Help!
Our family leaves for Alaska next week and we still can't decide on a fishing guide. Our kids are 11 and 7. We are considering Chet's fishing service out of Soldotna ($125 per person). Any feedback or referrals would be appreciated. We are novices and are looking for a 1/2 day fishing charter. Who cleans and fillets the fish? Who should we consider and more importantly who should we avoid. Thank you...

Take a look at Gary Kernan's site (alaskafishon .com) and see if that is what you are looking for. He does full and half-day trips. Used him 6 years ago for a half-day salmon fishing trip and was satisfied.

If you do land a fish, I recommend bringing it to a local processor for the cleaning, filleting, and shipping home. Your fishing guide will be able to recommend someone in the area.

On most guided trips I am familiar with, either the Captain, of, if there is one, the dechand will clean and fillet your catch. You would then need to take it to a processor for smoking or freezing, wrapping, and shipping, presuming you are going to ship it home.

I have always figured about a 20-25% tip (of the price of the trip) to the crew, which should cover both the trip and the fish cleaning.

Thanks for the advice. We have returned from Alaska!!! We went with Gary Kernan's guide service out of Soldotna. They were able to coordinate things at the last minute for us. Our wonderful guide Bill was professional, patient with the children and was a great conversationalist when the fish weren't biting. We only caught one fish but had a positive experience. Thanks MileKing for the feedback. One thing I realized while out on the Kenai River was that many of the Charters we were considering were all on the same river in similar boats at the same time. Just a thought...BTW the salmon tasted great that night!

Hey, Okay, thanks for posting upon your return, but it'd be so much easier for people to find out about what worked for you if you'd post one big trip report. Thanks!
Speedy