Playing with our Food in Yakutat, AK... Day 6

On Tuesday night (Day 5) when we returned to the Yakutat Bay BnB there was another message for us to call the guys at Yakutat Coastal Airlines. A group had cancelled and there were 10 spots open for Wednesday if we wanted them... we jumped at the chance to have another great fly out experience. We met again early at the hangar and there was great discussion about whether to return to the Akwe River or to try the Italio River this time. We decided on a return to the Akwe and even went so far as to request to be dropped off in the exact same spot since the fishing was so good at that particular location.

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Hans dropped us right on the fish again and we were off and running. Fishing was again fantastic and unlike Monday the wind stayed down for us all day. Watching masses of fish swim in wave after wave past us was unreal and something that I will not forget in a very long time. The fight in these silvers is phenomenal, you can guarantee two line burning runs that have the potential to take you well into your backing. The first run immediately after the hookset is a screaming run, generally with some aerial acrobatics if you've hooked into a big male, heading straight upstream. Then, for whatever reason the fish does an abrupt about face and screams straight downstream back towards you causing a mad scramble to put all that line back onto the reel... just for the fish to continue screaming past you again taking back everything you thought you may have gained. Then the heavyweight battle begins and you gain a couple yards of line but it takes it back over the next several minutes. By the end of the trip my right arm felt like it had been "arm day" all day long... and my left hand was bruised and bleeding. I'm used to little Utah trout so my initial instinct to stop a fish from running is to just grab the reel, well the only things that resulted from that habit were bruised fingertips, bloody knuckles, and a handful of clean break offs. I had waffled back and forth for a long time about whether or not I should buy an inexpensive 8 weight fly rod/reel combo and I am so glad that I did. The little combo that I bought from Cabela's cashing in some Cabela's Rewards points was the best thing I bought for this trip, and as we sit and talk about "next time" everyone is committed to making sure they have their own fly rods.





Back at the lodge that was doing the fish processing for us later that evening I sat and watched a seal in bay while we were cleaning up the fish and getting them prepped for processing.



Subscribe to get notified when all the pics from the second half of our Alaska trip get published and if you haven't seen the previous days, checked out:
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5