Kelly and Russ come to visit, Part 1

One of the great things about living in Alaska is that friends and family come visit on a regular basis.  This past week brought us our good friends Russ and Kelly who made the trek up from Wyoming.  With a shared love of rivers and fishing, we hit the local waters pretty hard.  I simply have too many pictures and days on the water since my last post so I'm going to break the past week's adventures up into a few posts over the next couple days.  Here's labor day weekend:

Kelly and Russ arrived early Friday morning, and with The Wife in Juneau through Friday afternoon, we weren't able to get on the water until Saturday.  

Because of the weather, it was the sort of day where if you aren't catching fish you might as well stay home and tie flies.  Fortunately, we all caught lots of fish so it's hard to remember the sideways rain and piercing wind.  Of course, as has been typical for this season, The Wife seemed particularly effective with her fly rod:

Of all the salmon, coho might be the best for targeting with a fly rod.  They take flies with aggression, fight like hell, and taste as a salmon should.  I found this female in a small side channel while targeting dolly varden:

Since we didn't get off the river until nearly 9:00pm and the rain was showing no signs of letting up, our original plan to camp had little appeal.  After grabbing a late burger and beer it was back to Anchorage in search of a warm bed and a roof overhead.

We fished again on Sunday but didn't break the camera out in earnest until Monday, at which point the rain and wind had given way to sun.  Here's Russ with the day's first dolly:

. . . and Kelly minutes later with her first Alaskan Sockeye.

The side channels were particularly productive.

This might have been my best dolly of the week:

After three consecutive days on the water, two of which were in a raft, Karta started to tire and seemed perfectly content to eat dinner lying down in the bed of the truck.  She leads a rough life.