So people often ask me where to go fishing in Alaska and I often point them to Kodiak Island. The place is beautiful and you can have an amazing do-it-yourself adventure at a reasonable price by just renting a car, staying at a B&B (The absolute best: A Smiling Bear) and eating on the cheap (there’s Taco Bell, Safeway, etc).
The Kodiak road system takes you to some pretty epic fishing…fresh and surf…and through some awesome countryside. I’ve made a couple trips up there over the past few seasons and this is one from 2011 that I finally got to putting to video.
Category Archives: JD’s roadtrips
Kodiak Island Car Fishing Adventure!
Boys Day Off: Lake Nacimento fishing trip
So sometimes you just have to get out and get away from town…and go do something a little different once in a while.
That’s exactly what K-Dawg, Scotty & I did yesterday when we headed down to Central California’s Lake Nacimento, where we chased after white bass and spotts. It was a great day just getting out and hanging with the fellas, away from all the drama of guiding and commercial crabbing.
Luckily, we put together a few patterns and had a nice day of catching…for the cherry on top!
Here’s a little pictorial. While we found very few fish near the inlets (not much water this year), we managed to locate some nice schools of shad…and, I the afternoon, there were some boils…which led to a flurry of fun topwater action…
But we also caught most of our fish on small plastics worked near the bottom…
Scotty with a nice spotty…
Fun little exotics: white bass look like a striper and and crappie got together. Called “sand bass” or “sandies” in the South, they are pretty fun on light gear…
The lake was lower that last time we went a few years back, but after a rainless winter, I expected the lake elevation to be even lower…
Another nice spott on the popper…
Good times and a nice sunset on the way home…
A once prolific Steelhead Stream: The Los Angeles River
If you could go back in time to the 1940′s and 1950′s, you would find a very different looking Los Angeles River than you see today.
Back then, the river was free-flowing and hosted a robust run of steelhead. Hard to believe these days since the poor dilapidated river has been reduced to a graffiti covered concrete drainage ditch in the heart of massive urban sprawl. Now, broken bottles and diapers are the norm…not chrome ocean-run rainbows.
But there are parts of the stream…upstream of downtown LA…that still kinda resemble an actual river. I spent some time exploring one such reach on Friday. It was exciting to see that there is still a bit of river left.
And it was thriving with waterfowl, plus many fish eating birds like cormorants, herons and egrets. In the slow pools, there were clouds of minnows and some slightly larger fish as well. In fact some folks were even fishing. I wanted to believe that the fish were schools of steelhead fry but I of course knew better.
As cool as it was to see so much wildlife mere feet from a e-waste recycling center and roaring I-5, it was also so damned depressing to see how destroyed this once amazing waterway is. So, it was with mixed emotions that explored this area. Here’s a photo essay of my trek…
Epic Alaskan Float Trip!
Some folks I had on the boat the other day were asking me about my all-time favorite fishing trip. Well, this one if not the best is right up there…
Watch as JD & Khev float a wild Alaskan river for 7 days and catch over 100 trout per day on flies!!
Juneau, AK: Go Fishing Here Now!
After a week-long road trip to Southeast Alaska, I think I may have found some of the best fishing on the planet. That is if you like yanking on halibut until your arms feel like they’re full of wet cement and hooking so many coho salmon that it seems a little like bluegill fishing out of a 5-gallon bucket.
And the best part of the deal is this angling paradise is relatively close.
My base of operations was Juneau, which is a short 3-hour flight from Sacramento, with a stop in Seattle. On assignment for Fish Alaska Magazine, my orders were to explore and report back on the fishing opportunities available in the waters within easy striking distance of Alaska’s capitol city.
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The Kenai of the South
Okay, so maybe the comparison to the Kenai is a bit much, but the Sacramento River in Redding, CA is one of the best trout fishing destinations this side of Alaska. While the rainbows here don’t reach the epic proportions their cousins to the north do, they are chunky, solid fish that provide some superb year-round angling.
Team FishWithJD was on the scene a few days back and we found (before the rains hit), a beautiful river with hardly a soul on it…and plenty o’ trout in the 2- to 4-pound class — we landed somewhere in the neighborhood of 30+ fish a day.
Here’s a quick photo log…
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Chasing Steelies in the OP, Part 2
Okay, so our first few days on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula didn’t exactly pan out from a steelheading standpoint. Cold rain, sleet, poor fish returns and rising water all conspired against us. But Days 1-3 paled in comparison to what awaited us on our final day…
Mike B. called it the “wost conditions” he’d ever endured on a river. I put it right up there behind the famed “Hunt for Mr. Hogito” day on Oregon’s Elk River many moons ago. Big Worm said…well…he didn’t say a thing but it’s safe to say he’d rather been somewhere else…say in a hot tub with a couple French bikini models, for example.
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Chasing Steelies in the OP
This week Baxter, Big Worm and I left the Golden State and made the marathon 473-hour trip north to the “OP” — Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. Why would we drive a bazillion miles and swap the 71 degrees of California for 42 and steady rain? Duh — giant steelhead of course!
Well, at least in theory…
Like most trips, this one didn’t quite go as planned. Here’s the photo diary…
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