My wife Abby with a Kenai River rainbow that was just under 30 inches.

The Kenai Peninsula is world-famous for its fishing. The halibut of Homer and the Kings of the Kenai have rightfully garnered the attention of anyone and everyone wanting to hold a mega-king salmon. But word has been out for quite a while and after years of combat fishing and poor returns, things aren't what they were. It's not that I have any frame of reference since June was my first ever trip to fish the Kenai, Kasilof and Ninilchik rivers, but as an angler, you can tell if you are in the good ole days.

The earliest kings that show in this area are the hatchery runs that mix in with some native fish. Deep Creek and Anchor River were both closed due to low returns but the Kasilof was seeing some good fish. There was a misprint in the regulations about the king fishery on the Ninilchik so many people thought it was closed, however, the bag limit was actually increased. These three rivers are more creeks than anything, and the Ninilchik was barely that. It looked like a small meadow stream high in the mountains where you'd cast small grasshoppers at cut banks in search of brown trout. But there are some deep slots and in those holding areas, you can find a couple fish.

Anyway, my wife and I got a guide for trout on the Kenai, because the guide seemed reluctant to fish the Kasilof for kings since we wanted to fly fish. After a great day catching some really nice rainbows with him, we understood why he hesitated to take us to the Kasilof. The program was clearly not to fish with a fly rod. It was to tie a heavy weight a few feet up from a hook with a piece of yarn that made it qualify as a fly. The cast was short and after a bit of a drift to lay what was something like a trip-wire, the angler would set sharply, pulling the hook across the water and impaling the hook in the side of the fish's face. It's called flossing. In no way am I attempting to frown upon or bring up the ethics of such a method. It was clearly the go-to method and it worked for a good number of anglers, though the fishing was far from wide-open.

https://youtu.be/cWqbz0cO-0M

Flossing almost looks like some sort of fishing Tai chi and I am sure there are specific muscles that are very sore after a day of that - not all that dissimilar to the soreness in my shoulders after a day of catching my 10-foot 10 inch switch rod.

There was an armada of drift boats too, but none of them were fishing with flies. This was likely the reason the guide directed us to fish the Kenai with him in a section that had recently opened for boats to use motors. We were able to get around and use fly rods. The Kasilof program was rowing and backtrolling.

In two days we didn't catch a single fish on the Kasilof. I lost a king on the Ninilchik. It was near the mouth of the river and there was a group of five or six fish in a deep slot of moving water. Once I lost the fish, I continued casting, then saw a kid a top the hill behind me. I moved a little downriver toward Abby to keep him from coming between us and ruining both of our drifts. It was a small slot that could be fished well by 1 person or 2 people who were fishing together. It was not the place for combat fishing. Yet, the kid descended anyway and dropped in five yards up river from me. He snagged a king on his first cast, and summoned his buddies waiting up at the truck. Three more came down. After the king he snagged went up river and down then finally broke him off, Abby and I had the difficult decision of sticking around to prove that we wouldn't be pushed out by high school kids, but also didn't want to spend another hour of our honeymoon around that type of person. So we fished for maybe another 15 minutes, then left.

The Upper Kenai

The Upper Kenai was much more to our liking, especially since we weren't desperate for kings. There is a terminal fishery in southeast Alaska where snagging below the river mouth is legal, so I have snagged king salmon before. I have also trolled for kings. I wanted a king on the swing and after seeing how unlikely it was since we were unwilling to spend our entire honeymoon swinging flies hoping for one fish, we were find with rainbows and Dolly Varden on the Upper.

We found there to be much better access on the Upper, though fishing from shore was a little difficult. The cloudy water made it impossible to see the bottom and the swift current made it dangerous. There were holes carved out by the water and knee-high boulders that could knock you off balance. Still, there was a good amount of territory we could cover from a few of the spots where people could launch boats. The boats always did better, but we certainly had fun fishing flesh flies and leeches.

If you go:

- The Kenai River has very little access. Best to be on a boat when motors are legal.

- The Kasilof has better access but draws a ton of people.

- Bait, flossing and backtrolling are the three most common methods on the Kasilof. If you want to cast a spey rod, have a plan to get away from people and be prepared to spend a ton of hours at it.

- The Upper Kenai has some great access points. Be careful about wading, but look for pullouts and boat launches for access.

- AirBnBs are around, but a guy in Cooper Landing cancelled our five nights a week before we were supposed to be there. He gave no reason, so we ended up at a 1-star lodge in Moose Pass that didn't have a refrigerator, coffee maker, clock or continental breakfast and there wasn't a restaurant in town open before 9 a.m.

Food:

- The best breakfast was in Seward at the Hotel Seward. It's a 4-table dining area, but very good.

- Louie's in Kenai was a comfortable, busy and excellent place to eat. We only had breakfast there, but it was great.

- There are two breweries in Soldotna, which seems to be the hub for fishing the Kenai and Kasilof Rivers. They complement each other well. Kenai River Brewing had exceptional wings and a great burger, while St. Elias Brewing Co. had excellent pizzas.

- Cooper Landing Brewing has a beautiful tasting room, popcorn and a food truck in the parking lot that had the best burgers we had for the whole trip.

- Homer was cool. We were going to stop by the talked-about Two Sisters Bakery but there was a long line, no menu outside, and we weren't willing to wait for an hour to get a quick look at the menu then have to order. So it may have been awesome, writers from magazines and newspapers back east say it is awesome, but I may never know. I sometimes think people are so excited to tell people where they went, that they don't want to sound like they went all that way to find some obscure, hidden place that was just fair. It sounds a lot better if you say you found the best bakery in the West at the end of a spit in a fishing town in Alaska. But, like I said, when the line didn't move for 15 minutes, we took off.