Northern Alaska

Fishing Northern Alaska Northern Alaska is Arctic Alaska; the most remote and harsh region of the state of Alaska. Northern Alaska, lacking the salmon runs, which provide economic income to other regions, relies primarily on mining to sustain itself. Around Prudhoe Bay, the oil fields in northeastern Alaska provide about twenty percent of the United States’ oil consumption and, through royalties, a great share of Alaska’s state budget. The industries associated with the oil -construction, pipeline manufacturing, transportation- provide the state and local region with a healthy income. Northern Alaska is famous for its harsh weather, with freezing days and nights. The average year-round temperature for Barrow, the northernmost city in the region, is a chilly 15.3 degrees. However, there are areas of the North that are not an icebox all year round. In the protected areas south of the Brooks Range, temperatures may reach up to 70 degrees in the summer.

Alaska is the largest state in the U.S., with a total of 570,373 square miles. You could fit the state of Texas almost two and a half times into Alaska, Florida ten times, or Rhode Island five hundred times! The entire expanse of Alaska accounts for roughly twenty percent of the total American surface area. On a world map, Alaska covers fifty-seven degrees; thirty-four minutes of longitude between fifty-two and fifty-four degrees latitude. That is an amazing amount of land!

 

Western Alaska

Northern Alaska Fishig Lodges For millennia, Western Alaska has been the home of Inupiat, Yupik, Aleuts and Athabascans. Anthropologists seem to agree that the first North Americans either walked or boated across the now-submerged Bering Land Bridge-what is now a 55-mile gap-perhaps 13,000 years ago and then spread across Alaska and down the continent.

A lot of Alaska’s deep-see fishing occurs here, off the coast of Western Alaska. Kodiak Island, Bristol Bay, and Unalaska serve as home to fleets of salmon and crab fishing boats.

Because of the proximity to the sea, the Aleutian Islands and the Alaska Peninsula enjoy fairly moderate climates. However, fog, rain, high winds, and a lack of continuous sunshine lend a different mood to the region. Nome, in the northern reaches of the Western Region, has a dry, colder climate, but the extreme northwest is devastated by large storms from the Bering Sea every October and November.

Kodiak is the largest city in the Western Region, with a population of about fourteen thousand. Kodiak is Alaska’s largest island, and is also one of the largest fishing ports in the nation. The largest land-going omnivore resides here, the Kodiak brown bear, as well. Kodiak is a fisherman’s town, with canneries, with fishing vessels harbored in St. Paul and St. Herman bays. One of the new points of interest new to the island this year is the Kodiak Maritime Museum. Many visitors to the island enjoy hiking, kayaking, fishing, hunting and staying in the remote wilderness cabins scattered over the island. Events of note include the Silver Salmon Derby, Iron Man Triathlon, and the Kodiak Salmon Celebration.

Katmai National Park and Preserve covers 6,250 square miles of the Western Region, near the top of the Alaska Peninsula, and west of Cook Inlet. The weather of the Katmai National Park and Preserve is terrible, but people who come here do so for two amazing reasons- brown bears and volcanoes! The huge brown bears gather at Brooks Falls each July and September to catch the red salmon, which have the Naknek River to spawn in Naknek Lake. Katmai originally gained worldwide recognition in 1912 when a massive volcanic eruption created the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. Fishing, boating and kayaking are popular here, especially kayaking, where kayakers can embark on a seventy to ninety five mile loop through Naknek Lake’s North Arm, Lake Grosvenor, the Savonoski River and back through Naknek Lake’s Iliuk Arm.