I should start by saying I don’t consider myself a novice fly-fisherman. I lived in New Zealand for many years, and guided many people there, helping many to catch their first trout on a fly-rod. I’ve caught literally hundreds of trout over 5lb on my 6-weight Sage, and I have a 14lb rainbow on my wall, which I caught in a small stream on 6lb test leader with a #12 hook. Since I had never fished Alaska before, I thought it better to trust the "experts". My son-in-law said he had heard that there was good trout fishing around Talkeetna, so I researched guiding services there. We only had time for this one trip, so a jet-boat trip to a "remote" spot sounded attractive. I contacted this company and set-up a day for us to go. When we arrived at the office, I asked if the river we were going up was fishing well. I was told by the receptionist that since they had taken people up the day before, it must be fishing well. We didn’t get a chance to look at the river first, so we trusted the local knowledge. I paid for me and my son-in-law to take the jet-boat trip and to rent some hip waders ($150 total). After paying, we drove to the river and were shocked! It was at flood level, running very fast, high, and dirty. We asked how we were going to fish a river this high, and we were told that we were being taken to small-stream inlets, where the water would come in clear. Again, we trusted the locals! We took the jet-boat up-river for a few miles. So much for remote! We were taken to a stream inlet, but it must have been the only one, because there were boats and fisherman everywhere, trying to fish this same little stream inlet. We fished all morning and caught nothing of course. I can’t express how disappointed I was. My only opportunity to trout-fish in Alaska was ruined for the "love of money".
This service should have been honest and told us that the river wasn’t fish-able. We would have understood, driven south to some small streams that cross the main road and tried the clear ones. On the way up, we did see some small, clear streams but we drove to the well-known place to trout fish! Alaska is well-known for its fishing, and we had looked forward to an opportunity to try it. How sad that our first fishing outing was ruined by this service!