Fishing the Noatak River- AWESOME!!


(from Russ)  The trout are in.  This place is so unbelievable!  Chumming the shallow gravel bars brings the trout in by the hundreds.  We had a great day Saturday and caught a number of salmon but only kept 3 good ones.  It is the end of the run with thousands of salmon in every stretch of the river but it is now rare to catch a fresh one.  On Saturday Kayla, Oren and I took the four wheeler to our hot spot.  Grandpa, Brett and Paul walked and fished the river on the way.  Grandpa caught the biggest grayling so far.  Kayla and I caught the biggest trout to that point along with a few others, some grayling, and some salmon.  It was a sunny calm day that started at 28 degrees but warmed up and was soo beautiful.  We have now all the Dolly's in the freezer we are allowed to take home along with a few limits of grayling.
Grandpa's grayling

Pulling in another "darn salmon"

Brett and I went out in the evening and caught trout every cast.  Brett knows this river very well and the setups to use.   The only problem is he took us to a spot where there was the most grizzly sign so far.  I had my eyes on the bush line the whole time.  The grizzly trails followed the lower edge on dried river banks so you would not see them where we were until they were very close!!  That was the first time I was that nervous.  The trout came in every cast on small egg yarn flies.  The shallow gravel bar we were fishing stretched for hundreds of yards across the river and dropped off at the edge.  There had to be thousands of trout there!!  Literally every cast we had a fish on or caught one!   I don't know how we can leave this place this week!!


The afternoon's catch (at least what we kept)

More again later-  Gotta go fishing!!!!  


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