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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
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!
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!
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
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!
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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