A River Runs Through Them: Family-Owned Lodge Makes A Home On The Kasilof River

The following appears in the June issue of Alaska Sporting Journal:

BY CHRIS COCOLES

Father-son fishing trips to Alaska eventually led the Chulick family to make the Last Frontier a family business destination.

Mike Chulick, his wife Tammy, their kids Alex and Jessica, and even their pup Sarge – affectionately known as the resort’s “Hospitality Specialist” – have teamed up for their Kenai Peninsula venture, the Anglers Haven Lodge along the fish-filled Kasilof River (907-201-2007; 49anglers.com). Their resort has become a special family-run operation in a special place for the Chulicks. Now they all play a role in fulfilling a dream that formed years ago.

FALLING FOR THE LAST FRONTIER

As a young family settling in in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Mike and Alex Chulick bonded over the outdoors.

“He’s always been my sidekick for hunting and fishing. We’d hunt in Wyoming when he was 4 or 5 and I’d be carrying him around on my shoulders for the whole day with me,” Mike Chulick recalls of his son.

One of his prized possessions hangs on the wall in his makeshift office at the lodge near Soldotna: a mounted buck father and son combined to harvest during a Cowboy State deer hunt when Alex was a boy.

The outdoorsy life became a conduit that Mike and Alex could share together, just as it was when Mike was a fishing and hunting kid in his native Cumberland, Maryland, home in the Appalachian Mountains. Now it was Alex’s turn to experience what his father enjoyed as a young outdoor adventurer. Alaska became their muse.

“I started bringing my son up here on fishing vacations when he was 8 years old in 2008,” Mike Chulick says. “We started an every-other-year thing and it became more of an annual thing as he got into his midteen years.”

Mike knew Alex was hooked right out of the chute.

“We fished north of Anchorage, where Montana Creek drains into the Little Su (River). The chum salmon were in thick, as were the pinks. We were trying for silvers but weren’t finding any. But do you think that matters to an 8-year-old?” Mike recalls.

“We’re throwing Vibraxes with spinning rods. His first fish was getting into this giant buck chum. It was the funniest thing ever – this little kid trying to land this great big salmon and yelling at me, ‘What do I do?!’ But he did it all on his own. We pulled that chum in and I had to explain to him that it was a colored-up chum. But being an 8-year-old kid, we had to keep it and try to make table fare out of it. It might not have gone well, but it was OK. Later on that trip we went down to the Kenai and we caught some silvers and sockeye.”

Ensuing getaways convinced a now coming-of-age Alex Chulick that Alaska was a place he wanted to return to on a more permanent basis. “He absolutely fell in love with coming up here,” his father says.

Alex didn’t wait long – two days after high school graduation, to be precise – to pursue a deckhanding gig on a Kodiak fishing boat.

“He found a company that was looking for summer help, went out there to Larsen Bay and spent the summer there,” Mike Chulick says. “The following year he moved over to the Kenai Peninsula and went from the saltwater to freshwater and worked drift boats on the Kasilof River and did some deckhand work out of Seward. And then he went and bought his own drift boat and went independent.”

After that first chum salmon catch came Alaska expeditions fairly frequently for Mike and Alex as the latter got older. They hit up a trio of magnificent places – the three Ks, if you will – Kodiak, Ketchikan and the Kenai. They were all wonderful trips, but Mike would eventually be connected most with the Kenai Peninsula.

“When Alex got in with his initial employer on the Kenai after his year in Kodiak, I came up to stay with him and that’s when I really got to know the area,” says Mike Chulick, who at some point along the way befriended area lodge owner Randy Berg, who’d provide plenty of intel about this vast region of Southcentral Alaska that makes Lower 48 outdoor adventure seekers swoon.

“Of all the places we’ve been in Alaska, this one has the best balance of any of them,” Chulick says. “This has the freshwater; this has the saltwater; it’s got accessibility.”

And it was a place he wanted to someday make a new life out of.

THROWING A CHANGEUP

Chulick was in the ROTC program during his college years at Penn State. He’d soon embark on a two-decade military career, and that’s where he met his future wife Tammy. When their service time ended, they worked together for 18 years in consulting for the federal government in security and defense preparedness.

Retirement – at least from that sector – seemed to be approaching, and Alex Chulick didn’t need to make too much of a sales pitch with his parents on the idea of relocating to Alaska.

“Right around 2019, before Covid, we decided that we’d like to buy a lodge. Nothing worked out for us at that time. So we would wait until we were a little bit older and retire when we’d be around 60,” Mike Chulick says. “What happened in between was (Alex) went independent and started looking for a one-bedroom or two-bedroom cabin to be able to have a place to park his boat and live here in the summer guiding as an independent contractor. And as we’re shopping for this, we stumbled across this non-operational lodge on the Kasilof River. And Alex was already drifting the Kasilof and he said, ‘Mom, Dad, this is the place. If we can get something on the Kasilof, this is where we want to be.’”

The Kasilof wasn’t exactly on the Chulick’s radar during their explorations of the Kenai years earlier.

“We didn’t even know about the Kasilof at that time. One of the little-known gems at that time was the Kasilof fishing when everyone was Kenai, Kenai, Kenai (River). We found out that there were some gems here that were nicer than the Kenai.”

Just like the rest of the Last Frontier, the Kenai Peninsula is an intriguing place to get to know better.

“Without leaving the (Kenai) again,” Chulick says, “I can explore until I die and not even come close to seeing it all.”

PURCHASING A FIXER UPPER

While the old lodge had the “three L’s of location, location, location” that most tempted Mike Chulick, it also wasn’t love at first sight or instant curb – riverside? – appeal. The way the previous owner had set up his compound needed some creative changes.

“It had a quirky vibe. We’ve changed the vibe since then. From the air … it looked like a military compound. With a little bit of imagination, it has a little more of an Alaskan lodge vibe because it didn’t have one when we bought it. But it had the essentials – sound buildings, a common area that looked like it could be made into a central gathering point. And it had a nice location on the Kasilof. When you’re running a guide service it’s nice to be a half-mile from the launch instead of 20 miles.”

And the previous owner – “a nice gentleman,” Mike recalls – who would eventually sell to the Chulicks was based in Hawaii and longed to sell his business to buyers just like Mike and Tammy, who wanted to start a small, family-operated establishment.

“He sold to us at a little bit less than his original asking price. So we ended up buying this lodge. It was not operational,” Mike says.

“We sold our place in Colorado and then we sold (Alex’s permanent) place in Wyoming, and we combined all the family assets and are trying to make a go of the place. We had customer zero on the books when we bought it, so we had to build it up from absolutely nothing. We’re still in the process of trying to build the lodge up and establish a customer base.”

A WORK IN PROGRESS

Calling what’s now known as Anglers Haven Lodge a labor of love must emphasize the word labor, because the Chulick family is constantly working to improve their investment.

“Two factors on why this property: Because of where we were in our lives financially and everything else, buying a fully operational lodge with an established book of business was probably not realistically within our means,” Mike says. “Buying a place that we could build up and afford with our income level at the time was far more advantageous for us. The slow and steady approach for us is better. The lodge was in good enough condition to where it could be operated immediately and make gradual improvements … I wouldn’t call it turnkey, but close enough.”

And sweat equity will hopefully pay off handsomely as the Chulicks put their own twist on the lodge they envision. They spruced up some of the exterior aesthetics of the grounds. They added kitchens to all four studio units (guests cook their own meals).

New furniture and mattresses went into all the sleeping rooms among the four studios, two-bedroom dwelling and the house that sat on the property when it was on the market and is now designed to be an extra-large, two-story rental unit to accommodate as many as 12 guests.

“It’s been one project after another. Constant work,” Mike says with a laugh. “We underwent a crash course of remodeling certain units and refurbishing everything.”

“Over two years we went on a rebuilding renovation campaign. We stained the exteriors of the buildings, we rebuilt a deck area, added a wood-burning fireplace out there and new grills. We basically made the place more functional and more attractive. We’ve still got some work to do.”

One amenity that the family is excited about is soon being able to process caught fish right onsite rather than having to take the harvests into Soldotna, which can get extremely busy during the high seasons of salmon runs on the Kasilof and other Kenai fisheries.

“We’re working on a master plan. We haven’t finished it yet,” Mike admits of new ideas buzzing around the family’s heads.

COME FOR THE FISH, BEAUTY

One of the first times Mike Chulick traveled from Anchorage to Soldotna for what became his home base on the Kenai impacted his perception of how amazing this region can be.

“You’re headed down the Cook Inlet on the Turnagain Arm. And all those mountains, the amount of snow, and then the lush green hills in late July. From a scenery perspective, I’ve been all over the globe. But it was an ‘oh my gosh’ kind of ‘just look at this. This looks amazing.’ And then when you follow the Kenai down with those turquoise waters before you get down to Soldotna, it’s just a truly beautiful river. The whole thing just captures your attention and puts you in a state of awe.”

Running their lodge near the less busy Kasilof River is perfect for the kind of vibe Anglers Haven Lodge wants to present. Unlike the power boat fleet that plies the more popular Kenai River, the Kasilof’s drift boat fishery makes for a peaceful setting.

When he’s not busy – and most of the fishing season he is – Mike Chulick likes to just enjoy the quiet time.

“The scenery on the place was nice and the river itself, there’s something magical on the Kasilof with the glacial flow and the fact that you’re not listening to power boats all the time. You can sit out there on the bluffs and it’s absolutely mesmerizing. If you’re not careful, you can lose a whole afternoon sitting there doing nothing.”

So far, the reviews from guests at this fledgling lodge have been good. Alex Chulick, who does much of the heavy lifting while guiding guests on the water, will often take the drift boat to shore when fishing is a little slow and prepare a salmon meal for anglers after catching a fish or two. The Chulicks added heaters for their drift boats to keep anglers comfortable on those chilly mornings.

The next step is getting more potential Alaska visitors to book reservations at Anglers Haven Lodge.

“How to market to people is still a mystery. That’s one we’re still trying to figure out,” Mike Chulick says. “It’s a good thing that I worked with helping grow some small businesses in the consulting realm. The business sense of how to run a business transferred over to the nuances of running a lodge. You learn on the fly and make a lot of mistakes. Customer service is customer service. If you like people, you want to show people a good time, experience Alaska and have fun; that just comes natural.”

And as the summer begins to heat up, those wanting an Alaska fishing vacation will have a chance to savor one of the Last Frontier’s most pristine environments and some outstanding salmon and trout fishing. Mike Chulick hopes what drew his family to the shores of the Kasilof will become infectious.

“Right now our expansion focus is trying to get people to recognize that the second half of the year here is really good fishing,” he says. “You’ve got coho salmon, and the Kasilof has a steelhead run of fish that are very much worth catching.”

Sounds like heaven for anglers. ASJ

Editor’s note: Follow Anglers Haven Lodge on Facebook and Instagram (@anglershavenlodge).