This week’s report is coming to you live from Kodiak Alaska, where your fish reporter has enjoyed a couple weeks of premier Alaskan fishing with my all-around fishing partner Allen Sansano and two groups of other fishing friends. For the past few years we've had the opportunity to visit Kodiak Lodge in the tiny village of Larsen Bay on Kodiak’s southwestern shore.  We time the trips to coincide with the silver salmon run at the end of August. 

Larsen Bay hosts runs of all five Alaskan salmon species including chum, sockeye, pink, silver and king salmon. In addition, a large number of Columbia River kings stay here year-round feeding on abundant bait in the area. In August and September we fish the salt daily looking for limits of king salmon (two), silver salmon (five) and Pacific halibut (two, one under 26 inches and one over 26). 

So, what are we fishing for? Well, just about everything. The pinks are so numerous as to be a nuisance sometimes. They don’t grow as big or taste as good as the silvers and kings. It’s still a blast to hook them as bycatch and reel them in, and we release them all. Kings and silvers are a different story. Small schools are scattered all around the complex of four bays of the the Uyak Bay Inlet. The kings are on the small side, five to ten pounds, while silvers can range from three to 15 pounds. Most days we caught three to five silvers each. Pacific halibut can be found all throughout these bays, though the best spot we found was an offshore ridge in about 300 feet of water off Seven-Mile Beach just to the south of Uyak. Most of our halibut caught were in the 27 to 40-inch range, but we kept a few fish up to 40 pounds, and there’s always a chance of halibut in the 200-300 pound range in the area.

The outside spots  were harder to fish. Conditions were often, as they say, too “nautical.” We had a few days of 25 MPH winds gusting to 40. The inside bays were a better bet when the Shelikof Straight gets nasty, though fishing in the Straight includes a grand view of the 8,000 foot snow-capped peaks and glaciers of the Aleutian Range to the west.

Pink salmon are fished heavily by commercial gill netters in the saltwater, who are often operating under the same permits issued to their parents and grandparents. Right now the nearby rivers are full of spawned pinks and an increasing number of bright fresh silver salmon.  We fished the Zachar River a few times over the past two weeks and the counts for freshwater silvers went up each trip.

Hiking upstream a few miles into Kodiak bear territory can be quite exciting.  Signs of feeding bears are everywhere, including half eaten fish carcasses, giant scat piles and huge paw bear paw prints on the river’s sandy edges. A mother bear and two cubs claimed the stretch of river we fished, and we viewed them on every trip upstream. The Kodiak bear is a Grizzly, also known as Brown bears. Kodiaks are a distinct sub-species and grow as large as Polar Bears. Being cut off from the mainland for 12,000 years, the Kodiak Bear is an example of “Island Gigantism,” where isolated pockets of a species grow larger. We learned to wait, let them catch and fish, then lumber off into the bushes to eat before we passed.  Exciting! 

Another wildlife treat was getting close to a Cross F

ox. Black and red, the cross fox is a variation of Kodiak Red Fox, a species also know to grow larger than their mainland counterparts. They have no inborn fear of humans, according to our hosts Josh Leach and Scott Harris, who operate Kodiak Lodge. This beautiful wild animal joined us on the banks of the Zachar one morning and stuck around for a half-hour or so. We did not get close to the fox, but it got close to us. Curious, no doubt. The wildlife sightings also included innumerable bald eagles, both juveniles and adults, big croaking ravens, puffins, one majestic golden eagle, significantly larger that the balds, and known as a pure predator rather than an occasional scavenger. In the salt, we observed humpback whales, fin whales, dolphins, Orcas, fur seals and Alaskan ocean otters.