It’s Easier Than Ever to Fly to Your Alaskan Fishing Vacation

I’ve frequently argued that a trip to Alaska is the most exotic fishing vacation most Americans can take without exercising their passport. Part of that is because it’s fairly remote – to drive to Anchorage from Seattle, per Google Maps, would take 42 hours and span over 2,200 miles of road. You cannot even drive to the state capitol of Juneau – there are no roads into the borough.

Despite those impediments, it’s remarkably easy to get to Alaska for your next fishing vacation. Anchorage is served by multiple airlines with direct flights from at least 13 cities in the Lower 48, as indicated by the chart below:

For other North American residents, there are also direct flights from Honolulu, Maui and Vancouver.

[Currently, the only direct route outside of this zone is to Frankfurt on Condor (Sunday, Thursday, Saturday from May to September) and Eurowings (Monday, Thursday, Saturday, June to September.]

What this means is that there are a wealth of options, no matter where you live, no matter your schedule, and no matter your airline group allegiance to get you there. It just doesn’t take that long, and on the way there you’ll likely “gain some time” – for those of us on the east coast it’s four hours. In the summer, it feels like even more because it stays light so late. And if you take a redeye home you can sleep off the distance on the way back. When I went in 2019 it was on Alaska through Seattle, and in 2020 we took United through Chicago, in each case breaking up the trip and making it palatable.

Routes To/From Other Alaskan Cities

Anchorage is the Alaskan city best served from the continental U.S., but there are limited routes from elsewhere in the state:

• Fairbanks to Seattle (on Alaska and Delta), Minneapolis (Delta) and Chicago (United)

• Juneau to Seattle

• Sitka to Seattle

• Ketchikan to Seattle

In some cases, if your final destination is elsewhere in southeast Alaska, a Seattle stopover may prove most useful.

Traveling Within the Last Frontier

Once you’re in Alaska, there are various carriers that may get you to other cities. I’ve taken both Ravn and Pen Air from Anchorage to King Salmon, the latter of which has since gone belly up, with some of its routes absorbed by Alaska Air. Flying is a way of life up there – indeed, many of the kids fly to school daily, or to “away” sporting events. Just about everybody seems to have a pilot’s license. On our fishing flyouts we’ve ridden in a number of different floatplanes, including the iconic DeHavilland Beaver. When we visited a dog sledding attraction on a glacier, we rode up in a small helicopter.

At the same time, if you’re flight-phobic or budget conscious, you can still have a great Alaskan (fishing) vacation without leaving the ground once you get there. When my two friends and I went in the summer of 1995, we spent a month living out of a rented Chrysler Concorde and a tent, and we saw a lot and caught tons of fish. Our stops included Denali, Fairbanks, Wrangell-St. Elias, Dawson City (Yukon), Valdez, Homer and Seward, so we hardly deprived ourselves. There’s more to do in the state than you can accomplish in a lifetime.

Notes

• If you will be checking frozen fish as luggage, but have a few days to kill before you’ll be headed home there is fee-storage in the Anchorage airport.

• Unlike some other places we’ve been, the airline employees in Alaska (and on Alaska Airlines everywhere) seem to be unfazed by fishing gear as luggage.

• One of the coolest airport perks I’ve ever seen is the pancake machine in the Anchorage Alaska Air lounge.

• Be sure to get on Alaska Air’s mailing list — they have all sorts of great promotions, like “Buy One, Get One.”

• The King Salmon airport in Bristol Bay was an Air Force base during the Cold War.

We’re headed back this summer. If you’d like to go – or want some advice on your own Alaskan fishing vacation – email us any time.