Paddling the little susitna

This weekend will be taking the kayak down the little susitna on a hunt. Other guys going will be in a drift boat so they can haul my meat!  But also planning on tossing a line in on the way down, mainly for dinner.

Big question I have is any considerations for floating an extremely windy river (nothing over class 1 rapids) with a line in the water....what I guess you would call trolling but it would be in front (?)

So I loaded up the kayak to make sure everything fits. Will be wearing drysuit/PFD and everything secured in drybags (front seat and small space behind rear seat). I have emergency paddle, guy rope for kayak recovery.

I don't have much experience floating small streams but my recollection of the little Su is to be careful of the jet boats that at least used to run up the little susitna. 

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G890A using Tapatalk

Well that was fun.  I don't recommend trying to troll and paddle a curvy river. Way too much going on. Only dumped over once and glad I practiced falling out of the kayak.  Trout were good, saw some reds, but no silvers at all.

So did you troll right through the Devil's Canyon?  Oh, wait, that's on the Big Susitna, not the Little Susitna.

Some years ago I did a nine-day whitewater kayak trip in which we launched where the Denali Highway crosses the MacLaren River, and paddled several days down the MacLaren and the Susitna to a point about ten miles above the Devil's Canyon, which we were definitely not interested in running.  Then we did a four-mile portage with 650 feet of altitude gain to Stephan Lake, and ran Prairie Creek and the Talkeetna River down to Talkeetna. The Talkeetna was up pretty high, and had a lot of read-and-run Class IV.  It was a fun trip. 

On the trip I caught some grayling from shore for dinner.  I didn't troll for salmon from my kayak.  Fortunately there wasn't any salmon run in progress, because floaters have reported seeing 30 bears on the 8 miles of Prairie Creek when a salmon run is in progress.  We didn't see any bears on Prairie Creek, which was just fine with me, as the creek is narrow, fast, and generally lined with alders on both shores.  Not a lot of room to avoid bears.