Santa is now in the business of gifting experiences and not just toys his elves made (or he sourced off Amazon). This year, Santa hooked Ashton up with an early spring, trout fishing trip. Apparently, Mrs. Clause is friends with a fishing guide named Felix Sturm, owner of Landem Fishing Adventures. It sounds like she pulled some strings to get us on his books 😊.
We were scheduled to fish the Kenai River at the end of
April, a few days before the season closed on May 1 for 45 days to allow the
trout to spawn. This would both help us shake off the cabin fever as well as
catch some aggressive fish staging before they make babies.
The 2026 spring season was absolutely terrible. It was
colder than normal, more rain/snow had fallen than what typically does, ice on
lakes stayed around for months longer, and snow on the ground took forever to
melt. This had us worried about the weather for the trip. We almost had to
cancel/postpone, but we got lucky with a window on the day we were going out.
Something else worth mentioning was Ashton’s ability to use
his right hand (reeling hand). Two days prior to the charter, Ashton was
playing football at school and busted up his hand pretty bad. Danielle had to
take him to the ER, where they said it was only a dislocation of a couple
knuckles in his middle finger. He swelled up huge and had bruising all around
his middle finger, but they taped him up with a finger splint and told him to
take it easy (that wasn’t happening with the need to bend the finger to reel in
many fish).
Luckily, we got the truck back the night before we left for
the charter. If the truck was still in the shop, we would not have been able to
camp, which would have made for an extremely long day. Luckily, that wasn’t an
issue. The night before our charter, we headed down and camped in a pull out
close to the river.
We woke up at 6AM and Ashton was itching to get on the
water. Felix and two of his buddies were already at the boat pullout (Bings
Landing). They kept a truck there, picked us up, and we headed to Skilak Lake
to launch the boat. Prior to this, Felix told us other people were fishing with
us. I was a little disappointed having to share the boat, but when I found out
the other guys fishing with us were pretty much two other guides/ deck hands
(Matty, works as a guide for Felix, and Ben as a local hunting guide), my
perspective completely changed!
Skilak Lake was still completely frozen. This meant that in
order to fish from the drift boat, we had to push the boat about a mile to the
mouth of the river where the ice ended… I was now even more thankful Felix
brought these two other guys! The four of us pushed the boat across the ice as
Ashton followed close behind. The ice was a few feet thick for most of the
push, with the water depth only being two to three feet deep anyway. As we got
closer to the river mouth, the ice started thinning and holes began appearing
where warmer water pushed through. It sounded dangerous, but it felt safe with
the shallow water and sturdy ice between the holes. We made it safely to the
ice edge, jumped in the boat, and headed out on the river.
We were able to use our small kicker motor for a few miles,
but we eventually came to a protected part of the river, a swan sanctuary, that
prevented motor use. It was tough rowing at the start since there was little
current and wind pushing us in the opposite direction. The guide and his two
friends rotated as they took turns rowing to exhaustion. There definitely was
plenty of swans in this stretch of the river. We also saw many swan carcasses,
the left overs from the lynx in the area getting easy meals.
We eventually got to some good current and Felix took over.
The arrival of the current also meant the beginning of back trolling. Our
method of fishing for the day would be the use of small plugs, tossed out about
40 yards behind the boat, swimming in the current, and then us slowly drifting
down river (controlled by Felix on the oars) putting the plugs in front of
trout as we stealthily place the bait in holes and where the fish are. Each
person on the boat was allowed a pole, but the two other guys’ poles were
basically Ashton’s too.
This type of fishing was easy… it was basically picking up
the pole when the fish hit the line. Occasionally a hit would occur and the
fish wouldn’t hook themselves, so we would grab the line, pull, and let the
bait drift back taught, which often resulted in the fishing hitting the
“wounded” plug again. This is not the typical method of fishing the Kenai, but
this is why I wanted to do this charter… it used spinning rods/ reels (not fly)
and it is easy to learn and recreate.
The first couple holes we drifted didn’t produce a single
hit. This meant it would be a fairly
slow day of fishing. Regardless, a slow day of trout bites still meant double
digit action. We eventually started to catch fish, but the bite didn’t get hot
until the infamous Super Hole. The Super Hole is well known to hold many fish,
big fish, and consistently biting fish. People snowmachine and walk in to this
area throughout the entire year. Many people even camp here too. There were a
couple people fly fishing from the shore when we arrived, but we kept our
distance, catching fish left and right while the fly fisherman got skunked.
The Super Hole produced a couple nice fish, but Ashton was
able to land a really nice one just shy of 30”. We were hoping to catch a
bigger fish that day, but it wasn’t in the cards. We landed about a dozen trout
out of the super hole before we moved on.
A little down river, Felix asked Matty to take over the
oars. Matty was putting us on fish when we heard Felix puking off the boat. We
gave him a hard time for being “sea sick” but really, he was recovering from a
stomach bug and something he just ate didn’t agree with him. He purged the bad
stuff and was able to get behind the oars again shortly after.
The rest of the day was about the same… float the river a
bit, catch a fish, eat some gummy worms, crack some jokes, and repeat. We
eventually came to a spot in the river where a creek dumping into the Kenai was
so dirty with silt and mud, it made the Kenai River dirty and impossible to
fish. At that point, our fishing for the day was over. It would have been
useless to fish in the murky water without the fish being able to see the
dancing plug.
We fired up the motor at this point and puttered the rest of
the way to the pull out at Bings Landing. We stayed behind to goof around and
guard the boat as the guys took the truck that was left there to go grab the
other truck and trailer. Once they returned, we helped load the boat up and
over the large ice shelf blocking the ability to use the ramp.
We offered to buy everyone drinks at the local bar, but they
all had plans so we thanked the guys for putting us on many fish, and then we
went separate ways. Ashton and I decided to stay another night so we went to
Buckets to stuff ourselves before bed. We were joking around and playing on his
tablet the rest of the night, but we didn’t last long since we got up super
early that morning.
The next day we checked out a couple houses that were going
through foreclosure, and then we headed home to get some spring cleaning done.
The charter was a blast. It taught me a new way of fishing
and I think we will try and implement it ourselves in the future. Thanks Santa!
