Top 5 flies for fly fishing Alaska

Here are my top 5 flies for fishing in Alaska

Hi, I’m Steven!

I moved to the small Alaskan town of King Salmon in 2017 to pursue my dream of fishing and living in Alaska. I have been fishing and guiding in the Alaskan wilderness for 10 years guiding hundreds of clients each year to catch fish of a lifetime in all types of conditions.

In this post, I want to help you come prepared for your fishing trip to Alaska whether it is with us or anywhere else! Knowing which flies to bring can certainly be a challenge if you have never been to Alaska before, below I will give you my top two Salmon flies, and top two trout flies, and a bonus fly. Later this spring season (2023) I will cover the top 5 flies for each species!

Salmon flies for Alaska

There are a few things to consider when selecting a salmon fly, the most important is going to be which species you are targeting. In Alaska, most rivers recive at least 2 species of pacific salmon annually and some receive 5.

Top fly for King Salmon / Chinook

Many of you will want to target King salmon, so here is my top fly for King Salmon or Chinooks. I would hands down always pick an intruder fly, we have found that dark colors with hot spots of blue or red work best!

This fly is best swung across the river on heavy sink tips as we regularly find kings resting in deep holes. If you find a willing fish to prepare for the fight of your life, these fish will turn into the current and use their enormous size to test you and your gear!

Top fly for Silver Salmon / Coho

I would consider the silver salmon second only to the King regarding their raw power and fighting strength. The silver salmons’ ability to rapidly change direction and willingness to launch themselves airborne at any point after being hooked makes them a worthy opponent for any fisherman.

If I was heading out Silver fishing and I could only take one fly it certainly would be one tied with material that brings a lot of action to the fly pulsing with each strip. The Dirk Wiggler would be an excellent choice although not the only option but the wiggler or something similar would have you jumping fish all day!

Top Trout flies for Alaska

Custom Leech + Bead = Secret to big 30” fish

I could spend all day writing about all the flies someone might bring to fish for trout in Alaska. The reality is that there are two staples you could fish the entire season with just these two, leeches & a “bead” the bead while not technically a fly catches fish. I will cover more flies in another blog post about fishing for trout.

Leech flies and variations of them will consistently catch trout of all sizes all year long. Some of my favorites are Wicket's ODB Leech that we customize into trout colors. (Black, grey, brown, green). Dolly lamas are an Alaskan staple, but be aware they can be heavy to cast on a fly rod but they do work well in smaller sizes. I’ll be honest here I am extremely biased toward two-handed fly rods so again intruders, in this case, micro intruders tied for trout prove to be consistent in producing fish.

Bead fishing love it or hate it, there is no denying some of the biggest native species are caught using beads every single year in Alaska. When it comes to picking which beads it would be impossible for me to give you a particular single color or size.

So my tip would be that I tend to pick smaller beads when water clarity is good and bigger when it is poor. I tend to favor slightly molted beads. It could be purely anecdotal but I have caught more fish on those than the really bright fresh looking ones.

Absolute guide secret here and honestly I should gatekeep but the truth is I really care that you catch some amazing fish and this is how I do it for my clients year after year. I combine the two Leech + bead.

So what you do is before you tie on the fly take your favorite bead color and slide it on your tippet/leader but don’t peg it. Then tie on your favorite leech fly and BAM an absolute trout magnet! So basically an egg-sucking leech pattern but even better you can customize the colors on the river and the bead looks much more realistic than some tying material.

Bonus fly

You might be wondering what fly patterns you should buy for sockeye fishing, well not to worry it’s not “patterns” there is only one, the Russian river fly.

Don’t spend unnecessary money buying a bunch of different flies for sockeye the truth is they don’t bite. Yes, I know every year there are a couple of articles written about how some guy that some guy knew had one bite. Yes I’ll admit once in a while when the fish are on their spawning beds they will occasionally bite but I would guarantee my entire season I’ll be limited out with my fish in about 30 minutes while that guy is still waiting for one to bite.

I have made a video on how to tie a Russian river fly or you can buy them at most Alaskan fly shops and big-box sports stores.

I won’t be covering how to fish for sockeye in this post but it’s in the works so don’t forget to follow me to be updated!

Thanks for stopping by,

Steven Benjamin