Situk River Fly Shop River Reports and General Information

Most reports coming in the past several days have been great. Yesterday, a group reported floating the river and did VERY well. We brought in some shrimp patterns this year and the sockeye have really been hammering them. They sold out before we put the tag on their drawer, so I don't have a clue what the name of these are... OOPS! Teen typed up two long river reports, for the 19th and 20th, so I inserted them below where they should have gone... Enjoy!

We had a big flush of fish yesterday, with a great week overall... The count yesterday was 3,469 bringing the total count to 44,748. Kings have been a terrible run, with 11 counted yesterday for a total so far of only 162. Yikes! The weather has been a mixed bag of rain, overcast, sun breaks and then more rain. The water is up with just shy of 300 CFS right now. Lots of pinks are starting to show up, but still the vast majority are sockeye.

I'm back from my last week of commercial fishing for the season. We had a pretty mediocre season on the Akwe and Italio. With two gill nets, we only caught 4 large kings for the three weeks we fished. A lot of chum in the river right now and not very many pinks. The Italio and Akwe have an odd-year run of pinks, so I wouldn't expect a whole lot of them this year. Next year however... I do have lots of photos and i will post them to the blog page. We had all sorts of boat and ATV and cabin problems that made this a difficult season, but any day out on the river is better than in an office. OOPS! Sorry if that hurt anyone out there..

Teen has a couple reports from while I was out, but she couldn't figure out how to post them on this page. I'll work with her on that, since come September, I'll be out on the river the entire month and she'll have to do the postings herself.

Bob Report:
No word from the river, but commercial fishing closes at 6 p.m. Plane should be rolling in between 7p-8p, we’ll see if Bob and the kids survived their adventure together …

Shop Report:
There have been two groups through the shop saying it’s slower fishing today, and are seeing smaller sized sockeye too. But still seeing plenty of HOTS (all colors) going out the door.

Amount of daylight for today 17 hours and 39 minutes.
A loss from yesterday of 3 minutes and 52 seconds.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TIDES:                        High                High                /           Low                 Low
Tuesday, 20^th             09:53A 6.3     09:19P                9.7   /           03:29A 0.5     02:48P 3.6
Wed., 21^st                   11:15A 6.6     10:23P    9.7   /           04:40A 0.1     04:06P 4.0
Thurs., 22^nd                12:17A 7.1     11:21P    9.8   /           05:40A -0.3     05:14P 3.9
Friday, 23^rd                 ………. ….     01:03P    7.5   /           06:29A -0.7     06:10P              3.6
Saturday, 24^th            00:11A 10.0   01:41P    7.9   /           07:11A -1.0     06:57P              3.2

Date	Count	Cumulative	Notes
Jul-18	35	36,955
Jul-17	2,013	36,920
Jul-16	970	34,907
Jul-15	255	33,937
Jul-14	742	33,682
Jul-13	1	32,940

Daily discharge statistics, in cfs, for Jul 20 based on 21 years of record more
Min (1993)	20th percen- tile	Median	Mean	Most Recent Instantaneous Value Jul 20	80th percen- tile	Max (1994)
73	95	129	175	202	242	476

Bob Report:
Received a call from the VHF, there commercial fishing opener has been extended on the Akwe River. So those who are missing Bob will have to wait another 24 hours J - Thanks for your patience, Teen.

Shop Report:
No new reports coming through the shop. Souvenir shoppers so far today heading back home.

Water Report / Conditions for the Situk:
The weather remains stable, no new precip., the river is dropping… fishing should be “GREAT!”

TIDES:                        High                High                /           Low                 Low
Monday, 19th             08:20A 6.5     08:14P    9.8   /           02:13A 0.7     01:38P              2.8
Tuesday, 20^th             09:53A 6.3     09:19P                9.7   /           03:29A 0.5     02:48P 3.6
Wed., 21^st                   11:15A 6.6     10:23P    9.7   /           04:40A 0.1     04:06P 4.0
Thurs., 22^nd                12:17A 7.1     11:21P    9.8   /           05:40A -0.3     05:14P 3.9
Friday, 23^rd                 ………. ….     01:03P    7.5   /           06:29A -0.7     06:10P              3.6
Saturday, 24^th            00:11A 10.0   01:41P    7.9   /           07:11A -1.0     06:57P              3.2

Date	Count	Cumulative	Notes
Jul-14	742	33,682
Jul-13	1	32,940
Jul-12	190	32,939

Gage height, feet

Most recent instantaneous value: 65.66 07-19-2010 14:30 AKDT

Discharge, cubic feet per second

Most recent instantaneous value: 219 07-19-2010 14:30 AKDT

Daily discharge statistics, in cfs, for Jul 19 based on 21 years of record more
Min (1993)	20th percen- tile	Median	Mean	Most Recent Instantaneous Value Jul 19	80th percen- tile	Max (2008)
73	90.	135	167	219	244	399

Sunday, July 18, 2010 3:47 p.m. ADT

Bob Report:
Bob has taken the kids to the cabin this week (Thank YOU Bob!) for Commercial Fishing.

Shop Report:
Quiet morning in the Fly Shop. The afternoon, however, brought in a few groups restocking their fly boxes. River report from those fishing, “It’s awesome!” All who have come through are catching their limit in 4 hours or less.

1. “Red Hots” - RED on RED – Red #4/Red Krystal Flash
2. “Blue Hots” - BLUE on BLUE – Blue #4 hook/Blue Krystal Flash

https://www.hillsdiscountflies.com/graphics/Image/pinkeyesm.gif

Shop Price: $1.75/ea or $20.00/doz. Plus tax. (color is faded in picture, it’s a bright pink)
3. “Pink Eve” Sockeye

TIDES:           High            High          / Low            Low
Sunday, 18th     06:58A 7.2     07:15P 10.0     01:00A 0.8    12:40P 1.7
Monday, 19th     08:20A 6.5     08:14P  9.8  /   02:13A 0.7    01:38P 2.8
Tuesday, 20^th    09:53A 6.3     09:19P  9.7  /   03:29A 0.5    02:48P 3.6
Wed., 21^st       11:15A 6.6     10:23P  9.7 /   04:40A 0.1    04:06P 4.0
Thurs., 22^nd     12:17A 7.1     11:21P 9.8 /   05:40A -0.3    05:14P 3.9
Friday, 23^rd    ………. ….      01:03P  7.5 /   06:29A -0.7    06:10P 3.6
Saturday, 24^th   00:11A 10.0   01:41P  7.9 /   07:11A -1.0    06:57P 3.2

AKZ017-191600-
CAPE FAIRWEATHER TO CAPE SUCKLING COASTAL AREA-
INCLUDING...YAKUTAT
400 PM AKDT SUN JUL 18 2010
.TONIGHT...MOSTLY CLOUDY. LIGHT RAIN DEVELOPING. LOWS AROUND 51.
WEST WIND 10 MPH IN THE EVENING BECOMING LIGHT LATE.
.MONDAY...LIGHT RAIN LIKELY. HIGHS AROUND 58. LIGHT WINDS. CHANCE
OF RAIN 70 PERCENT.
.MONDAY NIGHT...RAIN LIKELY. LOWS AROUND 51. WEST WIND 10 MPH IN
THE EVENING BECOMING LIGHT AND VARIABLE. CHANCE OF RAIN
70 PERCENT.
.TUESDAY...RAIN LIKELY. HIGHS AROUND 59. SOUTHWEST WIND 10 MPH.
CHANCE OF RAIN 70 PERCENT.
.TUESDAY NIGHT...RAIN LIKELY. LOWS AROUND 52. SOUTHWEST WIND
10 MPH. CHANCE OF RAIN 70 PERCENT.
.WEDNESDAY THROUGH THURSDAY...RAIN LIKELY. HIGHS AROUND 58. LOWS
AROUND 51.
.THURSDAY NIGHT...SHOWERS LIKELY. LOWS AROUND 48.
.FRIDAY...CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF SHOWERS. HIGHS AROUND 57.
.FRIDAY NIGHT THROUGH SUNDAY...CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF SHOWERS.
LOWS AROUND 49. HIGHS AROUND 59.

Date	Count	Cumulative	Notes
Jul-14	742	33,682
Jul-13	1	32,940
Jul-12	190	32,939

Daily discharge statistics, in cfs, for Jul 18 based on 21 years of record more
Min (1993)	20th percen- tile	Median	Mean	80th percen- tile	Most Recent Instantaneous Value Jul 18	Max (1991)
73	91	135	162	217	238	335

"Teen: Thanks for the great update. Tell Bob his look pretty weak in comparison! No, I can't come up until next May, but I vicariously enjoy the river thru your reports. Doug"

Gee, thanks a lot Doug! OK, I have to admit that my reports pretty much suck compared to Teen's. Me thinks I need to spend more time on the river. Teen also sold a lot more than I do in the shop this past weekend. Time to hand this thing over to her...

In the meantime... The water is dropping and good weather is expected though the coming week. Yesterday afternoon was bright and sunny, but it turned to rain in the night and held the water fairly steady after the initial drop. But... the water is back to being clear, the fish are starting to fill the holes in again and people are again catching fish. Best flies today have been the usual suspects - the Red Hots, Green Hots and Rainbow Hots. I had tied up a bunch of Red Hots with eyes and they are gone - having done really well especially in the bigger water. A little added weight helped significantly to get down. I'm working on tying up a few more. Also, the red on the green hook... seems silly to be all excited about a colored hook with a little Krystal Flash and whether a color change makes that much of a difference... but it does seem to make a difference.

The Rainbow Hot pictured above is a commercially tied one we used to stock. After the latest price increase from my supplier, I started tying them myself. I prefer red thread and the black hook I'm doing now.

Red flash on a green hook, compared to red on red with bead chain eyes... do the fish really care?

Part of the "Hots" drawer... Pink on pink with eyes, rainbow on black, "Pink Eve" as Teen recommended in her post below... Then green on green, FL Orange on green and the red on green... The red variants work the best "usually", but having a wide variety of colors is a good idea, since sometimes the red just turns off and they need something different. Last week in lower water, the black on black was the ticket. Sometimes it just takes a little shake-up to turn the sockeye back onto the bite. YES, THEY DO BITE!!! I have been holding my tongue on the message board on the discussion on how to "legally snag"... Odd how they miraculously grow to 7 lbs by never feeding on anything... I guess occasionally in nature they must accidentally "line" themselves on zoo plankton enough not to starve to death...

A "Hot" is just about the easiest fly to tie. Just tie on your thread, lay about 6-7 strands of Krystal Flash up the shank that are about 1 1/2 inches long. Three wraps right at the mid-point of the strands, then fold them over, so you end up with 12-14 strands. Doubling it over the wraps prevents the strands from coming out. Wrap a head, trim the length to just a bit longer than the hook, whip-finish and you are done. Just about the simplest fly possible and why I have the local school kids tying them for me instead of using the commercial supplier.

Then on the river, find a school and figure out the best way that works for you to totally dead drift to them. Sockeye don't generally chase down their escaping feed. It just sort of twitches in the water. So... let it dead drift by them and they will take it, but very softly. You'll miss a lot of genuine takes just because it is so subtle. My preferred method (because this was how I was originally taught by Matt and Gary) is to use a very heavy sink tip (type 8 or type 6 depending on the flow rate) with only about 2 feet of leader. Short leader, so the sink tip drags the fly down fast. A long leader will allow the unweighted fly to lag above the sink tip and miss the strike zone. The other way to do it is the classic jig-drift like for steelhead. "Hot" fly, split shot a few inches above, long leader and a Corky or Thingamabobber up several feet, so you can suspend the fly just above the bottom. Sockeye are ON THE BOTTOM, so you have to get it down to them. Either of these methods works to dead drift through the school without lining them in the mouth.

Once the current catches the belly of the line and the fly starts to swing, your chance is over and you need to recast. Get the drift right and you have a sockeye. Screw it up, or start to swing and you'll probably have a dolly. Either way, it is a heck of a good day...

There! A little actual content to compete with Teen's penchant for detail... Hope you are happy now Doug! J

We are overcast, foggy and drizzly… could we say.. “perfect fishing weather?” Now for those fish J Latest report – some are catching some aren’t. One sweet gentleman came in said nothings working but “THIS!”

Otherwise it’s the “Hots!” still going out the door – red, pearl, black, blue. Folks are liking an assortment, which is wise being 10 miles from town on the Situk.

You’ll still have to put up with me (Teen) while Bob and Tanis had an extension on the Akwe River (27 miles from town) commercial gill netting. They are due back in tonight around 8 p.m. for those who are missing Bob’s witty humor!

Amount of daylight for today 18 hours and 1 minutes.
A loss from yesterday of 3 minutes and 17 seconds.

____________________________________________________________________________________

Yakutat Bay Tides

                        Time               Height
High Tide      2:17 a.m.       11.3ft
Low Tide        9:01 a.m.        -2.7ft
High Tide      3:32 p.m.       9.7ft
Low Tide        9:09 p.m.        1.5ft

Date	Count	Cumulative
Jul-11	800	32,708
Jul-10	1,140	31,908
Jul-09	1,012	30,768

Daily discharge statistics, in cfs, for Jul 13 based on 21 years of record more
Min (2005)	20th percen- tile	Median	Mean	80th percen- tile	Most Recent Instantaneous Value Jul 13	Max (1991)
74	102	152	175	270.	287	365

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Temperature, water, degrees Celsius

Most recent instantaneous value: 12.2 07-13-2010 09:30 AKDT

We have under overcast and drizzly skies this morning. River continues to rise with the intermittent rain so bring your wading belt!

Report on the river: fish are there, and catchable, but continue on the move with the higher than normal water level. Folk are catching at the lower end and at 9-mile bridge area (yes, still with sea lice at the bridge!).

We had one report that there are now 3 BEARS in the 9-mile area. One is still our trouble bear that focuses around the bridge area. The other two were spotted between the bridge and the West Fork on the trail, but were spooked pretty easily and went their own way.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date	Count	Cumulative	Notes
Jul-09	1,012	30,768
Jul-08	0	29,756
Jul-07	0	29,756
Jul-06	117	29,756
Jul-05	1,856	29,639
Jul-04	3,026	27,783
Jul-03	437	24,757
Jul-02	1,549	24,320
Jul-01	434	22,771

Weather Forecast:
-----------------

AKZ017-112100-
CAPE FAIRWEATHER TO CAPE SUCKLING COASTAL AREA
INCLUDING...YAKUTAT
737 AM AKDT SUN JUL 11 2010
.NOW...
CLOUDY SKIES WITH RAIN CONTINUING THROUGH 1 PM. SOUTHEAST WIND 10 MPH
BECOMING SOUTHWEST 10 MPH DURING THE PERIOD. TEMPERATURES GRADUALLY
RISING INTO THE MID 50'S.

FPAK57PAJK_AKZ017
-----------------
AKZ017-120100-
CAPE FAIRWEATHER TO CAPE SUCKLING COASTAL AREA-
INCLUDING...YAKUTAT
500 AM AKDT SUN JUL 11 2010
.TODAY...RAIN. HIGHS AROUND 56. SOUTH WIND 10 MPH.
.TONIGHT...RAIN LIKELY. LOWS AROUND 50. WEST WIND 10 MPH. CHANCE
OF RAIN 70 PERCENT.
.MONDAY...MOSTLY CLOUDY. SCATTERED SHOWERS IN THE MORNING. HIGHS
AROUND 60. LIGHT WINDS BECOMING SOUTH 10 MPH IN THE AFTERNOON.
CHANCE OF SHOWERS 40 PERCENT.
.MONDAY NIGHT...MOSTLY CLOUDY WITH ISOLATED SHOWERS. LOWS AROUND
50. SOUTHEAST WIND 10 MPH. CHANCE OF SHOWERS 20 PERCENT.
.TUESDAY...RAIN LIKELY. HIGHS AROUND 56. SOUTHEAST WIND 10 MPH.
CHANCE OF RAIN 70 PERCENT.
.TUESDAY NIGHT...RAIN LIKELY. LOWS AROUND 50.
.WEDNESDAY...CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF RAIN. HIGHS AROUND 57.
.WEDNESDAY NIGHT AND THURSDAY...MOSTLY CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF
SHOWERS. LOWS AROUND 48. HIGHS AROUND 58.
.THURSDAY NIGHT...MOSTLY CLOUDY. LOWS AROUND 49.
.FRIDAY THROUGH SATURDAY...MOSTLY CLOUDY. HIGHS AROUND 60. LOWS AROUND 49.

River Report from 9 mile Bridge:

- There are now 3 bears in the area. L
- Those who were out fishing (yesterday) did wellJ

Taken from 9 mile Bridge:

Gage height, feet

Most recent instantaneous value: 66.27 07-11-2010 08:30 AKDT

Daily discharge statistics, in cfs, for Jul 11 based on 21 years of record more
Min (2005)	20th percen- tile	Median	Mean	80th percen- tile	Most Recent Instantaneous Value Jul 11	Max (1990)
73	110.	132	171	227	383	407

WOW! I didn't think it rained that hard last night... The water yesterday was holding steady at 270 CFS, but late last night, it shot straight up to just shy of 600. The rains have stopped for now and the level has already dropped back down under 500, but with months of gorgeous dry weather, the river has been holding tightly to its silt. Until now... Semi-transparent water in the upper river above 9 Mile, but by the time it gets down to the bottom, it is a raging torrent of dark muddy water.

In a word... fishing sucks today. A lot of water and zero visibility. The rain is supposed to hold off till Saturday, so the flow will drop fast and clear up quickly. Until it does... My guess is the fish are high-tailing it up to the lake in the high water. The commercial fishing week didn't have much of an effect on the fish moving through the weir. We have now topped 30,000 fish as of today - well above normal for this date.

The water flow popped up from 200 CFS to 270 overnight, stirring up a lot of turbidity. The fishing was tough yesterday and today with the higher flows. Fish spread out all over the place and not settling into the usual deeper slots. Cold, windy and wet. Feels a lot like September!!! Rain will continue through tomorrow, but is expected to lighten up in the afternoon. It won't take much for the water to clear back up again. Not a big flood, just enough to make things more of a challenge.

Sorry for the gap in reports... My last report ended up deleted somehow. Anyway...

Bear warning up at 9 Mile Bridge. There is a bear that has been acting aggressive toward fishermen and vans! Doesn't even flinch with a .44 going off right next to him and challenged a van in the road. Air horns did turn him away in a hurry, but be careful... they can habituate to ANY sound. Lots of fish reported up around the bridge and beyond. Fish have been thick in and around the weir, although had some reports that the numbers were a little slower down low closer to the lower take-out. Good over-all though.

The Red Hots have been the most popular flies, although several groups have been very happy with smaller black flies. Because of that, we have seen quite a few Black Hots and small black buggers going out the door. Also, a couple groups keep coming back for more of "Lil Willy's Sockeye" flies (which aren't generally a sockeye fly) and are having good success with those. Basically, just about anything is working because there are so many fresh fish in the river right now. Sockeye can be tough until you get the technique right to get them to actually bite (I'm not talking about "lining" them...), but with so many fish, it doesn't seem to matter so much.

Rainy weather this past couple weeks, so the river is up a bit, but not flooded. Commercial nets went in this morning and will be in for the next 2 1/2 days. We have over 25,000 fish through the weir now and counting... The peak should be happening over the next couple weeks - second and third weeks of July.

This is shaping up to be a great sockeye run, although the king run has been a big disappointment. We saw 3,995 reds pass through the weir yesterday, bringing the cumulative total up over 21,000 fish so far and 10,000 just in the past six days. Kings are only 71 large fish through the weir, so they have closed all retention now - including local subsistence and the off-shore troll fishery. There are still quite a few kings below the weir and people have been reporting a lot of landings, but also that they are already pretty beat up and haggard looking.

The Red Hots are working well as usual for actual takes on the sockeye. That is pretty much the only fly we seem to be moving, although a few of the typical Rainbow, Pearl and Green Hots as well. I added some shrimp patterns this year that I'm anxious to get out and try. I also tied up some Red and Pink Hots with dumbbell eyes, to help a little with weight. Since we had the local school kids tie up flies for some summer spending money, I appreciate the support you guys have shown them. Any time we have a chance to try and keep a little but of the money locally, that can go a long way to build local support for fly fishing on the river. Much of the community is as against the sport fishery as the sport fishery is against the commercial fishery, so building some good will can go a long way to help both these industries to get along. Yakutat can not survive on one of them alone, so we fly fishermen need the commercial fishery to stay viable, or the town disappears... and visa versa...

I'm running out the door for the flight to the Akwe, so not much time. Just wanted to report that EVERYONE has been doing well - "liners" and flies. About 16,000 sockeye have gone through the weir and there are now fish all the way up. Not just the concentrations at the lower landing. That will just get better and better each day through the coming weeks. Here is a comparison chart from the ADFG weir count page:

The red line is this year so far, compared with last year's 90,000+ count. We are still early in the run, so it just gets better from here... More when I get back on Tuesday...

Alaska Department of Fish and Game just announced this morning that Kings 20 inches or greater will be closed to retention beginning 12:01am Thursday June 24th. The weir count as of June 21st for large kings is only 42, therefore the run will be restricted to catch-and-release until they get closer to their escapement goal. Remember, last year they were well behind their goal at this point as well, however ended up far exceeding the goal and retention reopened. Last year, they only had 47 kings as of June 21st, yet hit 902 for the total weir count. The escapement goal range is from 450 to 1,050. The run last year really hit it's stride during the first two weeks of July and they reopened retention shortly after that. We'll keep an eye on things and keep you posted...

We really are just at the beginning of the run this season. Commercial fishing opened on the Situk/Ahrnklin Inlet and oftentimes, that can really put the breaks on the number of fish making it up into the river. Here is the past several days counts through the weir:

So... commercial fishing opened on the 20th, but the fish numbers through the weir really started to take off in the days since. Fishing closes today at 6pm. Yes, I am a commercial fisherman and therefore I am a bit defensive of the way my family has earned their living for decades... but as you can see... sport and commercial have been and will continue to coexist peacefully. The nets do take many fish, but there are still thousands making it by just fine. Like I said before, this is going to be a nice big run this year due to the big parent run. With the bad economy, we won't be seeing very much pressure on the river. Most of the lodges are sitting empty, so if you have the ability to come this summer, you may be able to negotiate a pretty good deal to get someone into the empty beds. Just a thought...

Well, we have seen a big jump in sockeye and kings in the lower river. Below the weir, the water is sometimes just boiling with fish. All the reports that have been coming in have been good. Kings are still open to retention and Fish & Game said Thursday that they expect to see a good run this year. Commercial fishing opens tomorrow in the Ahrnklin Inlet, so we'll see if that takes the edge off the run in the next couple days. Right now, fishing is great. Red and Rainbow "Hots" are the sought after flies as usual for sockeye. I had a couple local school kids tie them this year as a way of keeping some money locally instead of sending it off to China. The first few were a little shakey, but they are actually tying pretty well now. Since we can... I'm adding some new colors that I think are going to work great. I'll report back when I have time to test them out...

A slow trickle of sockeye coming through the weir, then on the 13th, they reported over a thousand all at once... WOW! I think the run may be arriving! 200 on the 9th, 206 on the 10th, zero on the 11th and 12th, then 1046 on Sunday! Reports have been that there are a couple hundred fish in every hole below the weir, but they seemed to be milling in and out of the river - not pushing upstream. Low water persists with a CFS of about 150-160 with a light scattered drizzle. Not enough to bring the water up, but certainly enough not to let the water continue to drop... I think the next week will be really good fishing. About a dozen large kings have made it past the weir, but there are a few more below mixed in with the sockeye.

Although I don't have a fresh fishing report, I do have some good news... Some rain has finally come!

Now that we have changed over to the sockeye run, they are starting to move in! The weir count on Wednesday was 200, making the cumulative total 302. Having a 200 count two days before it started to rain is a very good sign. Unfortunately we don't have an update for Thursday or Friday though. It started raining Friday afternoon lightly and has been raining pretty good overnight and this morning. That is what we needed to get some fish moving into the river. Water temperatures were VERY high through the week topping out at about 62 degrees, As we have discussed before, sockeye are very temperature sensitive and anything above 58 degrees harms their survival. The negative energy feedback loop sets in and they can't process their food. They essentially starve to death in warm water, no matter how much they consume.

So... evening high water temperatures of 62 degrees is lethal and they avoid it as best they can. Today, the temp has dropped back down to 52 degrees and should bring fresh fish into the system. Flow rates bottomed out at around 140 CFS, but are gradually coming up - sitting at 165 right now. Every little bit helps! If the warn trend continues throughout the summer, we'll have a pretty tough season on the salmon. Smolt survival will be low in the rearing estuaries and streams. Generally, it doesn't effect the returning adults so much, since they are here to die anyway. It is future run numbers that crash from warm dry weather.

At least we have some cool rain this week. Let's hope that continues throughout the summer...

PS. They have 4 large kings through the weir now too, so they are starting to trickle in as well.

WOW! We actually had some traffic through the shop yesterday... Fishing is still very slow on the Situk with the last of the steelhead working their way out past the weir. Sockeye are starting to show, but not in great numbers yet. Still no kings through the weir either. We do have some good news though...

A couple flew out to the East River yesterday for a day trip and had a great time. They said they landed about 40 sockeye. Oddly, a lot of the fish were already green and red. Reports from a week ago were that there weren't any fish in the East yet. For these fresh fish to already be in spawning colors seems strange, but they can begin to turn while out in the ocean hanging around at the river outlet. King fishing as well as halibut in the bay has been very good. The Glacier Bear and Yakutat Lodge have had a few groups of all saltwater fishermen and they were pretty thrilled with their trips with both lodges.

No reports off the river this weekend, but we did have a group through that had spent the week doing bay charters. They had really good king fishing and were thrilled with how well they did. The kings haven't appeared in the river yet, but with the good showing in the way, that means they are on their way shortly. Slow on the river, but the other options seem to be going gangbusters.

I have a couple fresh reports from off the river - yes, even a first-hand (as in - I actually went fishing!). We went out this week to see what was still up above the bridge. The answer... not much. My friend insists he spotted one steelhead, but I sure didn't. He had a nice new pair of expensive glasses, so maybe he could see better than my old scratched pair... I did manage to land 5 small resident rainbows and one dolly. He landed just one dolly up at the West Fork. The big balls of dollies seem to be nowhere in sight now. Just a few scattered around and under the bridge. A gorgeous sunny morning with not another soul anywhere. As we were pulling out at the end, one lodge boat arrived and a couple gawkers on the bridge. Otherwise, we had a quiet and secluded morning. Well worth the outing, even if the steelhead run is well over now.

Then had another report from this week. Local drifted the river and did land one steelhead. He said there were about 300 in the upper 2/3rds of the float, with another 500-700 between the Ox Bow and the weir. He was floating in a raft, so low in the water and not a good high vantage to see well. Probably at least double that still in the river. They are still averaging about 200 downstreamers every day and are nearing the 5,000 mark for the season. Just a trickle of upstream sockeye starting into the river, but not enough to target yet.

This that deathly slow time of the season, where we are right between runs. Yesterday was our first "zero day" here at the shop since the steelhead run started in earnest. Not a single customer through the door. Had I not bought a candy bar myself... Looking forward to the salmon runs that will be coming in very shortly. I'm hoping to drag Tanis out to Pike Lakes here next week, so I'll let you know how that goes. He wants to bring his spin rod, so my efforts to create another fly snob are failing miserably.

Just had an actual report from real people… the first one in several days! No other people on the river at all. This group managed to catch about 30 steelhead over the past two weeks for the group of four. Oddly, they said they only caught four dollies total. They saw a lot, but they couldn’t get them to bite… Wow! They said fishing was a struggle, but they have had continuous sunny skies with the fish that are here hiding tightly up under the debris and branches.

Looks like the end of the steelhead run is upon us. They have had right at 2,000 downstream fish so far and although there are a few fish still heading upstream, not many. Gordy said they will go a few days with none, then a batch of 10 or so will come in all at once, then several more days without any. There are still a few thousand in the river, but they are quickly taking care of business and heading out as quickly as possible.

Huge numbers of dollies and still more resident rainbow than anyone remembers seeing in the river before. With the snow gone, a handful of people have hiked into Pike Lakes, but I haven't heard if they have caught anything. The cutthroat at Tawah have disappeared, so no point looking for them for the time being. They will reappear and disappear periodically throughout the summer.

Weather is scorchingly hot! Mid 70's today, with no rain in the foreseeable future. The rivers and streams are drying up to a trickle and we are back down to the 160's for CFS on the Situk. If we end up with a really warm and dry summer, this could spell disaster for future salmon runs. We had a nasty dry year a while back that depressed silver numbers for several years when the smaller creeks dried up and we had a big smolt die-off. Let's hope we get plenty of rain! One plus this year though is that it appears there is a lot of snow on the hills. We did get plenty of snowfall this winter up there, even if temps were just above freezing in town.

Now we wait for the salmon runs to arrive. Despite the early report of a sockeye caught up above the bridge, none have officially passed through the weir as yet. Still waiting... and waiting... and waiting... We should have about a month before we see big numbers, although the parent year for this year had quite a few through the weir before the end of May.

Brian from Fish and Game said that as of today, he has the weir counts page up and running. They are starting to see the exodus of steelhead through the weir, with over a thousand gone already. Around 200 per day are migrating back out and that number should double in the next week. Still seeing a few coming in, but those numbers aren't posted on the weir site. I'll try and get those and post them here. Weir page is http://www.sf.adfg.state.ak.us/FishCounts/.

A couple detailed reports from people heading out today. The guys leaving the Forest Service cabin said they caught lots of bright spring fish in the middle river, especially in the last few days. The guys hiking in at the bridge said there are fish up there, but not a lot and just scattered here and there. Most seemed to be interested in getting out of Dodge. So... middle river is still good fishing, while upper river is not so great. Definitely on the backside of the run at this point. Still fishy, but not great. Takes a little more work.

The water flow as of today is back down to 200 CFS (200 exactly as I check now). Water temp has been getting up as high as 53 degrees by day and dropping only to the mid-40's at night.

The weir has been in for a few days. Last night, they did count about 78 steelhead coming in and reports are that there are a lot of new bright fish in the middle river, They still haven't made it to the bridge in any numvers, but yesterday it was noticably more fishy than it has been. Today is yet another terrible weather day though and the fish have been pretty scarce in this bright sun. Water temp is 50.8 and still rising for the day. The fish are in hiding under branches and logs, but we are expecting some nicer weather tonight and the next few days. Rain coming... we hope...

Reports from the storm said that a big batch of fish came in with the rising water. Reports from the bridge are that they really haven't made it all the way up there yet. Still mostly winter fish upstream on redds, but a few fresh ones are scattered around. The good flies have mostly been the smaller sparse nymphs and money bugs, but good results from black buggers and leeches too. Yes... now that the water has come up again, all white has turned back on again too. I still have a few white patterns, but not much of them left. You may want to make sure you pick up some white flies (especially big articulated ones) before you come up, if you are planning to come in the next week or two just in case.

Yes, the rain has brought the flow up to about 260 CFS, which also has brought in a big batch of fresh chromers. Even yesterday before the water came up, people were seeing fresh fish throughout the middle and lower river. That has continued to day, with even more coming in. Turbidity also came up a bit, but still clear enough to see fish easily.

With the higher water and fresh fish, reports are that just about anything is working. No real "hot" fly, since all of them seem to be hot right now. The rain is supposed to continue to fall throughout the next few days, but it has stopped for the moment and we have breaks in the clouds. This shot of rain probably won't flood the river, but just keep it up at a great level over the next week. Great conditions for those coming in the next few days.

Ah, yes! We finally have some good rain. Flow came up to a whopping 172 CFS, but at least that is the right trend. There have been some fresh chrome spring fish coming in the past several days, even with the low water, but not a whole lot. This rain should drive a good batch in now. I spent all day at the school doing a fly casting demo for the high school kids, so I'm tired and heading home. I'll have a more detailed report tomorrow...

Another hot sunny day under our belt, but the forecast is still saying we'll have rain Tuesday and Wednesday. Boy, we need this rain! The CFS is 168 right now and water temp at the bridge is 52 degrees this evening. Fish and Game floated the river and came up with about 1100 below the bridge. Not a whole lot of fish there, but a few bright spring fish are still coming in every day, even in the low water and bright sunlight. With some rain, we should see another rush of fish coming in. At the moment, most reports are that the fishing has been pretty slow. Some guys are making it work with the extremely skittish steelies, but most are having a tougher time.

We are definitely on the backside of the run this year already, but not all is lost... after a very crowded first week of May on the river, we are back to having an essentially empty river - fishermen-wise. Fishing is slower, but the pressure is practically non-existent again. VERY few people on the river now. The few that are are either throwing beads, or trying all sorts of crazy stuff to try and pull a steelhead out from under the shade of the branches.

After losing our satellite internet access for a day, I'm back. Sorry about the break in reports.

The river is EXTREMELY low. We did get ONE shower through yesterday, but other than knocking the dust down on the roads, it didn't do squat for helping the river. Flow rate at the moment is only 179 CFS, making for a lot of dragging on the float. Combine the low flow with really small tides this past week, there haven't been very many fish coming in at the bottom end. Much of the river has cleared out, with steelhead spawning in the upper river and the big slowdown at the lower end. Hopefully we'll get some rain and with the tides growing bigger each day, that should also help.

There is also the possibility that with our warm winter, the spring run simply came in early enough that they have already turned dark. We just don't have a lot of chrome-bright fish in the river right now. They may still be coming, but as I just said, they may already be here. Still showing a majority of winter fish and not a lot of bright ones.

With all that doom and gloom behind us, there really is a nice run in the river. Not a record breaker by any stretch, but a good strong run. We're just seeing them on redds, or not interested at the moment. Smaller patterns like nymphs and smaller beads are still working. Early morning and late evening has been better. Pretty slow mid-day for most people.

Tremendous numbers of dolly varden throughout. They are hitting just about anything and are not shy in the least in the bright sunlight. They have been taking dries pretty readily too. They are still a lot of fun in the bright sunny weather and low clear water.

Scorching sunny day yesterday with predictable results of hiding steelhead, but a lot of happy people catching a couple steelies and a bunchof dollies for variety. Today, boy we have seen some really varied results. A perfect overcast day, with really happy guys through the shop around noon who went out early and did great, then took their mid-day break and will head out again in the evening. Also getting the drift boat guys through later today who said they struggled all day on the float and said they didn't see anyone on boats doing anything. Looks like the walk-ins did well and the boats struggled. Not all, but the trend...

Also... yesterday in the sun, the white flies bombed, while the smaller nymphs and especially beads did really well. 8mm beads are working great, or at least with the additional people on the river, more people are actually using beads compared to no people on the river the past few weeks...

One problem I have with the fishing reports I get is that undoubtedly I get more "struggling" fishermen than successful ones per capita. The guys who have all they need and catching fish are out on the river, not in a fly shop buying stuff to fix a problem. I do my best to take that into account (in addition to the natural tendency of fishermen to "exaggerate" one way or another). The final check comes when some of my more trusted fishermen are heading out of town at the end of their trip. Today was one of those days... Lots of reports for the past week's fishing...

Yes, it was a struggle with the bright sun, but not impossible to get some fish to turn for your fly. Great reports from the brown Dolly Llama, Garcia Glo Bug, light Polar Shrimp and really big beads. A lot of beads going out the door this week. Glo beads were really hammering dollies last night. Really, I think with so many dollies in the river right now, just about anything will work for them - beads, May Flies, Mai Tai's, leeches...

Even with bright sunny weather and really low water, the fishing right now is great. Reports also coming in that a lot of people are doing all they can to drag spawners off their redds. Please leave those fish alone! When they are actively digging, or hovering over a pit, go find someone else to hook. Please! Even upstream a couple miles, you can find deep pools where there are groups not actively digging and laying and are fair game. But... if they are obviously on their honeymoon, move on. They are having sex for crying out loud! How would you feel if someone barged in on you while you were trying to get laid, hooked you in the back with a 3/4oz Pixee and rolled you off the bed?

So much for "Mostly cloudy, chance of rain". Bluebird skies today and for the foreseeable future. Much of the upper river has spawning steelhead on redds now. Still lots of bright chrome spring fish coming in every day, but this bright sun will drive them under cover. Reports have been about 60:30 wonderful fishing to struggling. Once they are serious about spawning, they are very tight lipped and taking no interest. Those fish should be left the heck alone anyway, but are far too tempting a target for many fishermen.

I have been repeatedly asked about May Flies the past couple days. There is a massive hatch happening and the dollies have been slurping off the surface. Traditionally, we don't think about dries, other than bass poppers for silvers, but this year, the conditions seem to be perfect for dries - both for dollies in the Situk and for sea-run cuts in Tawah Creek. Beautiful sunny calm days with low water and lots of hungry fish. With the steelhead either spawning, or hiding from the sun, there are a lot of other alternatives around. If you are coming up in the next week or so, bring along some traditional dries that look like may flies, or mosquitoes and see what happens. That is NOT a fly I have here, so don't leave your trout box at home.

The top flies this week have unquestionably been the Dolly Llamas in white and/or black and white. The olive/white and pink/brown combos have been going out the door, but not with as much success. Also, white cone muddlers have worked well and all white bunny leeches. What's the deal with white this year?!?! The Garcia Glo Bugs are working as usual, but this white obsession has eclipsed it for the time being. The exception to the all white phenomenon has been an almost-all black marabou stinger fly with a couple grizzly/white tail feathers.

This is quite a spring! Gorgeous weather and a really nice run. If you decided to take this season off from coming up, bummer... We'll just have to struggle on without you...

Sorry for the lack of reports this past few days. Fishing has either been really good, or really frustrating depending on your perspective. Reports coming in the past couple days have been that there are tremendous numbers of fish in the river, but they are very tight lipped. About half the groups have been able to unlock the mystery, but the other half have thrown everything they have at them to no avail. Can't really blame the weather... the pressure is holding steady, with overcast, occasional sun breaks and showers. What I would think are ideal fishing conditions.

We have had a majority of winter fish, but this week we seem to have had a change. One report came in saying that there were more spring fish than he had ever seen in all the years he had been coming at this time. The dollies are coming in and starting to get thick in some places. The sea-run cutthroat are in on Tawah Creek, but have been pretty heavily fished the past few days. Great fishing conditions with lots of fish. Getting them to react is the challenge. Also, expect there to be a lot of fishing pressure this week. Quite a few people have come in the past three days and it looks like the "season" is going to be compressed into a pretty short window this coming week. Then the pressure will lighten up greatly in the second and third weeks of May.

Yesterday was a pretty good day from most reports. This morning, we awoke to bright sun and my limited early reports have been that it has been SLOW this morning. Not a big surprise - the fish are in hiding in the bright light. Our air temperature was 62 by 10am, so it is a gorgeous day on the water. Just don't expect to see a whole lot of fish out and about.

Well, lo and behold, the storm didn't materialize after all. It clouded up, we had about an hour of blustery winds, it lightly rained and then... nothin'. The river continues to gradually drop, so we have a CFS of 236 right now and water temperatore low last night of only 39 degrees. Just reported in that there is a ball of about 200 fish in a single school about half way between the cabins and the weir, with groups of 15-20 throughout. Fish are pairing off in the upper river, so pretty scattered now up river. Still mostly winter fish, but I would assume this large school below the cabins is a fresh batch that had been holding at the mouth in the sunny weather and all pushed up at once when the clouds came in. Yesterday sounds like it was a really good day for most people.

Hold on tight... The storm has arrived and everything in the parking lot is tumbling away. This is going to be our first really good storm of the year. Hunker down for the next 12-24 hours...

As we all suspected... the cloud cover rolled in and so did some fresh fish. Yesterday afternoon, a few small groups came in at the mouth, but last night and this morning, a lot more came in. A guy came in off last night's jet and accidentially left his rod here in the shop. I knew he was camping at the bridge, so after we closed, I drove out there and found him. Heading back, I stopped on the bridge and visited with two groups that were done for the day and settling into lies about the day's fishing. Up above, they actually did really well yesterday - on big uglys. They burned through ALL of the Dolly Llamas they bought from me and had resorted to other big ugly things out of their box. Those worked too. Flies so big and hideous that I'd be embarrassed to sell them in the shop! Not just another "fish story"... they had photos to confirm it! Both the all white and skunk Dolly Llamas were the best though. Yes, the water is still high, which probably is why the big uglies are doing better than the more traditional stuff.

Reports from below and even the floats were that there just weren't any numbers in the lower river. At least not until late in the day and this morning where we had the recent influx of fish. A hike this morning up above the boundary found that there weren't many fish way up there either. Most were within a couple moles of the bridge - probably above and below. With tonight's storm, that should change things up a lot - we are once again expecting 50 knot winds tonight, so this on again/off again storm is actually "on again". 100% chance of rain tonight with 50 knot winds, but passes quickly and the worst will be missing us to the south of us. Expect just a "chance of rain" Monday and Tuesday.

Looks like there were some new fish that came in today. Thin bands of clouds have moved in and there were some small pockets of fish down at the bottom end. Most reports were that today (and yesterday) were a struggle. A few people did come off the jet today, so we'll see if tomorrow's rain will turn things around and see a better bite. It should.

Two scorching hot days in a row (by Yakutat standards) that were not in the forecast... The bright sun seems to have scared off any incoming spring fish down at the bottom end. Yesterday, the lower river was barren. Nothing seemed to want to come in in the clear water. The upper river however still held lots of fish and the fishing was pretty good. Even with the bright sun and stark shadows, the bite was on. Water temperature topped out at around 45 degrees at the bridge meter, which probably helped wake the fish up as well.

Beads are working. 8mm was what were catching easily above and below the bridge. We also had a run the past few days on all white Dolly Llamas - talk about a hideous fly. I guess a "Garcia" Dolly Llama would be more hideous, but... A nice couple from New York came through and probably caught the largest fish of his life on that fly. He's sending me the photo, so I'll post that when it comes in. I'm going to try to put together the photo album pages this coming week on here.

Nobody is in town right now. Last weekend we saw a big rush of people for a few days, but they left as quickly as they came and we have been left with a really quiet river. Nearly everyone this week has been remarking on how few people are here fishing. Some driftboat trips have not encountered even a single other fisherman. Did I mention how quiet it is? Hello?

Our off-again, on-again rain this past week has essentially saturated the ground, so yesterday's heavy cloudbursts brought the river up quick. We topped 370 CFS in a hurry yesterday, before the weather cleared up and it dropped back to 300ish now. Stirred up a lot of turbidity, but the river did remain pretty fishable. Not a flood by any means, but definitely high. Creating a challenge for a lot of wader anglers, but the driftboat crews still did real well. It isn't supposed to rain for the next two days and the storm is pushing into a Sunday start. Like I said, we'll see if it shows up at all.

There are a lot of fish in the river, but on Monday it seems nearly everyone was struggling to get them to bite. It took a lot of drifts to get a fish to finally pissed off enough to strike. Then yesterday it was the opposite. The fish were eager to play. No idea why. Reports today ahev been good again, so just seems like "one of those days".

The forecast is calling for a 40 knot storm with heavy rain. It is expected to roll in Saturday night and last through at least Monday. That doesn't mean we'll see a storm, but that is what the forecast is saying. Can't wait for the beautiful sunny weekend...

Most reports are coming in that the fishing is great. A couple people have been struggling to get it dialed in, but they are the exception. Most popular flies going out the door are the usual Garcia Glo Bug and second place seems to be the all white Dolly Llama. With last night's rain, the flow rate came up to 271 CFS, which is the highest we've seen since thr road reopened. Still a really nice flow rate. Air temps are in the mid-40's, so pretty mind weather - great conditions for fishing. I had a phone call today asking if there was concern about eyes icing up, so - nope! Not with this weather!

Interestingly, we had a couple "poor" fishing reports today, with people who were struggling to get the fish to react. Seems like there are plenty of fish throughout the system right now, but they just struggled and struggled. But... most people have been reporting pretty successful results. Looks like the winter fish have definitely come down from the lake. The majority of fish are being reported as winter fish right now. The flow rates are hovering right around 220 CFS with scattered rain showers and overcast. There are LOT of people here this weekend - the Alaska contingent in for the weekend. My guess is they will be flying out tonight and tomorrow, dropping the river traffic backl down through the next few days.

Other areas:
There are some sea-run cutthroat in Tawah Creek already. A few people have been hitting those as hard as they can, so they have already become jaded and suspicious at what is being thrown at them. Halibut fishing has been pretty good. Had a great report yesterday, with the guys that went out with Larry from Yakutat Lodge reporting a really good day. Trolling for Kings is pointless though with all that real bait swimming around. We have the herring spawn happening right now and the bay is absolutely plugged with herring. Much of the bay is white with milt from all the fish sex going on.

The sunny weather yesterday put a damper on the fishing a bit. It was pretty slow overall. Fish and Game estimates that about 4,000 fish have come up into the river so far. I have been expecting the run to peak early, but according to Brian, they are on track for hitting the peak around the first week of May - right on time historically. Nice numbers in the river right now, but it will continue to increase every day through the next couple weeks. Brian also said he thought the winter fish did flush out already, so it seems like there weren't many of those this year. He expects the weir to go in sometime toward the last week of April.

We were supposed to see another rainy overcast day, but it was a bluebird sky this morning. Not much info coming in off the river, since there is no reason anyone in their right mind would be in a store today. The power was supposed to go out for a few hours today, but then it didn't... So if I don't have any updates this weekend, it is because the power plant is shutting down to do some maintenance.

I hope your tax day was a good one. We had some conflicting reports from the river, but still pretty good over-all. Reports early in the day said that the higer water pushed most of the fish out of the lower river and up pretty high in the system. There are a lot of fish up around 9 Mile, while most of the fishing pressure seems to be down at the bottom. Not many fresh fish coming in on the tides, so now that the water flow is better, the fish that were trapped low in the low water shot up and are gone from the bottom end. No big schools, just 2's and 3's scattered around.

Or... Great fishing on the upper part of the float with a lot of fish above the cabins. A little slow in the middle river, but the fishing picks up again on the bottom 3rd of the float. Lots of fresh fish coming in on the tides. Great fishing around the weir. Some larger groups around, but 2's and 3's are everywhere - shallows, in the middle, in the holes, above the holes, below the holes... OK, sounds to me like some people are hard to please and some are more realistic... There may be some other "half empty" guys out there...

There have been a lot of people getting off the jet, but they apparently aren't out fishing... Not much traffic yet. I think we have a lot of Anchoragites coming in and out for a couple days, which means a lot of traffic at the airport, but not so much on the river with them constantly swapping out. In other words, not much competition on the water. Water went up to 260 CFS briefly, but is sliding back down to about 220. Really a pretty nice flow rate. Overcast with little rain expected throughout the weekend. Pretty darned nice conditions if you ask me...

Just had another last minute river report come in just before we close... That will make two 30+ reports and one 40+ fish day. Don't dawdle this year. The run is definitely in and we are seeing some really spectacular fishing. What a chance three days makes. We just needed a little water. But... we still don't have many winter fish in the river. Let's hope those flush out shortly and didn't migrate out during our February warmspell... Boy, after all these great reports the past couple days, I have to go and say something depressing like THAT! I guess ultimately I'm a "river is half empty" kind of guy...

We had been guessing that the run would be early, but the sunny weather and lack of rain dropped the flow rate down below 139CFS. Combined with small tides, the fish just were not coming in. The past two days have been wet and drizzly, so the CFS came back up to about 230 CFS and the fish have come in! Fishing was pretty skinny in the upper river, but reports are now coming in that there are LOTS of fish around 9 Mile, along with good numbers down below too. And they are biting. Looks like really good conditions through the coming week, with this damp overcast expected to continue throughout the week. Wet, cold and miserable, but the fishing is great. A pretty good trade-off.

Yesterday, the clouds moved in. Overnight, that helped the temperature stay above freezing and therefore the water temperature went up over 45 degrees pretty early in the day. Mostly cloudy skies knocked down the shadows and although the river isn't exactly full of fish, it did turn those fish on. A great day of steelheading!

Eden and I spent the afternoon floating down Tawah Creek. I brought my 6wt, but the only cutthroat in the stream are right below the Cannon Beach bridge. We left them behind immediately and didn't have a chance to cast to anything alive... This was the first time I have taken the time to float Tawah - a very small creek with little current. But... there are really some stunjing holes scattered throughout the creek, especially immediately below Broken Bridge. Come August, I think we'll be spending a little more time there...

Another gorgeous sunny day under our belt, but the forecast has chanced for the better - meaning worse weather... It is supposed to cloud up tomorrow and rain all Tuesday and Wednesday. We need it. The flow rate continued to drop today to just 146 CFS. Very low, although not quite as low as we had last year when it seemed stuck under 120... Low clear water with nice big shadows cast by the bright sunlight and icy cold water in the mornings... Yes, a good storm would do us some good! (not to mention the fact that we sell lots of fleece when it is stormy... :-)

As you'd expect, reports yesterday were that there were little to no fish in the upper river and if you were to find some, they would be down in the lower half. Not a lot of reason for fish to want to come in this week, with small tides and low water. Bring on the rain! The lake fish are still up there, so a warm rain in the 40's would help that situation as well.

This makes for our 4th gorgeous sunny day in a row, which also means lower water and warmer temperatures. The flow rate as of now is down to 156 CFS. The water temperature has been dropping down below 34 degrees each night, but rises to 41 degrees by late afternoon. Expect some mighty sluggish fish in the early hours of the day until the sun has a chance to have a positive effect. I sure don't get active at 34 degrees... Makes be want to pull the covers over my head for an extra hour, actually.

Not a big surprise... with the beautiful weather, not much for first hand reporting coming through the shop right now. More fly fishermen are scheduled to arrive on today's flights, so we'll have some better info for you in the coming days. Although with the extremely low water and smaller tides of the past few days, I would expect the incoming spring fish to be pretty hesitant to come into the river. Tides are increasing which should help bring more fish in, but the weather is supposed to stay nice throughout the next week. "Chance of rain" on Wednesday, otherwise, partly cloudy or sunny throughout the week. It is 22 degrees now, which won't exactly help the lake thaw out, even with the bright sunny days. Overcast will keep the temps in the 40's - even at night - so that would be the ideal conditions to get the fish out of Situk Lake.

No new fishing reports today, but I did get a call asking about snow, so here is a snow report... There is still about 2 feet of snow on the middle cabin runway and 2-4 feet of snow up in the trees above the bridge. Hiking sucks at this point with so little traffic on the trails to knock the snow down. Over the next week or two, there will be more feet packing the trails, so that will make it easier to get around, but as of now... yes there is snow up along the river, even if there isn't any here around town. We did get about 4 inches yesterday and last night here, but it was very wet and has melted away again. The sun is back out now... That's all I have for now...

The counts coming in from people floating the river seem to be a bit up and down over this past week. The AVERAGE number of fish counted seems to be around 200 total. Brian from Fish and Game had it just above that, I saw a little less. Then there was more again... my last report from yesterday was back down in the lower end again. We also had a frequent visitor say he hiked all the way up past the boundary and didn't see much up above the bridge. Early info tends to be contradictory and we are definitely seeing that right now...

Reports have been that the majority of fish are spring fish. I didn't see that, it was really about 50:50 for me on 4/1. The fresh fish at the bottom may just be milling in and out because they weren't seen up above the weir in any significant numbers yesterday. The lake fish are definitely not out of the lake yet. The spring fish are still not in yet... More fish than what we have seen in years by this time, but the "run" is still waiting.

I had heard that the Glacier Bear was the primary boat-passage cutter this spring. When Tanis and I floated, we took the raft, not knowing if the log-jams had been call cut out yet. Glacier Bear did a great job and we wouldn't have had any problems drifting it this year in a hard boat. But... there are two jams that probably still need some work. One was a "new" jam created by a bunch of cut logs that floated down and formed a new jam of their own. They were short pieces that probably just needed to be kicked loose. A solid boat would have easily rolled over them. Then there is one jam that is actually a problem. It was pretty high up in the river and they may just simply not have reached this one yet, but it will take some care to get around in the low water. Over-all, this year looks like a really nice year. We didn't have any big floods this winter and not many big trees fell into the stream. As always, be careful - but it is a pretty low risk float this season. A refreshing change after the mess we had last spring.

And make sure you thank Glacier Bear for putting in that extra effort to make the river floatable for everyone else. Last year, Yakutat Lodge did much of the cutting and as always, Bob and Frank have carried the burden of work for decades. They all deserve our thanks for keeping the river open for the rest of us to use.

After a week of putting Tanis off, we woke yesterday to a beautiful morning. I had heard many things about the river this year, but we finally had our chance to see first hand what was happening. Glacier Bear guys had been out cutting passages down the river, but I didn't know if they had completed the river yet. Just in case, Tanis and I loaded up our Avon raft that is easy to portage over and around log jams if need be. As with any adventure with kids, it was a late start. I also had to be back at the shop early for a teleconference with the museum Board of Directors, so we were short on time. That means not a whole lot of time to actually fish our way down.

OK, the reports of "hundreds" of fish may be a bit of a stretch. Here is what I saw... The river was pretty barren in the very top of the float. It wasn't till we were down a couple miles that we started to see fish and it was a scattered couple here, a couple there. No schools to speak of. Definitely enough to spend some time with, but this is still early in the run and it showed. We came upon a run and saw fish breaking the surface below us. This was the first place we stopped. Worked the water for a few minutes blindly and decided we needed to keep moving. Back in the boat, I didn't see any of the fish that we saw surface, so that also says a lot about my ability to see winter steelhead in some pretty brown and deep water...

Honestly, I'd say I confirmed about 3 dozen fish - all winter fish - above the confluence. There was sun glare, a raft is low to the water, so hard to see fish from it... Lots of excuses why I wasn't seeing much... The river became barren again from the confluence down to about 2 miles below the cabins, where we started to see our first bright spring fish. It was still pretty skinny for the middle section, but small pods would scatter here and there throughout. I'd say another 50 or so fish through the middle river. Then... it seemed to get barren again for quite a ways. All the frog-water stretches were fishless. The deep holes were black, so they may have held more fish than I was seeing. There are definitely fish in there, just not a lot. Very good for April 1st, but it wouldn't be a 20 fish day by any means.

The last couple miles before the weir, I didn't see a single fish. It was pretty slow. The sun had gone behind clouds, so it was a lot easier to see and I didn't see anything. We hit tidal water at the weir and spend the rest of the time rowing like mad against the current and against the wind that wanted to push us back upstream. Then all of a sudden the water erupted out from under us. In the slack water, there was a single school of about 30+ fish that scattered everywhere. Moments later, we were in brackish tidewater and the visibility was gone.

So... not a whole lot of fish in the upper river. Mostly dark winter fish. Then down at the bottom, fresh bright spring fish are just now starting to nose their way into the river. I didn't see them immediately above the weir, so they may just be starting to arrive - or they may be milling in and out with the tide - as they have been known to do this early. We'll see how this next week goes. There are a handful of people arriving and will be bringing me their reports. I have to admit, they probably will be able to spot and count fish better than I did...

But... slow fishing - and not a single other human on the entire river! It was a great day with my son, regardless of my time crunch and his short attention span.

Well, this must mean the season has officially started! I'm actually starting to get daily reports coming in off the river! Sorry I haven't posted the past couple days though. We were called in to jail guard, so I've been a little too tired to sit down and update the river reports as I should have... I hope you'll forgive me.

We are seeing a few Anchorage-ites trickling in off the jet. Late March and early April tends to be an Alaskans-only time on the river. After two years of dismal results in the early weeks of the run, I expected the river to remain lonely through till closer to May. A few brave souls are instead getting a chance to be the first out on the river this year and being rewarded for it. There aren't a lot of fish yet - a couple hundred scattered throughout the system - but they seem ready to play and are hitting pretty well.

Reports have been that most are spring fish, with only about 1/4th dark winter fish. That means we are still waiting for the big exodus from Situk Lake and these are mostly the river overwintering fish. The lakes around town were mostly ice-free a month ago, but then refroze again in our little early March cold-snap. They are thawing out again and Situk Lake will not be too far behind them. Weather right now is hovering just above freezing at night, dropping a little bit of slush from the clouds that isn't sticking. Days warm back up to around 40 degrees. Today was miserable with gusty cold winds and sleet, after several beautiful sunny days. Spring is still teasing us a bit, but the fish seem to know winter is over. The water is cool, but not so cold as to make the fish lethargic. The next couple weeks look to be a great time for fishing on the river.

I heard that three locals went out and landed 15 (yes, fifteen!) bright steelhead this weekend. That's a pretty good day for three guys in one boat in mid-March! I think it is safe to say that the run is definitely starting in and that it looks to be a little early. Some winter fish... some spring fish... flows are still real low at 172 CFS today. Water temps are ranging from nighttime lows of 36 to daytime highs of 38 degrees. Cool, low, clear water with a thin overcast layer to knock the shadows off the water. Could we have better conditions than what we have today? I'm hoping to take Tanis and float the river tomorrow, so stay tuned! I was going to do it today, but I need to hang around and pull a drift boat out of the hangar. Thanks Mark for spoiling my fun! I'm going to crowd you off the river tomorrow for that! Ya, two boats on the whole river at once... We have to do something about these crowds!

Yes, the state had the roads all plowed out again as of last Wednesday. I also heard (third hand) that the Mayor landed a nice winter steelhead that flushed out of the lake as some recent point. There are not a lot of fish in the river yet and the big flush has yet to happen. But... this does bode well for the coming weeks in early April. There are a few fish around 9 Mile as of today and there is full access to both ends. I heard from the Glacier Bear. They sent some people out to start working on boat passages. Unfortunately they didn't see any fish where they were cutting, but they also said they weren't really looking for fish.

Tanis and I are going to float the river this week, so I'll have some first hand reporting in the next couple days. Stay tuned! Another beautiful sunny day today. We are having a gorgeous spring. Temperature yesterday here at the airport warmed up to the mid to upper 50's. Just a thin overcast diffusing the sunlight... Could there be any better fishing conditions? Warm indirect diffused light... Sorry Teen, but you may be stuck running the shop a LOT this spring... After a winter of working on the hangar, I'm really anxious to get on the water. NOW!

I may not be able to get out to the river today, but the least I can do is give you a weather update. After babbling unendingly on the blog about how we need more snow, yesterday was in the mid-40's and it rained ALL DAY. Today, the sun was out and we had a gorgeous sunny and warm day today. Hmm... Most of the snow has melted from the parking lot AGAIN. Two weeks to go before the "official" opening of the spring steelhead season and we don't have much snow on the roads, or along the river banks. One thing is for sure, as of April 1st, we'll be able to get to the river, unlike last year.

Without seeing a flake of snow over the past two months, it looked like we were going to be having a VERY early spring. Then, something happened - MARCH. The past couple days have been in the mid to upper 30's, but the snow still fell from the sky. What a sloppy mess, when 6 inches of slop coats everything. Now, Jack at the Weather Service had been saying we should be seeing a dramatic change in the weather systems that we have been seeing. If today is any indication, he is spot on. The temps are still hanging on right near freezing, but the driving wind and heavy snow fall this morning has already stacked up between 4 and 8 inches on the roads. We may see as much as 100 before the end of the month, so the wide-open roads to the Situk will be disappearing under about 9 feet of snow before the traditional opening of steelhead season.

I was planning to reopen the shop officially a couple weeks early with the warm weather, but there may be no point now. The state guys did plow off all the ice from the road surfaces, so even with this heavy dumping, they will have a much easier time reopening things when the time comes. They had also scooped away half the airport snow pile already, but as of this moment, it is already bigger than before they started hauling it off. I will do all I can to keep you appraised of the situation throughout the month, as we near the start of the season on April 1st.

There have been a couple local guys keeping close tabs on what was happening up at 9 Mile. With the road open, they were making weekly trips out there to scope out the conditions and see if there were any early fish yet. As of two days ago, still no major sign of any steelhead around the bridge since mid-December. Unfortunately, it is going to be a little while till we get another first-hand look at the river from the ground. I did get an aerial report from Situk Lake - with the warm weather of the past couple months, there is no ice dam like we had last year. Even with the snow piling up, the winter fish in the lake probably won't stay trapped in the lake as they have the past couple years. As you know, the lake didn't release the winter fish until the last week of April, making the usual late March/early April fishing pretty darned skinny. If you scan through last year's river reports, we had just a handful of fish in April and they seemed to leave the river before the lake dam released and the spring fish arrived late. Even with heavy snow, I wouldn't expect to see the lake refreeze heavily over the coming month. Of course time will tell...

Word is that the state has plowed both roads this week, opening both access points to the Situk. Today, they are hard at work scooping the airport snow pile away, getting a huge head-start on the spring clean-up. Of course we usually seem to get hammered in March by snow, so we'll see... At this point, the roads are open and the river is flowing. Lakes around town are still frozen over, so Situk Lake won't be releasing the bulk of the winter run for a while, but there are fish in the river right now. I'll drive out to 9 Mile this weekend and report back on what I see out there.

We went to Cannon Beach today. Absolutely gorgeous day with clear skies and warm in the sun. As soon as the sun started to drop low on the horizon though, the cold winter started to make itself known. Mid-day yesterday, the thermometer at our house was reading 73 degrees! Our house faces the perfect direction for this time of year, so we usually feel warmer and lose our snow a lot faster. But still... it is warm and gorgeous up here in Alaska. The rest of the country may be experiencing record low temperatures and record blizzards, but I'm savoring my little patch of Global Warming this year.

While we were heading to the beach, there were bald eagles everywhere along the road and in the road. One bird had dragged a salmon out onto the shoulder to feast on, with a dozen juveniles bickering and fighting in nearby trees, hoping for a scrap to be left behind. Another lone eagle had dragged a carcass out into the grass below the bridge out of the hole we caught so many cutthroat in last summer. Tanis spotted one lone silver sitting in a deep pit just above the bridge. Chrome-bright if you can believe it! A nice big male that was probably about 13-14 lbs, just hovering there all alone, waiting for a really lost hen to wander through. Tawah Creek has a really odd late run that continues to have silvers trickle in well into the new year, but this is mid-February!!!

That's also why we have year-round eagles. Year-round food. The next run "scheduled" will be the Eulachon run (Candlefish). I'll type something about them in the blog tomorrow. I'm tired after a long day of mudding the sheetrock, so heading home...

I keep meaning to post this, but then I had to leave town in a hurry and haven't had access to the net for a while... Yes, I have a river report! Although it is a little over a week old now.

Tanis and I were planning to make a run out to 9 Mile, but a friend was going to check his traps and offered to take a look. He said that the river was high, but not flooded. He could see a steelhead in the water just above the bridge in the shallows, but the water was too murky to see down into the bridge pool. Could be fish in there, but the high amount of rain we had been having stirred up the turbidity too much to tell. He didn't see any in the riffle below the bridge and he didn't drop down off the road surface.

As of his run out there last week, the road was still wide-open. Some ruts in parts, but just about any vehicle could make it out there. Once you hit the 9 Mile Meadow, the road was bald and polished ice on top, so you needed to be careful to stay balanced on top. Enough slush on the shoulder though to keep you from sliding off into the ditch. Then two days after Jim gave me the report, we were hit by some heavy snow that would have shut the road down for the season. Then... it warmed back up again with more rain and sleet. That seems to be the cycle this winter. Thick heavy snow of about a foot or two, followed by a warm stretch that melts most of it away again. Not much snow on the ground - certainly not piling up anywhere. As of today, it looks like the road is open... Weird winter...

I had two fishing reports come in this past week, but I have been so busy working on the hangar that I neglected to get them posted. Sorry.

Brian, our local Fish and Game biologist passed through the shop with the question, "Where did they go"? We had that initial shot of steelhead, but then temps plunged into the single digits and the steelhead seemed to disappear. A day ago, I had another report from one of our good friends who did quite a bit of hiking to try and get into some fish. He hiked upstream all the way to the boundary marker and didn't catch a single steelhead. Also worked the river all the way downstream from 9 Mile to the frog water and didn't hit any there either. He did see more resident rainbow than he has ever seen - upwards of 26 inches, still a lot of dollies and a few spawning silvers. I haven't talked to anyone who has made it down to the middle river in the past couple weeks, so my guess is that they are still hanging out from the confluence down.

It looks like there are steelhead in the 9 Mile pool, but the water was deep and dark from the storms of last week and I couldn't quite confirm. With the dramatically warmer weather we are seeing this week, hopefully we'll get a good push of steelhead into the system in the coming weeks, before things freeze up and the road closes. Access is easy right now, which is a wonderful blessing. Slow on the steelhead, but great fishing for the resident rainbows - something that we usually don't see too much of. As you know, unless you trek all the way up to the lake, we just catch an occasional stray rainbow. Fun to have so many in the river that you can actually spend days targeting them with flies in the river.

Have I been out this month? Of course not! I did get all my concrete counters poured for the six bathrooms I'm putting in at the hangar. Now on to more sheetrocking and getting ready for the electrician to finish his work. This little fixer-upper project does cut into my fishing time...

WOW! This has been a rough weekend weather-wise, with 50-60 knot winds, heavy snow, heavy rain, back to snow again. Today is absolutely gorgeous, but cold. We have about 4 inches of snow now after getting it rained back off a couple times. In other words, the road remains wide open. No one here fishing, but access is wide open and the fish are definitely here.

Slow on reports the past week, but they are starting to come in. Last week, the guys renting the Forest Service cabin reported that there are a HUGE number of silvers still in the river with about half of them pre-spawners. A good mix of chrome and slightly blushed salmon this late into November in the Situk is pretty nuts. Obviously some streams have a reputation for later runs (like the Italio and Tawah), but the Situk is usually long past the salmon season by November.

All the salmon in the river is making it a bit tough to hit the winter steelhead run that is starting in now. Yes, there can be such a thing as too many fish... In addition to the bumper crop of silvers, there are more dollies than you can shake an Ugly Stick at. Big dollies up over 6lbs. The resident rainbows from the lake have all flushed out into the river to feed off the salmon eggs. Dollies and bows are all bloated from the huge amount of "8mm dark roe" in the water.

The steelhead have also started to arrive. A lot of smaller 30ish inch fish, but not a whole lot of big ones yet. Nothing to speak of in the upper end. Just a handful of spawning silvers around 9 Mile and above. Most of the fish seem to be concentrated from the confluence down. A few steelies trickling in at the bottom end, but they seem to only be slowing down once they get within reach of the cabins.

Still silvers in Tawah along with a bunch of dollies and sea-run cutthroat. Cluster at the Lost/Tawah confluence, not much at the first bridge, some fish gathering at the broken bridge and of course at Cannon Beach Bridge. Lots of fish for this time of year, but still no people. Just a couple people on the river - total.

Granted this report actually came in a week ago... sorry for the delay in typing it up... We did have the first "official" steelhead group come in on their way out of town last week and report that they did in fact catch one lonely steelhead. They did catch lots of silvers and dollies, but only one steelhead. With the sudden change in the weather that we have had this week, perhaps we'll see a few more driven into the river. October was a beautiful warm and sunny month, but the temps plunged this past week and our first real snow is falling as I type this. The silver run continues to trickle in far later than we usually see on the Situk. My guess is that the steelhead will be a little late as well, although the drop in temperature may be the catalyst needed to change things back to normal.

We have had an amazingly gorgeous fall. Warm days, cool nights, very little rain. Of course we had a nasty storm hit last night that was peeling the roof off the house next door to mine...

There are virtually no fishermen here at all. I haven't had a report in weeks, thus the lack of reports posted. I did get one a few days ago that I should have posted. Some locals went fishing for steelhead and didn't see any. Instead, there were lots of chrome-bright silvers and dollies still in the river. I helped someone pack out their moose and there were chrome-bright silvers everywhere in the Lost River. In fact, we didn't see any dark ones at all... Tawah is still full of fish too. Haven't heard anything for a while from the Italio or Akwe, but the last people in the Forest Service cabin had more fish than they knew what to do with. A group just headed out to the East for a week of hunting, but wanted to catch fish too. They won't have any problem.

I'm starting to get a lot of calls and e-mail asking about the winter steelhead run. My guess is that there are a few starting to trickle in, but still a lot of silvers and dollies too. The more aggressive silvers and dollies are going to make it tough to spot and catch steelies this early, but that will gradually change over the next couple weeks. The winter run comes in and over-winters in the lake, or deep holes in the river, so they are still here to feed. Coho-sized egg patterns and beads are what they will primarily be looking for. Flesh for dollies too. Right now, it is just a little early yet for steelhead.

Great report in from an Italio fly-out. All week, it has been great fishing, with lots and lots of fresh bright fish throughout. Situk has also been continuing to be good. Last reports from Yana were about bears and not so much about fishing. No new news there. I literally only know of a couple groups in Yakutat right now at all, with fish in every stream and drainage ditch.

Yesterday, we closed for an hour and let the kids throw some spoons in Tawah. The most fun was watching the cutthroat trail behind the salmon pairs and get chased away by the male silvers. No shortage of fish anywhere. No, they didn't hook up, but we all enjoyed the sunny warm weather and time outside. We called it "Home School PE".

With my guide season over, here is how things have shaped up late in September...

We had a great run on the Italio. After back to back mediocre seasons, this was our best run since 2004. Like 2004, it was early, with great fishing for silvers in mid August. Problem though is that we definitely started seeing the incoming fish dwindle toward the end of September, with October looking somewhat skinny. Italio runs usually peak in October. No bear problems - primarily due to the lack of fly-out day fishermen on the river. Very few people came out to leave messes and train the bears. With great incoming waves of fish, most of the transients fished down at the mouth, far from the trees and bear hideouts. Carcasses were kept in the water for the most part, so no bait to associate people with food. Thank you to those that did keep it clean and help us to prevent any major confrontations and issues. Akwe River was slower than average, with a lot of high water to make fishing tough.

Situk is slowing down as well, with a good run, if not record breaker. Most people had no problems getting into fish. A few bear issues as always, but no one was eaten this year. The Lost didn't have much of a run and certainly appears to be the weak link on the region this year. Tawah Creek had a great run though and it seems odd that this tributary to the Lost did great, while the Lost did nothing. There was a bear on Lost that was a problem late in the month. Maybe he was just hungry with no fish in the river...

Last year's big bright spot was fly-outs to the Yana River. This year, fishing there was spotty, with some days great and other days slow. The biggest issue was an extremely aggressive bear that scared the snot out of several groups over the past week or two. VERY aggressive charging people even after warning shots were fired. Interesting...

Tsiu had a nice run as well, with a good take for both the sport fishermen and commercial guys. Over all, this was a nice well-deserved good run. I just talked to Icy Bay Lodge on the sat phone... Pete said he had a great run out there as well. The season is winding down early this season - not because there aren't any fish - because of the slow economy and slow bookings. I'll blog about Tanis' experience yesterday in the airport ditch... Plenty of fish left.

That's it! I have had it! All these great fishing reports this year and I have had enough. I'm going fishing! I'll be back on the 27th. Teen will be here covering the shop, so be nice to her!

The big storm from last week knocked over several trees across the Situk and closed the river to drift boat traffic. The Yakutat Lodge is sending a crew out today to cut a path through and will have the river reopened. Fishing on the Situk has been slower the past couple days, but the commercial netting ends today at noon, so we should see another good push of fresh fish up into the river. The fly-outs have been the best bet over the last couple days.

We have a spectacular sunny day today, which is helping to make the water drop like a rock. Lots of reports coming in from yesterday and today's fishing activities. Fish and Game decided the run was strong enough on the Italio to open the Middle and Old for the first time in several years. Usually when they do this, no one bothers to set a net. Well, someone decided to fish the river right in front of my cabin. With that said, it appears there are plenty of fish to go around for all. Reports from day trippers who fished the upper section in the spruce and alder holes did great. They "tried to see what wouldn't work" and failed miserably. The only key was that they wouldn't rise at all. You had to get it down to them at the bottom. If you did that, it didn't matter what they threw. For the guys down at the mouth, fishing was good there too. With a morning high tide of 6 feet and an afternoon low of 4 feet, there was plenty of water for the fish to trickle in over the outer bar all day. The only dead zone was up by the landing strip where the net is.

The Situk had another great day as well. One family reported that the big articulated leeches were their best bet. The smaller profile flies didn't perform as well. With the lower water last week, it was the opposite - with the articulated ones being overkill and the smaller flies doing better. Makes sense that bigger flies would come into play in the bigger water. 9 Mile was good, but so was the bottom end just about anywhere people went. We are down to 700 CFS and should be under 500 by tomorrow. They said it dropped over a foot at 9 Mile while they were standing there today.

Tsiu was very good even though the wind was tough on people yesterday. It is a balmy summer day now with little wind. Commercial fishing was delayed by 24 hours on the Tsiu due to the flooded runway, so it opened today at 9am and ends tomorrow at 9am. Then it will reopen for another 24 hours Wednesday9am to Thursday 9am.

Looks like the Lost is still pretty flooded. Since it just drains the muskeg of the forelands, I'd expect it to hold its water longer than the Situk, which is a pretty straight shot from the lake.

Life around here has been hectic. The big storm day ended up being our 4th biggest sales day ever with everyone trying to duck out of the wind and driving rain. Lots of coffee and stories around the table. Today is a gorgeous sunny day and things are a bit slow... VERY slow... Life in the retail business... Hmm... Maybe I should go fishing...

Reports back from the Middle Italio and Tsiu as well as out in the bay... The water today cleared up and dropped fast on the Italio. Great fishing again for everyone who went. Tsiu was extremely windy throughout the day. Commercial fishing was postponed for 24 hours due to the flooded runway, so no nets till tomorrow at noon. There has been so many fish over there that the gill-netters and the sport fishermen have been getting along without any hassles. With the extreme flooding on the Situk, I suggested people get away from the current by going to the Ankau Bridge. We had a 6.7 foot high tide this morning followed by a 4.6 foot low this afternoon - only a 2 foot difference between high and low. This means virtually no current swing and plenty of water for the fish to come into the salt chucks throughout the entire day. No word back from anyone who went there yet though. I did get a response back from someone who attempted to rent a skiff from Leonard's Landing ("CohoBob" from the forums...). They were all sold out, so he just wandered along the shoreline till he found any trickling stream into the bay. There were silvers gathered right at the stream terminus and he had a great time all alone. Later, he went to the log dump, but didn't have any success there.

With the big storm, we obviously ended up with big floods. The Situk topped off just shy of 2000 CFS, but literally dropped like a rock - falling 400 CFS over just two hours yesterday morning and another 400 by late afternoon. Now, it is slowing that pace down but still has ducked under the 1000 mark this morning at around 930 CFS. Still VERY flooded, but we should see it down to under 600 tomorrow.

Reports back from the Middle Italio are that the river was too deep to ford in waders for most of yesterday. This in a river that is usually only 12-18 inches deep. The spin guys have been doing far better in the flood, since we have no shortage of fish, but you need to be extremely heavy to get it down to them. Raging torrents of muddy water at the moment. Light sprinkles of rain, so the water will continue to drop throughout the day. We are supposed to have a few nice days before the next system comes in. Plenty of time for the water to drop and clear back up.

Tough fishing, but if you can go heavy, you can still catch fish. During the last storm, drift boats did really well by finding little back eddies and sheltered coves in the river. Just letting the fly swirl around in the eddy. The fish want to get out of that current for a rest, so that is where you want to try and target in the high water.

Speaking of high water... Apparently a few new trees fell over to block the Situk float. Essentially, the Situk is closed to drift boats for the time being - we'll see if that is for the season. I don't know if they are planning to get in and trim the route with just two weeks left of the lodge season.

It really hasn't rained all that hard (by Yakutat standards), but the river sure came up in a hurry. It was the wind that blew everyone off the water. Gusting up over 50 knots. I talked with Mark Sappington of the Yakutat Charter Boat Company and he said they were able to stay on the halibut out in the ocean for quite a while this morning, even though most of the fleet stayed inside the shelter of the islands. Talked to one group that floated the river and they did great, before getting absolutely soaked and frozen. Had a wonderful time, but managed to be changed and showered and to the fly shop before 2pm... They must have really paddled hard for the last half of the float!

Two reports yesterday that the Lost was really slow. Had been getting great reports from there all week though. Oh well. Also, the Tsiu seems to have started slowing already. It does have the earliest run for all the local rivers, so we'd expect it to start slowing down around this time. Everywhere else seems to be chugging right along with great fishing all around.

But... this is the fall storm season and we'll be getting hit by a nasty one tonight and tomorrow. The National Weather Service is forecasting 60+ knot winds over the next couple days and heavy rains. Chance of rain - 100%. Situk's water gage right now is showing 221 CFS, so expect that to shoot back up over 2000 CFS over the weekend.

I just returned from my week trip on the Italio. I'll report on that toward the end. First, here is what is happening around town...

Situk:
The Situk is seeing one of the best runs in many years. The fishing with VERY FEW exceptions is absolutely stunning. I did get one report yesterday from two guys who did OK overall, but struggled with flies. They had much better success with spin gear, but honestly I think they were just not used to getting the fly down into the deeper runs where the fish are holding. That's OK. Silvers are an equal-opportunity fish and do great on both spin and flies. Salmon tend to be on the bottom, so you have to first get to them in order to catch them. On the Situk, with its swifter current and deeper holes (especially the way the river is cut this year), a heavy spoon can give you an edge - sort of. EVERYONE else has been hammering silvers with flies. One of the guides came in today to say this was the best run he has seen in a very long time. Also reported that Glo Bugs are working on the Situk. I have used them on the Old Italio successfully, but haven't drifted Glo Bugs for silvers on the Situk.

Tsiu/West Side:
The Tsiu continues to be huge for both the commercial fishermen and the sport fishermen. The west-side streams are really coming in right now, although after our heavy flooding of last week, the smaller tributary streams are drying back up again. In and around Icy Bay, there are great schools hanging in the salt waiting for higher water to drive them up into the streams. Not quite enough water to get them inside, but they are hanging close enough to shore for you to cast out into the salt and hit them. By far, the best fishing has been the Tsiu, but remember it peaks earlier than all the other rivers of the Yakutat area.

Tawah/Lost:
Tawah and Lost are doing well, although the fish haven't really started stacking up throughout the lower river yet. Another week and you'll probably have fish everywhere. Still a lot of pinks in Tawah, but the silvers are definitely starting to take over. Ankau has seen quite a few fishermen and the fish are streaming in on the tides. Renting one of Leonard's Landing's little Lund skiffs and plunking along the shoreline of the inner bay, anywhere there is fresh water coming in will yield schools of silvers in the salt just itching to be cast to.

Old Italio:
OK, now for the Italio... The Old Italio is still not filling with fish the way it can. There are 4 good sized pockets of fish scattered around the lower river holding about 50-100 fish. A couple more pockets with a dozen or so. If you land on one of the groups and have it corralled, then you'll have a great time. Not enough fish to support a major fly-out invasion, but that doesn't seem to be an issue this year. I never saw more than 8 people on any given day out there - all flown out by Jack with the Yakutat Lodge. They have essentially had the river all to themselves so far. There just aren't many people here this year to fish this great run.

Middle Italio:
The most fish on the Italio system are definitely on the Middle Italio. Down at the mouth, there are three spots holding good numbers of fish. We haven't had any fish holding in front of my cabin for about 5 years, so it was a pleasant surprise to see a group there throughout the week. Oddly, there is a stretch upstream about half way between my cabin and the ATV crossing that is holding the largest group if fish - probably about 500+. There isn't any contour that I can tell to make them hold there, but they are. Not a lot of fish upstream in the old holes - by the trees. The water has dropped and I think it is just too low now to drive the fish upstream. Because of this, the fish seem to just be loitering in the lower half and haven't been pushing up into the upper river.

Akwe:
Something I thought was odd... after the big flood from nearly two weeks ago, the New Italio and Akwe remained flooded and turbid throughout the week. Yesterday was the first day they finally cleared up. Everything else was already down to below normal, but these two rivers held their water a long time. This did make for tough fishing there, but there is always a trade-off. The Akwe has HUGE fish!!! Most of what we caught on the Middle Italio were pretty small overall (an occasional big one, but a lot in the 8lb range). In the Akwe, we were seeing about 1/3rd to 1/2 up over 15lbs and several that hit 19lbs. The Akwe can be tougher to fish, but the reward is some mighty big fish.

With adjectives like "stunning" and "spectacular" used to describe the fishing this fall, my assessment is that it is an average to slightly below average run, but there are few people in the way to fish them. Of course you can catch more fish if you don't have to share the hole with anyone else! I pretty much expected the traffic through Yakutat to be way down with the economy as it is and that is definitely the case. One group flying out today said they fished all day on the Situk yesterday and didn't see another group period! The bear encounter reports have stopped coming in, so those issues from last month have either been solved, or... Weather is great, fishing is great, rivers are uncrowded. If you didn't cancel your trip this year, you will be rewarded.

OK, I freely admit to being a very crappy guide. Most of the time, I go fishing... Pretty light on "service" and heavy on catching fish. That's the trade-off with fishing with me... I get paid to fish and I let people come with me. I think it all works out pretty well for all involved because if I'm catching fish and happy, so are they... The flies I carted along were chartreuse foam bass poppers - that's what I used most of the time and probably hooked fish on top-water about every 3rd cast. Subsurface, I used an olive bonefish crab pattern till I lost it (I only brought one...) and a "Psychedelic Herring" that literally hammered them on every single cast. This is a 4" long silver and white saltwater pattern. Pretty light, but in the 2' deep water, it was the perfect weight to slowly strip through the school.

Reports today off the Situk were a little mixed. Most groups did great, but at least two struggled to get fish to shore. Even they landed a few, but seemed to perform below average. One group couldn't get away from the pinks, so I went through the method to increase your silver ratio with them... Dark and/or subtle colors dead drifted instead of stripped. Pinks love bright colors stripped fast. Silvers love that too, but will still hit other colors slowly drifted. You essentially reduce your chances of catching both, but reduce the pink interest far more and thus increase the odds of hooking a silver. Nothing reported lately as far as bears up at 9 Mile. There is still one bear lumbering around the lower landing, but hasn't acted aggressively for a few days. Possibly Mr. Problem moved on after some intensive training.

Top flies (as reported) seemed to be the fuchsia bunny leech and the same fly in the "Aleutian Queen" purple with pink hackle collar. These are very heavy flies with lead wrap around the shank, big dumbbell eyes and bunny fur (which also sinks when wet). One group was using exclusively black egg sucking leeches and were thrilled with the results. Lots of people heading to the Lost River today. A lot more people getting off the jet, so we are starting to see more traffic through town and out on the river. Still far below normal for number of fishermen here this time of year. My guess is that the "fringe" of the season is open with people concentrated the second and third weeks of September. Hope that isn't a mistake with the slightly early run...

I head to the Italio tomorrow morning, so don't expect any reports till Tuesday. I gotta go fishing! Be nice to Teen if you come through the shop...

Most reports that came in today were that yesterday and this morning were pretty slow. Just not a lot of fish at the lower end. The nets were pulled out at noon today, so that should change tomorrow. Everyone coming back from the Tsiu and Italio were raving about how great the season is. The water is now down below 500 CFS again, so that has helped all the rivers a lot. Pink and fuchsia are still the most popular colors, with black coming in next...

Just heard from some of my commercial friends... Looks like a big batch of fresh silvers hit the Ahrnklin Inlet enmass today and the commercial nets did really well. They pull the nets tomorrow, so expect a big influx of fish to hit the river throughout the week. Also, trollers have done really well off shore all along the coast, so fish are heading into the rivers down the beach - Italio, Akwe, Alsek, East, Doame... Farther down the coast beyond the Doame, those streams are still mostly full of pinks, so the run will take a little longer to make it down that far. Some of those streams far down the coast are pretty incredible for day fly-outs and don't see any people at all...

Tsiu is still doing great. If you are heading there to one of the lodges, or as a day trip, try skating a bass popper across the surface. Look for spots full of fish, but low on current. A little chop on the surface is fine - you don't need a still surface. Pink Pollywogs are the most popular flies for this, although frog and bumble bee patterns work just as well. Last season, I ordered in some bonefish crab patterns to try in the salt and estuaries. The olive crab worked incredibly well the one day I played with it. I head out to the Italio on the 4th, so will be armed with a lot of odd flies to try. I'll keep you posted as to how that goes when I get back.

The water is dropping fast, but the difference between this storm and the last one is water clarity. It never cleaned up on the last cycle before the next batch of rain, but it was back to being clean immediately this time. During the worst of it (just shy of 2000 CFS), drift boaters reported having great success seeking out little pockets of still water, or back eddies where the silvers were pulling over for a rest. When suggesting this, I was asked how someone with a fly rod was supposed to fish that - they are silvers. Just let the fly swirl around in the back eddy and they'll hit it. They did.

To get some relief from the raging current, heading down to the mouth, where the incoming tide could have a chance to relax the torrent was a good way to see a lot of fish scurrying by and get an occasional hit. Easier on the Lost than the Situk since there was just so darned much water in the Situk. Tawah Creek was fishable, but you had knee-deep water out across the meadow. No stream was crossable, since they were overflowing their banks. It was sometimes a struggle just to cross an ordinarily dry field. Speaking of which, two guys "swam" into Pike Lakes (much of the meadow was waist-deep) and hit a couple pike. The two fish landed were actually up in the meadow grass though...

The best way to avoid flood induced current is to hit the salt. Leonard's has those great little Lund skiffs they rent, so you can plunk along the coves around the bay (still inside the shelter of the islands), where the salmon are congregating. Anywhere you have a little fresh water trickling in - even if the stream is far too small for a salmon to swim up - you will have fish sniffing out the possibilities. Sometimes - especially if it is a stream large enough for a run - you can have fish boiling in a big ball. Big streamers work great, but think about a popper on the surface too if they look like they are up high. Some of these streams are accessible on foot too from the road system. And of course there is always the Ankau Bridge too, but remember Ankau has a 2 fish limit even though it is salt.

We should be back below 500 CFS by tonight, so back to easier fishing. There were some groups that struggled through the flood, but those were usually people who didn't know where to go to avoid the current, or people so set in their ways that they wanted to continue to hit the same deep holes they always fish. It's fall. Be flexible.

Good reports coming in from The Middle Italio, East River and Tsiu. The flood blew all the rivers out, so the commercial guys were essentially blown off the rivers too. Conditions were tough all around in the wind and rain, but it was short lived and now we are right back to some really nice weather and water.

Last night, we were hit by a real good storm, but it blew itself out by morning. The drizzly rain we have been having was plenty of moisture to have the ground pre-saturated for when the rains hit and the river flow skyrocketed overnight. It came up anywhere from 6 inches to two feet - depending on who reported. You know how guys measure... Good reports coming in from everywhere, with day fly-outs to Tsiu and Middle Italio having a great time (till the storm made it miserable). Lost and Tawah were great today with little pressure. Yesterday, everyone was getting a lot of silvers on the Situk before the storm hit. I haven't had many fresh reports for how fishing is today, since I think most people are hiding from the weather. By noon, the next band of storm had arrived, so we are back to heavy rain and wind again.

Bears... A LOT of "encounters" with bears reported up at 9 Mile as well as down at the bottom end. There is a 2-3 year old around the bridge that was targeting people's backpacks. There is also a juvenile at the lower landing that has no fear and has been bluffing fishermen EVERY day, ALL DAY. Fish and Game is working with the Forest Service to try and retrain him, if possible. One report came in that there were three separate brown bears that are a problem down there, with one that would aggressively come after people and the other two that just seem to have absolutely no fear. It is always possible that it is just one bear (which is what Fish and Game told me they thought), or we are shaping up to have a real big problem this September.

Remember... be careful, be aware, carry protection, be clean and keep your fish and carcasses in the water.

A week on the Italio was a great break from the rat-race of town. We started the week with heavy rains and probably the biggest August flood I have ever seen. All the rivers blew out immediately, but once the storm passed, the Middle Italio dropped like a rock, with the water soaking into the overly low water table from our dry summer. Akwe and New Italio held their flood through the entire week though. We were anticipating good pink fishing, but also with the flood, expected it to be a struggle in the huge water. Well, we did catch our share of pinks, but ended up seeing far more silvers than we could ever have hoped for. A nice early shot came in, but also great luck in having them concentrated in the spots we could easily access in the high water.

The Middle Italio has 4 full curves down at the mouth with some pretty good distance between them. This should work to spread people out and provide ample elbow room - except for the fact that with tourism traffic down, we won't be seeing very many fly-outs. If you are coming this fall, expect to have half the people in town and probably even fewer people on the fly-out rivers due to the added expense of air charters over fishing the semi-empty Situk. Upstream on the Middle, the big winter floods that scoured out the Situk's channel also helped to dig some of the old holes in the trees a little deeper. They had been filling in over the years, so now they should hold fish a little better than in recent seasons. The downside of course it that the old snags are exposed again...

The Akwe is starting to see early silvers as well. Down at the mouth, the river has worked its way down the beach a lot this winter, so getting longer and longer. There is a tight curve right at the mouth - about 3/4ths of a mile below the New Italio/Akwe confluence that was really holding sockeye and pinks earlier in the season. I'd expect it to fill up with silvers as well, especially on weeks with the large low tide hold-backs of 3-4 feet. Fish will be able to come in over the bar easily throughout the low tide, but still be held back below the first shallow riffle till the high tide pushes them in. Not very many day fly-outs land at the Akwe mouth, but this year looks like the prime time to try it.

The Tsiu opened to commercial fishing last week and this week they are expecting between 50,000-60,000 lbs to be landed. The fish are reported to be VERY LARGE down there, although we didn't see big fish in the Italio this week. The Tsiu fishery is open for two 24 hour periods - Sunday 9am to Monday 9am, then it closes for 24 hours and reopens Tuesday 9am to Wednesday 9am. The 24 on, 24 off, 24 on, 96 off schedule allows good numbers of fish to get through and above the commercial fishing zone throughout the week, so even if the nets are in, the sport fishing is pretty stunning up above the markers. You should be seeing 3000-5000 fish coming in each day in that very small river already. The Tsiu is the earliest run of the Yakutat area, so it is going to be hitting its peak in the next couple weeks. Situk will see its peak in early to mid September, with the Italio, Akwe and East Rivers peaking late in September and even early October sometimes. If this is shaping up to be an earlier than usual run, October may end up being a little skinny though.

The sockeye run turned out to be a banner one for escapement on the Situk, although Gordy (ADFG commercial fisheries biologist) described it as just an "average" run. The numbers worked out to be 83,386 total across the weir (which is definitely far above average), but the commercial take was pretty low. A warm sunny summer had the odd effect of sending the sockeye right up through the middle of the Ahrnklin Inlet, bypassing the nets that line the edges. Sockeye need cool water (thus their very limited southern range), so they went up through the deeper - cooler water in the middle of the channel. So... Gordy's description of "average" was total fish, with the low commercial take and high weir count.

By the way... Bright pink in just about any pattern... Worked great in the big flood, with all black bunny leech as second place.

Just a real quick note before I head out to the Italio for a week... Big storm hitting tonight and tomorrow with up to 8 inches of rain expected. After raining most of the evening last night, we are still way below average on the flow gage (about 150 CFS instead of the 200 we usually have now). Thousands of pinks coming in on every tide, with a few silvers showing up as well. Tsiu is already seeing good numbers of silvers, with a few in the Akwe mouth and Middle Italio. A little earlier than normal, but not by much. Maybe a week early? Exceptional fishing everywhere with more pinks than you can ever want to land, but enough silvers to keep.

Have a great week. I know I will. Tanis is coming with me to be my little helper, so we'll have a great time regardless. I have the feeling that I'll be in the kitchen most of the time, but guiding the last two days. I'll have a report when I get back to town on the 24th. Be nice to Teen while I'm gone...

Sorry for the lack of reports lately. My excuse has been simply a lack of fishermen to give me any info. Kind of pointless to say "i have no idea what is happening...", so I didn't. But...

The vet conference is taking place this week and therefore we have some people here giving reports. Plus a group just left yesterday that had seen a VERY large group of silvers up at the confluence on their float trip - hundreds. Now we are getting feedback that people are limiting out on silvers in the river for the first time pretty consistently. You can catch all the pinks you can stand, plus limit out on silvers for your take-home fish. We had a little rain this week, so water flow is great. A hundred thousand fish of various species in the river system, very few people on the river (although it can get crowded in the evenings when the conference lets out and attendees head to the river), but not overwhelming. Nice early run with a lot of fish in all varieties.

Meanwhile, I'm getting as much as I can done on the hangar before I head to the Italio this weekend for my first guided week of the season. I'll let you know what is happening out there, but expect it to lag a week or two behind the Situk. Should be silvers making their way into the Tsiu and west side streams too right now. Great fishing in the bay for both silvers and kings. The commercial troll fishery is closed through the 17th, so those boats aren't out there this week.

With 80,000 sockeye in the river and now up to 7,000 pinks coming in each day, there is some amazing fishing on the Situk right now. Just a couple handfuls of people here, so you essentially have the river entirely to yourselves. Two guys came through the shop today that had hiked up into Situk Lake and caught more chrome-bright sockeye than they could handle. Still seeing up to 1,000 sockeye a day through the weir too.

Tanis managed to catch a cutthroat right in the drainage ditch behind the hangar. Gorgeous sunny days with water temperatures in the mid-60's. Practically warm enough to wet-wade. Calm winds... we spent tonight out on the beach throwing the frisbee after the shop closed. Not a soul out there either.

                                                   Kings                                      Steelhead      Coho
   Date        Sockeye      LG     Med     SM      Pinks                 Down             Up
July 17th           688          1          0         0          64
July 18th       4,395        57          6        2         245                      26
July 19th        1,499        12          4        2           32
July 20th        1,813          3        2        2           37                                            1
July 21st        744          2          1        1           16
July 22nd       1,881        41       4        1          133                       3
July 23rd       1,716        17         9        5          237
July 24th        1,328          1          0        2            74
July 25th       1,212          3         2        3          373
July 26th        2,733      116       18       6      6,991                      2
July 27th            291       24          2         0         767
July 28th            403         2          1         0      1,683
July 29th            682         8          2         2      6,691

Holy Crap! 17,000 humpies already and 13,000 of them were in two days! Just a tiny handful of silvers have made it over the weir so far, but people are still reporting catching them in the lower river. That may be due to erroneous identification though. Surprising to see a batch of 26 steelhead heading down on the 19th. At the moment, you are more likely to catch a steelhead than a silver in the Situk. There are of course a lot of early silvers in the bay, but we are another couple weeks away from reliably catching them in the river.

Still some very nice numbers of fresh sockeye moving into the river, but with up to 6,000 pinks, it is VERY tough to get the reticent sockeye to bite when you have so many voracious pinks everywhere down there. Much better luck heading upstream for the sockeye at this point, but a few more days of heavy pink migration will pretty much put the sockeye run to bed. Even though we are seeing hundreds and occasionally thousands on a daily basis. A lot of kings still below the weir, but now that retention has opened for them, they have been VERY HEAVILY targeted and are just not responding to anything anymore. Those kings have seen it all...

There are no fishermen in town right now at all. Just a couple groups with the entire river to themselves. Real mixed bag of species, with all 5 salmon species in just about all the rivers. Still seeing sea-run cuts in Tawah (although the Cannon Beach Bridge is closed within 50 yards), even a few sockeye and at least one really lost monster king swimming around down by Broken Bridge. Akwe this past weekend was REALLY flooded out, but the pinks hadn't taken over yet like I expected. It was still probably 10:1 sockeye to pinks. On the East River, I don't have any "fresh" reports back, but the sockeye should be showing up there pretty good now. This shot of rain and higher water has pushed all the sockeye up and over Italio Falls, so they are no longer in the river there.

Looks like all the doom and gloom of last season has been overtaken my the optimism of 2009! They have seen 700 large kings across the weir, so Fish and Game have opened the river below the weir for retention. Also, sockeye have exceeded 70,000 across the weir, so they have doubled the daily bag limit to 6 fish. I didn't get the exact counts before the office closed yesterday, so I'll have those here on Monday morning. They just keep flooding into the river...

A few pinks and silvers are trickling into the Situk as well, but we aren't seeing huge numbers of humpies yet. Akwe and Italio are, with more than 2:1 humpies to sockeye now, but we have an odd-year pink run there. The East River opened to commercial fishing for the first time last weekend, but there weren't a lot of fish yet. That river has a very late sockeye run that lasts well into August.

Indications are that the silver run will be pretty early this year. Still catching a lot of them in the bay. I would expect to start seeing catchable numbers in the Situk with the next week or two.

                                                   Kings                  Steelhead
   Date        Sockeye      LG     Med     SM             Down
July 10th        6,550        29          4         7                 5
July 11th       2,791         19          8         2
July 12th        5,742         47        13        9
July 13th        2,611         27        11         8                 1
July 14th       2,313        63        16         6
July 15th           176         4           2         4
July 16th           125           1           1         0

WOW! I thought the run would be starting to wane, but we saw 20,000 sockeye pass the weir in just the past week! Commercial fishing opened on the 12th at 6am, yet we still saw nearly 6,000 fish that day!

More reports of bear troubles - a situation that will only get much much worse unless we users clean up our act. If you clean your fish streamside, put the debris into the deep end of the hole. As long as bears look to the water for their food, they won't look at the people as a food source. It may be too late for the bears already trained, but be careful, be clean and be aware.

Gorgeous weather continues, which means really low clear water. Streams are not drying up entirely, but we need rain! There has been a lot of fishing pressure down at the lower end especially, with a lot of people avoiding the 9 Mile area because of the bear reports. Still a lot of kings in the lower holes below the weir. Other rivers continue to see quite a few fish. The Italio seemed to become barren last weekend after all the fish that came in there the week before. The Akwe is running ultra-low and clear. Lots of fish down at the mouth, but in the low water and small tides, they just would not come up into the river. Reports are that the East River is showing a good looking run. That sockeye run tends to be late into August anyway, so we'll see the East hitting hard long after the rest of the rivers are seeing their decline.

OK, back to the Akwe for my last week of rushing back and forth... Sorry about the once-a-week reports here, but we'll get back on track when my sockeye season out there ends. Amazing to look down from the bridge right now and see so many fish in the river. After last year, we deserve a great run like this!

Looks like there are two sows, one with one cub and one with two - hanging out near 9 Mile that are pretty aggressive. Watch out/be careful.

Weir Counts:
   Date        Sockeye      LG     Med     SM
July 1st           472            1          0         0
July 2nd         731          38         8         0
July 3rd        1,962         36          7        3
July 4th        2,468          36        21        6
July 5th       2,828          59        21        5
July 6th           704         25          5        0
July 7th       1,180          38          8        4
July 8th                5            1         0        0            35 steelhead down
July 9th        1,324          15          1        3

We topped 40,000, but there is no plan to increase the bag limit till after they exceed 70,000 sockeye through the weir. Boy, this week in the low water, the commercial fishery sure made a dent in the numbers Wednesday, but over-all these are really stable/good looking numbers. No weir counts from today obviously, but verbal reports through the shop are that the lower river is absolutely plugged with fish by the "thousands". Another steelhead was caught in the lower river the other day and a few silvers.

I'll be heading out to the Akwe/Italio again this weekend to... um... "work". :-)

I am back from my week of commercial fishing on the Akwe River. There is a good run out there, with a few kings still showing up on the evening tides. You can keep kings on the outlying rivers by the way... I have also never seen so many sockeye going up the New Italio all at once! Wave upon wave of fish moving through where we park our boats. Some fish showing up on the East River as well, although not in huge numbers. The East tends to have a later run than most of the other local streams, with sockeye well into August.

Right now on the Situk, the fishing is great. The commercial opener did slow the numbers of incoming fish, but the numbers are right back up there again. People fishing "correctly" are having no trouble limiting out and landing far more mouth hooks than they can keep. The hot flies are still the "Red Hots" and "Rainbow Hots", with the "Black Hots" coming in third. "Mai Tai's" are also catching quite a few sockeye and that is probably the best king catcher right now as well.

After a week of virtually no one on the river, the traffic is starting to pick up again. Extremely low water conditions persist with current CFS at only 123! Water temp at the bridge topped 69 degrees two days ago, but came down a couple degrees yesterday with a thin haze to block a little of the sun. We are breaking heat records every day this week and desperately need some rain to come in. The water is ultra-clear and low, somewhat limiting where the fish can hold. That may be the reason for the seemingly crowded river - crowded in the deeper holes...

I was asked about bears last week and reported that we hadn't had any bear issues at all lately. Well, that is far from the case now! Heavy bear activity around the cabins and confluence, with reports of bears following fishermen around - listening for their bells... A sow and cub have been loitering around the bridge, but although they aren't intimidated by people, they haven't been acting aggressively either - yet. I heard that a bear may have been "disposed of" yesterday down at the bottom end. Keep your fish in the water, don't leave garbage or food around and make sure you have bear spray, or a fire arm. The bears have already been trained.

Gorgeous sunny days, 30,000+ sockeye in the river, kings hammering flies - What a great time of year... Fish and Game was closed yesterday, so I wasn't able to catch up on the latest weir counts, so we'll do that early next week. In the meantime, if you are heading up here in the next week or so, expect one of the best sockeye runs in quite a while. So many fish in the river and far fewer people than we'd normally see. There won't be any reports this weekend though because... um... I'm going fishing! ALL WEEKEND! If you need anything, Teen will have the shop under her control... I hope...

OK, no excuses for the slow reporting this time. Just that life is a zoo this time of year around here and it is hard to find time to breathe, let alone stay on top of everything. Here are the latest weir counts:

   Date        Sockeye      LG     Med     SM
June 24th     2,177        23          3         0
June 25th     1,291          4           2        1
June 26th        991          8           2        1
June 27th     3,823          9           4        3
June 28th     1,671        20         10        9
June 29th     1,286        37         21        1
June 30th     2,706          1           0        0

Looking at the graph, it is the 2nd best sockeye run by this date in the past 10 years. Notice of course that we maintained 4 digit numbers throughout the commercial fishing opener this weekend (28th-30th). King numbers look especially good through the commercial opener, so the nets are having a negligible effect over-all. This is looking like it will be a great run.

Heads up though... already seeing a LOT of silvers in the bay. That run looks to either be another big run like the sockeye returns, or early (also like the sockeye returns...). The 2005 sockeye run that out-paced this year early on wasn't a record breaking total - peetering out just shy of 70,000 fish. Still a great run, but far shy of the two years that hit the 90,000 mark (2003 and 2006) by the time the flat-lined in mid-August.

Great reports coming in from the river. Red Hot's are probably the best performer, with Mai Tai's and an occasional odd ball pattern being a particular group's favorite. We have some new patterns I'm excited to get out and try, as soon as I catch up around here and get my butt back out on the water...

Sorry about the lack of reports from the last couple days. Our internet was down, so was unable to make updates...

Lots to report though... Although retention of kings has closed, you can still catch-and-release them - and there are a lot below the weir. Probably enough to justify reopening to retention if they would just move up the river. Many reports of long wild rides at the accidental hooking of some monster king. There are several in every hole that is holding sockeye. The rain we had on Tuesday raised the river although not anything close to a flood. What it did do was stir up a tremendous amount of turbidity. All these weeks of dry sunny weather have allowed the silt to collect throughout the drainage and a little rain will stir up the river, making the water completely opaque in a hurry. It has cleared back up somewhat, but yesterday was another OK batch of rain and it stirred up again. Most of the kings were big surprises, since you couldn't see them in the water.

Still seeing great numbers of sockeye every day. There were a couple really slow days last week (even though the fish were there, they just didn't want to bite), but most days are being described as "spectacular". It has been a tough uphill battle trying to reeducate people about sockeye and how to catch them. The ol' "they don't bite" and "all you can do is 'line' them" beliefs are hard to get people to overcome. Sockeye are a classic fly fishing fish, taking small sparse flies at a total dead drift. I don't spin fish much anymore unless I'm helping Eden on the river, so I haven't tried to catch sockeye with a spin rod in a lot of years. This season, I have been getting asked by quite a few spin guys how to make the fly technique work. This past week, I tried to help out a group that was mostly spin fishing. Great guys who were content to catch 1 or 2 sockeye a day with spinners - something that is easy to do with a lot of fish in front of you... I helped them gear up to throw sockeye flies with the spin rod and they did really well:

"...On a much brighter note, the flies you sold me , and the information you provided proved incredible. We have NEVER caught so many Sockeye. I personally out fished guys with fly rods routinely, pretty much everywhere we went!" -Bill

No! You don't have to try and "line 'em". Especially right now with so many coming in every day! Thanks Bill for giving it a try.

Commercial fishing for the week opened and closed without having all that dramatic effect on the sockeye run in the Situk. Weir counts showed over 2,000 sockeye through the weir throughout Sunday, when nets went into the estuary at 6am. We had a batch of weather hit on Monday which drove many of the commercial guys off the river and we still saw 1,228 sockeye on Monday. Fishing ended Tuesday at 6pm and that probably shows an effect, with 407 sockeye that day - but that is still a lot of fish to go in and is right in line with the fluctuations seen through the previous few days. Nets are out now, the water did come up a bit in the storm, so we should continue to see a strong run throughout the rest of this week. We are already nearly half-way to last year's total escapement!

   Date        Sockeye      LG     Med     SM    Steelhead Down
June 22nd     1,228          7         3
June 23rd         407          1                     1                 1

   Date        Sockeye      LG     Med     SM    Steelhead Down    No longer tracking Up
June 19th     1,553          9          4         2                 49
June 20th        368          3           1                              3
June 21st     2,214          4           7                           76

The nets went in yesterday and some reports were that it took a big bite out of the numbers of fish in the lower river... then other reports were that it didn't effect much. Rumors are that they pulled 30,000lbs out of the estuary on Sunday, but today a storm it and blew enough to send most commercial guys packing. Some people are still reporting good success while others are struggling... Sounds like typical sockeye fishing...

As of tonight at midnight, Fish and Game is closing the king sport fishery to retention, so it is catch and release only till they get some better numbers through the weir. They have 47 large kings so far with a normal escapement goal of between 450 and 1,050. Click on the image below to read the official news release:

Well, yesterday I had a couple reports of it being VERY slow in the morning and early afternoon. LOTS of fish in all the holes of the lower river, but nothing seemed to be happening to turn a head. Seems the only hits were the scattered handful of kings that were mixed in with all the sockeye.

Had a group get off the jet yesterday and hit the river loaded up with "Hots" (the colored Gamakatsu Octopus hook with a little tuft of krystal flash) that we primarily use for sockeye. They were back in this morning to buy more - especially in red. The Red Hots were just the ticket last night. Since there are still so many steelhead in the river, I had sent them out yesterday with a couple of the standard black/copper buggers just in case there were any steelhead they saw. This morning, they asked for more of "those black flies you recommended for the kings..." Um... I didn't remember recommending anything for kings yesterday... Oh crap! What did I send them out with?!?! :-) Looks like those work great for kings too... He hooked into a huge colored up steelie too to round out the evening - all after getting off the jet the same day... Three marquee species on their first half-day on the water. After last year's dismal run, it is a wonderful relief to have such a strong early showing like this.

The Rodeo Hole is packed with fish, but especially packed with fishermen. The lower holes are filled in with sand after the massive winter flooding, so it will take some time for those to dig in again. Not ideal for holding fish at the moment in that lower stretch. Very few fish under the bridge at 9 Mile, so the best fishing is still in the lower river, although you'll have to do some hiking to get above all the people.

Sorry for failing to bring you the weir counts this past week and a half. Here they are...

Commercial fishing down in the estuary begins this Sunday at 6am. Kings will be closed to commercial retention, but is still open to sport retention. They are forecasting a 900+ large king run this year, so they expect to have the sport season open throughout. We'll probably pass the 10,000 sockeye mark tonight. We didn't hit this number till after July 4th last year, so we are a good two weeks ahead in counts. Fish and Game has reported that the eggs coming out of the commercial catch thus far are 'underdeveloped", meaning that the early fish have not been developing - the early fish are simply coming in early and the bulk of the run is still weeks away. Should be a strong big run that lasts through the next month and a half, not a small run coming in early...

I sent a loan fisherman off to Pike Lakes this week for a quiet and relaxing day in isolation. Well, it was far from quiet, or peaceful... He said his first fish landed had attacked the pile of chartreuse fly line at his feet and refused to let go. He actually landed the pike by dragging the fly line wad back in. Well, no hook damage to that fish, since it was never hooked. It just latched onto the line and refused to let go. The rest of the day was a lot like the first few minutes. When he retires, Mike wants to retire to a Pike Lake...

Once again, I failed to call in for the weir counts before they closed. Oh well. I'll have them for you on Monday in detail. For now, I did have a great fishing report yesterday (for fishing on Thursday) - so many sockeye in the Rodeo Hole that the river was "black with fish". Not a bad situation. Then yesterday Matt went out loaded up with afresh supply of Mai Tai's (the fly, not the drink). Now i didn't head directly from him how the fishing was. Tanis and I went camping instead, so this is through Teen's interpretation... Apparently, he would have rather had the "other" Mai Tai's than the fly version... It was dead. Fish in the river, but nothing would bite. My guess (not being there) is that we had a bog change in the atmospheric pressure (we finally had some rain last night), which can turn off the bite. More so with sockeye than the other species - tentative biters to begin with, so the changes that effect behavior are more dramatic with them.

                       Sockeye     King     Steelhead Up    Steelhead Down
June 3rd            368            0                  65                        723
          4th          1370           1                  69                        500
          5th             66             1                    9                        542
          6th            186            0                    0                        475
          7th            624            0                    4                        375
          8th            390            1                blank                     150

Pretty erratic sockeye numbers right now, which isn't unusual for the early run. This is quite an early shot to see (we only saw 6 days last season where we topped 1000 fish, so we already have two and several more with 700+). Kings should only have an occasional one going through this early in the run, so no real indication what that run will look like. They were expecting to see a run strength of about 900 (if my memory serves). Looks like the official spring steelhead run has come to an end, with the numbers dropping off to nothing the past three days. They did say there were a bunch waiting to come upstream, but they still had the gates closed. Tomorrow, they may revise yesterday's numbers to show incoming steelhead again...

That makes for two days in a row that I called to get the weir counts while they were out to lunch, then managed to forget to try back again till after they went home. Sorry. I do however have some live reports from real human beings to report...

Matt was kind enough to spent his two days off work out doing "research", so I would have some accurate fishing reports. Here he is donning his brand new wading boots for the deep-wilderness expedition. VERY few people in town right now because this is supposed to be the lull between runs, but the peak for both at once... All indications point to some of the best fishing we will see all year right now, with spring steelhead still coming in along with thousands of sockeye salmon.

On Thursday, Matt and Gary did very well right down around the lower landing (the "Old Man's Hole doesn't close to young punks till June 15th, so the whole river is open right now). Matt said the good ol' Mai Tai was working wonders, even though it is a much larger pattern than most traditional sockeye flies. I don't have permission to publish Gary's numbers, but Matt hooked 7 big fresh sockeye over the couple hours they were out trying. Then yesterday, Matt returned for more abuse, although not nearly as many fish were there as the day before. Looks like a big shot went up through the weir, since they weren't loitering down where they had been. Matt hooked several, but only landed one sockeye. He also landed one big bright steelie that he thought was a king...

Water is low and clear with all the snow gone and more sunny days. We did get a little shot of drizzle this morning, but that has ended without fully wetting the concrete. Certainly not enough to add to the water levels, but at least we weren't getting more evaporation for a few hours. Water temperature yesterday ranged between 56 and 63 degrees. We don't want it to be any warmer than that, or else we start stressing the alevins and smolt - something we recognized last year as the reason behind the disastrous sockeye run of 2008. I'll type up the details one of these days as to why the sockeye were hurt last year, which makes a lot of sense. This year is sure shaping up to be a good one though, from all early indications...

A group came through reporting that they were getting hits by sockeye on green glo-bug yarn and anything red... Matt was getting aggressive takes, not just the usual subtle mouthing that we usually see from biting sockeye (yes, I'll type up a report on sockeye behavior one of these days too, so you can actually get them to bite instead of trying to "floss" them, or get them to bite with their a$$ (aka "snagging"). Remember, the limit has been reduced for sockeye in the Situk to 3/day until after they reach their 70,000 escapement goal.

And a report from a couple Pike Lakes expeditions, but that's top secret info I'm not supposed to share... I guess I shouldn't have mentioned it at all... OOPS! Forget I mentioned that there are other fishing opportunities in Yakutat than just the Situk...

Yesterday showed 800 sockeye going upstream through the weir and a lot of fish stacking up below. Reports are coming back that people are catching their limits easily on sockeye. Remember, the daily bag limit was lowered this year to 3 a day, so don't keep the 6 that we used to do on the Situk. Also, the king run is expected to exceed their escapement goals, so it is open as of now for 1 a day. Another large king went through the weir, so that makes for 4 total so far (but that is all we should be seeing this time of year). The focus has changed from steelhead to salmon, so reports now are from people targeting salmon - even though they are still catching steelhead and there are a lot in the river and still bright ones coming in.

Have had a couple reports (from the very few fishermen here) through the weekend of "lots of steelhead that don't want to bite" and "but we caught plenty of sockeye" to make everyone happy. Yes, it appears we will have yet another week of blistering sun, with a lot of steelhead in the river that are as skittish as can be. Weir counts for the weekend are as follows:

Saturday:     387 down 42 up, Sockeye 0 up
Sunday:       548 down 87 up, Sockeye 5 up
Monday:      741 down 26 up, Sockeye 1321 up

Yes, you read Monday's numbers correctly. The sockeye are hitting the weir heavier than ANY day last year! And that was only the 1st of June, not the second week of July when it should be peaking! Let's see what the numbers hold through the week and see if we have a really early trend going on. Funny how the steelhead were so late, but the sockeye seem so early... or so strong...

The road is already plowed and open, so access to things like the Ahrnklin and Pike Lakes are open.

A very slow day here at the shop, with a couple non-fishing tourists passing through, but no fishermen, or fishing reports. Brian from Fish and Game came through though and said the weir report from yesterday was about 100 down and about 20 up. Definitely slowing on the upstream counts, but a lot of fish leaving now. He also said that a lot of the downstream fish are really healthy, bright spring fish, so the late spring fish are not staying long in the river. Doing their business and getting the heck out of Dodge. Still a heck of a lot of steelhead in the river though. Looks like I may need to convince Teen to watch the shop again this week.

First off, the rains came to an end and movement slowed down tremendously. Weir counts from yesterday are in and are as follows:

Thursday: 31 down 22 up Flow rate is at 246 CFS, so coming down from the 265 we had yesterday.

Matt and I had an afternoon on the water. Confirmed a lot of things we had been hearing through the past few weeks, but also clarified some things as well. First off, The bottom end of the river below the weir is pretty barren right now. Small pockets of fish scattered around, but not till you get higher up toward the weir and the Rodeo Hole. There was a rumor of 100+ sockeye down below Rodeo, but we didn't see those. We did cast over about 6 sockeye (and I have to admit we were hoping to catch our first sockeye of the season, not necessarily late steelhead), but they were deep down and not reacting to our attempts to entice. They didn't react to ANYTHING actually, including Matt towering over them from a log and me wading out to them from the other side of the river. Maybe there were dead... certainly not skittish in the least.

We would see an occasional steelhead moving upstream toward the weir, or a big ugly one heading downstream like a rocket. Otherwise, not much to report from down there. OK, I did have a gorgeous bright and big steelhead in a flat right in front of me (right at the point I was giving up and crossing back to the trail to skip over the lower water) - the perfect set-up. Pulled my line back out, stepped a little closer, started false-casting my line out and... here comes Fish and Game around the corner to trade out the weir crew... Bummer! When the waves settled down, there was no trace of that fish anywhere...

On the trail, we ran into a couple heading down after the last day of their trip. They have been seeing a pretty mediocre trip overall, with a good evening on Wednesday, but pretty slow fishing yesterday when we saw them. They were the ONLY fishermen we saw at all through the entire time we were fishing! We paused at the weir to see how it was set up this year and to watch the fish up above it stray down into the slot. There was a pretty good group stuck immediately above the fence, just holding their own in the current. Fun to watch...

We wandered upstream a little farther and could see fish laying in the branches at our feet at every spot we could see through the trees. We dropped into the river about 200 yards above the weir and I worked my way downstream closer to the closure sign. I immediately hooked into two chrome bright steelhead on two consecutive casts. Shortly after, I had another good take, but this one didn't come up out of the pit high enough for me to see if it was bright or dark. At that point, I had stirred things up well enough that any fish had fled to the safety. I was essentially geared up for sockeye, so had my 8wt Type 8 15 foot sink tip on my 7wt floating line and bamboo rod. My fly of choice was a brown and cream colored bugger with gold dumbbell eyes and white rubber legs. Sorry, I don't even know the name of it. I had ordered a batch several years ago for out on the Italio and I'm down to my last couple... I think I need to order some on for the shop... duh! I LOVE that fly for silvers!

Having caught more steelhead over the years than I have, Matt was gracious enough to let me have all the good spots... That, or I just rudely waded in after every fish I spotted before he had a chance. He doesn't have his own blog, so I'll stick with the first description and he can't contradict it. The 28th of May and there are bright steelhead everywhere! Our initial flurry of success dropped to no reaction at all for the last two hours we were out there. The sun came out and all those fish so easily spotted became barren water unless there was a shadow from a tall tree. We flailed for a while, but decided it was time to wander back toward the bottom. Right at the end, one guy on a Cat-a-raft came through, followed by Aaron from the Lodge with one client. They had a really good time in one particular hole, boating five fish in short order before moving on. They suggested we head up there, but I was done and very ready for some food.

It was a wonderful way to spend an afternoon, as only my second day on the river this year. I landed two fish, Matt landed one. Encountered a total of 5 humans (other than the weir crew), two on a trail and none in the water while we were fishing. Light sprinkles early in the hike, warm sun on the hike home. The only downside of the whole day was that the bugs have hatched and we had no-see-ums in our face a couple times. Water was up, but it was still real clear and lacked the brown tannin color completely. Just enough turbidity to make the really deep holes opaque, but the 5 foot holes were easy to see into.

Perfect conditions right now and no one here to enjoy it. Just waiting for the salmon season to start in earnest in another three weeks. Several sockeye have been reported caught down in the lower river below the weir. We didn't see concentrations enough to bother fishing for, but apparently there are some milling in and out. Still only the 5 through the weir, so they must be coming in and going back out with the tide still. I don't know of sockeye being caught with flies earlier in the season than this ever before. A good run will be refreshing after last year's dismal run.

Math error in your favor from yesterday's report... The Tuesday downstream count was actually 316. The count for yesterday (as reported today) is:

Still seeing between 50 and 100 new spring steelhead each day. We have not seen this kind of consistent incoming fish at all in May this season. Interesting. No one has been through the shop today for a river report, so I'm just going to have to go fishing myself and report back what I find. Teen has the shop today...

Friday:       42 down     33 up
Saturday: 42 down     15 up
Sunday:     72 down     59 up
Monday:    34 down     41 up
Tuesday: 406 down     97 up

So the rain we had Tuesday spurred some movement both up and down through the weir. Hard to believe we could have nearly 100 fresh spring steelhead moving upstream through the weir on the 26th of May!!! Getting reports of sockeye being caught below the weir on flies, even though they aren't moving upstream yet. A LOT of sockeye down in the estuary already, with a handful of subsistence nets catching them down there. Sockeye are also being caught by the subsistence nets in the bay as well. All indications look like we'll either have an early sockeye run, or a really big one... The parent year was OK, nothing record breaking, so I'd lean more toward early.

With 6 weeks without rain this spring, that has definitely helped to throw the runs into chaos. Rhonda at Fish and Game said (while I was getting the counts) that no one would try to guess what is happening with so many variables this season... so on that note... here is my guess...

2006 saw a 15,000 steelhead count. 2007 had 10,000. 2008 ended up with 7,000. My guess is we'll see a count around 5,000 this year when all is said and done. And since we have no idea what the sockeye will do, I'm going to throw out my random guess of 55,000 returning sockeye through the weir and about 1000 kings. We only had 30,000 sockeye last year. Hopefully everyone will forget my guesses by the time we know totals in a couple months and no one will hold me accountable...

My apologies for not having the weir counts... I called too late yesterday and right now, they are at lunch. I'll get those up as soon as I get them. In the meantime, some mixed reports... We had rain finally move in yesterday and it continues today. Water has come up a bit, but still at 220 CFS - very low and clear. Water temperature is hitting a nighttime low of 8C, or 46.4F. That's the LOW temperature now. That certainly isn't a problem anymore.

The river is as full of fish right now as we have seen all season. The upper river is clearing out, with most of the fish in the bottom half. Lots of fish anywhere from the confluence down, but pretty thin around the bridge. Best colors continue to be black, white and olive. One guy hit it well on the Garcia Glo Bugs, but most people haven't been making that work well for some reason this year.

If you want a good laugh, come in and ask me about a conversation I had with one of the river guides... I won't post it publicly here though... More info later when Fish and Game come back from lunch.

In spite of the promising incoming counts through the weir (we won't have accurate counts till the office opens after the holiday, but we are seeing between 30 and 50 fish a day moving in), the numbers of fish in the upper river seem to be dwindling. The winter steelhead that have spent half a year in fresh water are gradually working their way downstream. Counts of downstream fish through the weir are about the same, or slightly below the incoming numbers, so really aren't losing fish totals in the system - yet. Catching steelhead is getting tougher not because their numbers are declining, but because so many dollies are now in the system that you can have one of them on nearly every cast... Some reports have been that there are large numbers of steelhead stacking up below the weir. Others are that there are no steelhead congregating there... No float reports, so I don't know how many are in the middle river right now. But if they are leaving the upper river and haven't passed through the weir yet...

Conflicting reports about sockeye as well... Reports that they are stacking up in the lower river already, although Fish and Game said they came in initially in a small batch, then stopped. We'll have the counts tomorrow... Also, apparently Fish and Game have closed the areas immediately above and below the weir for a short distance. I'll check on that tomorrow as well.

Two reports came in for a VERY slow day at the shop (other than the visitor shown on the blog page). The first was a group midway through their trip. Fishing has been a struggle for them, but they have been catching a few. Seeing far more fish than are willing to take an interest in their flies... The second report was from a group heading home to AZ on tonight's jet. They too struggled, spent a beautiful day on the bay, took the 13 hour hike from hell off the trail and ended the week a bit disappointed - especially when on their way out of town, I informed them that we are seeing 50+ bright fish a day coming through the weir and spring steelies stacking up in the weir hole... That is their favorite area to fish and they didn't do it at all, after hearing just a single fish went through on Friday and Saturday... OOPS!

Normally, Fish and Game traditionally isn't concerned about upstream counts, since they are only tracking the survival numbers migrating out. Outbound numbers of course don't concern us so much, since you have a tough time fly fishing for steelhead after they left the river... This year's oddly missing/late spring run is fascinating, since we have yet to see a real major influx of spring fish at all, except for a brief window in April. Sooo... we have both upstream and downstream counts to look at and the trend actually looks pretty good right now:

Last Friday and Saturday - only 1 fish up each day
Tuesday - 50 up and 62 down
Wednesday - 39 up and 28 down
Thursday - 59 up and 38 down

These are the most consistent incoming fish numbers we've seen in weeks. Looks like the spring run is coming in after all, although still not in any great numbers. We have essentially added a couple hundred new chromers into the lower end, with a lot of fish starting to school up below the weir waiting to make their run through. As odd as this sounds, we have our best fishing of the season right now - the end of May! We kind of suspected this would be happening even a year ago, so doesn't come as a big shock. I think we were starting to wonder if they would come at all, but now we are doing OK and they are hitting the river at long last.

Fishing reports have been good and OK, with no one really doing poorly. There are a few people in town, but not many. Fishing pressure is really down. Last year, it dropped to virtually zero for the last week of May, but I think with the peak seeming to be happening right now, we may see a trickle through the shop and on the river for another week, possibly even two.

They did get a few sockeye through the weir this week, which is VERY early. They had a couple through the weekend and 5 on Tuesday. After a terrible sockeye run last year, Fish and Game are expecting to see a pretty good run this year. Time will tell...

Interesting... the cloud cover didn't turn the bite on much. A few fish getting caught here and there, but not anything spectacular. The fish in the upper river seem to be on redds (for the most part), with pockets of 6-12 in each of the holes that aren't. I had great reports over the past few days and sent out quite a few of those flies today. Mixed reaction to the Mai Tai's and copper buggers, with some doing OK and others not so OK. Now for the interesting news... people reporting seeing "a lot" of bright fish down at the bottom. We had the confirmation that 50 went through the weir yesterday, but apparently there are quite a few in the bottom end still waiting to go upstream. Fish and Game get the report around 10am, so we'll see what happens tomorrow with the counts and if we have a trend of spring fish coming in now...

The clouds rolled in at some point last night and although Weather Service was calling for them to burn off, they aren't. With that said, fishing was slower yesterday from two reports, although we had several more that said it was really good. Through the weekend, we have been seeing some of the best fishing of the season even with the bright sun. It is supposed to stay cloudy for a few days, with a 20% chance of some rain. Let's hope we get it! The snow is essentially gone, so we need the water in the river. Flow is down to about 215 CFS and very clear. Water temperature yesterday hit our season high of 52 degrees!!! The lake is essentially ice free, so access to that area is wide open with Yakutat Coastal's float plane.

The ADF&G weir is up and running. Counts this morning are 62 steelhead downstream and 50 upstream (yes it is a net-loss of 12 fish, but that is the biggest batch of fish we have seem move in for quite a while). Through the weekend, they were only counting a single fish a day upstream, so yesterday had a nice flush of fresh bright spring fish coming into the system. Maybe we do still have the spring run coming... They also counted 5 sockeye upstream, so they are already starting to make a small showing.

A TON of dollies throughout the system now. A couple nice resident rainbow have been caught in the upper river. The sea-run cutthroat that had been hanging around under the Cannon Beach Bridge at Tawah Creek have moved away from there up into the lake, after getting harassed by quite a few people. Fishing pressure is the heaviest in the upper river around the bridge (for obvious reasons), but with fish starting to move in and a few moving out now, the bottom will be fishy again after being pretty stagnant for a couple weeks. 50 new fish isn't a huge number, but that is definitely a change from what we have been seeing this season. Jumping from 1 to 50 in a day is a great change. Let's see if it is a trend though...

One of the biggest catches yesterday was... um... the guide... The group that came in early this morning had managed to put a hook THROUGH the ear of their guide. They wouldn't tell me which guide, but I'm sure that info will be known very soon since they said he may still be wearing it... OOPS!

Fishing is still great with a lot of fish throughout the system, but the "catching" slowed down again in the bright sun yesterday. Today is another gorgeous day and already seeing the effects of the sun, with some traffic through the shop and people looking for some different flies to try. The better success is by using a lot of shot to get deep fast under the trees, or swinging the tail-out from way upstream. Not much sitting in the deep runs unless they have cover to hide behind.

Several people have described Yakutat right now as "a ghost town", with few people out on the river this week. Many are getting a very late start on their floats, so they are still on the water late in the evening when the light is better and fishing is more productive. We are about to break 60 degrees here at the airport and it isn't even 930am yet. This will be another record breaker day. Can't wait for summer to come and we get some rain...

Yesterday was an extremely slow day around the shop. Overcast, an occasional light drizzle... fishing was HOT. Why would anyone in their right mind be hanging around the shop when the fish are hitting?!?! Why was I?!?! Well, I guess I kind of answered that already... I didn't hear any float reports this morning, but the guys hiking both upstream and down from the bridge all did really well. Hitting some nice bright ones too, although they aren't coming in... Rhonda with Fish and Game confirmed that the weir is up and running, although it is not "fish tight" yet. They did count a whopping 7 fish downstream and... one upstream yesterday. I don't know how dedicated they were to the enterprise of counting with the weir not quite finished yet, so those numbers could be - are probably way off from what moved in and out.

Water continues to drop, though not precipitously. Running at 230 CFS today with water temps in the low to mid 40's. Overall, the view seems to be that fishing is "good" for the Situk, but not "Situk Great". Stunning for most steelhead rivers, but a little low for what people have come to expect from this system. We do have the best fishing of the season right now. Not a lot of people, although we did have some groups change out today. Most pressure is upstream, since that is where the fish are... Duh. Easy to get away from people if you are willing to walk.

Unsolicited report just in... Fishing is "incredible". Two guys came in to get stronger tippet and are really doing well this week. A little slow when the sun was out, but it is great now. They have a couple more days and will be back in for another report when all is done on the water...

Today couldn't have been better, with all of the cloud cover, we were into fish ALL DAY LONG and had 2 that went over 40". Lots of dolllies for first 1/2 mile beneath the bridge. Such a great day - had an otter tackle, overpower and commandeer a fresh steelie I was playing - thought the fish had suddenly gotten a crazy 3rd wind, but it was being bear-hugged by the otter which proceeded to take its victim onto the bank and commenced to eat it while keeping my flies!

Well, looks like Matt and his crew are having a pretty good trip for their first day on the water. Also reported that a few more bright spring fish have come in in recent days. Not a big batch, but more than what we have been seeing. Overcast again with a little sprinkle here and there. I seriously doubt I'll see any reports today, since there is no way anyone will be wandering around town when the fishing is heating up...

Reports are coming in that we are seeing some of the best fishing of the season. A couple blue-bird clear days dampened the mid-day catching a bit, but most people were still doing great anyway. Still tight up against the bank with a lot of fish. The water REALLY dropped again, but still at 240 CFS:
Graph of

Lots of dollies in the Situk, lots of cutthroat in Tawah Creek and the Lost. Situk Lake is now thawing out enough for Yakutat Coastal's floatplane to fly into there. Fishing is good, with more fishing options starting to open up on some of the other streams. Clouding up today, so that just helps. Not a lot of people in town right now, so the river doesn't have very much pressure. I was expecting a later rush of people this season with two straight late runs and this year looking like a 3rd late one. I think those few that are planning for a late May trip will have some of the better fishing of the season.

The water is ultra-clear, which has put us back onto very small profile flies. White was again the color of choice for people coming through the shop today. Bright colors were making the fish part around the fly as it drifted through. Small beadheads with wings, or rubber legs for a spot of color on white, black or olive again...

Two reports in this morning... The first was that fishing is great and the group has had no trouble hooking up. Mostly dark fish, but a couple bright ones in the mix. They walked all the way down to the confluence yesterday and saw plenty of fish. The second report was that "fishing was great, but that catching was tough". Group #2 is leaving in the AM jet, so are done for the week. Had a great time, even if they didn't land a lot of fish. They did say that the river is now full of dollies. Said they couldn't swing a fly though the bridge hole without hooking one. That is a dynamic that has changed this week.

Sunny days coming in the forecast all week, so the river is coming down in a hurry. Not a lot of snow left, so access has improved. Flow is still above average, but you can see the average drops significantly through this week... We are down to about 280 CFS as of this morning:
Graph of

A lot of people heading home today. Faces we haven't seen before, therefore some completely different fishing reports. There were a couple groups with very low numbers for the week. Struggling to get the flies up and under the branches where the fish were hiding. The vast majority however had pretty good weeks, so long as they had the skill to get it in there. Drifting essentially fell apart as the method of choice, with the traditional fly guys capable of stalking fish and targeting the steelhead tucked under branches seeing far more success. There are plenty of fish in the river, you just have to get the fly to them instead of the usual "they'll come to you" Situk tradition.

After dismal float reports yesterday, this morning's reports were mostly "great", with two "poor" reports mixed in. Understand that I get reports a day late, so that would be two days ago with poor fishing and yesterday was the great day. One group had so much success, they started chucking spoons and rubber worms they "found" and still had follows and takes. They had 20+ fish to the boat (and a lot more lost) caught primarily on the move, shooting from the hip as they drifted by the pockets of hiding fish. Another guy in the shop at the same time said he was skunked and is planning to tie himself to the other guys' boat next year...

I think what we are seeing is an advantage for the traditional fly guys. The river has changed so much that there are few deep holding holes, trees have swung into shore creating better cover and much more technical fishing. Drifting under an indicator just isn't working like it usually does. Yesterday was probably a high day for the average guy on the river. A big jump in the success rate for most people. Didn't seem to see a mid-day lull like we had been seeing. Those that did well did so all day long.

Oddly, one of the hottest flies was that big articulated all white Dolly Llama - every single person who had bought one the day before caught something on it! I ordered those entirely by mistake... The black and copper Krystal Bugger is working well. Garcia Glo Bugs have turned on. Another group had all their success on the big articulated bunnies too, but with purple and chartreuse as their color of choice. Most were using the big profile flies, but the Glo Bugs and smaller patterns were working too. It was a real mixed bag that worked yesterday - just about everything if you put it in close to the fish enough times.

Fish are definitely heading for their redds now, but most are still in the cover and along the cutbank. Fish are much more spread out than previously reported, so good fishing on the entire float as well as above the bridge. Nice to get so many good reports all at once.

Obviously I get contradictory reports about fishing depending on people's ability, time of day they are fishing, etc. This morning, I received two oddly contradictory reports about how many fish are in the river. One drift boat report was that yesterday after there being a lot of fish in the river, the next day the same guys said they didn't see very many at all. The fish from the day before were "gone". An hour later, another fisherman came in to report that there were plenty of fish throughout the float. Less than normal, but still a lot. They just didn't have any interest in what he was throwing.

That last part is a pretty universally reported situation. Lots of fish, but they just don't want to hit anything. Yesterday was slow, although a couple of the guides were able to race to a couple select holes and do well. Most people continue to struggle and the usual tactics aren't getting the reaction one would expect. The fish are definitely starting to spread out on their redds. Lots of fish in the upper river above the bridge and... um... there may or may not be lots of fish in the lower 2/3rds of the river (from the bridge down). A few bright ones are still trickling in at the bottom, but not a whole lot. Most will be colored up.

The suggestion is to be flexible, carry a wide variety of color and size. Nothing seems to be the hot ticket. Success will come with just about anything, but with no consistency. You just have to try everything and work hard to get a reaction. The weather is perfect, water flow is up, temperature is stable between a night low of 37 and day high of 42. No excuse for the fish not behaving normally other than fish are fish. Conditions today look ideal, so we'll see tomorrow how those reports sound...

Most reports today came back as being slower on the bite yesterday than the rest of the week. Lots of fish in the upper river above the bridge. Floating, the river seems to have swapped itself around, with fewer fish on the upper half of the float and more fish on the second half of the float. Gets fishy about a mile down from the cabins and the fish peeter out by the last mile. Still not many fresh fish coming in.

The flies people were having success with today were long black bunny leeches and all white Dolly Llamas. We have had a bit of a run on those flies - silver flies, not steelhead! I think the dynamic we are seeing isn't a feeding behavior, but territorial. Not a lot of fish are on their redds yet, but they are snapping aggressively at these large flies - as long as 8 inches! It was pretty slow all day with a lot of fish in the system and a lot of frustrated fishermen. A few fish were caught on the big flies, so word spread quickly. It is raining again right now... It wasn't for most of the day.

The weather changed again, making fishing a little better than it has been. The upper river is the ticket (along with the crowded destination). Lower river is still slow with not a whole lot of fresh bright fish coming in. The floats have been sporadic, with some people doing well and others struggling. At least the fish are coming out of hiding now that the awful sunny weather has passed. Garcia Glo Bugs were all the rage, but small 6mm beads, huge black articulated leeches and all-white flies have been working for people. In other words, just about anything works when presented well in the drizzle.

Water flow for the past three days has bounced between 300 and 350 CFS. Great flow rates for fishing. Enough to get a good drift, while not too high for targeted stalking. The water remains very clear, although we did get a little bit more color to it yesterday. Evenings are still best, although once the sun was off, all day seemed to produce for those who worked it hard.

Still keeping an eye out for any sign of the missing spring run... I'll keep you posted.

Weather cleared back up again, making the mid-day bite slow. Supposed to rain again tomorrow night and all day Thursday. Very slow at the bottom for most people with only handfuls of fish showing up on the tides. Lots of fish in the upper river, with the lake expelling the winter run over the past two days. Aerial view shows a lot of fish in the lake now that it is thawing out, so we should continue to see the darker fish moving down into the river over the next week.

Some have been struggling, some have done OK. A very few have done great. A real mixed bag. More tomorrow...

We had a big change in the weather yesterday. VERY windy conditions appeared late in the morning, followed by clouds and rain by afternoon. I didn't get ANY river reports, which would mean that fishing was good and no one wanted to leave the river. This morning, the rain had stopped, with sun breaks coming back out. Fishing once again slowed down, although many people were still doing well in the upper river. Multiple confirmations that the lake fish have flushed out, with the upper river above the bridge full of dark winter fish. The upper half of the float is still pretty fishy, but the latter half tends to be a little skinny on fish.

The water has come up to above the historic average. We are running a pretty steady 320-330 CFS today - a far cry from the terribly low water we were seeing just a week or two ago. Not many fish coming in at the mouth, thus the slow fishing at the bottom end. Oddly, there are no dollies in the system yet. We should have thousands of them in the river by now, but they just haven't come in yet. We have been wondering if the run is in and weak, or if we are still waiting to see the main body of spring steelhead. With no dollies, it may indicate that they haven't followed the spawning steelhead in yet because they haven't come in yet...

Other late runs:
The herring spawn was very late, with big balls of feeder fish in the bay and ocean everywhere. The eulachon came into the Akwe just two weeks ago and should have been doing their thing months ago. Most telling was the local hand-troll commercial fishery that didn't see good numbers till just two weeks ago - a month and a half late. All indications seem to point to a late run - possibly later than last year. There is always the chance of "no run" of course, but only time will tell...

After dire report after dire report yesterday afternoon, the late evening fishing (as reported this morning) was for some of the best fishing we have seen all season so far. Many more fish are appearing in the upper half of the river, although still pretty slow in the lower half. VERY heavy fishing pressure Saturday, but it appears much of the crowd is thinning out. Heavy Anchorage contingent is flying out today, leaving the river empty. Still sunny, but supposed to start raining this afternoon. Windy, so there is a definite change in the air. The pressure dropped, which may have helped turn the fish on so dramatically last night. Nice to have widespread positive reports, even if it was only for a short duration.

Today hit 71 degrees, shattering the previous record. Water temperature is showing 46 at this moment. Flow exceeded 260 CFS, so PLENTY of flow now. The water has picked up quite a bit of color. Still transparent, but looks like weak coffee. Floating the river was an odd experience from the sounds of it. A lot of people just soaking up rays on the bank, not fishing. Those that were fishing had pretty dower looks on their faces. Very few fish caught in the bright sun, but we've been seeing that all week.

Change is on the way. Tomorrow is supposed to cloud up, with a 40% chance of rain by Sunday evening. Cloudy with a chance of rain every day throughout the coming week. There are plenty of fish in the river, so the change in light and temperature should shake things up a bit. I can't report on which flies have been the best the past couple days - nothing has been hot except the sunlight. A bead here, a bugger there, money bug, jig... you'll hook something, but rarely hit it again on the same thing. Just seems to be pretty random. Some days are like that.

Good fish in the upper half of the float, with fewer fish on the bottom half. Not many fish moving into the river on the tides. I wouldn't have expected that with the warmer water and higher flows. A lot of dark fish now throughout, although darned few fish at all above the bridge. Just small pockets scattered here and there. I haven't talked to anyone who has ventured above the closed area to see what is way up by the lake. The few that have hiked all the way to the sign have reported it as a waste of time, or a lovely hike... All depends on attitude... or sanity... Or maybe a little heatstroke... We'll see if tomorrow cools off a little and the clouds return. We spend all winter dreaming of the sun rising again, then when it comes out, we complain about how bright it is and how miserably hot we are (at 71...). So hard to please us, isn't it? I'm not "too big to fail", so no bail-out money. I might as well bitch about the weather being too nice then...

How can this be? With frighteningly low water flow rates over the past couple months, we shot up to the historic average yesterday, with some scorchingly hot weather (for spring in Yakutat anyway). Today is expected to break a temperature record, so we should pup up above the flow average today in the 250 CFS range. We may just run out of snow before long - a far cry from the 5 feet we had along the river banks just a couple weeks ago. Nice high flow rates and warm water (water temp topped 45 the past two days), although the water dips back down to 35 degrees at night.
Graph of

Graph of Temperature, water, degrees Celsius

Like I mentioned briefly last night, fishing can be great, or tough depending on the person doing the work. Still not a whole lot of fish in the upper river above 9 Mile, but certainly enough to keep you entertained. Drift boat reports have been saying that the first couple miles of the float have been somewhat slow, but then things start to pick up well after that. Real random numbers coming in on the tides, with one day having hundreds of bright fresh fish, followed by a measly dozen coming in the next day. With the dramatic rise in water levels, the whole dynamic on the river has changed and what was the case yesterday probably isn't today. People are primarily leaning on the darker flies, although with greater water comes greater turbidity. Today's 65 degree weather will undoubtedly bring that flow and water color way up.

Yesterday's 61 degrees missed the record by only 1 degree. We'll blow that away today. Good news through... Tomorrow will cloud up and hopefully bring in some much needed rain. Just a 40% chance of rain, but that is much better than a zero chance. Going a month without significant rain is not good for the resources here, even if we humans like to experience it once in a while. We are a full foot behind what we should see March 1st to May 1st.

I'll let you know what the fishing is like today as soon as someone comes through. I would expect a little foot traffic mid-day today once the AM bite turns off and we hit the hot-bright dead zone mid-day...

Just a quick message... Busy day around the hangar, so didn't make a full entry...

Another hugely bright sunny day that topped 60. Tomorrow will top 65. Snow is fading fast. Fishing continues to be just OK, with more fish each day, but the bright mid-day sun puts them tight into the trees for much of the river. Still not many fish above 9 Mile (depending on who you talk to). Tanis and I found plenty of fish, but I'll blog about that tomorrow. Over-all, some people are doing great, some passable and some are getting skunked. A real mixed bag. The bead guys have invaded and they have done well in holes vacated by jig guys who were skunked... Slapping weight and big bobbers all day for no positive effect (mono because the fly line "scares" the fish, but apparently the 3 globs of lead and the "strike indicator" the size of a basketball doesn't...), then the gentle drift pulls fish after fish out of the same hole... Go figure...

In a nutshell, patience and creativity seems to solve the problem of skittish fish in the low water and bright sun. Doing the same ol' thing doesn't. You want to catch fish right now? Show them something they haven't been seeing day in and day out and present it with some care. You'll do fine. Mono, or fly line doesn't matter in the least. Some common sense does though.

In case you are wondering, I had a discovery this week on why so many fly shop owners are jerks... I'll blog about that in a day or two after I'm a little more rational... For some odd reason, nearly everyone who has passed through the shop over the past year and change has been great. I can count the "not great" people on one hand. Unfortunately the "not great's" leave a lasting impression...

By the way, rain is coming in two days (according to Jack at the weather Service). That will change things DRAMATICALLY. Let's hope it actually comes! The melt has brought the river up to a pretty good level. Still below average, but not bad. Daytime high water temps in the mid 40's. Perfect for a late evening bite.

Just a quick update before Tanis and I head out to fish... Had a couple reports of people doing real well early morning and late evenings - the typical reports that have been coming in. Most are reporting that lull mid-day with the bright sun on the water. Also reported having a lot of success on beads - haven't had very many bead users come through the shop yet. Yarn and beads seem to be improving. The flow came up a LOT yesterday and the cool dip this morning stayed at the level we were peaking at the day before. More melt, more turbidity in the water as well. The lull "window" seems to be shrinking, as we get a little more color to the water.

Reports that waves of fish were working up into the bridge hole in the late evening, fresh chromers. Also a report that 80 fish were counted up above the bridge by a group hiking pretty far up. No one else has reported seeing more than just a handful, so that may mean the lake has discharged its captives. Either way, more fish each day throughout the system. It would be nice to have a good spell of rain, but even without that, fishing looks like it is improving nicely.

The fog rolled in last night early (around 8pm) and coated everything in a very thick layer. This morning, it actually burned off much earlier than it had been and we are already up above 40 degrees (air temp). Yesterday, the bite was a lot better and more consistent than the previous couple days. Warmer water is having the expected effect. Good fishing early in the morning and again late in the evening, but the mid-day sun wasn't quite as bad for fishing as it has been. Yes, the fish scurried off to find shelter, but warmer water did allow for a few hits when we had been seeing nothing happening in the glaring sun.

The flies that have been reported to work better are still dark colors, although dark - large profile flies. Big articulated bunny leeches with red heads. Also large dark red and black marabou flies. A lot more dark fish in the river, but we are still not seeing very many fish above the bridge. 50-100 under the bridge (depending on who's counting), with good numbers all the way down to tidewater. Tides are getting smaller again, but not the extremely low 6 footers that stopped the fish from coming in... 7.9ft this evening and 7.6ft tomorrow, but then they start getting bigger. The early morning tide is still a 10 footer for the next couple days. Water is essentially holding steady with the daily fluctuations in snow melt. Drops down to around 165 CFS in the early morning, then rises up to about 180 in the evening. Still a little low, but not by much. Over-all, pretty good conditions - especially when the sun isn't out on the water.

I won't have an afternoon report. Teen will be covering the shop when I take Tanis camping and fishing for his birthday. We'll report on that adventure on the blog tomorrow.

I have only shown up late twice this month. Granted we have never had anyone show up at the shop before 9am, so no real pressure to be open at 8am - except the two days I was late of course. Boy, if I was my employee, I'd probably can my butt.

So, fortunately the guys didn't drive off this morning and gave me their report from last evening's fishing:

Yesterday was dead for EVERYONE - guided, drift boat, bridge and bottom end. There are lots of fish, but it was just deathly slow. The bite was off. Here is the temperature gage...
Graph of

As you can see, each morning starts off as low as 34 degrees. The fish are lethargic and not in the mood to come out and play. Foggy and cool in the mornings, until the fog burns off and you have bright sun thrown into the mix to push the fish into any dark hiding spot. By noon, the water temperature had warmed up to a whopping 36 degrees. By 3pm when the guide boats started pulling out of the river at the bottom, we were still only seeing 38 degree water. Then in the late evening, the temp shot up to just over 44 degrees! How late? Well, not till about 5pm, when the sun started to drop behind the trees and cast the river channel into shadow.

Two young guys from Juneau have been here for a few days and thus far had been skunked. They were in the shop last night at 5pm wondering what they were doing wrong. Well, nothing. The water was cold all day and had bright sun shining in the water. There are some conditions that just stack up against you. They went back out to the bridge with some big dark flies and after 6pm, they did pretty well, landing two and having a couple more hits. Early this morning, they did just as well until the fog burned off and the bright light sent the fish packing for the dark shady cover.

Boy, things have been busy around here today, so although I started typing this entry early this morning, it is now 5PM again and the water temp is back up above 40. I'm closing the shop early today, since it is Tanis birthday and also the Pinewood Races for Cub Scouts tonight. We'll let you know on the blog tomorrow how it went.

I have had a couple good reports of LOTS of fish at the bottom end. Great numbers of fish have moved in!!! Now the bad news... they are VERY tight lipped and not biting anything. At least for the two groups that have come through the shop this morning. VERY slow fishing, with large schools taunting everyone. There is a lot of fishing pressure down at the bottom, so with the cold water, bright light (although not quite sunny) and people chucking hardware at them, the fish are not in the mood to play.

The water has come up significantly to about 180 CFS. A really nice flow rate for fly fishing, although still a little low for maneuvering a drift boat around the gravel bars. Some reports of really good fishing (and a couple poor reports...). Early morning before the sun casts shadows has been really good for most people getting up early. The once the sun hits the water, the bite turns off, followed by great evening fishing again. Still mostly dark colors seem to be working the best for most people.

You always get contradictory reports... With that first spike in the flow, I drove out to the bridge to take a look. Looked like really nice fishable water to me, although I didn't get my feet wet. Back at the shop, a group came through and said they thought the water had dropped and new gravel bars appeared since the day before. Looking at the chart, I don't see that happening, but each person sees the world through different eyes. Things are starting to look pretty good to me though.

Teen covered the shop and I drive out to the bridge to take a look at things first hand. My first trip to the river this year, actually... I've been relying on second hand info all this time. The flow looks really nice right now above the bridge. Ya, it is a little low, but not bad at the moment. The rain we had last night brought it up higher than it has been all spring, but still showing about 150CFS on the gage:
Graph of

There are about a half dozen tents clustered around the parking lot (or in the parking lot). Still about 18 inches of snow around under the trees and on the road past where they stopped plowing. Some bare spots around the base of trees. We have had a few sun breaks today, but otherwise, it has rained lightly off and on all day. There were about 10 guys clustered on the bridge watching the fish mill around and getting advice from our resident bridge expert and his dogs. Not a single person our there with their waders wet though. I had the kids with me, so it was just a quick peek to see what the camping situation looked like for someone coming up next week. I don't think the camping area looks too bad and I just might take Tanis up there for his birthday, if Teen and Eden commit to covering the shop on the 28th.

Looks like the river did pick up a little more color too (from what people have been telling me) with last night's rain. There are more fish in the river, the dark ones have reappeared and most people are reporting catching at least a few today. Numbers are still a little low, but people numbers are pretty low at the moment too. Tanis has been itching to catch his first steelhead, so I think his 10th birthday will be a great day to give that a try. I may hobble myself with only his and Eden's flies in my box just to see what happens. There can't be anything better than hooking a chrome-bright steelhead with your son, on a fly his little sister tied. I love my life!

A lot of skunkings yesterday by some pretty experienced fishermen, while a handful of people had a great day. The sun was off the river, but it was definitely cool. The water never came back up above 38 degrees. Flow this morning is at about 145 CFS after the rain and should stay up there throughout the day. Nice to start the morning with the higher flow. Tides are building back up, with a 10.7 footer this morning just after midnight and a 9.0 footer at 1:41 this afternoon. There are a few 50+ groupings of fish in the lower river. The run is definitely on the upswing. Looks like we'll have a good week coming up. Conditions have definitely improved.

The evening reports are trickling in... Still slow, but dark fish are definitely scattered through the system. We must be seeing the lake fish at long last. 40+ fish under the bridge. The 44 incher was independently confirmed. Same group also landed a 40 incher as well. Some nice big ones. Later in the day, we are seeing hens starting to dig redds. Much cooler today with just a few scattered sun breaks. A few skunked people, a few catching one or two fish, a few are having great days. A variety of flies, jigs, yarn and the usual mixed bag of techniques... No one method seems to be reigning king at the moment. No particular flies are "the hot thing". Back to people saying the darker smaller profile flies over brighter colors.

Looks like there is about two feet of snow still in the campground at the bridge, so probably about that or a little more along the trails. The depth has been cut in half over the last week.

Rumor has it that a 44 inch lunker was pulled out of the bridge hole yesterday. Reported to me by Fish and Game, so it may not be a fish story... Brian said there are some big ones milling around under the bridge, so that is a good sign. There haven't been many under the bridge in recent weeks.

You can see that last night's water temp didn't drop as much as most nights. It clouded up and didn't drop the air temperature below freezing like it had been. With the fish so lethargic and tucked into hiding spots early in the morning all week, I recommended to a few people to hit the estuary first thing instead of trying to work the colder river water. Well, not much success down there until about 11am when some fish finally started to swirl and work their way into the river. That had been working for a while, but seems the bigger tides have pushed more fish into the river recently and not as many are holding off the mouth in the estuary anymore. Sometimes your best laid plans...

Some better reports all around. Some that totally contradict the conventional wisdom of the last week from everyone else. Universally, people have been having better luck with the darker, more subtle flies. Yesterday evening, a group was heading out of town that had no problems at all with their typical chartreuse and purple yarn balls. Someone always has to come along and contradict my best suggestions, don't they? Looks like things are starting to settle into a more "normal" looking pattern. Still a bit on the slow side, but there are fish throughout the system now. Still don't know what is happening with the lake fish. A couple dark fish caught here and there, but not the large numbers we should be seeing.

Rain (70% chance) in tonight's forecast. Definitely a change in the air, so let's hope we actually see this rain materialize.

Darned if I didn't just make a long report of what is happening and it didn't get saves to the server... So here is the abbreviated version that I don't want to have to type twice...

Brain Marston, ADF&G Fisheries Biologist has a fishing reports page now. Click on the link on the right column of this page and it will take you there. Now you'll have a second opinion of what is happening, to prove I'm really full of crap... The second link is for the Alaska Region Directory, if you want to find out how other areas of the state are looking.

Reports back from the river this morning are that there were some really good batched of fish coming in on the evening tide the past couple days. The morning tide has not brought anything in, but each day the tides are about an hour later, so today's "morning" tide is just after noon. They are getting bigger too, so that should drive more fish into the river even if the water flow continues to be low. Gorgeous sunny day again today. It was over 50 degrees at 2pm, which will definitely help melt some more snow. The meadows and open areas are without snow now, which would make camping a little easier. Still deep in the shadows though.

Here is the latest gage height chart... You can see we aren't making much progress without the rain, but each day the water spikes to about 150CFS, then drops back down to around 130 CFS. Last night didn't get below freezing, so that helped keep the drop a little higher:

There is no significant rain showing in the forecast through the end of the week. Just more of this awful sunshine. Fish are moving in anyway, so long as you have the patience to wait till the water warms up enough. A little turbidity in the lower half from the snow melt, but still much lower and clearer in the upper half.

The group that has had one of the cabins in use for the last 10 days came in and gave me a great report. Cold low water, sunny skies... they haven't even bothered to go fishing till late afternoon when the water has had a chance to warm back up. They reported some great fishing in the evening hours, but nothing in the morning at all. Early mornings have the fish hiding and hunkered down in the icy cold water. Once the sun has had a chance to get things thawed out, the fish come out (after the 10 or so boats have passed) and they had fish in every hole. Still not a lot of them, but OK numbers overall. The past week has been very good to them, even while most people have felt empty handed. He said the water was starting to cloud up a little bit, helping the fishing and looking more like muskeg run-off. All very good signs.

We did hit 50 degrees officially today, but the river essentially held steady at around 140 CFS. The water temperature did peak out at 42.6 F, the highest we've seen this year. That should have perked up the fish a bit and created some action. Also, multiple reports of good fish late in the evening, with virtually none on the morning tide at the bottom end. The moral of the story... sleep in. The early bird eats worms, while the late risers feast on fish.

It is another bright sunny day. At 10am, the air temperature here at the airport is already 47 degrees, so the water will be warming up nicely. That should breathe some life into these lethargic and frozen fish. If you can get within a mile of them without spooking them off... Even with the snow melt, the water is dropping back down again as the ground absorbs the trickle of water.

You can see just how low the water is running, with the line of triangles showing the median average... The sun has brought it up a bit, then it dips back down again each evening with the clear cold nighttime lows. The weather forecast keeps pushing the rain off another day later, saying now that rain isn't likely till Sunday night, or Monday. We'll be losing a lot of the snow this week, but the river will probably trend to hover right around where it is now. At least the gage is definitely working accurately now. The tides are also building each day, which may aid in pushing the spring fish out of the estuary and into the river proper.

Reports this morning (already seeing people off the river...) are that there are not many fish within hiking distance of the bridge. A few were hooked yesterday above the bridge and one dark winter fish was pulled out from under the bridge last night. Below the bridge, it is essentially barren till you get to the confluence. Several good batches mid-river, then it gets a little skinny again toward the bottom end, where the fish from last week have moved upstream a bit, but not all the way up.

Some people have said the lower river is actually not that low. The upper river sure is, so the snow melt is working it's way into the river more and more as you get closer to the bottom. Dries up as you go farther upstream. The lake is still frozen over solid, but 50+ degree days this week could change that quickly and we may finally see the lake fish flush out.

Rain all night the night before last, then sun for most of the day yesterday. Brought the river up to about 150 CFS. Then last night was clear and below freezing, so all that came to a stop. Even though today was another sunny day, the water is dropping back down again. It is supposed to be partly to mostly cloudy through the next week with the next forecasted sign of rain being Saturday night, or Sunday. Most of our melting seems to just be soaking into the ground, because it sure isn't bringing the river level up to where we would expect it to be.

Reports from both yesterday and today are that there are a lot of fish swirling around in the tidal water in the evening, but they seem to be heading back out to the estuary instead of moving into the river. With the water level so low, they seem to be stacking up down below, work their way up with the tide, then drop back out again with the tide. We are having tiny little 6 and 7 foot high tides, so not enough water to drive the fish in. Tides are getting bigger now, with 8 footers today and 12 footers by the end of the week. Reports from last week were that the upper half of the float was entirely barren and devoid of fish. Not the case now. Not a lot of fish in the first two miles below the bridge, but there are small pockets scattered throughout now. Plus, only two miles shy of the bridge is a lot better than only in the bottom couple miles... Last week's flush of spring fish are heading up farther now. Fish caught at the bridge as well as all the way up to the West Fork. Half dozen fish here, half dozen there... This should relieve the pressure down at the bottom now that the floats are seeing more fish in the top end, as well as fish being caught above the bridge. Lately, with the only fish being at the very bottom, EVERYONE was concentrated in the last couple miles of the system.

Nice to finally get a report off the river today. With the bright sun and warm temperatures, I was wondering if I'd see anyone at all. Nice and comfortable for the fishermen, but boy are these fish skittish in the low clear water! Bright sun casting long shadows... The better flies are those with dark, or subtle colors. Olive, cream, brown and black are what people have been coming back for. Also more traditional trout and steelhead flies, like Prince Nymphs are working for people, when the yarn and bright colors are doing more spooking than catching. The flies that sold well last year are not the ones people want now, no matter how heavily I loaded up on them... :-) Ah, the lessons of retail...

Conditions are a challenge right now, but we'll see the water come up (it always does) and the fish will be back to acting normal any time. Let's hope the weather forecast is wrong and we get a nice spell of really crappy weather to turn the fish on. Only steelheaders are psycho enough to pray for miserable weather...

A couple interesting reports later in the day today... Looks like most of the fish on the lower end have either moved upstream, or back out again. These weren't drift boaters, so no report from today from anyone who has floated the river. My guess is the fish we have seen this past week went ahead and moved farther into the system. We may finally have enough up at the top end to make a day up there worthwhile. There were a few up under the bridge and in pockets along the upper end of the float yesterday. Certainly an improvement. Still all spring fish though, even the fish caught up near the West Fork was chrome bright. When will we see those darned lake fish?!?!

Still no winter fish coming down out of the lake. Good spring numbers in the bottom 6 miles of the float now. The first half of the float is slow going and doesn't have many fish in it. Little pockets here and there, but not enough to justify camping and spending time working the upper stretches. Good fish in the bottom end though and we are getting a lot of snow melt. Open areas where the sun can hit the snow had brought out bare spots. Much easier to walk now along the banks and trails. Still pretty snowy in parts, but things are improving fast.

Looks like the flow gage is working accurately now, after that jump in the gage a week ago Friday. Flow is showing exactly 100 CFS (historic average for today is about 230 CFS), so very low clear water. Yarn balls have not been working well, nor have the jigs. The fish are not hitting hard from several feet away. You need to get it right in their face to get them to take it. Bright colors have not been working (for this group), using the softer subtle colors like peach and cream. They did a combination of yarn, flies, spinners, jigs, etc. It took the entire arsenal to get things moving, but were having 15-20 fish days for the group. Some really nice big fish too. Jigs seemed to turn on just in the last couple days.

There is an aggressive moose that did a false charge. Watch out for them. There seem to be a few more moose on the river than in normal conditions. The excessive snow has pushed them into the river channel, so they don't have to try and walk in 5 feet of slop. With the snow melting, that should help them get away from the river. Bears are definitely out now. No reports of bears on the river yet, but they are out at Cannon Beach and hanging at the dump.

Two guys came through who spent the week camping along the river. Not surprisingly, the early part of their week when they were upstream was dead. They did well yesterday when they reached the bottom end where the fish are. There were some other boats that passed by them, but they were moving as fast as they could to get down to the bottom... Still no fish in the upper river to speak of at all. A report last night was that there were about a dozen fish under the bridge (from a local), but no one else has been able to see them...

The water has dropped again over the course of the week. Lost as much as 5 inches in water height. Off and on drizzly rain today, so we should see a little more water today and tomorrow. Still no sign of the lake fish flushing out.

Ah... it is very good to be home. Yesterday as I deplaned, I received a good detailed report as a group was leaving. They said the week started off very slow, but gradually through their trip there were more and more bright fish coming in. Had another report from a couple guys heading out on today's plane. They confirmed the lack of fish early in the week, but said the past couple days were pretty good, with the river filling up with fish. Last night, guys were still on the water till after 10pm, because of all the bright chromers coming in. What was 10-20 fish per tide a week ago is now (or at least was last night) hundreds.

The bright spring fish are definitely coming in with the higher river flow. Flow rate is back below 100 CFS today (should be over 200 historically), but the daily water temperature has been peaking right at 40 degrees. Warmer than last year, but still pretty cool. Fish are a little lethargic if they have been in the river for any amount of time. Conditions just seem to be getting better and better each day, so if you are coming un in the next week or two, you should be in a pretty good position. Short-term, better below than on the float, or upstream at the bridge. We still haven't seen the big flush of winter fish out of the lake, but that could happen any time if the water pops back up again.

Brian with Fish and Game said the ADFG blog page is now up and running. Teen said he has been working on the weir site and they have seen fish moving in. Remember I'm down in Seattle at the moment, so this is filtered through Teen... She said Brian said... 100 fish came in Tuesday and Wednesday of last week (exactly what the reports were saying from visitors) and now there is an average of about 20 fresh fish coming in on every tide. Looking good for the coming week.

Critter report... The first bear of the season was seen - not on the river, but out on the road to Cannon Beach. There are a LOT of moose IN the river lately. The deep snow up on the bank and in the trees is making it very difficult for the moose to move around. They have been standing in the river bed, or laying down along the shoreline. Expect to see more moose than usual while drifting the river until the snow starts to melt.

The gage suddenly appears to be working as of yesterday morning! Thanks Jim for bringing that to my attention. I had stopped checking it with the continuously odd readings of 30-40 CFS. On the 12th, the gage jumped up to 125 CFS - still only about half the flow we'd expect for this time of year, but more like what the river is really doing. Here is the link:

Just before my plane arrived, we received a nice detailed report from a float trip. First, the guys at the Yakutat Lodge went in and did a second round of cutting boat, making the river a lot easier to navigate. Rick said they had no trouble compared to what they expected to see with their cata-rafts (he also gave me some great pictures and I'll be putting a few of those on the site shortly...). The bad news unfortunately is that they didn't see more than a couple fish total above the confluence. Essentially, the 60-100 winter fish that had been in the river are now gone. Usually, we get a big early flush of winter fish that come out of the lake. It appears that the lake is still frozen enough and the flow low enough that the fish aren't getting over the lip out of the lake... yet. There are however a good 100 or so fresh bright spring fish that have come up into the river. They aren't heading upstream yet. Just hanging around from the weir hole and below.

Second report was actually while I was waiting to reboard the flight in Juneau. A couple very experienced fly fishermen reported having a pretty darned slow week on the river. Not exactly news there, but they did say fresh fish were starting to move in on the last couple days. They confirmed the earlier report of about 100 fresh spring fish coming into the lower river. Sounds like everyone has been catching a couple fish a piece and a couple guys "hit the jackpot" with 16 fish landed in the last couple days of the week. Still slow, but it appears the fish have reacted to the slight increase in flow and started into the river. They also said they didn't see any winter fish at all... Only spring fish, but they didn't go upstream.

I have a second hand report... There are some fish moving in at long last. Gordy with Fish and Game reported that Brian (Gordy is the commercial fish biologist, Brain is the sport biologist) is seeing a few fish moving up into the river. They are hard at work putting the new weir in, or at least getting the early prep-work done on it. In addition to the substantial damage we had last summer during the sockeye season, the very high water levels of December and January did even more damage on top of that. The weir will be going back in at the same location, but it will be interesting to see what changes they make to how it is put together. Anyway...

Also a second hand report from fly fishermen visitors who said they have been catching a couple each day, while two guys told them they had landed 16 fish in a couple days - all from the weir site hole. At least that does confirm the fish are moving up into the river farther and not just swaying in and out with the tide. Water came up slightly, but is still extremely low. Floating requires a lot of dragging and negotiating the tree-falls.

Also reported that "they" have gone back in after the initial cut and worked on the boat passages again to make them safer. Snow continues to fall here in town, although the temperature is 34 degrees. It isn't sticking much. Just coating the ground with an inch of transparent slush. Up on the river, it will be a little cooler than down here in the wide-open airport ramp, so we are probably getting a couple more inches of snow where it counts.

We woke to about 3 inches of fresh white wet snow. Since coming out to the shop, we have another inch on the windshield of the car in the past hour. So much for rains this weekend...

We did see the river rise a bit and the water temperature come up. The temp is back down in the 30's though. No actual fishing reports yet today, so we'll see what we can find out.

The boys seem to be hooking up with a few fish down at the mouth. No reports from any drift boaters. Light dusting of snow last night with a flurry or two through the day, but the sun is out now and nothing is sticking. The water temperature has warmed up considerably. The river gage is showing a nighttime drop to 37 degrees and a daytime high around 40. Considering the low flow and copious amounts of snow on the ground, things are looking up. We didn't really break the 40 degree mark last year till the second week of May... With visible schools of fish milling around in the estuary, I think the fish are going to come in in a hurry when the water hits the sufficient flow rate. The gage is still looking broken, so I wouldn't trust what it is saying. The water has come up a few inches over the past few days.

In a nutshell... I think the run is still outside, but won't be as late as it was last year.

Well, we have seen some traffic through the shop the past three days, but all people just arriving and no one actually off the river. Sorry for the lack of new info, but there hasn't been. I did get an accurate fresh report today though.

Water is still really low. Rain and warmer temperatures seems to be "softening" the snow along the banks, but not really "melting" the snow and increasing the flow rate. It came up a couple inches, but not significantly enough to make much difference. It is starting to rain again now and it did not dip below freezing last night. The clear days we had gave us some daytime warmth, but the night froze a crust over the parking lot again and it took till almost noon yesterday to get back to liquid. That didn't really help the thaw much. Right now it is 39 degrees and raining lightly.

Fish-wise, we have some chromers milling around at the mouth, but not enough water flow yet to get them into the river. They seem to move in on the tide, then panic when the water drops back out again. There are a few being caught, but people are looking to wade out into the estuary to strike at these fresh fish out there that aren't coming into the river yet.

Counts from floaters range from a high of about 60 fish up in the river, to a dozen... Depends on how good people are at spotting the ones tucked up under the brush and logs. Either way, that is a pretty skinny number to be in the 13 miles between the bridge and the take-out. Good sign to have schools swirling around in the Ahrnklin Inlet where the Situk dumps into, but they just don't have the motivation yet to head upstream in the low and cold water. That could change with a single rain event. The weather forecast is calling for scattered rain showers today and tomorrow with highs around 43. Friday and Saturday it turns to "rain" (for those of you from Seattle who actually understand the difference between rain and showers...) with 20 knot winds. That may be the "event" we need...

The fish are definitely in the estuary waiting, so we may have some movement this weekend. Bright ones are starting to appear and be caught.

Well, just heard from the first sport boat to drift the river. Not exactly great news, but confirmation for what we were expecting. They followed Bob down as he cut the rest of the boat passages just after the state declared the road open. They spent the night at the cabins and made it down this evening. Yes, I even came back out to the shop just to post this!

So... they said they counted 26 fish in the entire river float. No fish in the upper part of the float to the cabins and virtually all the fish in the river were dark winter fish. Just a couple bright new fish down at the bottom end. The water is EXTREMELY low (even with the rain we have had today). They said the Rodeo Hole has changed so much that there are high sandbars where there used to be a hole. The upper and middle part of the float hasn't changes a whole lot, but the lower 1/3rd is totally different. Much deeper in many sections to the point where it was just "frog-water". Some parts are so thin and shallow (in this water) that they did a LOT of dragging. The deeper sections look like great holding water once we actually get some water and fish, but right now, it was a LOT of work to get down the river. Moving logs out of the way, dragging up and over logs and across gravel. A lot of gravel "islands" throughout. Most of these will probably end up under water once the snow starts to melt in earnest, but some were as much as 4 feet high. Snow on the bank is a full 5 feet deep. That's 5 feet deep EVERYWHERE. They didn't recommend camping right now with the snow so deep and the river looking like it does.

Looking at the river gage, the mean temperature is right around 1.5C (and I'm too lazy to get an exact translation to Fahrenheit right now). Just a hair above freezing. The water level is still pretty erratic, going up to 80 CFS on the 2nd and back down to only 25 CFS the next day. Today has been showing a steady 37 CFS... We should be running about 200 CFS right now, so either the gage is still out of service, or there ain't no water flowing. I can't imagine we really had only 25 CFS, but the fluctuations do seem to match daytime temperature fluctuations...

As much as I would like to see some traffic through the shop and some cash flow... the run looks late, the river looks very low and the snow looks very deep. The forecast is for the temperature to get into the 40's starting on Monday through Saturday (when the forecast ends). That could help a lot to get some snow to melt and bring the river up. This time of year, a few days can make a huge difference, so next weekend could look like en entirely different river. This weekend, it looks like a barren ice trickle. Bummer.

The state had the road open fully by 2pm, so they were ahead of schedule and more productive today than expected. THE ROAD IS OPEN!

Also received a fish report from a group that flew out to the cabins this morning for some snowshoe fishing. They said they only came across one school of about 5 fish. Big tree in the confluence hole, so there are some interesting changes to the river. Should be a fun year to float it for the first time, with so much unexpected changes around every corner. Now let the water warm up and bring the fish in... Speaking of which...

Change to the weather report... The temperature has dropped and the rain in the forecast has changed to snow, with a winter storm warning for the next 12 hours. Only 3 to 5 inches expected before it warms tomorrow and it turns to rain. We can only wait and see...

Yes, the road will officially open tonight at 6pm. The state has cleared the parking lot and turn-arounds at the bridge, but it will take through most of today to widen the road for cars to pass each other. They will be letting Bob Fraker through at 2pm today to finish clearing the boat passages, so by tomorrow (Saturday) the river should be fully accessible. The snow that was in the forecast has now been changed to "rain and snow... little or no snow accumulation..."

THE ROAD IS OPEN! (or at least it will be tonight barring any unforeseen problems...)

Well, each day can bring big changes... Yesterday was a gorgeous sunny day, so the state was able to dedicate the whole crew to road-work. They replowed the lower road, so access to the lower river has been restored. They also made a lot of progress on the upper road, given that there was a couple feet of snow on what they had already cleared. They have now "officially" made it to 9 Mile Meadow, so not quite a mile left to go. Today is another gorgeous day, so they hope to make it to the bridge today (barring any problems).

With that said, it is only one bucket width down the road and they still would need to clear out the parking and turn-arounds, plus run the grader down several times to widen the road enough to get traffic through. Now the bad news... It is supposed to snow tomorrow, so there will probably not be any more progress for a couple days. Also, the airport navigational aids are buried deep enough that the instrument approach is NOTAM'd out of service. They have to get that back up and running, so the road isn't expected to be fully open till the middle of next week. Keep in mind that the airport is the #1 priority and as much as some would like the road open NOW, an open road doesn't do you much good if the airport to come isn't open.

Weather Service is saying that this should be the last major snow event of the season, due to the warming ground. It isn't going to be cold enough to have anything more stick around for too long. Um... OK. Let's keep our fingers crossed. Half of my parking lot is now down to bare pavement, when a few days ago the loader couldn't get under the 6 inch layer of ice... We actually have a little heat in that sunlight shining outside right now!

Also, I heard that Bob and Frank were able to cut boat passages all the way upstream to the confluence of Old Situk. The water level is so low that they are doing damage to the lower units trying to get upstream any further, so they need to get into the bridge to make more progress from above. The state (if they make it in there today) will let them through to work on the tree problems, but keep the road closed to the public till it is "safe".

Since I haven't been out to the river yet myself, I'm having to rely on what little info trickles in from the few that have been out there. Last week, a group of guys made it up that come every year and know the river well. Here is the somewhat depressing report, but keep in mind that this was a week ago just a couple days after the lower road was declared "open". The state guys had told me they had made it to the West Fork Road, which is only about 1 1/2 to 2 miles away from the bridge. Unfortunately, I didn't realize they had put a snow burm across the road to keep people out till the road was completed and so suggested the guys park and walk the last mile or two into the bridge. It wasn't possible unfortunately. They did get in at the bottom, but extremely low water didn't help get any fresh fish into the system. They also attempted a fly-in to the cabins, but were hit by a snow storm that brought visibility down too low to fly. Well, here it is in Steve's words. Again, this was a week ago and each day brings big changes. Today's sun melted half of the parking lot down to bare pavement in front of the shop. I'll call tomorrow morning and see how close they are on the road and let you know... Here's Steve...

I just wanted to say "thanks" again for the information that you provided us before we went down to your neck of the woods this year. It was a tough fishing trip but it was fun in the aspect that it always feels nice to be out on the water and to be able to hang out with a couple of fishing buddies.

We only stayed for two days for a couple of reasons. 1) seemed like the road out to nine mile was not going to be plowed in the foreseeable future (while we were there) and 2) what we saw while walking up from the lower landing did not make us seem like we were going to be able to get into many steelhead. Thought that you would like a update on what we saw.

What we did was we contacted Les about flying us into Eagle - Raven Cabins which he said that he would do for $400 for the plane (up to four people plus gear) to drop us off and to pick us back up at a later date since floating the river was not doable this sounded like the next best option to us. Les also told us that he had been there (at the cabins) recently with the Forest Service to clean them up which was good news to us. We thought with the low water conditions that we would be able to walk and explore the mid section this way.

However, when we showed up in the morning it was snowing too hard to attempt to make the flight so we decided to head down to the lower landing and give it a go by walking up it. Tides were just right with the high tide being at 3pmish so it was dead low when we got down there at around 9am. This is important as when the tide was in it would be<