Alexander Lake Alaska 2017

Mekaniks

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My son Jacob (age 13) and I took a couple of days this week and flew into Alexander Lake for a couple days of pike fishing. Lots of good father/son time! The story goes like this...

I had a couple of scheduled days off in the middle of the week and my son had a week between summer basketball camp and when football practice starts. So we booked an overnight unguided pike fishing trip to Alexander Lake with Trail Ridge Air. The package that Trail Ridge offers includes the flight, boat and motor, and a dry cabin at the old Alexander Lake Lodge. The lodge has not been used as a commercial fishing lodge since the early 90's when the Pike wiped out the king salmon fishery. But it's still owned by the Swarovski family (like scopes, binos, and jewelry) and they use it as a summer vacation place. They have a couple of dry cabins that they let outfitters use and store their boats and gear. Just bring bug spray, fishing gear, food and a sleeping bag.

Monday 6/26
I worked all day and at the evening meal break 5-6pm we loaded up our gear in the truck and Jacob came back to work with me and hang out for a couple hours. By 9:00pm we were on the road for the 2 hr drive to Anchorage.

Tues 6/27 06:00am
A quick breakfast at McDonalds and we were at Trail Ridge Air on Lake Hood in Anchorage by 0700 for our float plane ride out to the lake. Loaded up the Cessna 206 on floats and we were airborne before 7:30 for short 50 mile flight out to Alexander Lake. We spotted 14 moose, but no bears, and arrived at the lake just after 08:00am. Trail Ridge had our cabin and boat ready to go when we arrived. We dropped our gear in the cabin and put the fishing gear together. There was 2 other nice fellows from Anchorage that where already there, doing the same thing as us, but they had already been there a day before and they were scheduled to leave that evening. We had a nice chat with them about the fishing and we were headed up the lake before 0900.
Jacob had a pike on his very first cast and it was ON! Pretty much non stop! We fished until about 1:00pm when it was getting time for lunch and we headed back to the cabin. Here is a few of the first day pics
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We had some lunch and it started to rain and wind started come up so we spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning fish, a little exploring around the lodge and visiting with the other guys. They left about at about 4:30pm and we had the place to ourselves. We spent the rest of the evening hanging out in the on the cabin porch and fishing from the bank in front of the lodge.

Wed 6/28
We were up early, a quick breakfast of hot cocoa, coffee, breakfast bars topped off with a few Pringle potato chips. We switched boats beacause the boat that the other guys had been using started easier and ran much better. We were fishing by 07:30.
By 11:00am we had a stringer full of pike and my son was getting tired. At one point he was hanging his pole over the side of the boat and just banging his lure on the water and a pike grabbed it! I netted it into the boat real quick, and we laughed for about 10 minutes. Super good time!
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Trail Ridge picked us up about 6:00pm. We had 3 1-gallon zip lock bags of pike fillets and lots pics.
We never caught any really big fish but we sure caught lots of small ones.
We rolled into the house about 10:00 pm with a truck load of stinky gear, bags of pike fillets that needed to freeze and I had to be to work at 04:30 in morning but it was all so worth it and wouldn't change a minute!
 
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Outstanding! You can't beat quality time with your kids in the outdoors. Congrats!!!
 
Thanks for sharing and Congrats
 
Green with envy here! You are one lucky guy to have a kid interested in the outdoors! Great looking place to go too. Enjoy those fillets!
Best
 
Very nice, looks like a great time with great memories made!
 
Looks like the fish were taking the bait and you guys had a good time!
 
You and your son will be talking about that trip for many years to come. It's the time you spent together, not the number of fish you caught that he will remember most.
 
Great stuff, looks like you all had a blast.
 
Hi Chuck,

Thanks for the great report.
No doubt you already know how much good you are doing for your son, in teaching him to respectfully enjoy the wild places.
But, I just wanted to underline it.
I predict he will "be somebody" someday.
Not like many his age who grow up with a couch glued to their back side and a TV remote control glued to their hand.

Back in the late 90's, I fly fished Alexander Lake and did well on pike, with red & yellow streamer, called a "popsicle".
Perhaps same cabin and tin boat you guys used, likely a new motor on it by now though.
It's a shame what's happened to the kings in AK but that's what usually happens when anything is managed by government evidently.

Well anyway, congrats on the pike trip, sounds like you had a very fine time of it all.

Cheers,
Paul.
 
What a great time! I love pike fishing, very underrated in my estimation.
 
Living the dream in Alaska! Looks like a great time for sure. Thanks for sharing.
 
Next time try leaving the fish whole. Stuff with your choice and BBQ. The meat picks easily from the bones. I find you get more useful meat this way, and it tastes great
 
Looks like a great fishing trip and time spent with your son is time well spent. Do you get any big pike?
I'm from Saskatchewan and we get some monsters in our Northern Lakes.
 
Looks like a great fishing trip and time spent with your son is time well spent. Do you get any big pike?
I'm from Saskatchewan and we get some monsters in our Northern Lakes.

Yes we can get some real monsters as well. Fish and game has been actively trying to reduce the pike numbers for several years in the Alexander system and I think they are starting to have some effect, so the big ones are getting fewer and farther between. But regardless it's still lots of fun fishing and catching high volumes of small fish.
 
excellent holidays !
 
Great report ! As others have said you are a lucky man to have a son to take fishing .... look forward to hearing more of these reports in the future . Kids are our future !
Glen
 

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