Juneau Update II

Yesterday was a day of varied delights. I started out the morning tying a few flies to replace the ones lost on the last fishing outing.

Here in Juneau I use a fly that I came up with ten or twelve years ago. For me, the main requirement for a salmon fly was that first, it really catches fish, and second, it's really simple and easy to tie. This fly has only four parts, the hook, green tinsel, white calf tail, and thread. OK, five, if you count the cement I put on the thread so it won't come unraveled. (For those of you that tie flies, that's a Mustad #8 9672 hook.)

Most salmon fishermen when fishing for pink salmon or chum salmon use red, orange, or hot pink colored flies. When they see I'm using a green fly, and catching more fish than they are, it's not very long before they are digging through their fly box looking for something green! This particular fly sort of named itself. Other fishermen would ask me what I was using, and I would reply "That little green thing". That got shortened up to L.G.T. The L.G.T. has now been featured in a book about Alaska fishing guides favorite flies, and several world records for salmon have been set using the L.G.T.

After tying some flies, we headed out to my local credit union for lunch as it was "Member Appreciation" day, complete with BBQ pork sandwiches, hot dogs, cake, and soft drinks. YUM!

From there I stopped by the local sporting goods place to pick up some more hooks and calf tail. Then we headed out to do a little sight-seeing up along Montana creek, a tributary of the Mendenhall river. After walking the creek for a while and taking some pictures, we decided to head over to the visitor's center at the Mendenhall glacier for a little more sight-seeing and picture taking.

On the way back from the Mendenhall we stopped by the DIPAC salmon hatchery to see if any more of the chum salmon run had arrived. It looked like there were now enough fish in the area to make it worth doing a bit of fishing.


This is a picture taken a few years ago of a chum salmon caught by Tony, one of my clients from when I used to guide here in Jueau. This fish was probably around 16 pounds. Great fun on a fly rod!

I'm going to go get some breakfast, tie a few more flies, then go see If I can tie into some of those big chums.....