Kenai River Rainbows

It always suprises me when I speak to die hard trout bums how few of them are aware of the Kenai rivers tremendous Rainbow trout fishing. I was driving up the highway heading to the Fred Meyer parking lot in Soldotna to meet my long time friend Ben of Trophy Drifters when I thought of a couple guys who I new were on the peninsula on a month long roadtrip. I dialed up Mike, "so I don't suppose you and your brother would want to fish Bows on the lower Kenai today" suprisingly they did and we all met at the designated location and headed off for some Monster Rainbow fishing.. and we were not let down. We didn't get started untill 10:00 a.m and with Ben having clients coming in at 4 we would have to cover alot of water fast. Minutes into the float Mikes 7wt bent into the cork and his backing was clearing the tip seconds later, it appeared that a 15+ lb bruiser could not resist the sexy chunk of rabbit fur that had passed by its face. The fish powered up and across river and wrapped a rock, Ben rowed to the point of exaustion but to no avail, in the heavy current the fish broke off and made his escape. The saddness was subdued moments later by a double of fiesty 18-20'' fish and the tone of the drift was set. We agreed that there would only be grip and grins with fish over 20", we almost instantly upped the bar to just REALLY big fish... and that was coming. We aggresively fished downstream of any of the cleaning stations and piles of dead King salmon carcasses in the river hooking landing and losing fish like crazy, must have had at least 6 or 7 doubles in a four hour float with around 40 fish brought to the boat. I fished the fiberhammer all day and it was a blast, my biggest fish was probably only in the 22" range but extremely fat, I ended up being the photographer for the day and never did get a glory shot of myself. Mike took M.V.P status with a sexy 28" fish tipping the scales at around 10lbs. All in all it was a very good day with tons of tugs and laughs.. and as always... I can't wait to do it again- If you would like more info on Ben and Trophy Drifters or just some info on how to fish the river without a guide feel free to e-mail me... I love talking fishing