Kodiak Island is known as the "Emerald Island" for its emerald green appearance. From the air, views were breath-taking! Vast green hillsides lead up to incredible snow-capped peaks. We saw countless blacktail deer, bald eagles, and a giant Kodiak brown bear on our flight to the western side of the island.

We spent the first soggy night at Karluk Lake. The river outlet had several pods of sockeye salmon that kept us entertained until sunset (1:00 am). We woke the next morning to the sound of a floatplane bringing more fisherman. We hooked up with a couple guys, inflated our rafts and headed down the river.

Sockeyes or "reds" were the first salmon we landed on the shallow upper stretches of the river. You can understand where they got their name from this one's coloration. Sockeyes are chrome silver in the ocean and when they first return up the feeder streams and rivers, but once they've been there awhile a crazy thing happens. They metamorphize humped backs and hooked jaws, and turn bright red. Look out for those teeth! Sockeyes are known to been the best eating of the 5 species of salmon. I believe it after we had a couple riverside meals of one of the fresh, silver-colored salmon.

About halfway down the river we started running into kings. The river was chrystal-clear and we could see the giant dark outlines of monster salmon in the deepest holes. It didn't take long for us to get our first hook-ups and our first taste of fighting kings on flyrods. Where the sockeyes were speedy battlers, the kings were strong and powerful. Just when you thought you'd be able to "tail" them, they'd go on another screaming run to the depths of the river. Many took as long as 20 minutes to bring to shore and release back to the river. Talk about sore muscles!

Talk about a beautiful fish! Many of the kings were chrome-silver; fresh out of the saltwater...and were they ever powerful. We felt fortunate to break only 2 rods on the trip, but lost countless tippets! The kings averaged 36 to 41" long and tipped the scales at 25 to 35 lbs. I landed one close to 32 lbs on 5 lb tippet...just for the thrill of it!

The closer to saltwater the more kings we spotted, landed, and released. The river narrowed and had deeper pools in the lower "canyon" stretch. There was hardly an hour that passed that our lines and reels weren't singing. These were powerful, fresh fish with endless long runs.

The last night of our trip was remarkable. We landed kings until our arms dropped. As you can see by the photo, it was even starting to get dark....at 2:30 in the morning! These were the freshest salmon of the trip as we were only about 5 miles from saltwater. We even topped off the trip with a few tiny 10 to 20 lb jacks!

We arrived at the predesignated pickup in the giant "lagoon" and waited the arrival of our floatplane. We waited until about 10:00 pm and new something had gone wrong. We set up our tent and prepared for an additional night at the lagoon. Unfortuntely, our sleep was rudely interupted at 3:00 in the morning by a hungry Kodiak brown bear. He schreaded the side of our cooler and but a foot long gash in our raft. Luckily we were already at the pickup spot! Jim and I hooped and hollared and the bear went sprinting off down the shoreline with a mouthful of garbage. The plane arrived early the next morning and we headed back to Kodiak City.

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