You can definitely fish on your own. Chest waders would be the best to get away from the crowds. When the salmon hit the fresh water, their mouths open up. The tactic to snag them is called flossing, or lining, where you run a 5 or 6' leader through their mouth while they are moving upstream and pull your hook into their jaw or cheek. You don't reel or cast, just basically chuck a rod-lengthed amount of line at 12 or 1 o'clock and pull your sinker back along the rocks. You do this motion over and over until a salmon explodes out of the water. It's fun!
Agreed alaska is the last frontier lived and worked early years in oil field in purdo Bay. My favorite stream was the Russian river several Salomon species in June early Chinook run,your description of hooking stream salmon sounds like you were on reds...
Best salmon table fare mpo only,never cared for sockeye salmon /dog salmon as they pan fried,mushy,usually we canned sockeye or made patties fun to catch tho
Recent years fly in trips from Anchorage to a small inuet village then another puddle jumper to a small out post camp headwaters o a small river for a day then float the stream for two days camping fishing the entire way.
Always wanted to book a trip to the old now closed navel base on the tail end of alucian islands after watching a video when this fish camp opened up mid June silvers are stream running then ole Gary Roach was fishing this fish camp for halibut,ole Gary stuck a few monster butts,largest was over 200lbs,bait was salmon chunks and a 13" white swim bait,sadly never made the trip yet, this stretch of the inlet gets very little fishing pressure hence the huge cows. Great memories thanx for sharing your adventure. Well done.
