My Season on the Kenai: Fishing Alaska's Greatest Salmon River

by Lew Freedman

Overview

Follow along with award-winning sportswriter Lew Freedman as he journals an unforgettable season of fly fishing along the Kenai River.

Just as you never know what kind of fish and what size fish might be tugging on your line when the rod bends, you never know what kind of excitement awaits during a season on the Kenai River. Located in Southcentral Alaska, the Kenai River is a world-class salmon river attracting fishermen from all over the world. Each summer thousands of anglers fish the magical Kenai River. Discover what makes the eighty-five-mile-long river a dream destination for the devout fisherman inside My Season on the Kenai.

Freedman’s amusing stories and first-hand experience are sure to entertain and inspire the avid angler, with valuable information and insights sprinkled in each chapter.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780882409061
Publisher:	Turner Publishing Company
Publication date:	05/15/2013
Pages:	218
Sales rank:	1,151,013
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Lew Freedman lived in Alaska for seventeen years and regularly fished the Kenai River—and wrote about it. Currently, the outdoors/adventure writer for the Chicago Tribune, Freedman is the author of twenty-one books about Alaska. Included among those are Live from the Kenai River, Reelin' Em In With Celebrity Fishing Guide Harry Gaines, a biography of the pioneer guide on the Kenai River, and Fishing for a Laugh, which includes many stories about adventures and humorous incidents that occurred on the Kenai River.

Freedman has a deep familiarity with the Kenai River and knows many of the key players involved in river life, from guides to preservationists. Alas, frequently, despite his best efforts to make friends, he is not always on speaking terms with the salmon.

Read an Excerpt

A complete novice waiting to be hooked, I asked around and was told that if I was going to fish on the Kenai River and attempt to wrangle a salmon into my boat, I needed to look up a personable guide named Harry Gaines. Harry Gaines, I was told, could read the river like the lines on the palm of hands, and he was a wizened old-timer with more experience than almost anyone else in the Soldotna-Kenai area where most guides were based. That was about 150 miles from Anchorage, the banks of those small cities abutting the Lower River.

The Lower River is where the king salmon, the most prized of all types of salmon, return to spawn each spring and summer, and where the angler with ambition goes to catch one. Kings, better known to the outside world as Chinook salmon, are the bad boys of the river, the big, even monstrous fish, that are difficult to entice onto a hook, that fight like hell when caught, and that offer delectable dinners when served.

The kings were the kings of the river. The biggest kings in the world returned to the Kenai each year and this was proven year after year when fishermen and their guides were left agog as someone hooked into a hog of a fish weighing 90 pounds or more. For the typical fisherman, weaned on the sport in the rest of the United States, a big fish might be a five-pound bass, a common fish a perch, walleye, or bluegill weighing anywhere from a few ounces to a couple of pounds. Catching one of the giant king salmon (nobody even bothered to keep one that weighed less than 35 pounds) was the equivalent of hooking your fifth-grade son and trying to haul him into the boat.

                                                                                                            —from the Introduction