Alaskan Summer Adventures Part II

Hiking in to go fishing.

An Alaskan summer trip isn't complete without a fair amount of time devoted to fishing. Not that you have to twist my or Cody's arm to do so. In fact, it's one of the main reasons why we make the summer pilgrimage to a land best known in our world for its epic skiing. To the average tourist we must of looked silly on our plane flight up, between Cody and I we had 5 fishing rods (3 fly and 2 traditional casting) hanging off our backpacks and 6 reels tucked in our bags! With further inspection of the two of us we must have also looked very confident: we were lugging along a big, empty cooler that was waiting to be filled with fish for the trip back. This summer the fishing was on the tougher side, the fish were finicky and the most of the runs were down making catching fish for the idle nearly impossible. Sure, Alaska is teeming with it's wildlife but like anything else in the cycle of life the fish ebb and flow (pun intended). We were determined though. We put in our time and hard work and it paid off. We caught plenty of red salmon, a king each, and a few trout. For the trip home we actually needed a second cooler, not too shabby.

Amazingly this is the Russian River. If you hike far enough you can escape the crowds.

These little suckers sure are pretty.

Cody bringing in a Sockeye...

And now playing with his food. Air guitar to be exact.

My loot.

Cody filleting up the fish before we head back. Now this is what you call deliciously fresh sushi.

Yeah! Fishing in AK!

Cody happy to bring in his King Salmon.

And this is my King... it's tradition in the Saugstad family for the women to catch the biggest fish. Not going to complain about that good luck!

Check out the airtime the fish is catching during it's attempt to swim up the falls! And in this video I took... it's pretty awesome to watch the salmons' determination and skill to make it. All in the name of procreation.