Spring steelhead in Southeast Alaska

To the steelhead fly fisher standing in icy water while being drenched with rain or pelted with hail, or blinded by snow is just a day out of the office. Casting time after time with no result while ignoring that nagging thought you are casting to absolutely nothing is part of the game. Putting on layers of clothing, socks, waders, boots, hat, gloves, making sure that thermos is piping hot goes with the territory. But watching out for bears? Well if you are heading to Southeast Alaska that is just another consideration, not a huge one in this neck of the woods, but it is a consideration nonetheless.




By Alaskan standards ,much of the water in southeast is accessible, and a perfect destination for the do-it-yourselfer, Another nice feature are the steelie runs are from Mid-April through mid-May, a high run-off time for much of the lower 48. Salmon is still some time away up here, so the crowds are light. As an added bonus you can usually manage to hook a few Dolly Varden and Cutts during the spring too.

A good map and a rental car will suffice fine for 3-4 days, plenty of water is to be fished like the Skuk, you can easily burn the daylight of a weekend getaway just on this river alone. Other well known rivers the Karta and the Thorne are there too, but the small rivers are countless and the exploration seems endless. For those with more time and more to spend, there are float planes, and guides with off season pricing are abundant.



But the real joy is exploring on your own. Because the rivers are quite short and quick, high water is rarely a problem, clear and fast is the rule and rain generally means a new flush of fish headed upstream. And the fresher they are the more aggressive they tend to be.



Like most steelheading finding the fish tends to be the hardest part. Because they streams are high and fast productive lies can be well camouflaged from the surface. Plan on a lot of hit and miss, well plan on a lot of miss, but every cast is an education.



Two trout tactics that are productive are swinging egg-sucking leeches, and dead drifting eggs. Weight and intermediate sinking lines help you get the flies down to the fish. Once you are in the fish stay put, until the action is exhausted, and then maybe stay put ten more casts for good measure.



Southeast Alaska on your own isn’t for the faint of heart, but the rewards are bountiful, the scenery is breathtaking and the self reliance you feel is life assuring. Just brush up on your bear defenses. To be honest these are black bears and generally are harmless but have some spray nevertheless. It will help you lose yourself in this frontier of steelhead hunting.

Early Season Stripers

A calendar to the fly fisher in the North East begins something like this; early spring Quill Gordon, Red Quill, Hendrickson, March Brown etc. And then Memorial Day comes the stripers migrating up from the South and time to hit the sand.


But lesser known; before the summer fish, striper action is inland in the estuaries and ponds. In the spring months, that’s right the spring. And the nice thing for the predominantly trout inclined is the fishing feels familiar.



Estuaries can be complex labyrinths creating currents, made up of various features like flats, channels, islands, and sand bars. Each estuary is unique and a haven for those who like to explore on their own, and who’s best fly fishing joy occurs when fishing new water and catching fish on their own.



Alewives and herring show in Southern New England as early as March. Silversides are right behind them in the early season. And the Stripers can be quite active following them in the early season, for the mid-day fisher this is the time to hit it.

For the trout fisher understanding tides can be something new. Tide charts are readily available online, in local papers or local sporting goods stores. Depending on the distance from the coast, estuary and salt pond water can be rising several hours after high tide and lower in the same fashion on the ebb. The smaller the estuary or pond the more it is affected by the tide. If too small fish will only be present during mid to high tides.

Fishing is relatively similar to trout, seams channels, bars, etc will affect stripers’ lie. Stripers work the baitfish like trout do nymphs, and often will key on just one species when more than one maybe present. Great early season patterns include Deceivers, Beast master, Hot Flash Shiner.

The Traveling Sedge

Before Twitter the social network site took over the word, twitter used to mean flutter nervously and described the action of the travelling sedge, the ‘walk on water’ caddis.

As far as most fly fishing amateur entomologists are concerned caddis and sedge are one and the same. Yet without splitting too fine of a hair, sedge is normally reserved for a few special caddis (caddi?) none more special than the traveling sedge. While the ‘traveling sedge’ umbrella actually covers a few different hatches that is a hair we’ll leave unsplit for now.

What the traveling sedge does is run across the water when emerging; the most famous of these emerge on the lakes of British Columbia. But that same species (or a close enough relative) lives in many lakes across the Northern US and Canada.

The rough average of these hatches is Mid-June to Mid-July but can vary up to a month on each side, depending on the particular year and your particular latitude. About two weeks before emerging pupae reach the surface they emerge from the substrate and make themselves available for patient, hungry cruising trout. Once the pupae reach the surface their vulnerability is at its highest. Pausing a goodly amount of time on the surface to escape it pupal shuck and seemingly catching its breath it then starts its twittering across the surface, leaving its wake like the skating, trout enticing phenom it is.

Some other random tips include observe the action of the natural and mimic it with your own strip and twitch retrieve. Wait each day for the hatch to start fish pupa patterns until then or sink your dry patterns for that matter. Takes are usually vicious, head snapping matters, so make sure your tippet can handle the initial stress and keep your hand light, hard to do in the initial stages of the hatch to be sure!

Patterns include Tom Thumb, Goddard Caddis.

High Water Patterns

We have written about fly fishing in high off color water here. But with the spring run-off right around the corner we thought another look at fly selection for that time of year might be in order.

During these times of heavy rain and snow melt, streams swell but they also begin to warm. While the snow melt is cold, the rain is warm, and the surly broth is a turbid mixture of cross currents. But the metabolism of fish is awakening and with it their appetite and their attention becomes easier to get.

In short, we prefer streamers and a dropper system. Streamers that are weighted with a bead or a conehead, and maybe one that isn’t. An excellent starting point is the BH Aggravator with a Mickey Finn dropper trailing about 18”-24” behind. The aggravator acts as a sinker while the Mickey Finn swims above it. If more depth is desired try adding split shots above the Aggravator. Other favorites include Conehead Marabou Muddlers, BH Flashbuggers, Conehead Woolly Buggers, and for the dropper pattern, try Black Ghost, Marabou Muddlers and Supervisors. Bright and contrasting colors are most effective.