Lake trout in the arctic

In July I was able to get above the arctic circle to Galbraith Lake, I fished it for almost 45 minutes and didn't catch a fish. I switched to one of my originals and caught this laker on the first cast.

He's 32 inches long and 13 pounds. We also got to do some really good wildlife viewing while we were there.

Thanks for looking.

Ice fishing, winter of 2017-'18

I put the fish house out on Quartz Lake for most of the winter. This is not fly fishing obviously, but I am tying the same flies that I fish in the summer on jig heads. It's nice to be able to look through the ice and see how the fish react to the jigs.

 My 28 inch rainbow, my biggest fish this winter and my biggest rainbow through the ice ever.

Here we are again.

 

 Mike working his magic.

Here's the 28 inch rainbow with the typical fish we catch, 12-14 inch silvers and rainbows.

 A full limit that Jon and I caught.

 Jon actually caught these two but he's allergic to fish so I held them up for the picture. These two rainbows are 24 and 23 1/2 inches long.

 Once in a while we catch a stocked king salmon.

 A limit I caught by myself one day, there's a Quartz lake grand slam in there. A king, a silver, a char and a rainbow (20 inches).

My buddy Steve with a couple nice 'bows.

 A nice mixed catch.

 Some of my best fishing buddies. That's a 24 inch char.

Another limit.

 A 24 inch, a 21 inch and an 18 inch rainbow.

 Some more of my favorite fishing buddies. Jack and Elle with their' Dad, that's Elle's 23 1/2 inch rainbow.

 Travis letting go a 23 1/2 inch rainbow, he'd had already kept one over 18 inches, you're only allowed one a day over 18 inches.

 

 Another nice catch, I really like these smoked.

I had a great time taking kids fishing this winter.

 Bessie and I caught these.

Ed and Mike helped out on this trip.

Steve and Liam had so much fun the first time they came back again.

Ed, Travis and what's-her-name (Rachelle) were in the house with me on this trip. We caught 127 fish on this day and kept only the ones over 12 inches.

All told, I fished the house 24 times this winter, sometimes by myself and sometimes with other people. We caught 789 fish in the house this season. On my best day I caught 124 fish by myself and on our best day with two or more people in the house we caught 127 fish. It was the all round best winter for fishing Quartz lake.

Fly fishing Sitka Fall 2017

Fly fishing the salt in the fall of 2017. This trip it would be Rick, cuzz he owns the boat, my youngest brother Jon and I. For Rick and I it was our bi-annual trip, for Jon, a recent immigrant from Wisconsin it would be entirely new.

We caught the usual suspects, Black Rocks, Yelloweyes and Silvergreys.

Our first days catch.

We caught Quillbacks and Coppers.

Jon's first ever Yelloweye, and it's a nice one.

A double on really nice Ling Cod.

A nice Silvergray.

Rick caught two Silvergrays on one lure at the same time.

A Canary Rockfish.

Then I caught two black rocks on one lure at the same time.

Then we caught a new species, a Red Line Rockfish. It was caught on conventional gear so it doesn't count toward our all time list of species caught on a fly. It was pretty cool to catch a new species though.

We didn't get to fly fish on this trip much and we didn't catch any new species but it was still a great trip. This will be my last open water trip of the season, next, ice fishing.