THE LOWER KENAI RIVER

The Lower Kenai-River, as defined for this webpage, is the lower 50 miles of river--from the outlet of Skilak Lake to the mouth of the Kenai River at the city of Kenai, Alaska, where the River empties into Cook Inlet.

It is this lower 50 miles of the Kenai River that I fish exclusively. I have nothing against the Upper River. It is gorgeous, and fun to fish. But, all of the fish species I target--Kings, Silvers, Sockeye, Rainbows, Dollys, or Pinks--are also in the Lower River in greater numbers and larger sizes. The Upper River has Lake Trout that I can't find in the Lower River, but I don't target this species.

Following is another map that shows campgrounds, boat launches, and day-use areas along the Lower Kenai River. These are just the City, State, and Federal facilities. There are scores of private RV parks and campgrounds, lodges, bed and breakfasts, and cabins available along this reach of river; far too many for me to list them here. I provide this listing because many of these facilities provide river access, which will be discussed shortly.

On the Lower Kenai River I have heard of people occassionally catching a King Salmon from shore and landing it. Usually it happens when they are fishing for Sockeye or Silvers, because knowledgeable fishermen simply don't target the big Kings from shore.

My guess is that for every King successfully landed from shore, another 99 free themselves after breaking the angler's line, and often his/her rod too. Imagine for a minute that you snagged into an 80-pound log floating down the middle of this big, fast river. It would be very hard to pull this inanimate log back up against the current to land it. Now, add the power of a mighty King Salmon to that log, and you can see that the fight is extremely one sided, in the salmon's favor, especially because it is nearly impossible to chase a hooked fish downstream any distance due to the dense vegetation on the shoreline, right to the water's edge. For this reason, about 99 percent of all Kings caught in the Kenai River are caught from boats.

There are great boat launch ramps distributed throughout the Lower Kenai, most of them shown on the map above. Once you know the River, you can fish it with your own driftboat, cataraft, or even a cartopper aluminum boat. I don't advise anyone to launch their boat and explore this big, fast river without first having accompanied an experienced riverboat guide to learn the ropes. It is not like fishing your local pond or small lake. Currents in the river can be very fast, huge, barely submerged rocks lie in wait for the unwary, and sweepers line the banks in many areas. The water is cold, coming from glacial meltwater lakes. Fun and excitement can turn to tragedy in an instant. I'm not trying to scare you too much, but I do want to adequately impress you that you need to learn something about the river before you venture onto it in your own boat.

Sockeye, Silver salmon, Rainbows, and Dolly Varden can all be successfully angled from shore. But to do that, you must know where you can get shoreline access. Much of the riverbank is privately owned, and much of the publically owned shoreline is far from any roads. For this reason, you need to seek out the public access sites listed on the map above, or else stay at a lodge, cabin, hotel, or RV park that offers shoreline access as part of their package.

Most of the public access sites have installed steel grated fishing "boardwalks" along the riverbanks. This was done to stop shoreline trampling by the thousands of bank fishermen who visit the Kenai each year. The shoreline protection has been wildly successful (see my writeup about it; last button under the "Kenai River" tab). You will usually have a choice: fish from the boardwalk, or wear chest waders and enter the river from the boardwalk and fish there. The latter is by far the better method during the Sockeye Salmon runs. Most of these public boardwalks were installed from three to four feet above the river's water level during the height of the salmon runs. They were installed this high to protect them from the ravages of the current during flooding. Unfortunately, they are hard to fish from for Sockeye Salmon. For this reason, during the Sockeye Salmon runs a good set of chest waders will give you a big advantage over the fishermen who are boardwalk-bound.