Locally for chums I use my 9 wt and it works great. If you are bank fishing and don't want to exhaust the fish to death, you need to bring it in quickly and release it. 8wt might be good choice also but I don't own one. My 9wt was a bit light for some AK kings/river combination and I bought an 11wt. Heavy current and a good size fish can spool you quickly, so you need some back bone for bank fishing.

I have a 3,4,5,6,7,9,11 wt rods (G-Loomis, winston, sage, orvis and another old brand name that I can' remember). My 6 weight Orvis broke couple years ago when I accidentally hooked into a big king and tried to horse it in for a quick release. Went to orvis and they gave me a brand new higher model and more expensive rod. No questions asked. My other rods are good also I but have not had to deal with the customer service yet. Orvis's customer service is great. They have a nice store in downtown Bellevue near the mall and very good selections. I like the pflueger reels for their price but spend the money and get a good rod.