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 . . .
After dropping Mom and Dad off at the airport, we drove back North in search of grayling--a species I managed to hook lip with a few days earlier but which had evaded Josh. Things were looking up and the day delivered. Before long we all were hooking into fish.
On my second or third cast, two very large fish followed my fly out of the depths and into the shallows only turning away at the last minute. On my next cast, I hooked the sticks on the far bank and broke off my fly. Josh didn't hesitate to step in and take a cast. If it wasn't his first cast, it was within his first five when he hooked into a nice coho.
It was a beautiful fish.
But it gets better. After having retied my tippet and fly, it was my turn to get after it. On my second cast I hooked into this guy.
But it gets better yet. By this time we could see a number of coho swimming around in the run. I'd guess there were twenty or so fish, but wouldn't be surprised if there were many more. We could tell it was on and The Wife wanted nothing to do with getting left out of the action. Before my fish was even released, she had started her casts. In short order, she hooked up with a fish every bit as large as Josh's, and much larger than mine.
In the end, each of us pulled a coho out of this little run with no more than ten casts, combined. Unbelievable! Deciding we had harassed this small school of fish enough, we moved on in search of a grayling for Josh, which he found without too much trouble.
All in all, one of the more successful days I've ever had on the water. There's something to be said for figuring it out. 
I'm not so naive as to think that I could go back tomorrow and repeat everything all over again (since I know I'd just as likely get skunked), but every once in a while it all comes together. While some fishing trips can blend into others and fade after the passage of time, there's been a handful of trips that really stand above the rest. Whether it's the fish, location, company, effort that goes into the trip, some other factor, or some combination of the above, last Thursday was one for the books.
With the whole crew aboard, we headed North out of Anchorage this past Sunday to search out a few trout and see if we could find any coho loitering around. It took us a little while to figure things out, but eventually worked our way into some rainbow and a few grayling.
The grayling were a new species for me. I had fished for them a bit in Idaho, but my past efforts always fell short.
Eventually, I worked my way into some rainbow. I never got the impression there were a ton of fish in the water, but the deep pools and runs each seemed to hold a fish or two that would move for a fly. This guy topped out around 18 inches or so. At the time, Josh gave me that the fish was 19 inches; but, a few days later, Josh isn't so generous any more.
Here's Mom getting after it, with Karta supervising.
After lunch, we decided to relocate to a new stream. Here's dad testing out the waters.
More Karta supervision, this time with me fishing over a school of ~50 coho. Despite my best efforts, I couldn't do anything to move these fish . . .
. . . and neither could Josh.
Dad giving it his all--an effort I've replicated many times before after a hard morning of fishing.
After losing a gazillion flies, it was back to the bench for Josh and I.
Oh yeah, for those keeping score at home, I've evened things up with The Wife. Nice.
