Jim Voss | Kenai Riverside

Captain Jim Voss - Kenai River & Kasilof River Fishing Guide

Hi! I’m Captain Jim Voss the owner and manager of Kenai Riverside.

I grew up in Kenai Alaska and attended Kenai High School – go Kards! After high school I attended Montana State University where I earned both a bachelors degree and masters degree in electrical engineering. After college I was hired by Hewlett Packard where I worked on a number of different technologies over a 10 year period of time. I started out working on high performance computer chips and eventually spent the majority of my time at Hewlett Packard working on imaging products such as flatbed scanners and digital photography. Eventually I was in charge of business team strategy for the entire $2B imaging organization.

While at Hewlett Packard I met a great group of aviation enthusiasts who took me under their wing and after only a couple months working at HP I had already earned my private pilots license and developed a love for aviation

While at HP I continued to learn more and more about aviation and kept increasing my education and experience in the field until I had achieved every rating a person could get in a fixed wing aircraft – Single Engine Private Pilot, Single Engine Instrument Pilot, Single Engine Commercial Pilot, Multi-Engine Commercial Instrument Pilot, Single & Multi-Engine Instrument Instructor Pilot. The only thing missing was ATP (Airline Transport Pilot) – The rating you get when you fly for the commercial airlines.

After leaving HP I helped lead the expansion of the worlds largest video security company – Pelco. For the next 10 years we would grow the company until selling it to a large French conglomerate called Schneider-Electric.

After leaving Schneider-Electric an opportunity to fly commercial airliners presented itself and gave me the chance to earn that one last rating I did not have – Airline Transport Pilot! For the next two years I flew a CRJ-900 under the American Eagle brand.

I would have never thought that I’d have pictures and memories of 3 generations of my family fishing the Kenai River. I never expected that 30 years apart I’d have pictures of my daughters standing on the same river banks that I stood on and fished at their exact same age.

This picture shows my daughters Keilli and Sydney getting their rods ready to go fishing at Centennial Camground in Soldotna, Alaska – the same spot my parents used to take us to fish when my brothers and I were that age.

The river is a little more developed today than it was in 1984. But the glaciers continue to create the relentless discharge that brings back salmon by the millions every summer and the river still flows the exact same path it did 30 years ago.

In 2014, I brought my daughters to Alaska to experience the magic of the Kenai River and unknowingly started a journey that would bring me back to Alaska.

I hadn’t intended on making Alaska a permanent part of my life again but my kids loved it so much they wanted to visit Alaska every summer. The picture shown here was the from the first day they ever came to Alaska. For me, it also symbolizes the day that led us to start Kenai Riverside and share this special place with everyone.

They spend most of their time in college now but still spend a lot of their summer helping us to run our resort, joining our guests and friends on hikes to glaciers, viewing bears, fishing, socializing in the evenings and more.

I sincerely invite you to take a look at the gallery below of just a few of the picture and friends we’ve been so fortunate to meet over the years. Please consider making some memories of your own with us.

People and families begin their relationships with us as customers but inevitably they leave as friends. I wouldn’t want it any other way.