fishing on the Kenai River, wondering what is going to work best. I am going to go over a few things regarding when I think it is appropriate to use flesh…or not! Early season flesh fly. When to fish flesh flies The years when we consistently use flesh flies generally happens the year after we had a big pink-salm ..read more

written and photos by Dan Paull Pike fishing on the Holitna River is some of the best that Alaska has to offer. Or at least I have been told many times by guests. The waters around Alaskan Adventures’ lodge on the Holitna River consist of a wide variety of environments. From landlocked lakes, to oxbow lakes that are connected to the river system, to fishing the slack water on the main river, we offer a wide range of pike fishing scenarios. If someone wanted to just pike fish, they could easily fish different water every day and have great success. Our favorite time of the year for pike fishing ..read more

written by Joe Jackson photos by Joe Jackson and Emmie Jackson  I’m staring at my fly box—one of several, I should say—at the end of yet another season that I’m still perplexed is gone. Doing this is always a dangerous thing; the last time I poked around my fly box I started asking questions about the patterns therein, and what ensued were twelve months of hopeless research, dozens of hours spent pestering fly experts, and an I’m-not-even-going-to-guess-it sum of marginally-related tying expenses. This particular fly box contains legions of grayling patterns (your Usuals and your Pheasant ..read more

by Joe Jackson Photos by Jonathan Farmer Jonathan Farmer with a lovely steelhead from one of his favorite Alaskan rivers.   There’s a vexed sigh from the other end of the phone line, Jonathan Farmer says “This stupid Schlappen is not cooperating.” It doesn’t surprise me at all that Jonathan Farmer, founder and owner of Midnight Sun Custom Flies, is tying as we speak. As a full-time fly designer who produces something on the order of ten dozen flies per week (sometimes more—sometimes much more), it seems he would have time for little else. What does surprise me, though, is that in only p ..read more

Written by Joe Jackson photos courtesy of Derek Fergus It’s July 7th, 2003, and the night sky around Cape Canaveral Air Force Base in Florida is suddenly whelmed in fire. The National Air and Space Administration’s Delta II Heavy rocket surges upward, its $400 million payload destined for a mission far, far away. A little over six months later, that payload—a dastardly intelligent rover named Opportunity—will make contact with its destination and proceed to give mankind some of its first true insights into a world beyond our own; the lonely, windswept rock known as Mars. You’re likely scratchi ..read more

Mark Hieronymus is a self-proclaimed “fish translator,” and his mentality for fly creation is refreshingly simple: The fish will tell you whether something works or not. It follows, then, that his resume of fly creations is essentially a Rosetta Stone of fish opinion, and the resounding diagnosis is that Hieronymus flies might be the best thing to hit Alaska since sliced bread. Take, for example, Hieronymus’s Happy Meal or Twofer. These flies are among the first to combine the effectiveness of flesh flies and beads (a pairing that we take for granted these days). Or what about the Fryolator, o ..read more

by Melissa Norris Spey fishing advantages are numerous and fishing for trout and salmon this way could easily become an addiction. The very first time I learned the basics of casting Skagit style for rainbow trout with a two handed fly rod was on the Naknek River on a trip to Bear Trail Lodge. It is there I met Kate Crump who was fated to become one of my besties. Their head guide at the time, Kate was charged with teaching me how to cast. Now Kate and her husband Justin run Frigate Adventure Travel based in King Salmon, Alaska offering trips on the Naknek and Nushagak rivers plus various dail ..read more

by Joe Jackson Photos by Jonathan Farmer Jonathan Farmer with a lovely steelhead from one of his favorite Alaskan rivers.   There’s a vexed sigh from the other end of the phone line, Jonathan Farmer says “This stupid Schlappen is not cooperating.” It doesn’t surprise me at all that Jonathan Farmer, founder and owner of Midnight Sun Custom Flies, is tying as we speak. As a full-time fly designer who produces something on the order of ten dozen flies per week (sometimes more—sometimes much more), it seems he would have time for little else. What does surprise me, though, is that in only p ..read more

Jason Rivers blog by Joe Jackson Rivers in his Alaskan element: pike fishing in the Interior. The fly is every bit of what I’d call “unconventional,” and the best way I can describe it is a hybrid of something extraterrestrial and a long-lost member of the arthropod family. It might be a pattern you’d use for bonefish in the Bahamas—a veritable crustacean imitation—if it wasn’t nine inches long. Perhaps the strangest thing about this fly, though, aside from the facts that it looks like it could latch onto your face à la Ridley Scott’s Alien and is affectionately called the STD, is that it is ..read more