The Fly Shop800·669·3474

Round trip travel to/from the lodge from Anchorage, Alaska, two fly outs each week (weather dependent) park fees and bed tax, all guided fishing and instruction, use of boats, all meals, limited beer and wine with dinner only, soft drinks and juice Flies provided on the stream as needed. Fishing gear can be provided if requested in advance of the trip.

Not included in your Big Ku Lodge package are fishing licenses, hard liquor, staff gratuities and additional fly-outs. ($450.00 per person)

The Fly Shop® is not in the insurance business, but we recommend Travel Guard coverage as a service with a desire to see your best interests protected. It is impossible to know when an unfortunate situation (loss of luggage, fly rods, illness in the family, or an accident) may occur. However, such things can and do happen, and this insurance can provide a means of recourse against non-refundable financial losses.

• Travel Insurance Information

Saturday
Anchorage Departing Flight – Lake & Peninsula Airlines at 11:00 AM. Arrive Iliamna at 12:00 PM.

Big Ku Lodge Arrival – 12:30 PM
Guests will arrive at the lodge (pending weather and LPA scheduling) by 12:30 PM. Guests will have time to get unpacked and relax before hors d'oeuvres are served at 5:00 PM, followed by the Welcoming Orientation and dinner @ 6:00 PM.

Sunday through Friday:
For the next 6 days, you'll be fishing in one of the most famous fly fishing regions of Alaska. From its location in the heart of the Iliamna-Katmai drainage, the jet boats of Big Ku Lodge will help you access a combination of streams and rivers that are often choked with fish.

Saturday
Big Ku Lodge Departure – 11:30 AM. Arrive Iliamna at12:00 PM. Depart Iliamna at 1:00 PM. Arrive Anchorage, Merrill Field at 2:00 PM

We suggest a departing flight out of Anchorage no earlier than 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM

(Weight limit is 70 pounds total for luggage)

the fishing day, and again for dinner and on into the evening.

The lodge facilities include a main cabin with living and dining room, full bath and kitchen. The two duplex cabins hold two guests per room, with heat, comfortable beds and full private bathrooms in each room.

Meals here are delicious, and prepared fresh daily. Hot and cold breakfasts will be waiting for you each morning; lunches will normally be taken in the field; and dinners are always a special event, preceded by addicting appetizers (and a cold beer or soda) and including well-prepared and presented beef, chicken and fish dishes, shared with a glass of wine where desired. You will not leave here hungry!

For non-anglers, the wilderness surrounding the lodge makes for an amazing backdrop, and it is not unusual to see, from the lodge and on the rivers, brown bears, wolves, moose, caribou and eagles.

Communication is limited, due to the extremely remote nature of the lodge, and is accomplished via radio phone with sister operation, Royal Wolf Lodge. There is limited WiFi available, but it is via satellite, so guests need to realize there is no surfing, or fast messages - only simple emails. Guests who absolutely must have phone contact with the outside world during their stay at the lodge should consider renting a portable satellite phone that is capable of working in the far northern regions.

the bane of fly-out operations, is virtually a non-issue here; morning fog won’t keep you from the water, nor will any but the most severe winds. Even in the worst weather you can always fish the home river, and typically the Little Ku, as well.

At the heart of the Big Ku Lodge boat fishery are the rivers themselves, four jewels that are counted among the finest of what Alaska has to offer in terms of trophy trout.

One of the beauties of this small occupancy, boat-to-fishing lodge format is the flexibility it allows. While Big Ku Lodge is happy to arrange for fly outs for guests at any time they might so desire – planes and pilots from nearby Royal Wolf Lodge can be deployed with 24-hour notice ($450/person - minimum of two anglers), fishermen can be flown to one of the other blue-ribbon stream. Most will not choose this option, as the boat-to fishing is as good, or better. Admittedly, special situations arise that might warrant a fly out during the week, though none involving more or larger fish. Examples may be flying to the upper American River in early summer, where some days big rainbows suck oversized dries off the surface for hours each afternoon; or a flight to the upper Funnel, a magical place for massive trout in the late season; or, serious hikers only, a modest flight and hour-long hike to one of several small streams in the region with 2-5 pound trout in mid-season. You will see almost no other anglers during the season. It is a great option to have, but one we suspect will be lightly used.

The Kukaklek River (Big Ku):
Kukaklek River (Big Ku) is located literally a stone's throw from the front porch of the lodge. More importantly, there are miles of river accessible by jet boat, from the outlet of Kukaklek Lake just upstream, down through the tundra plains and eventually into a deep canyon, which marks the downstream boundary of available water. And while a handful of anglers from other fly out lodges will float from the outlet downstream a short distance, the vast majority of the Big Ku available from the lodge will see almost no outside angling pressure. The lodge's river jet boats can also easily access a large, shallow lake integral to the river, a giant pond that is full of northern pike. These predators are readily caught on brightly-colored streamers (and wire leaders, to mitigate their barracuda-like dentures), but the most exciting method is dragging mouse patterns across the surface… the takes can be quite memorable! Of the four streams, the Big Ku is the one we most often fish with large streamers for trout, usually swung on 15-foot or shorter sinking tip lines; the tight-line grabs can be quite dramatic, and the average size of fish here impressive. For the dry fly enthusiast, there are also grayling here, though few can ever pull themselves away from the big rainbows! While most fishing here is done wading, there are times of the season, and stretches of river where the guides will fish you from an anchored, or rowed jet sled. Nine foot 6 and 7 weight rods are perfect here, and because of the width of the river and the effectiveness of swung streamers, switch rods and light spey gear are also quite popular. As everywhere in this region, there will be some times of the year when dead-drifting egg patterns on floating lines will be particularly deadly.

The Little Ku:
Barely more than a creek, the Little Ku is accessed via a quick (10 minute) boat ride from the lodge to where it dumps its modest flows into Kukaklek Lake. From there anglers will hike upstream, fishing various stretches depending on the time of year. This is fishing in fairly tight quarters, and hooking a 4-pound trout in the small flows is an experience not soon forgotten; not only will you often see the fish before you cast here, but once hooked, the big fish often panic and go airborne, not uncommonly right onto dry land or into overhanging bushes! This is "close fishing" at its best, with the opportunity to hook many big trout in shallow water within 20 feet of your rod tip. Also pouring into the creek during the summer and fall months are beautiful sea run Dolly Varden; visually, imagine 15-22 inch brook trout, in full spawning dress, and you get the picture. These gorgeous fish are almost unbelievably gullible to a dead-drifted egg pattern, and are more than happy to fill in any slow trout periods during the day here. In a normal sockeye salmon escapement year, you will be dumbfounded by the numbers of salmon that ascend this little stream to spawn – it can be quite a visual spectacle. Because of the small size of the stream, nine foot 6 weight rods, floating lines, and dead drifted egg patterns are the de rigueur choice of equipment.

The Moraine River:
Arguably the finest small river trophy trout fishery in the Bristol Bay region. Over the past twenty years more truly enormous, and more astounding numbers of merely big rainbows have been hooked and landed here (as well as lost to overtaxed tackle and anglers) than in just about any other similarly-sized stream in the area. The Moraine is reached by an approximate 40-minute ride in the lodges comfortable “lake boat”, an inboard jet designed to transport anglers in comfort, regardless of the condition of the lake. Once at the river's entry point into Kukaklek Lake, guests are transferred into smaller river sleds, which allow them access to miles of the stream’s prime lower reaches. This mid-sized river is fished by wading, and while streamers and even skated mouse patterns can be superb early and late in the season, most of the really big number days here are achieved by dead-drifting egg beads during the heart of the summer. For those inclined to hit these waters in September, a large flesh fly streamer swung on a sinking tip, or dead-drifted beneath a floating line can be the ticket to a fish of a lifetime. Nine foot 6 and 7 weight rods are standard fare here, though the river is large enough for switch rods and light spey gear to be effective.

Battle Creek:
A relatively short stream between Kukaklek and Battle Lakes is what many serious trout hunters consider the quintessential trophy rainbow stream; it is modest-sized, generally shallow, with a heavy run of spawning sockeye salmon. Add this all up, and you have a lot of large lake rainbows following the mobile salmon buffet into water that is easily waded, and ideal for sight-fishing, to trout that are far larger than what you would normally expect in water this size. It is primarily fished with floating lines and dead-drifted egg patterns, and quite often to sighted trout. When you see one of these big fish suck in your egg in twelve inches of water, and set the hook, you need to be prepared, for you can be guaranteed something dramatic is about to happen. Though the furthest boat ride from the lodge (also in the big lake boat) at about 50 minutes, this is also one of the most intriguing options, as many fly out lodges prefer to avoid it, due to the prevailing wind issues there. The odds are good that on some days, Big Ku Lodge guests may be the only anglers on the water, or at least sharing it with only a small handful of others. Typically, as with the Moraine, guests will be driven across the lake in the comfort of the large lake boat, then transferred to a river skiff to actually enter the river. Again, a 9 foot 6 weight rod is ideal here, though a 7 weight is not really overkill, and there can be days in late season when throwing larger flesh patterns can turn up some huge trout, making the larger rod appealing.