Alagnak River Fishing Report 2014

​The 2014 fishing season on the Alagnak River will go down as one of the top seasons on record. We experienced a great start to our king salmon and sockeye salmon runs in late June that carried on for the entire week. Daily limits of kings and sockeye were easy to come by, and releasing quality kings was an enjoyable task to preserve such a wonderful resource.

As the month of July started to move forward, so did the warmer temperatures. This seemed to make the king fishing a little slower, but average to say the least with daily catches per boat near or in the double digits. The sockeye run really started to slow down the second week of July, but with that slow down came our first run of chum or calico salmon. The fly fishing was superb as an alternative to fishing king salmon on the Alagnak River, and quite enjoyable to actually fish while wading to escape some of the afternoon heat! The calico salmon were hot fighters and were eager to take a swung or stripped fly, and were not at all content on staying underwater for their fights. The calico salmon were airborne almost as much as silver salmon, but willing to break a record 26 rods in 4 weeks time!

As the month of July progressed, the king salmon numbers went back up in the last week with nice king salmon being caught on the last day of the season, and all boats landing half a dozen or more before lunch on July 31. That first run of chum salmon was quickly being overtaken by our pink salmon run, creating non stop fish catching action while wading the sand bars of the Alagnak River.

The silver salmon run began in late July right on schedule with the first one being caught on July 23 by one of our guests as they were pursuing pink and calico salmon.  Things really started to heat up the first few days of August as our first big push of silver salmon entered the Alagnak River.  One of our new guests actually caught and released over 20 silver salmon before lunch on the second day of August!  As August went on, we had peak silver fishing every day of the month and we watched the pink salmon and calico salmon slow down on schedule by mid August.

Our last week on the river yielded the highest catch rates of silver salmon every recorded at Angler’s Alibi Alaska, with many days over the 50 fish mark per boat!  Needless to say, we are adding another week to our schedule in 2015, and it is already full!

As a wrap up to our season, the few slow king days we had were greatly overshadowed by the continued success of our silver salmon fishing and new techniques developed over the past few seasons.  Please check out our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/anglersalibi for near daily photos of great Alaska fishing!

About the Author

​John Perry grew up in Michigan on an island called Grosse Ile, in the mouth of the Detroit River and Lake Erie. It was here, surrounded by great fishing and waterfowl hunting that John developed a passion for the outdoors. John moved to Colorado to chase trout in the summers and ski patrol in the winters. John had the privilege to start guiding for Angler’s Alibi with his fly fishing mentor TR Rafferty the second year it was in business. He left a head guide job in Colorado to pursue bigger and better fish.