Alaska 2023 Seven Days on the Arolik River

I was lucky enough to spend 7 days fly fishing in southwest Alaska on the Arolik River close to the Bering Sea in Aug 2023. Will and Cody were our two intrepid guides from FishHound Expeditions, and they got the four of us onto lots of silver salmon, arctic char/dolly varden, rainbow trout, and grayling (catch and release). The weather was rainy and cold for a few days and then cleared up in the back half of the week which is when I shot most of this footage.

This was one of the more physically demanding trips I’ve done because we tore down camp each morning, floated/waded all day, and then set up camp at the end of the day. I learned a ton and had a great time and if you listen closely, you can hear my happy fatigue in certain parts of the video. The guides and my fellow anglers were very patient with me as the least experienced person on the trip, but I caught far more fish than I expected, especially the incredibly powerful silvers. I fished single handed 8 weight and 10 weigh rods and got most of the strikes on streamers, poppers, and nymphs (with very little success using dry flies or mice).

Some of the footage and pics were taken by Winston Wellborn from FishyBrand (‪@winstonwelborn‬) so thanks to him for letting me use his content (and for inviting me on the trip in the first place). We used DJI action cameras and a DJI drone as well as a GoPro. It was mostly 8-bit footage, and the weather swings resulted in some very dark footage so I tried my hand at color correcting where I could using the incredible Davinci Resolve Studio. I have a long way to go to be proficient at post-production but I’m relatively happy with the result given what I had to work with.

Timecodes
0:00 - Introduction
0:05 – Fly in
0:46 – Silvers Everywhere
5:12 – Drone Montage 1
6:08 - Rainbows
8:25 – Amazing Silver Hole
10:52 – Drone Montage 2
11:26 – Dolly Varden and Grayling
14:01 – Silvers in the Sun
16:29 – Picture Montage

Big thanks to ‪@SimmsFishingProducts‬ and ‪@Fishpondusa‬ and ‪@Sageflyfish1980‬ and ‪@ScientificAnglers‬ and ‪@RIOPRODUCTS‬ and ‪@GalvanFlyReels‬ for making the great gear I used on the trip and to ‪@DJI‬ for creating excellent drones and cameras and ‪@DAVINCIRESOLVESTUDIO‬ and ‪@BlackmagicDesignOfficial‬ for the amazing software for all the post-production work.