After seeing all the great coho posts, I thought I'd contribute my best coho day here in Alaska for the season. I lurk and get a lot from these boards.

After getting my start kayak fishing in Grays Harbor, I'm finding its definitely transferable to Alaska! I'm surprised more folks aren't doing this. I LOVE my fuel bill! lol.

Shot on Labor day, I pedaled 5 miles out one way to reach the "spot" after a slow day closer to town. That's a little under two hours. Limited time available so used heavier equipment and was "meat" fishing hatchery cohos. one for four day one fishing just 3 hours. 10 for 10 day two but actively fished only 2 hours.

Doc's hang back rig with herring was the best though spinners or frankly anything would have probably worked.

First part of video is deployment of gear to landing a fish and stowing it...fortunately that only took three minutes uncut.

Coho fishing with downriggers from a Kayak - Valdez, ak

Here's one more.... chicken halibut caught a little earlier in the year.

Halibut from a kayak - Deep Creek AK


Thanks for the site. Not only informative but almost always entertaining!

Great video. Those hobie kayaks are awesome.

Seems like you could do it a lot easier without the downriggers, and use a gaff instead of a net?

That looks like a ton of fun and you are puttin the whoop-down right there. I'd love to get into them in a kayak once! Love the free jumpers in the video.


With that many fish I would be tempted to experiment with lighter gear- straight bait, spoon or plug like a Rapala or wiggle wart if they'd would dive deep enough and I'd nix the downrigger and flasher if at all possible.

Obviously you are doing it right and it is working.

All good points. I should have added that I did have a 6wt fly rod with straight mono I wanted to try. Day one was such a failure due to a late start, I had to hammer fish and get home (6 hour drive one way to Valdez) on day two.

I had the downrigger for two reasons. Light line fish the cohos deep. Second, was to practice the downrigger technique for the feeder king salmon we are fishing for currently. Those tend to be caught 40 to 80 ft down so you need the downriggers.

Here's another Valdez coho hammering video from two years ago. Everything but the flyrod on this one including my GLoomis 1-4 lbs rated ultralight. shorter at under 3 minutes total. No downriggers and only occasional flashers, and they definitely caught fish and it was MUCH more enjoyable.

Valdez cohos from a yak - 2011

I rescind all of my prior suggestions- you have it dialed in amigo!


I have nothing but envy now.

Cool stuff. Looks like fun. Good luck,

SZ

Nice work, that looks like so much fun!
Thanks for sharing,
Tyler

cool! looks like a blast!