The month of July brought Alaskan summer weather! The first few weeks were spent enjoying endless sunshine & numerous days of 80+degree weather. Afternoon water skiing & tubing became a daily routine. The sockeye salmon run was extremely strong this year with limits being caught the entire month of July and fresh fish still arriving in early August. We are expecting this year’s run to be near 100,000 fish when all sonar counts are tallied. Not bad considering we are the only ones fishing it! In addition to a stellar sockeye migration, the pink salmon returned to the Crescent River providing another species to target. Overall, July was a busy month at RML with the lodge being fully booked with numerous new guests & many familiar faces. Here are a few highlights:

July 1st-5th RML hosted an avid fly fishing couple from Washington State. As sockeye limits were found early in the day, countless dolly varden & arctic char were caught in the afternoon. Each day more & more bears emerged to compliment the beautiful weather. To top it all off, they both caught monster Lake Trout on the fly with Mark setting the new “lodge record”. Rumor has it, the picture is circulating the web as one of those “fact or fiction” photos.

RML celebrated Independence Day with the notorious Pyramid Hike to raise the stars & stripes for the 2009 season. This hike marked the 1st canine ascent in RML history, as lodge security officer, K’eyush, put her paw print in the log book.

On July 9th arrived a family with four boys from the DC area. These kids did their best to keep the guides busy with lots of fishing and nightly tubing around the lake. Patrick (age 9) became our first guest of the 2009 Water Sport season, logging the most time on the tube.

The afternoon of July 12th brought about a last minute Pyramid hike. The trek was comprised of guests from 3 different groups at the lodge. The team assembled and departed for the trailhead at 2pm with everyone reaching the summit by 5:30. Despite the annoying black flies, the mountain was conquered!

On July 16th, Wayne arrived bringing some Redoubt Mountain Lodge veterans in pursuit of “dime bright” sockeye salmon. With one to two thousand new fish arriving daily, guests were hooking up with each cast. This creates what we refer to as “boiling water”; when a seemingly quiet fishing hole suddenly erupts with a large run of fish just arriving—exciting to experience.

Fishing continued to remain “red hot” through the end of the month and into August leaving us wondering when they will ever stop. Mid-August may allow for some overlap of sockeye and silver salmon…we can’t wait!