On opening day of fishing on the Upper Anchor, we trekked for miles, back into the far reaches of the Upper Anchor wilderness in search of big Dollies.  This is a well-known feeding ground for the big coastal brown bears, so we kept a firearm handy at all times. 

There are many, many miles on the Upper Anchor, and it all had been closed to fishing until this morning. A few anglers were fishing it, but not many, and everyone was fishing within a mile of the road crossing. Rumor had it that this is where the big ocean-run Dollies could be found. After tasting a few of them, we decided we needed more ... and Andy hooked one, of course, before I even made it to the river.

Andy got this fish on a bead on his first cast.  This was shaping up to be an incredible day of fishing.

These fish are tough fighters, much like a steelhead but they jump more.  Andy slipped a bead underneath the overhanging brush on the far bank and a big fish pounced on it.

The fish finally gave up, and ended up on a stringer.  Every bend of the river was full of fish like this.  

I caught this nice Dolly on my beadhead dayglow woolly worm.

This is a typical Dolly Varden from the Anchor - about 15 inches long. 

 Some of them were just starting to show their spawning colors.

But this one was still bright chrome from the ocean.

Here's another beautiful Dolly Varden.   

Kings were spawning all over the upper Anchor, so we fished egg patterns behind the spawners.

Andy poses with most of our limit of Dollies. We caught around 40 or 50 apiece and kept the choicest ones.

Then, we visited our relatives in Soldotna - thanks for everything David and Judy!  We enjoyed a delicious meal of Alaskan-style Kenai River sockeye salmon, and headed back toward Anchorage under the cover of darkness.  We had to find a bush pilot in Anchorage, so we wanted to leave plenty of time, but we didn't make it.  Moose kept jumping out in front of The Corolla, and fog and rain made driving difficult.  I got very tired.  We had to pull over, pitch our tent, and sleep.  The next day, we woke up early and quickly threw all our gear in the car and headed for the Lake Hood Seaplane base, to hire an air taxi.