Alaska fly-fishing float trip

Bush pilots equipped to land on lakes, rivers or tundra operate out of virtually every airport in Alaska to usher anglers into remote wilderness destinations where river bottoms are obscured by clouds of fish. Rivers, especially those in southwestern Alaska reachable from towns such as Bethel, Dillingham and King Salmon, lure anglers looking for adventure and hooking up with Pacific salmon, Dolly Varden, rainbow trout and grayling. In the middle of August, Outdoors editor Rich Landers and three buddies booked a pontoon-plane flight into a river's headwaters and launched an eight-day unguided float trip geared primarily for the arrival of bright, acrobatic silver salmon fresh from the Bering Sea. As you'll see in his Sunday Outdoors story and this gallery of photos, virtually everything about this delicious trip was Goodnews.

Section:Gallery

Fri., Aug. 28, 2015

Anglers often experience a moment of sobering vulnerability when a float plane flies off after delivering them to the remote headwaters of an Alaska salmon and trout river.

Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review
Our group saw the first brown bear of our trip less than two hours after our float plane left us off at the river headwaters. The bear was feeding on a salmon in the short willows along the stream about 40 yards away as we floated by.

Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review
Tail-dancing rainbow trout were the first species we targeted in the upper stretches of the river.

Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review
In August, many southwestern Alaska river bottoms and shores are littered with carcasses of spawned out salmon, such as this king, as well as sockeye, pinks, chum. The coho are the last of the five Pacific salmon each season to migrate upstream from saltwater to spawn and die.

Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review
David Moershel of Spokane holds a male Dolly Varden in spawning colors caught with an egg pattern while fishing for rainbows.

Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review
David Moershel of Spokane holds a male Dolly Varden in spawning colors caught with an egg pattern while fishing for rainbows.

Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review
Anglers have a hard time forgetting that brown bears are attracted to southwestern Alaska rivers during the salmon runs, too.

Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review
Anglers have a hard time forgetting that brown bears also are attracted to southwestern Alaska rivers during the salmon runs, even when the wild blueberries are ripe.

Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review
Grayling are a bonus and a dry fly diversion for anglers fishing for salmon in southwestern Alaska rivers.

Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review
Float-trip anglers have vast stretches of Alaska rivers to themselves.

Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review
Some wildlife, such as the gray wolf that made this track, move along Alaska salmon streams unnoticed.

Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review
While fishing an egg-sucking leach for char and rainbows, Rich Landers hooked and landed this sockeye, which ripped off line and showed some zip for a fish in this stage of spawning.

Scott Wolff
Sometimes rafting progress downstream to the next fishing run was slowed to let the native pedestrians pass.

Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review
Sometimes rafting progress downstream to the next fishing run was slowed to let the native pedestrians pass.

Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review
Once we got downstream a few days, we started running into bright silver salmon fresh from the Bering Sea.

Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review
Scott Redman releases one of his first salmon on a fly rod; many more followed.

Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review
The trick to landing salmon on light tackle is to let them get their runs and jumps out of their systems and then back them up onto smooth gravel, where they calm down for the release.

Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review
Rainbow trout can be caught as they feast on eggs downstream from spawning salmon.

Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review
Even though brown bears were nearby, we occasionally took a bright silver salmon for camp dinner.

Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review
This bright silver caught about 5 p.m. was a perfect candidate for dinner that night when we found a place to camp.

Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review
Rich Landers fillets a silver salmon along the river to feed four anglers at camp.

Scott Wolff
Rich Landers fillets a silver salmon along the river to feed four anglers at camp.

Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review
Fresh fillets of silver salmon had our mouths watering at a shoreline camp.

Scott Wolff
Scott Redman's chicken curry with fresh pineapple was one of the fine dinners we prepared on the river.

Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review
Sometimes we would walk or row our rafts upstream for a second shot at salmon in runs we couldn't reach while wading.

Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review
Floating the river as the weather changes, again.

Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review
A rain tarp supported by a tripod of oars was a welcome dinner time refuge during frequent rain squalls.

Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review
On rare occasions, the weather as nice enough to take off our Gore-Tex waders and rain jackets -- but we never went without our bear spray.

Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review
We caught most of our silver salmon while wading, sometimes in slow-water lagoons off the side of the river.

Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review
Some of the coho we caught jumped, flipped and cartwheeled up to six times after the hookup.

Scott Wolff
David Moershel gave our group a clinic on fly fishing for silver salmon.

Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review
Scott Wolff holds the largest coho he caught during the trip, but we had no scale... that would be extra weight.

Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review
Scott Wolff fly fishes a silver salmon run near camp along a southwestern Alaska stream during the eight-day, fly-in, float fishing trip.

Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review
David Moershel and Scott Redman fish for silver salmon past the 10 p.m. sunset at Camp 7.

Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review
Hors d'oeuvres served before shore-camp dinner.

Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review
Cold foggy morning start to a day of fishing for silver salmon.

Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review
A red fox cruises the shoreline as we drift downstream.

Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review
Cold foggy morning start to a day of fishing for silver salmon.

Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review
Float-fishing anglers can run into guided parties in jet boats on the lower reaches of many Alaska fishing streams.

Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review
On this river, we arranged for a village native to shuttle us and our gear about five miles through tidewater to reach an airstrip where our pilots would pick us up at the end of our trip.

Rich Landers The Spokesman-Review