The 'Coho Bros'

I had the pleasure of hosting my longest-returning clients all of last week. The two are brothers, and both live in Washington State. They’ve been fishing with me since I was guiding while in college in Washington, and they've now returned every year for the past four years to fish with me for a week every August.

Their trip is usually timed perfectly to coincide with the egg drop and the presence of fat, happy trout. While there were some trout to be found this time, it was nothing like they had experienced in years previous. A lack of food last year and an increase in parasites and disease has put a hurt on the trout populations. Not to mention the large numbers of salmon this year that created an excess of food in the water that made it difficult to stand out among a sea of salmon eggs.

We quickly changed our focus to the cohos, or silvers. This has been the best silver run I’ve ever experienced while living in Alaska. The peak of the run occurred last week and the brothers and I had a blast targeting them everyday.

Most of the fish we caught were sight fished. A majority of the silvers were holding in big, slow pools with little current. I would pull the raft up on the bank and we could put the sneak on the fish from shore, casting large streamers out into the mass of fish and stripping back quickly and aggressively. Sometimes I would wedge the raft against a log and the two would take turns casting from the boat at schools of silvers that would otherwise be unreachable from the bank.

My favorite place to target the silvers was in the wood. On several occasions we found them sitting against steep banks choked with downed trees and logs. They would sit behind the lumber where they could get out of the current. Placing the cast ahead of the fish and allowing the fly to sink down and stripped back in front of their face without snagging the logs was a fun challenge. Watching a blushed out buck scream out from a school and annihilate the fly is an absolutely incredible experience to be a part of.

The boys went home with plenty of fish to enjoy and share with family and friends. While the trout fishing wasn’t great, we made lemonade out of lemons, or in this case, smoked salmon out of the best run of silvers I’ve yet to experience.