Alaska Silver Salmon Flies - Updates from Deneki Outdoors

by Deneki Outdoors

The period from late July through early September at Alaska West is just one big mess of silver salmon mayhem. At this time of year the leopard rainbows, dollies and other salmon species in the Kanektok make room in already crowded waters, because they know as well as we do that the river gets jammed with silvers.

Our silvers love eating flies. They typically stack up in softer-water sloughs and along undercut banks. This tendency to hang out in softer water makes them excellent targets for stripped flies, both on the surface (that’s right – poppers and pollywogs ) and beneath the surface.

Here are five of our favorite flies for targeting silvers on at Alaska West, in no particular order.

1. Riverborn Pink Popper .

We’re going to come right out and say that we’d rather catch silvers on topwater flies than beneath the surface – the visual nature of the popper/chugger/pollywog game is just way too much fun to not indulge whenever given the chance. These days we prefer actual foam-headed poppers to the traditional spun deer hair Pollywog, simply because we catch a lot of fish and a foam popper keeps floating for fish after fish, while Pollywogs tend to get waterlogged.

This type of fly right here is your go-to silver fly when you’re fishing the lowest stretches of the Kanektok. Pink is king the majority of the time. The lead eyes are important too – silvers can’t get enough of the slight jigging action that results from stripping a lead-eyed fly.

3. Solitude Starlight Leech, Purple .

Source: Alaska Silver Salmon Flies - Updates from Deneki Outdoors