The Best
Alaska Fishing Guide
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Flyfisher's Guide to Alaska
by Scott Haugen
Who must get this book: Anyone who fishes Alaska
regularly, flyfishermen and spin casters alike.
Who should get this book: I would recommend
this book to anyone with any interest in fishing Alaska.
ISBN: 193209802X
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I
had been searching for the best new fishing guides for some time and
I got a pleasant surprise when I opened this box from Amazon.com.
I had purchased the book on a suggestion from a forum posting and
had never seen it anywhere. The first thing that struck me was its
shear size, nearly the size of a phone book. Flipping through the
pages revealed great maps and black and white photos. Watching the
page titles flip by, I realized this might be the replacement for
Rene Limeres' Fishing Alaska. (Now
the 3rd Edition of Fishing Alaska
is out and the bar is raised again. But this book still stacks up
pretty well against it. I recommend Alaska Fishing first but this
book is just as valuable for planning an Alaskan fishing trip.)
For those not familiar with Limeres'Fishing Alaska, it is
a 1997 publication that is considered by many to be the bar that few,
if any, guides have ever reached. Unfortunately it has been out of
print for several years now. This book differs from Limeres' book
in a few ways. First the coverage is not quite as extensive. Frankly,
this is fine. To do every trip in the Limeres' book would take several
lifetimes and many of them would run into the tens of thousands of
dollars. Haugen limits his scope to more realistic trips. He also
spends a lot of time with road system fishing. This makes a much more
valuable guide for the average fisherman. I would gladly take Haugen’s
thorough coverage of the Anchorage area fishing over a dozen remote
arctic lakes that I probably will never see.
The book has a nice clean design with some of the best maps I have
seen in a guide. Other than some clumsy salmon run charts, the book
is perfectly designed and laid out. Add to this, well written accounts
for lots of accessible waters (on and off the road system) and you
have a winner.
I should mentioned again that the book is big. It really is the size
of a small city phone book or the Milepost,
so it is not as packable as you might like. It definitely cannot be
tossed into a pocket. But that may be a necessary tradeoff.
Overview
The book starts with a short overview of the fish of Alaska. The descriptions
are brief and don’t explain how to fish each species. That is saved
for the location sections. (If you are looking for a good book on
how to fish individual species, try Flyfishing
Alaska by Anthony Route.)
The bulk of the book is dedicated to fishing locations
in different regions. There are chapters for Anchorage, the Kenai,
Bristol Bay, Kodiak, the Southeast, the Roadsystem, and the Arctic.
This is where the book really shines, each area is well covered and
sections are filled with the authors personal experiences and fishing
tips.
Each river description is broken into a facts area that
covers seasons, regulations (always be sure to check for current regs,
they change regularly,) species present, water characteristics, access
and maps. The length and depth of detail in each river description
changes depending on whether the body of water is worth fishing or
not.
All in all, this is an impressive book. It should be
on the book shelf of anyone who fishes Alaska.
Author
Scott Haugen is an accomplished fishing writer with
a long list of credits to his name including seven books which span
from fishing guides to cook books. He currently lives in Oregon but
has lived a number of years in Alaska and continues to visit often.
For more information about the author, check out his site at www.scotthaugen.com
Other books by the Author
