Back in the Saddle

Now that I've totally alienated my readership* by taking yet another prolonged hiatus, I figured it's well past time to get back on the blogging horse and provide some sort of update.  Things are starting to crank back up in Southcentral and it's already late May so I'll gloss past our epic snow year and stick to the fishing.

As I mentioned in my last post, this year was all about fishing--even in the dead of winter.  To that end, Sam and I kicked things off with some very early season fishing.

We turned down a powder day for this?

We both had hall passes from our familial obligations and met up with a bunch of friends the night before that had rented a house outside of town to catch a concert.  Suffice it to say that I can only pretend to party like I'm still 20 . . . and standing in 32-degrees water when it's snowing is a great hangover cure . . . even if the fish aren't cooperative.

* * *

Our first day out with the drift boat came sometime in April, and was a success.**  Grandma Jan was up visiting Mason and, once again, set the bar.  We ultimately tied into three fish that cold day, which was spectacular given the conditions and the short amount of time we were on the water, but only got one fish to the boat.

Jan, working on her grip-and-grin.

The Wife, taking advantage of Mason napping.

The Wife and I have been trying to think of a name for the drift boat.  Given the fact that Jan was about the only person on the entire river to catch a fish that day, and the success my mom had out of the boat last year when she came up to visit Mason, we might need to think about this developing trend as we consider our options.

* * *

Moving ahead in the calendar, not long ago I found myself down south a ways for work and had the opportunity to get out for the day.  It was classic Alaskana.  At various points we saw snow, rain and hail--and I still managed to get a mild sunburn.  We dodged humpbacks on the way out, chased steelhead in very skinny water all day, then had to evade a grizzly family on the way back.

Always fish the undercut bank.

* * *

The last real development is that I'm committing myself to spey casting for the next month or so.  I have a longer switch rod that I'll be using with the hopes of focusing on slightly different water than I usually fish.  It's early season, so you never know.

I've also been hitting the vise a fair amount this past week and tying up various tube flies, so we'll see how that turns out.  It's all new to me, but I came across this post and figured I'd give it a whirl.

Meet Mr. and Mrs. Sculpin.  The cones are separate from the rest of the fly.

* * *

So there you have it.  Now let's see, what got left out . . .

Well, for one thing, Mason now crawls and can't stay away from The Pooch's water bowl, which is constant entertainment--for Mason, at least.  I'm pretty sure he looked at me and said "dad" yesterday, but since he's only nine months old it was probably a coincidence. After all, "dad" sounds awfully similar to every other sound he makes.

I have a new job as of last week, which promises to be a significant upgrade as far as actually getting shit done.

And finally, The Blog is undergoing a bit of a revision.  Nothing formal, but if all things go according to plan you should notice a subtle change in content.  Although I take care not to specify where I fish, I'm a bit tired of providing the local fishing report so it's time to shake things up.  Stay tuned.
______________________

* Hi Mom.

** Hell, every day in the drift boat is a success--I could float circles in a mud puddle day after day and not get bored.

Belize

Russ on the lookout for permit.

So, in case you were wondering, Belize is awesome.  This was the first real vacation The Wife and I had taken together, and it did not disappoint.  Our pictures are still something of a mess (my only fishing pictures are of Russ, for example) but if you're contemplating a trip to Belize here's a few quick lessons learned...

1. Just like in Alaska, fishing in Belize can be a total crapshoot.  We had two full days guided along with a decent bit of non-guided fishing.  One of the guided days was a near complete bust.  High winds meant we couldn't get out to the flats--and couldn't have cast well even if we got there--while rain and cool weather meant everything was shut down.  It's never good when the guide tells you it might as well be snowing.  With few options, at the least the reef fish cooperated.

My first fly-caught mutton snapper, also known as "Dinner."

Russ with a jack.

2a. and 2b. It doesn't get much better than chasing tailing fish on the flats; and, don't expect to catch a permit your first time out.  Our second day guided was with a local guide out of Placencia and he was phenomenal, just don't judge him by his website.  We got up at 4:30, drove the hour-plus from Hopkins to Placencia to meet the guide at the dock by 6:15, and fished until dark.  Our guide was mildly disappointed we showed up so late.

A typical Belizean bonefish.

We caught bonefish all morning, grabbed lunch on the beach, then fished the reef for snapper and jacks until the tides became favorable for permit on the flats.  

Russ wandering one of many flats in search of permit.

The panga is the boat of choice in Belize.

I have to severely restrain myself when I describe our afternoon of permit fishing lest my head might explode.  I had four or five solid opportunities at permit--ignoring all the times I flubbed the cast or otherwise spooked the fish before even giving them a chance to reject my fly.

After a morning of very soft bonefish takes, I asked the guide what I should expect if a permit took my fly.  He responded, "you'll probably break it off."  I took that to mean that they take hard.  Later, after missing an epic opportunity at a herd of permit that looked more like a swarm of locusts destroying a midwest corn crop than a school of highly sought-after game fish tailing across a flat, the guide says to me "it's just not yet your time."  I nearly shat my pants watching that school of fish tailing on top of my fly. 

Russ and I both agreed that the guide's dry sense of humor was a plus since he definitely put us on fish.  Combined with his frequent, yet appropriate use of swear words, I'd book another day with this guide in a heartbeat.

This fly will not catch you a permit.

3. You can't see everything Belize has to offer in nine days.  We easily could have drug this trip out over a couple months.  Leading up to the trip I kept joking that we should have just bought a one-way ticket.  Little did I know how right I was.

The Mayan ruins are amazing.

Mason enjoying Labaantun.

The Wife and Mason kayaking the Sittee River.

Taking the Little Man out for some snorkeling.

Mason's big fan of the beach.

4. The food and drink of Belize is underrated.  The state beer of Belize is Belikin, and if you can only drink one beer on a trip this is as good as any.  Our trip also coincided with the tail end of lobster season--and it doesn't get much better than fresh seafood, local fruit, and a healthy portion of rice and beans.

The view from our front porch.

5. Good friends make a great trip even better.  The Wife, Mason and I met up with our good friends Kelly and Russ for this trip--in fact, they were a large reason for The Wife and I finally getting off our duff and making the trip happen.  The Wife, Mason and I would have had fun in Belize by ourselves, but it's always better to be surrounded by friends.

Russ, Kelly and I in Punta Gorda, Belize.

6. Alaskans don't do well in direct sunlight.  Scroll back up to the third picture--the one of Russ holding the jack on a rainy, windy day.  The whole day was overcast and most of it was rainy.  Yet somehow I ended up with my most severe sunburn in years.  Ridiculous.

A couple lessons learned

As promised, I took advantage of the unseasonably warm weather and got out on the water this past weekend.  It was my first trip of the year and, while my camera skills were weak, I did manage to learn a couple important lessons.

Lesson One: Water levels are stupid low.  This river normally is around 2,500 to 3,000 cfs when it's in its prime, and current water levels put it around 380 cfs.  I saw two other boats on the water--both of which involved everyone out of the boat walking it through a riffle.  I'll wait until water levels come up a bit before putting the new drift boat in the water.

Lesson Two: I don't know the first thing about spey casting.  I've watched a few short videos and read up on the subject online, but, as things sit right now, I've got serious work to do if I want to get the most out of my new switch rod.  At least it roll casts a mile.

Lesson Three: Even though Karta is turning gray, she's still got it.

A gluttonous tragedy

I first ventured to Alaska in earnest in 2003, well after the heyday, to work a seasonal fisheries job for the U.S. Forest Service in southeast Alaska.  I had just been accepted to law school and was looking for one last epic opportunity to chase fish. 

You really ought to click that picture and make it a bit bigger.

Having, to that point, been almost exclusively a catch-and-release angler who valued fish first and foremost for their intrinsic and sporting value, I was disgusted to see people with readily-available alternative food sources setting gill nets across entire stream widths that effectively blocked entire salmon runs, dipnetting more than they possibly could consume in a single year, and generally killing everything in sight in an orgy of overabundance and shortsightedness.  Yeah, your freezer might be full this winter, but what about the winter a few years from now?

I was disappointed, but not surprised, to later learn that one of the most prolific sockeye fisheries in that area had been closed.  From a 2008 news release:

The weir count to date is 90 sockeye. The weir count in 2007, as of the same date, was 2765 . . .

***

As I eluded to in my last post, The Wife and I spent the Fourth of July weekend fishing and camping.  I had pulled an all-nighter on Thursday in order to meet a work deadline and was in no condition to go anywhere after work on Friday but bed.  It had been a rough week.

Come Saturday morning, we geared up and headed north with our good friends Sam and Liz.  Because King Season was in full swing, we had planned to avoid the combat-fishing crowds and target areas farther up stream for rainbows.  Seemed to make sense at the time since few things repulse me more than rubbing shoulders on the stream bank with people too self interested to see beyond the tip of their fishing rod. 

From some exploring I had done last year, I had some ideas about where to go.  We drove down a too-narrow-for-my-truck two-track road to the river with hopes that we might have the place to ourselves.  Of course, we did not:

The first day only afforded us an afternoon on the water before calling it and heading back to the rig to set up camp and cook some grub.  Of course, the camera wasn't around when I hooked into my best fish--a feisty rainbow around 20" that almost got away from me down a side channel on the far side of the river.  By the time the camera came back, all I had to show for my efforts was this stick, broken roughly to the proper length and every bit as exciting to Karta as the real thing:

With the camera back in tow, Liz grabbed a hold of this guy:

 Got's to put forth the effort (there's a dog in there too):

Of course, it rained all night and by morning the too-narrow-for-my-truck two-track road turned into a too-muddy-for-my-truck two-track road:

Yeehaw!  With much coercion, we forced things along and made it back to pavement after only an hour or two delay.

While neither The Wife nor I managed to take a single picture for the remainder of Sunday the Fourth, we worked our way north, exploring new streams before ultimately enjoying beers in Talkeetna, then turning back to a nearly vacant campground that allowed us to stretch our legs a bit.  We definitely saw more people on the water than I cared to see, but I can't complain about the crowds where we chose to camp.

Having fished hard for two days with very limited success (no fish were caught on Sunday), we headed back to a familiar stream hoping to up our catch rate.  Sam found some Chinook schooling up in this big bend:

And soon thereafter we started hooking fish:

And the rainbow version:

The Wife sending it:

After all was said and done, we had had a great weekend.  We fished hard, ripped a little lip, shotgunned a couple PBRs, and generally had a great time--but something was missing.  Something was off.  For the peak of Chinook season, we only saw a handful of salmon.  There might have been more people on some of these creeks than salmon.

Little did I know, since we were planning to chase rainbows all along, but the Chinook fishery was in such dire straights that it had been closed.  This is Alaska folks.  What the hell?

Thinking back to my days in southeast Alaska, I couldn't help but wonder about the individual and collective greed that likely led to these low salmon abundance numbers.  Apparently, I'm not the only one with these thoughts.  In more eloquent words that I might provide, you really ought to give this opinion piece by a Mr. Wittshirk a read.  It's better fare than anything the ADN typically provides.

Since it's late, I'll leave you to come to your own conclusions here . . . but I can't help but look for some sort of lesson.  With our ridiculous history of overfishing and short-term fisheries management--in southeast Alaska, here locally, and in nearly every other fishery in the world--perhaps . . .

Out with the canoe

One of the great things about Alaska is that, if you simply pick a spot out on the map and go there, you're likely to find some beautiful terrain.  Last weekend, our friend Evan joined The Wife and I for just such a trip.  I had identified a couple lakes down on the Kenai peninsula that were joined by a short stream.  The map indicated there were some "falls" at the outlet of the upper lake--and we had our destination.

We used our new canoe to shuttle out to an island and set up camp for the night.

Karta was very concerned anytime the canoe left without her.

Of course, our camera's battery died almost instantly. . . 

[pictures of camp and campfire-fried cheese curds]

Sam and Liz joined us the next day for the final assault to the falls and upper lake, and managed to bring a working camera along.  Of course, the trails that exist on maps don't always exist in real life, and what was supposed to be an easy 1.5 mile hike to the upper lake turned into a three-hour death march.

We didn't see tons of wildlife, but we did find this guy:

The Wife, not seeming to mind the long slog:

Finally:

Givin'er:

A group shot (Sam, myself, The Wife and Karta, Evan, and Liz):

After relaxing at the falls for a while, we finally turned back for home.  What the trip lacked in fish, it more than made up for with devil's club:

The Wife, right before making the final descent down to the lower lake, our canoe, and the drive home:

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:

'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: