Pro Guide Kelly Bandlow
Do you like Big Fish?…Huge, Gigantic, Shamoo sized fish?…These are the sizes of the steelhead trout that inhabit the Situk River.
Hello all…Kelly Bandlow here. I have been fly fishing for over 30 years, many of which as a professional guide. To this day I can clearly remember my first day of fly fishing on this gorgeous piece of water in southeastern Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. A friend of mine, the one who had invited me up to fly fish for these beasts, stood silently beside me, looking in disbelief after I had just ranted at him about being really mad. “Aren’t you catching fish of a lifetime? Isn’t that good enough for you?” he replied rather timidly. “I’m certainly not mad at the quality of fishing,” I shot back in a quick reply. “Why I’m really mad at you is for not convincing me to come to Alaska sooner!!”
That sums up my feelings every time I visit this wildly magnificent place.
Steelhead Trout caught on Situk River
Steelhead, half the size of me, call this river home.
for several months every spring. They migrate by the thousands (12,000- 14,000) each year) up the 18 mile stretch of the Situk. It doesn’t take a math genius to estimate that’s almost 1,000 fish, the size of a small truck, per mile.
Because the Situk River is not formed from glacial run off, it flows clear and shallow. This means the fly fisherman is not casting blindly by typically dredging their fly through deep pools, but rather is almost exclusively sight fishing. Casting to holding steelhead in runs and pools that are rarely over knee deep is tremendously exciting and can make even the most passive person come down with the “shaking knees syndrome.”
