Late June and early July at the Royal Coachman AK

We had our latest start to a season in the eight years I've been coming here, partially due to a full week cancellation, so two weeks ago was our first week of guests. I spent that week camped out on the lower Nushagak River exploring some new water for King Salmon. The first two to three days down there were good fishing but the numbers entering the river plummeted after that and the fishing was tough. We landed lots of kings, not many big fish unfortunately. However, we went there the following week for a couple hours and landed three fresh kings on the fly, the largest was about 35lbs. Its been a very warm dry spring this year with lots of forest fires around us, mostly to the north towards the Aniak and Holitna Rivers. We had Skeeter Scoville here as a guest this past week and he started off the week with an amazing day catching nearly 40 Sheefish! He caught lots of different species of fish and had a blast. Great to have him here and look forward to having him back. Fishing this week is starting off great for kings, sheefish, pike, chrome sockeye, rainbows and dolly varden. The Chum have started spawning on some of our fisheries which greatly increases our catch rate for trout and dollies. Here are some pix from the past couple weeks.

Mid May Final Steelhead Trips For The Season

Last Friday was a phenomenal day of fishing for drop backs, we were into fish all day long. Yesterday, my final guide day, was a different story. The bite was tough and there are fewer fish by far than last friday. We did land a number of fish and hooked many more but you can tell its coming to an end. I have a few more weeks off until I head out to Alaska so my next posting will probably be from the west coast. Thanks everyone for a great season and see you next fall if I don't see you in AK this summer!

Early May Steelhead Trips

This past week has been great, especially the earlier part of the week. The fish are on their way back to the lake and feeding heavily but since the water has dropped to 185cfs it has slowed down significantly. Still a good number of fish around in the holes but a few more anglers of late as well. Here are a few of the highlights from this past week.