Alaska surf n' turf

Richard Flanders · 09-12-2019, 01:49 AM

Flew up to the Eskimo village of Ambler on Sept 4th to go fishing with a friend. It's east of Kotzebue up the Kobuk River if you want to look it up. Weather was mostly rainy but we managed a day 30mi up the Ambler River. Fishing was spectacular. You could fish a lifetime up here and never get grayling like these, which ran 2 - 2.5#. We caught them like this all day. I used my 3-wt Orvis cane rod and felt in flyrod heaven. At one spot I turned to see three caribou swimming the river so we 'harvested' them and put them in the boat and barely made it back to Ambler before it was too dark to navigate the river safely. The next few days were spent processing them and giving some elders some meat. I brought most of one home today and the pcs are hanging in the basement with a fan blowing on them to get them cased over. My plane made a double rainbow while flying through a small shower during the 5 hr flite home today. First I've ever seen that.

Dean Romig · 09-12-2019, 03:11 AM

Thanks for those pics Richard! Did you ever think you’d be the envy of so many flatlanders?

I love that those big grayling are so eager to take a fly, be it an adams or a big egg-sucking leech!

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Reggie B · 09-12-2019, 08:04 AM

That's pretty awesome Richard!

Randy Roberts · 09-12-2019, 08:57 AM

You're a lucky man Mr. Flanders to have access to some of the finest wilderness I can think of. Beautiful country for sure !

davidboyles · 09-12-2019, 10:43 AM

Just talked to my lifelong buddy who just got back from Alaska . He and his guide flew over to where the river meets the coast and he caught over 40 Silver salmon on Orvis bamboo rod then when to some special river where they caught rainbows up to 30". It's and annual trip for them all the way from Houston Tx. I've never done this but we are going to Andros Island to fish for big Bones where last year he caught a 13 pounder. We go in Feb. You had a lifetime trip. Congrats

Dean Romig · 09-12-2019, 10:50 AM

The big rainbows are beginning their spawning runs now and they come up from the ocean and the big lakes into the rivers.

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Dean Romig · 09-12-2019, 10:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by davidboyles

We are going to Andros Island to fish for big Bones where last year he caught a 13 pounder. We go in Feb.

David, you better plan to go to Andros some other year..... there's not much left there after Dorian....

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Mills · 09-12-2019, 11:00 AM

Beautiful!

Richard Flanders · 09-12-2019, 12:00 PM

Dean, we caught them on flies and various spoons on spinning rods. And Nick said that egg sucking leech flies work very well. They actually eat what Nick called "water shrews", that mostly live in the water. Two we kept to pan fry had one in their stomach. I'm about to look up "water shrew" as I've never heard of that one. They have also been in feeding on the eggs of the pink salmon run up there. The salmon are done spawning now but there are still Dollys in there, albeit a bit scrawny as you can see here. There's also pike in this river, which we were fortunate enough to not have caught. I've caught a couple of grayling that big before but we caught almost nothing but 2#+ fish all day, and lots of them. The biggest grayling I've heard of up here was caught north of Nome and weighed 4#15oz. THAT had to be a real hawg.

David; SW Alaska is arguably the finest rainbow fishing in the world these days. I fished there some yrs back and my first fish was 23". We used 9-10ft rods set up for Spey casting. I tried my 9ft, 9-wt Orvis cane rod but it was just too heavy for my arthritic hands and wouldn't reach out enough.

TxHuntermn · 09-12-2019, 01:45 PM

Andros largely escaped the storm....way west of Abaco.