Alaska 2011

[mikebraun]

I'm back from my annual summer trip to the Kenai peninsula and it was another fun season. We were there from 7-29 through 8-20 and the weather was great this year, only rained 4 days.
I bought a car this year and my buddy had it in the airport parking lot full of gas and ready to go. The plane landed at 5 pm and we headed for my buddies house and loaded our camp gear up. I told my brother we could be set up by 11pm if we headed out now. We made our 2 1/2 hour drive got set up and caught fish by 11pm that night.
The kings were just starting to spawn in the creek we camp on so the dollies and bows were on. The other creek just down the road had sockeye spawning with many large trout lined up for the buffet. The bears were plentiful this year chasing salmon in the creek at camp, more griz then blackies.
We would drive a different direction each day hitting all the rivers we could. During the first week we both caught all 5 species of salmon, rainbows, dollies and grayling. I also caught a 18" whitefish that surprised me as I didn't know they were there. In the town of Hope is the Ressurection creek that we got chrome bright chums, pinks and silvers. We hiked out of Seward to the mouth of a creek and got chums and pinks in the salt. A few other road side streams for whatever was in them and then back to camp to catch trout in the afternoon ( 5pm - 11:30pm).
We would camp 5 days then head back to my buddies (leaving camp set up) for a few days. We stayed in his motorhome at his house and drove out on day trips. On the lower peninsula we fish sea run dollies that fight like little steelhead and silvers in tide water.
I took some pictures but can't get them out of the camera cuz the adapter is in storage. The bow fishing was better this year with some beautiful lepperds in the mix. Many of the runs are way down this year so we had to fish a bit harder then normal but we caught fish every day of the trip.
If you want to see some pics just go to some earlier posts.

I miss it already and can't wait for next July to do it again.

[ryank]

Wow, that sounds like an epic trip! I can only dream about spending that much time up there. I've never been to alaska but I will someday! It has to be hard to re-adjust to fishing in Oregon after being up there?

[Twise95]

Sounds like an awesome trip Mike, can't wait to see the pics!

[mikebraun]

Wow, that sounds like an epic trip! I can only dream about spending that much time up there. I've never been to alaska but I will someday! It has to be hard to re-adjust to fishing in Oregon after being up there?

It's not too bad of an adjustment because we have pretty good fishing here also.

This is a very affordable trip every year and easy to do if you like camping. My entire trip cost just over $3,000 which includes the car and plane ticket, so next year will be even cheaper. For the price of one nights lodging you can buy all your camp gear and stay till you run out of money. It really helps to have a friend there to store some stuff and now I have 3 big totes and a car there.

Some years only 2 of us go and some years up to 6 people go. We are the only ones that camp at the place we go. It is an island in the creek and we pack the gear out and set up for the 3 weeks. We leave all food and totes back in the car to keep a safe camp in bear country. So far we have never had an incident in camp and the bears stay in the creek 30 feet away. We can sit in camp and watch the bears catch salmon right there, it's so cool.