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​When I moved to Thorne Bay on Prince of Wales Island in Southeast Alaska in mid-May. I hoped that I had made it in time to catch the end of Steelhead season, so my first couple of trips out were Steelhead focused. My first stop was the Thorne River. The Thorne is largest river on the island and has multiple runs on the lower river that are suitable for swinging streamers with a spey or switch rod. I spent a couple days swinging through runs with my new Redington Dually switch rod I did not find any Steelhead. I was however catching cutthroat trout from time to time. After finding no steelhead ..read more

Stream fishing on Prince of Wales Island was great in July. Fly fishing for Dolly Varden early in the month was outstanding. We also saw an early run of Coho that made for some really fun early season salmon fishing. Dry weather and low water delayed the Pink Salmon run a couple of weeks, but the month ended strong with Pinks pushing into many systems toward the end of the month ..read more

The Thorne River has been fishing really well. Water level has been on the drop and wading access is great. Some Sockeye have moved into the system but cutthroat trout have been the main attraction. Swinging steamers through the riffles and stripping through pools have both produced fish. I will be looking for Cutthroat an Dolly Varden to begin keying in on salmon eggs as more Sockeye and Pinks enter the system. There are probably better options out there if you want to target Sockeye, but if you do, small sparse flies such as the Montana Brassie or Teeny Nymph are good options ..read more

September had its challenges when it came to fly fishing Prince of Wales Island rivers. Pinks lingered late into the month which made finding fall Coho in the mix difficult at times. High water was often a challenge during the month as well. Coho fishing did pick up throughout the month, but we really didn't experience good Coho fly fishing until the latter part of the month. Cutthroat and Dolly Varden fly fishing was very good during the month. We targeted Cutts and Dollies mostly with beads and experienced some of the best fishing of the year.  ..read more

Fly fishing on Prince of Wales Island was great in August. Fly fishing for Pink Salmon was incredible. Pinks moved into the rivers and lakes thick and we had a blast landing large numbers of fish every day. Coho fishing has been sporadic, but we have been lucky enough to find some nice fish here and there using a . This time of year we found that Coho were most active early in the morning. Cutthroat and Dolly fishing has been good, although we did not spend a lot of time targeting them because the salmon fishing was so good. We caught a fair amount of Cutthroat and Dollies while streamer fishi ..read more

Much of October was predictably Southeast Alaska with heavy rains and high water. We did get out a couple times and tried some nymphing and streamer fishing for Cutthroat Trout in a few creeks with no luck. There were still a few dark Coho in some of the lakes. The one I caught while searching for Cutthroat was pretty worn out. Overall the fishing in October was very slow, but Prince of Wales Island was as calm and quite as I’ve seen it in awhile and the fishing was very pleasant ..read more

November was very slow fishing for me. I only made it out a few times and had very little success. I found a couple worn out Coho and a couple Cutthroat Trout while doing some lake fishing but that was it for fish. Towards the end of the month I got the big stick out and swung some streamers for Steelhead, but was unsuccessful. Even though I didn’t find any Steelhead, it was nice to be on the river and the scenery was beautiful with the snow ..read more

Fly fishing on Prince of Wales Island in May was excellent. The Trout and Dolly fishing has been some of the best I’ve seen in Southeast Alaska. There has been tons of fish around and the average size of the fish seems to be larger than I’ve seen before. Streamer fishing was really great and we even had some good dry fly fishing. On top of all the good Trout and Dolly fishing, we even found a few nice Steelhead early in the month. May is one of my favorite months to fish on Prince of Wales. The weather is usually good, the fishing is awesome, and the rivers are pretty quiet ..read more

This July was certainly not the best month that we have had, but I guess it could have been a lot worse. After a hot and dry June we battled with low water and late salmon returns. We caught lots of dollies and cutthroat early in July but the fishing was still below average. Sockeye never really seemed to show up in good numbers and early run Silvers were a couple weeks late showing up. When they did show up they shot up river quickly during a short period of higher water. Pinks in the Thorne were right on time which helped to improve fishing in the latter part of the month ..read more