We spent our last day on Kodiak with a fishing guide! We left not to early in the morning and met John our guide for today. He pulled a trailer with an UTV (Utility Terrain Vehicle) we needed to get to the Saltery Creek. We first drove to the start of the Saltery Rd, unloaded the UTV and packed everything we need onto this all-terrain “golf cart”.
The road we drove now was a former state-maintained access gravel road for a fish saltery. After the saltery wasn’t needed anymore and closed, the road maintenance by the state stopped. Today all the bridges are gone, the road is very rough and one needs an all-terrain vehicle to drive a little bit more than 1 hour all the way south to Saltery Cove. The drive was very fun – especially the passages involving water and creeks.
When we got to Saltery Creek we unloaded and startet salmon fishing. There were a couple of salmon we were able to make out in the water. Since salmon don’t eat anything on their journey back (and therefore don’t fall for bait), we had to make sure to place the fly line of the rod in front of the fishes’ mouth and then hook them actively. This sounds complicated, but we managed to get a couple of fish!
We were not the only ones fishing that day – at one point suddenly 2 brown bears appeared downstream and ran towards us. Our guide reacted by yelling and throwing a stone in front of their feet whereas they understood and turned around to stay at their former fishing spot.
Towards the evening, as it was time for the rising high tide, we suddenly noticed a lot more Sockeye salmon moving upstream. At some point we had around 30 fish around us. At that point we could have caught even more fish, but we had enough and we needed to get back to catch our ferry!
Driving back the UTV was even more fun since we were able to drive it ourselves! On our way, we’ve also encountered a couple of deer with youngsters. In no time we found ourselves again on the overnight ferry back to homer. Byebye amazing Kodiak Island!
