10 Sep August 2016 Fishing Report: Kenai River
“Kind of” is a great way to describe August as a whole. As always we will break down the month by species fished, but the trend across the board was definitely, “kind of”. Does a tough month or season have any weight on the next month or next year? Absolutely not, Mother Nature has her way and reasoning, all we can do is hang on for the ride and work through the curve balls and duck, ducking is good.
Red Salmon – Kenai River
The first week of August was tough, it was quite evident that the Red run was definitely slowing down as we were having to pick through the fish that have been in the river longer. Putting fresh fish in the fish box happened, but not as easily. Historically by the end of the first week in August the Red Salmon run slows down and picking through the fish to get a limit of fresh ones is typical. Hilarity with ADF&G’s prediction of 2.5 million was felt deeply during this time. Granted predicting a run is well, a prediction, historics, and probabilities come into play and best intentions are utilized. There are many factors that come into play for the return of salmon. We often tell our clients when we see a dead spawned out salmon floating down river in September that it is truly a small miracle for that fish to have made it back to its spawn ground and completed its life cycle. It is very cool.
1st Run Silver Salmon – Kenai River
The trend continues with the first run of Kenai Silvers, above average size but not many. The sheer size of the 1st run was impressive (10-12lbs) and almost made up for the lack of them. Limits were brought to the boat, but we did have to put forth some effort, the easy days of limits in a couple hours where not present this season. Back trolling seemed to be the best technique to get silvers into the fish box.
Kenai River Rainbow Trout
The “kind of” return of Red and King Salmon made for kind of decent trout fishing. Consistently inconsistent kept us on our toes and trying to keep up with the ever moving Rainbows. High water and a small King spawn kept the food and trout moving from one location to the next. The minute we could develop a patten, they were gone. We did find nice fish on almost every outing, but Mother Nature kept us working hard to achieve big fish in the net.
