Jacks

I spent much of the past couple weeks in Southeast.  It was hard to be away from the kiddo, but it was good to get back to the real Alaska.  As I've said many times, Anchorage is an alright town . . . and its less than 30 minutes from Alaska.  But there's something special about Southeast.  Sure it's cold and it rains too damned much, but it feels as much like home as anywhere else I've been.

Your taxi has arrived.

While I would have loved to chase fish the whole time, I was on a work trip so much of my time was stuck in meetings.  Meetings about how to protect the Tongass and the incredible salmon runs it produces.  Meetings about how local communities might take advantage of burgeoning tourism and recreation to diversify and strengthen their local economies.  And meetings where I had to bite my tongue listening to people stuck in the past proposing yet another government handout in a region drowning in federal subsidies so the fortunate few can have a job clearcutting the last of our best national forest.  Oh, and in case it isn't obvious, your tax dollars (not mine, I'm an Alaskan*) would pay for all this.

While I could ride this soap box like it's a winning derby racer, this is a fishing blog so . . .

* * *

One of the great things about fishing--even when you're on water you've hit dozens or hundreds of times--is that you never really know what to expect.  Chase salmon in small or medium-sized streams and it gets even more unpredictable.  Add in the fact that I hadn't fished this water since 2005 (on my wedding day, no less) and I really didn't know what I'd find.

An old friend at low flows.

As expected, a little late for the pinks.

I only had a few hours after my meetings before it got dark.  While I figured most of the salmon runs were done, I held out hope that I might find decent flows and hook into a few dollies; if I was luckly, maybe I'd find a coho.

Pink redds exposed by low flows.

Coho are amazing fish.  Generally, they hatch in spring, spend a year-and-a-half or so in fresh water, migrate out to the ocean for a year or two, then return to their natal stream to spawn.  However, like many salmon, a very small portion of coho salmon (usually males) may never go out to the ocean or may only spend a very brief period in salt water before spawning.  Usually, these younger spawners, sometimes called jacks, only account for a very small fraction (maybe 1% or less) of the total spawning population.  I had seen a handful of Chinook and steelhead jacks during my prior work, but never seen a coho jack.  Somehow I found the mother lode.

A chrome coho about 14 inches long caught swinging an FMF.

Pulled out from right on top of the last one.

Another, for scale

While I would have loved to hook into one of their older (and larger) brethren, I managed to grab onto four of these mini coho and a couple coastal cutthroat.  It certainly wasn't what I expected, especially considering the odds, but a pretty good time nonetheless.

I went to bed that night excited for the next evening when I had a little more time to get out after my meetings.  Of course, it rained like it only can in Southeast and when I went to the river the next day the water had raised about three feet.  Standing ankle deep in the river but ten feet back into the woods, I made a dozen or so halfhearted casts into the milky-mud flow before turning back and calling it a day.

With any luck, the people who want to privatize the Tongass and turn it into a stump farm won't get their way and, when I return next time, the flows will be perfect and every coho will have spent at least two years in the ocean.

* Yes, I too pay federal taxes.  But the state pays me and this too often is the mentality up here.

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:

Waiting for the hatch to start

The Wife, Josh and I found ourselves fishing up near Cody this past weekend. We got a couple hours in Saturday afternoon and, after breakfast at Irma's, hit the river pretty hard on Sunday. It was warm and sunny out, with good flows and reasonable clarity. Since we were fishing in town, the crowds were to be expected.

After a short hike up the trail, Josh discovered a handful of cutthroat rising to midges. With a mild case of dry-fly fever, it was on. We quickly caught a handful of fish between us with various dry flies that defied visible detection. It was one of those instances where we were hooking quite a few fish (although only landing a few) while another angler just within sight and earshot upstream was getting skunked--and increasingly agitated with our success.

After hooking or scaring off all the fish in our immediate vicinity, we continued on upstream and came across two fly fishermen fully geared but sitting on the bank. With fish visibly feeding in the top few inches of the water column, these two blokes informed us they were "waiting for the hatch to start." What the?!? There were midges all over the place with decent fish coming up to the surface, or near-surface, and these guys were content waiting for the hatch to start. I moved on and landed a nice rainbow on a stonefly nymph.

Later in the afternoon, it warmed up even more and a sporadic mayfly hatch materialized. We caught fish off and on with midges, blue-winged olives and various nymphs/streamers throughout the day.

All-in-all it was a great day on the water. The Wife got to break in her new 5-weight fly rod and, like last season's first real trip, she got the big fish of the day--this time a nice cutthroat about 16 or 17 inches. Unfortunately, there appears to have been one casualty. Our camera seems to have kicked the bucket.

EDIT: By popular demand, here's a camera-phone shot of The Wife's fish that Josh managed to catch.

Of firewood and whitefish

After fighting with a borrowed saw last weekend, The Wife and I bucked up and bought our own chainsaw--a Husqvarna 445. I'm sure a professional tuneup would have helped the borrowed saw immensely, but it took us five hours to fill our truck with the borrowed saw. The new saw got the truck filled in about one hour.

Since we made quick work of our logging operation, we had plenty of time left over for a little fishing. I'm not sure why, but I've been slaying the whitefish recently.
The dogs even got in on the action:
While whitefish are good and all, we really wanted to get into a couple trout. You see, The Wife produces a periodic newsletter called The TroutTale--and what good is a newsletter called The TroutTale if you only have pictures of whitefish. Eventually, I got into a cutthroat and Russ gave it the full supermodel treatment.

Another great day on the water...

Holy cow it's been a long time since I posted anything on here... Gunahaftodobetter.

Instead of trying to recap the last month, I'm just going to pick things up like I never left...

The Wife and I got out fishing a bit on Sunday. It was a beautiful day, with just a hint of fall in the air. As you can tell, the water was crystal clear. We had been fishing this place off and on for the past couple months using mostly hoppers. After getting to the river around 3:00ish, there were hundreds of grasshoppers clicking about along with the occasional PMD mayfly spinners or caddis fly.

Not seeing any fish on the surface, we tied on a couple hopper-dropper rigs and got to fishing. The fishing was slower than it had been in the past, but persistence pays off. We caught a few Yellowstone cutthroat, a lost brown trout and the occasional whitefish.

I think this river may have been straightened back in the day. Much of the river is riffled and fairly shallow. To fish it, you end up hiking quite a ways, picking the best spots to cast while walking past the rest. We usually end up covering about 2 miles per day of fishing, and this day was no different.

The Wife got into a few fish too.
After fishing for a number of hours, we finally decided to turn back and head for the truck. However, with the sun starting its descent, we still had one more super sweet run to fish before calling it a day. We started fishing the run with our hopper-dropper rig and caught a couple fish, but then it happened. All of a sudden, we began to hear the sweet slurp of big fish taking small flies on the surface.

After a mild excitement-induced heart attack--not too dissimilar from the several heart attacks I experienced watching the Oregon Ducks trying to lose to Purdue the day before--I changed my fly to a small, size 16 light cahill similar to the mayflies we saw earlier. Oh yeah, we caught fish:
The last 1 1/2 hours of fishing was amazing. I caught this toad pretty quick after changing flies and numerous others followed. Kinda wish I'd moved my ugly mits out of the way because this fish had AMAZING color.

At one point The Wife missed what she thought was a large brown trout. Knowing that there could be truly huge fish in this river I tied on a big black streamer about 5 inches long after losing my light cahill. I cast across the current and began stripping in. On the first cast, a huge fish hit my fly. A split second later, my leader was toast and the fish was free. To Karta's excitement, it still jumped a couple times trying to throw my now detached fly. Without another black streamer like the one I just lost, I tied on a white one. After watching a large fish follow it for a few casts, I finally hooked lip and landed a couple cutthroat from 15-18 inches. Not nearly as large as the fish I lost...

As always, you can click on the pictures to enlarge them.