A flyout…fish&bears

Day 36

7/26/26 Sunday

Mosquito count: 0

Brown Bear count: 3!

It’s going to be a good day and a big day! We are getting  ready to take a float plane to Crescent Lake in the Lake Clark National Park and Preserve.  It will be a long day 1:30-9:00pm from takeoff to return landing. 

Settle in because this post is going to picture and video loaded. Today was a doozy of a day! Better yet… login to the website you might want to see a few of the videos! http://www.cinnicrew.com/alaska

Goldilocks weather. The weather was perfect today. Seems we’ve been waiting weeks for a day like today. Calm, nothing but blue sky and warm… not hot. We had this weather from sunrise to sunset today. Pinch me… could we ask for a better day??

Preparing for Flyout. We had the morning for breakfast, conversation and gathering drinks, snacks and making sandwiches for the lake trip. The Swain’s have most all the fishing waders and boots for everyone. I think we only had to borrow one set of waders for me.

We purchased a seven day fishing license online from the State of Alaska. We will be fishing at least two more times this week… perhaps three. So this will cover us.

Flyout in a float plane. We booked this flyout date and time quite a few weeks ago with Alaska West Air operating out of Nininski AK. When they booked they also requested their favorite guide “Badgr”. Except for Jim and me the rest of everyone has had this experience before.

We arrived at the office to sign in and pay for the trip. Once you’ve taken care of those details you walk over to the lake area where they have a nice little cafe and waiting area to board your plane. It was a busy day with groups of fisherman and planes taking off and landing. White garbage bags of fish filets and fisherman coming off the planes. Everyone looked very happy with their morning that was coming off the plane. Lots of smiles! The ratio of men to women fishing was predominantly men and teenage boys and our then our group of 50:50.

Our plane was scheduled to load at 1:45pm. I think it was right on schedule. It takes about 15 minutes to load and get safety speech and 1/2 hr flying to get to Crescent Lake.

Everyone has a window on the plane. But someone gets to be co-pilot… and today it was me! First timer rewards. You can talk to the pilot on the headset and he was telling me the mountains names on the Alaskan Range. We were flying towed volcano Mount Redoubt. Crescent Lake is just below it. We could see all the way south to Denali which was all clear today but too far away for my camera. It was fun to have the front vantage point. Over the water across from Kenai and into the mountains.

Brown bears and eagles.

Meet Badgr. We’ve landed and our guide and pilot help us all get off the plane and to the shore and unload all the day bags, coolers etc.

Then we meet Badgr… our guide for the rest of the day. Marianne and Brian met him years ago on their first flyout and somehow they clicked. They say maybe it was the Crown Royal! Since then they’ve become friends and have had Badgr guide them many times.

Badgr is in his early 50’s and has been a fishing guiding in Alaska for 30 years and before that he was a flyout backcountry ski/snowboard guide in Alaska. He had quite a career in the winter as a clothing rep for a company that makes high tech outdoor clothing (Patagonia). After high school growing up in Idaho Falls he ventured in the early 90’s to Big Sky Ski Resort and became the first snowboard ski patrol for several years.

He’s so experienced and so good at his job but because he’s friends with the Swain’s we had such a good time and he was buzzing back and forth and trying to teach beginners (like me) and made sure that everyone was happy and catching fish.

Let’s Fish. Alaska law allows 3 salmon/person limit for the day.

When fishing the spawning sockeye salmon your rod just has a bare hook and you cast and jerk your line basically trying to hook the fish as it’s swimming upstream. They are just opening and closing their mouth not feeding but trying to stay alive. As Badgr described it they have been in the river working hard and they just hit the opening of the lake and can take a bit of a break. You could see the ripples of when they would roll and sometimes jump as they flowed by.

We only kept the silvery salmon. If they are too pink there lifespan is almost done. The meat is too mushy and not a tasty for human consumption… bears don’t care though😊

Filet ‘0 Fish. Once we met our limit Badgr set to work filleting. He gave us a demo complete with explanation as he quickly went to work. He explained that there are several ways to fillet and every guide has his own process. There is part of the salmon they call the salmon belly that is a delicacy. They separate the belly from the fish and the Swain’s will smoke this belly. I have never seen or heard of this but I am looking forward to tasting this. To see this with justice I suggest watching the video.

Brown bears and eagles. There are so many great parts to this day but another one out in the wildlife preserve is seeing brown bears and eagles. Today we saw three different bears. The guides told us the bears had just arrived to this lake because the fish had also just arrived in the last few days. Timing is everything!

We saw our first bear just as we were coming to the mouth of the lake. He was cruising the shore and eating berries. We ended up seeing this bear cruising the shoreline and walking in the water. Entertaining bear for sure.

The other two bears showed up as we were leaving the fishing spot and returning to meet the plane. The second one was cruising the shoreline and the third one was when we were on the plane driving out. The last one was actually walking the water and diving for fish. That was fun to watch for a minute.

Return flight… scenic route. It was about 8:30pm and we got the plane packed up and we were headed back. We’d been told that the last flight of the day the pilot will often take the scenic return and go around Redoubt Volcano. That’s exactly what he did. Because it was such a perfect day and the first time he had been able to fly without weather in weeks. He flew really close to the mountain and we saw the glaciers up close and the glacier washout. The Big River valley. Stunning!

Fish processing. After the fun part is over the work begins. Marianne is all equipped in her laundry room for cutting the fillets into suitable dinner portions and vacuum packing for freezing. It took several hours to finish packaging all those fish.

Late night Moose. The moose come out at sunset about 10pm so we took a drive down the street to see if Mama and her babies were out.

Tomorrow is either to fish the Kenai River or rest day. We are waiting to hear from the river guide/friend about the when and where.