Moxi's & Salmon Fishing

Found a new use for B’Fish’N Tackles 3″ moxi on my recent trip to Alaska.
The Silver Salmon simply could not resist these. Thread one on a single hook
behind a Vibrax spinner and get ready to do battle. On one occasion, I cast out
and had a fish on before I could pick up the slack in my line. That fish jumped
out of the water performing several acrobatic back flips before throwing my lure
30′ closer. Before I could pick up all the slack in my line, another fish hit
and another battle ensued.
Pink & white was by far my favorite color but I also caught a good number of silvers
on Peanut Butter & Jelly and Chart/Green Core. I’m also betting that had I taken more
colors along, I probably would have caught fish on them as well.

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Dream trip! How long were you up in Alaska? Willing to share the general area you fished? I’ve always wanted to make the trip but don’t know where to start with the planning.

Oh man, where were you a year ago when I was struggling up there? and me without my Moxies, who knew that would be a good thing.

One question, did you also try the Vibrax spinner plain to see how much of a difference the plastics made?

Beautiful fish Joel. Nice work.

James Holst wrote:

Dream trip! How long were you up in Alaska? Willing to share the general area you fished? I’ve always wanted to make the trip but don’t know where to start with the planning.

Call me……

I will post more info over lunch. Got a lot of catching up to do this week.

Dream trip? In this case I would have to probably say yes.
At least for people who have a similar budget as I do. Others with more
disposable income may do it every year.

We were fishing out of Diericks Tsiu River Lodge. Its not a cheap trip so if you want to do this, your going to have to open up the check book. But, having said that, there is nowhere in the world that I know of where you can catch silver salmon of this size and numbers. The largest silver I saw caught while there was 20lbs. My biggest was 16lbs and my brother Chuck landed a 15lb silver on his fly rod. We both caught numerous fish in the 13lb neighborhood and the average size was in the 9-10lb range.
For reference, silver salmon are the same fish we call coho on Lake Michigan.
They can be very aggressive and willing biters and can be caught by both fly fishermen and spin casters. Chuck caught them on Dolly Llama’s, (same as an articulated leech I believe) Clauser minnows and many other fly patterns.
Spin casters were catching them on spinners, pixie spoons and jigs tied up in similar patterns as the articulated leech and clauser minnows.
These fish fight hard! I broke a St Croix rod which was my own fault but I also saw another guy snap two different fly rods. He obviously showed up with one size to small rods.
My St Croix was a medium, fast action which would be the smallest rod I would ever take up there. I ran 17# Nanofil for the main line with 20# P-line as my leader. These fish were not the least bit leader shy so no reason to go with anything less than 20lb.
Before I broke my rod being stupid, I also broke my main line, leader, clinch knots and a 30lb swivel. Getting the drag set properly was obviously very important. Normally, a person would be a bit upset if they lost that many fish with broken equipment. But on this system, you just knew that there were going to be a lot more opportunities. Which there were.
I switched to a palomar knot and did a better job splicing in my leaders and then checked my line on a regular basis, removing and retying any line that was less than perfect. From that point on, I didn’t have any more issues. These fish will test your equipment and knot tying ability not just because of how hard they fight but also because of how many you can catch and how big some of them are.
When hooked, numerous fish would raise there body 3/4’s of the way out of the water and race across the surface for considerable distances. If you’ve never seen a salmon swim literally on top of the water while screaming drag off your reel, its something you will never forget.

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patk wrote:

One question, did you also try the Vibrax spinner plain to see how much of a difference the plastics made?

Yes this will work. Two problems with this rig though is that:
1) you will hook many of them deep down in the gills. They tend to attack the blade instead of the back of the bait when you don’t have plastic or hair on the back hook.
2) you won’t get as many bites.

By the way, hair worked very well on the single hook Vibrax spinner.

This is also the reason why you don’t want to use a 4″ plastic. They will hit the back of this bait and miss the hook. The 3″ worked quite well and after several fish had there way with the plastic, I simply bit it in half and threaded it back on. That worked just fine.

“If you’ve never seen a salmon swim literally on top of the water while screaming drag off your reel, its something you will never forget.”

I have had the privilege of experiencing that. That Silver was moving so fast the fly line burned a groove in my fingers before I could do anything about it. That was over 5 years ago, and I still have the scars on those fingers to prove it ha ha. It was unreal.

Five years ago it was hideously expensive. Now it’s even worse. If you want to go, start saving money now.

SR

If you decide to go, don’t skimp out on the number of days you plan on spending there. Just getting into Yakutak, Alaska can be an issue. Our 737 flew past Yakutak on the way in do to a low cloud ceiling. We had to go to Anchorage and board another flight going back the other way. Fortunately, we were able to land on the way back through. If we hadn’t and had to book another flight the next day, we would have missed our halibut fishing trip out of Yakutak with captain John Gates. That would have been a major bummer and my wife would have been mad at me for not bringing home some halibut.

From Yakutak, we flew in an Otter about 100 miles up the coast to get to Diericks Tsiu river lodge. No problems with that flight and saw some beautiful scenery on the way in.

Our first 1-1/2 days there the weather was awesome. I was even using sunscreen. But, especially in this part of Alaska, nice weather doesn’t last long. 40-50mph winds hit us hard on the 3rd day making it very hard if not almost impossible to fly fish. Spin guys were fine other than dealing with the rain & wet sand being driven into us all day long. The rest of the week there was literally a monsoon with the river rising every day. Fortunately, we were still able to catch fish but the conditions were pretty miserable. Ruined a good camera trying to take pictures in that stuff.

I haven’t looked it up myself, but word was this area is the furthest northern rain forest on this continent and receives over 300 inches of rain per year. Seemed like we got close to half of that just while I was there. The last day they could barely get the atv’s down to the river. The many sand bars we crossed on the way to the river were no longer sand but lakes.

So a wise person would be sure to schedule an extra day or two (if possible) on either side of a trip like this just to be sure you can take full advantage of a once in a life time trip to a destination to this part of Alaska. Otherwise, you to will have to fish through the same bad weather Chuck and I had too. Now that its over with, I’m glad we did!

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Thanks for the report Joel!
This is a trip I’d like to make within the next few years. I might pick your brain a bit through pm’s if you don’t mind.

Sure sounds special…. does sound expensive…. but a once in a life trip for myself. Besides google… any suggestions on pricing it out, timing and such? Sources for studying up on it?

Thanks for sharing!!!

Diericks Tsiu River Lodge

They do take pretty good care of you at this lodge. Food was awesome. Your choice from at least 5 different pies for desert each night, all of which were awesome.
You can go back at noon for lunch or have a sandwich brought down to the river for you. A cooler is always packed full of snacks, soda’s & water for whenever you get hungry. The guides will unhook pretty much all the fish you catch if you let them and they will take you back out after supper so that you can fish till dark if you so desire. They bite very, very well during the dusk & dawn hours.

Bears, big brown bears at that are not at all uncommon. The guides generally all carry a side arm and anytime I fished away from the group, I was give a can of bear spray for my protection. Never even came close to using it.

Timing: Silvers come in a little earlier than many places due to the river dumping directly into the ocean. September is the best month of the year by far. I personally wouldn’t go any earlier than the last week of August. (we didn’t book in time this year so ended up getting stuck with the time frame of August 20-25) Fish may come in earlier but it varies year by year and they could also come in later. You really want to be there when a lot of fish are coming into the river. Booking early (like a year in advance) is a must or you won’t get the dates you desire.

Other than that, google. I will also answer as many questions as I can.

For reference, if you are wondering just how good was it? The two of us caught over 300 silvers in 5 days. There were times when I would look up and down the river and almost everyone had a fish on.

It was as good as I could have possibly imagine.

So cool… thank you!

Sounds SWEET Joel! Very good info. Thanks. It is on my bucket list to fish Alaska.

That’s some seriously awesome stuff Joel! Way to tweak the bread and butter approach and turn some extra heads. I truly only have one fishing trip on my bucket list, and Alaska is it! Someday…….

Nice looking trip Joel! There’s no place I’ve fished that I’ve liked more than Alaska. I went up this year too and I already can’t wait to go back!

Here is an oldie, but a goodie. Back in 2003, my father and I headed up to Alaska for a three week trip. We had a blast fishing Halibut out of Homer Spit, and we caught these Silvers out of Seward. We caught so many Kings on the Russian and Kenya Rivers – hard to beat that trip. James, I volunteer myself to come along

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Joe Scegura wrote:

There’s no place I’ve fished that I’ve liked more than Alaska. I went up this year too and I already can’t wait to go back! waytogo

Been there three times and I couldn’t agree more Joe!
Can’t wait to go back.

Nick Cox wrote:

We had a blast fishing Halibut out of Homer Spit, and we caught these Silvers out of Seward. We caught so many Kings on the Russian and Kenya Rivers

Nick – I’ve fished in both Homer & Seward. Both great places to fish.
Nice bunch of fish! By the way, the scenic boat tour out of Seward was awesome as well.