An overnighter

Josh took off on Monday, but not before getting to spend another couple days on the river.  With the truck packed full of all the car-camping essentials, we motored north in search of a few more rainbow.  The fishing was a bit slow--forcing us to change tactics a bit and work some different flies.  We could see numerous juvenile salmon in the shallows and a few arctic terns splashing down into the water so I'm guessing the rainbows were full of smolts and not very hungry.  I managed to hook into one decent rainbow, giving Karta an up-close-and-personal view of the fight.  Of course, I also lost the fish before giving her an up-close-and-personal sniff of the fish.

One of the wonderful things about car camping is that you can bring a ton of stuff.  By this picture you'd think we brought the hot chocolate . . .

. . . but it's something far more important:

A couple pudgy pies, some baked potatoes and a few sausages on a stick later, our bellies were full and we settled in for some late night sun by the fire.

After a lazy morning, we packed up and drove on a bit farther north to another of our favorite haunts.  It's hard to tell from the picture, but this fish seemed to have some cutthroat in it.

And The Wife, who may need a new set of waders:

One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish

Fish are pretty amazing animals.  It's always interesting to note the wide color variation among fish--even within a single species within a single water body.  Josh and I caught these two rainbow trout this afternoon within a couple hundred feet of one another. 

Of course, mine's a bit bigger . . . for once.

Midnight FMF, part deux

In an effort to not fall too far behind on my blogging, here is a series of pictures from the past couple days.  I normally prefer to sit down with a couple beers and wax poetic (is that what I do in this space?) about the day's adventures, good friends, or whatever else the six readers of this blog might find interesting--but it's after midnight on a school night so you'll just have to deal with a bunch of pictures.  Cheers!

Although the fishing has been slow, our good friends Sam and Liz joined us on the water yesterday.

Since we didn't even leave the house until 3:00, The Wife got to spend all morning gardening and still made the fishing trip.  "It's like having two days," she says.

This time, Josh grabbed a hold of the first fish.  Once again, it was the biggest by an inch or two.

The Wife's ubiquitous feet shot:

Couldn't get Karta to sit still long enough . . . although her stick is well represented:

After losing every Midnight FMF in our boxes, this evening was time to reload.

A forty percent chance

Josh and I got out for a few hours this afternoon.  It was warm and sunny so the rivers were calling a bit louder than the mountains ...

Karta has had a bum wheel for the past couple weeks so this was her first return to action.  It was very exciting for her.

As we drove out of Anchorage, Josh commented that we each had about a 40% chance of catching a fish today.  I generally agreed with his assessment and, for whatever reason, as the day wore on with nothing more than sticks and rocks pulling on my line I started to calculate in my head the odds of both of us getting skunked.  A 40% chance of catching a fish is a 60% chance of not catching a fish ... if two people are fishing and each have the same odds ... what did my old GRE studies teach me? ... 0.60 times 0.60 equals ... Fish on!

And not five minutes later:

'cause there's no weak sauce in Alaska

So Josh came up for what's becoming an annual visit.  The snow was looking good and we decided to harvest some fresh corn.  We'll keep this light on the verbiage, and heavy on the pictures.  Enjoy!

Josh got in on Thursday; by Friday we were skinning up the local peaks under cloud cover . . .

. . . but the clouds didn't hang around for long.  Everything cleared up just as we made the final push.

From the top:

Too busy skiing to take pictures, you'll have to take our word that the down was every bit as fun as you might imagine.

Turning the page to Saturday, we worked our way up North to practice some flexible rod sampling.

Of course, they call it "fishing" and not "catching" for a reason.

With clear skies and a distinct lack of fish willing to take a (our) fly, it was back to the mountains.

Once again, the views were terrible . . .  looking West into Cook Inlet at low tide:

Putting away the skins for the down:

Austin taking a turn:

That wasn't so bad.

And Josh, pooped at the end of the day: