Tsiu River, Alaska

The Tsiu River is simply one of the best destinations on the world for silver salmon fishing (coho). It is home to one of the largest and most stable runs of coho salmon in Alaska. Here the fishing is for aggressive dime bright coho salmon freshly arrived from the sea. The shallow crystal clear waters of the Tsiu are the delight of every fly fishermen. The area we fish is wide shallow sandy bottomed river where fish are easily spotted. Generally fishing is by sight with floating fly lines. If your fancy is catching explosive cohos on surface flies, this is the place for you. A polywog skittered along surface near a pod of fish is just the ticket to entice one of these aggressive finned creatures to smack the daylights out of it.

On a typical day during prime season, an average fisherman can expect to hook 25 to 50 cohos. For spin fishermen this number can be even greater. If you hit the thickest part of the run you can have days that you catch so many fish you feel like your arms aregoing to fall off. Coho salmon begin returning to the Tsiu during the first week of August and continue running until the end of October. By this time autumn steelhead will be coming in strong to feed on the salmon eggs left by the cohos. It’s not a bad time to come if you would like to mix it up and alternate catching hard fighting steelhead with the feisty silvers, as long as you don’t mind a little Alaskan Fall weather.

Guests are accomodated in a very basic self-service lodge located on a bluff overlooking the river. To get to the river they have access to quad vehicles.