Royal Wolf Lodge

Guests at Royal Wolf Lodge will start the first day of their adventure in the Lake and Peninsula Airport in Anchorage, where they'll board a flight to the remote community of Iliamna. The flight over the Alaskan interior is absolutely stunning, and a preview of what the rest of the week is going to look like. Once on the ground in Iliamna, the lodge's bush pilot will meet you and take you to a the marine dock on beautiful Lake Iliamna, where you'll take off in a DeHavilland Beaver and fly to the lodge. 

The scenery is even better from the lower altitude, and after about 40 minutes, you'll land on Little Lake and motor up to the dock at Royal Wolf Lodge. From there, the lodge's guides and staff will help you get settled, and you'll enjoy appetizers and cocktails in the beautiful main lodge building. Dinner is served at 6, and you'll enjoy some of the finest cuisine in the Alaskan bush while you enjoy the views of Little Lake and the boreal forest of southwest Alaska's Bristol Bay watershed. 

You might be tempted to have another cocktail or two, but be warned. Breakfast starts at 8 a.m., and the guides will be waiting for you at 9 on the beach of Big Lake. Maybe an early first night is the right call. 

Royal Wolf does things a bit differently. While most lodges have their guests on the water by 8 a.m., lodge proprietor Nate Morris prefers to give his guests a bit more time. Breakfast is ready at 8, and you'll wader up after you're done eating. Then, you'll take a leisurely walk down the hill to Big Lake, where your float plane — either a venerable DeHavilland Beaver or a maneuverable Helio Courier — will be waiting to take you and your fishing buddy to one of several rainbow trout rivers or streams within short flying distance. Because Royal Wolf is centrally located in the Bristol Bay watershed, no flight is too far to reach for these incredible planes.

The bonus for starting later? Most outfitters will pull their clients from the rivers around  3 p.m in order to get them back to their respective lodges for dinner. When you fish with Royal Wolf, you don't meet your flight back to the lodge until 5 p.m. That means you'll be the last anglers off the water. And, when that first big rainbow nails your streamer, you'll appreciate the extra time on the river. 

After shaking the rust off on Day 1, and catching your first legit trophy Alaskan rainbow, it's time to stretch your legs a bit. After a 20-minute flight from Big Lake to a larger lake surrounded by snow-capped Alaskan peaks, you'll follow your guide along a bear trail that tracks along a gorgeous, meandering stream that flows through the black spruce and birch forest. Every time you look at the water, you see nice fish rising to dry flies, but keep walking. About a mile in, your guide stops atop a little bluff and you can see the creek off into the distance — a stunning, small-stream paradise. Small stream, big fish. After catching a couple of two-foot-long rainbows on a Chubby Chernobyl in one pool, you hand your rod to your guide and get the camera out — so you can prove to your buddies back home that this place really exists.

You take your time on Day 3, because the flight to your next destination is all of five minutes long — it's just over the rise from the lodge where your plane will touch down on beautiful tundra lake. Once there'll, you'll hop into a skiff and motor through the lake's outflow into a sweeping, willow-lined Alaskan river. Today, you'll swing streamers and mouse patterns for eager rainbows and, because you're so close to the lake, you might even tie into a beefy lake trout that's moved into the river to eat. This is big water, and when a 20-inch fish grabs your fly, you have to fight both it and the river's rapid current. 

It's time to see one of Alaska's true gems — the Brooks River and Brooks Falls at Brooks Camp, a well-known tourist destination and an incredible trout fishery. Every year, when Bristol Bay's sockeye run climbs the rivers of the drainage, the fish entering the Brooks River must leap over Brooks Falls on their way to spawn. And the falls aren't the only obstacle — sometimes as many as a dozen brown bears position themselves at the lip and the base of the falls while they do a little fishing of their own.

If the salmon are in, the Brooks is an egg-pattern fishery, and the action for big rainbows can be nonstop. If you arrive before the salmon do, the river can be a solid dry-fly river. The bonus to early arrival? You can leave the bear-watching to your guide while you fish. If you're there when the sockeyes are there, you need to keep your head on a swivel. 

Royal Wolf Lodge is located atop a bluff overlooking a stunning Alaskan stream the guides simply call the "home river." If flows from an expansive lake and meets up with another sizable salmon stream and forms the fabled Alagnak. From there, the river flows directly to the sea. You don't fly to this stretch of water, but it doesn't see a lot of boat traffic from other lodges, so it fishes very well. You'll chase trophy rainbows and, near the river's inflow from the lake, huge lake trout. The giant char can push 35 inches and offer up a stellar flight. Farther downstream, you'll fish places with names like "the trout factory" that guides have bestowed on their favorite haunts. After a return to the lodge for dinner and cocktails, one of the guides might just offer to take you out on Big Lake in search of hungry northern pike. Your answer? Uh, yes. 

One of Bristol Bay's most storied rivers, the Alagnak starts when the lodge's home river, the Nonvianuk, meets with the Kukaklek about 10 miles downstream from Royal Wolf Lodge. It's a bit of a boat ride, but the confluence of the two rivers is plenty fishy. Farther down the Alagnak, you'll come to the famous Alagnak braids, where the river spreads out over the tundra, creating some of the most appealing riffles and tailouts an angler can imagine. This is dry-fly country before the salmon arrive, and the rainbows here will gobble up skated mouse patterns with abandon. 

You realize, after nearly a week of fantastic trout fishing, that your guide might have saved the best for last.