The end of the guide season

I scraped ice off of my raft this morning, maybe the third or fourth time I’ve done so in the last week. The creek is dropping quickly along with the temperatures. The salmon have all but spawned and returned their nutrients back to the water and the earth. The trout and the grayling remain in the creek to feast on what eggs are still bouncing along and what salmon flesh clings to the logs and structure along the stream bottom.

I’m still on the water multiple days each week, although trips are beginning to slow down. A few tourists are still making their way north. Many of our anglers are locals looking to get in on some fishing while the Kenai is overrun with sockeyes in various stages of the spawn.

The fish have been holding in deep, slow runs and we’ve been having to work for them. Cold temperatures in the morning can make cold-blooded trout sluggish and the bite typically warms up with the day. They seem to sit in the gradual drop offs from shallow to deep, often in transitions from sandy to rocky bottoms.

Old, faded and washed out bead colors have been finding fish, like the South Central Bead Co. Su Reel, Deadhead and Mae’s Solstice. Some anglers are experiencing good fishing with flesh flies and nymphs. After fishing beads for the last several weeks, I find it hard to switch up my bead game besides experimenting with color and size.

If we’re lucky, by the afternoon we’ll find rising grayling that are sipping caddisflies from the surface in foam lines and current seams. I’ve left one rod rigged everyday in preparation for some surface action in the sun.

Most of the fish I’ve been finding are healthy and fat from an August and September gorging on salmon eggs. Even a small fish is two to three times its normal size by the sheer amount of food in their bellies. After a terrible salmon run last year, this fall and winter seems to be shaping up to be in the trout's favor.

The end of the guide season is bittersweet every year. I’ll miss the long days spent on the water, stripping streamers across slow pools and eddies for silvers and chums in August, skating mice in the logjams for rainbows in July, casting fry patterns in May and June for feisty Dolly Varden and targeting the big ‘bows behind the salmon in early September.

But now I can give my shoulders a rest, work on the gear that needs maintenance and refill the fly and bead boxes that need attention. Every season builds on itself and each year is better than the previous one. Here’s to another season on the creek and to an even better one in 2026.