Went to Alaska to visit family. We caught a bunch of bottom fish and then spent some time in the rivers.

We were about 2 weeks early for the silver run, and the rivers were stuffed with pinks. It was challenge to get the target species. This actually made it pretty enjoyable for me, in that you couldn't just throw a lure or fly into the meat of the hole and hope to catch a silver because it would just get grabbed by a humpy. Or worse; you could snag one in the dorsal. The trick was to figure out where the humpies had forced the silvers into little pockets or behind boulders. This was pretty easy because the water was clear enough to see the silvers. It didn't show up well on the GoPro but on the video I see the silvers that I am hooking. I used a grill mount for the camera, this is probably the best way I have found to use a GoPro. I think the view is better than from the head mount.

I had a blast hiding behind a tree or stump watching how the fish reacted to my fly or jig. A lot of bow and arrow casting was required.

On the first day in the river a chum grabbed my 'hareball leech' and while I was trying to tame it I broke the handle on my fly-reel. So I borrowed a reel from my uncle. It was a comically small trout reel with no exposed portion of the spool, so I just fought all of the fish by hand and used the reel to hold the line. Still fun and the rivers were pretty small so it was pretty easy to do.

Here is the video:

YouTube Link - I can never embed.

Effing Sweet

That looks like fun!

very cool

Great😚

Nice vid Ryan.

CR coho will never be the same after that!

The AK coho definitely act different than here in WA. If we saw 3 fish we could usually catch 2 sometimes all 3. Amazingly aggressive compared to fish here, where if you see 300 you might catch 2.

Yup. It might take a couple days of footage to capture as many fly eats round here as you did in that video (which was pretty awesome, by the way).

Wonder what makes those AK fish so much more aggressive (assuming water temps aren't the only factor)?

cool as hell!!

Looks like an awesome time. Nice video too

Terrific video! Thanks for brightening up my morning here in Vancouver.

I would note that by the time coho get upstream 50+ miles, they are not very aggressive, regardless of where they are, even in Alaska. In SW Washington, if you can get to a coastal river when the coho are thick, they are just as aggressive as those in the video. But once they're in freshwater for a week or so, they're no longer interested in whatever you're casting. My sense is that the video was taken fairly close to tidewater in SE AK, so the fish are still very aggressive.