ALASKA

We returned home from our vacation on Sunday night. I've been anxious to get these pictures posted here on the blog. We had an AWESOME time! We flew into Ketchikan and stayed there in a cute little bed and breakfast apartment the whole week. The apartment was right on Ketchikan Creek so we had very easy access to fishing in that stream. Surprisingly, all of our flights were on-time and uneventful!


Our first day we went ocean fishing with a guide. The weather was gorgeous! The locals all said it was the best weather they had seen all summer. We caught three silver salmon and two baby king salmon (that we didn't keep.) Unfortunately we didn't catch any halibut, cod, or rockfish. The guide said that the season is kind of winding down and also that it's usually a trade off between good weather and good fishing. I guess we got the good weather.

Bob, our ocean guide.

Here's Will and me with our fish! Definitely the biggest fish I've ever caught!

Sunday we attended the Ketchikan LDS Ward. We met a lot of nice people. The building they have is so beautiful! It is made of wood on the inside and outside! It reminded me a lot of a cabin. Here's a picture of the chapel.
Pink salmon were EVERYWHERE in the streams. While wading they were literally bumping into our legs. Staying right on the creek was awesome because we could just gear up and walk outside and start fishing. It also made it so we didn't have to rent a car. We rode the bus a couple of times to the Walmart for groceries and the days we were guided, we had a driver pick us up at our apartment.

Here is Will fishing in Ketchikan Creek. Our place we were staying is a part of the yellow home on the right.

Here's Will with one of the MANY pink salmon that we caught. These fish are strong and can fight! We were using 8 wt. fly rods and the salmon were putting some serious bends in our rods.

We did take some time to walk around Ketchikan and do a little bit of souviner shopping. Ketchikan's main industry is tourism and both sport and commercial fishing, so there were plenty of shops and people that wanted to take you fishing and sightseeing. Here are more pictures of the town.

I was intrigued by the colorful houses that were built on very steep cliffs and drop offs.

We saw BEARS!

We fished the streams with a guide two different days and the first day we saw black bears! It was a mama and two cubs. The cubs were such cute little fur balls! They were approximately 25 yards away from us. It wasn't really scary, but more exciting to see them. Our guide had a Glock just in case.

Mostly we were catching pinks, but we did hook into this nice Coho (silver salmon) in this stream. Note: Just for the record, I am NOT using my teeth as tools. ha ha :) Don't show this to any of my patients.

Here are more pictures of us fishing and the fish we caught:



At Ward Creek


Heidi's coho caught in the creek




Above: The coho that took both of us fighting it for over a half hour! Caught in the creek.

Fishing with our guide at the White River. Can you see the bears behind us?

We had a great time! It was an incredible experience that we will always remember. We both decided that will be returning to Alaska in the coming years.

Anyone want to join us?