For live and premium content, sign up for our email newsletter and we'll send reports directly to your inbox
Subscriber Ken MacKay fished with Ayakulik Adventures on Kodiak Island, Alaska, this past September and has very good things to say about his experience. The main focus of his trip was silver salmon. “The Ayakulik is a terrific river on the west coast of Kodiak,” MacKay writes. “The fishing takes place at the mouth of the river and several miles upstream. Many of the anglers at the lodge took the upstream hike to fish multiple pools along the way. However, there were plenty of fish coming in daily so the long hikes were not really necessary.”
MacKay says he caught an average of 10 salmon a day and lost at least that many more. He says the silvers that run up the Ayakulik are larger than those found in some other parts of Alaska. “The fishing was strictly wade fishing on a very wadeable, low-gradient river,” he writes. “I used a single-handed Sage nine-foot 8 wt., as well as a Sage 13-foot, 7-wt. Spey rod. The river is perfect for fly casting with very little streamside brush. As for flies, almost any kind of articulated leach was deadly, especially an egg-sucking leach. In calmer, slower pools, topwater flies like bombers or pollywogs worked very well.”
The only two problems MacKay reports related to other anglers at the lodge using spoons (which tend to spoil a pool for flies, he believes) and to the poor performance of one of the guides at the lodge. “There were four guides for 11 anglers,” he writes, noting that the lodge can host as many as 12 anglers. “Three of the guides were excellent, but the fourth was poor and I seemed to get him more than my share of the time. Fortunately, the fishing was so good that I really didn’t need a guide.”
MacKay gives the cost of his weeklong trip as $4,400. He recommends the experience to fellow subscribers. He closes with a note that the bear viewing there is very good. “There are a lot of bears on the river,” he writes. “The lodge, in fact, caters to bear-viewing guests as well as anglers. I had multiple bear encounters every day. The guides know the bears and manage them so well that I never felt threatened.”