Kelly and Russ come to visit, Part 3

One of the great things about fishing is getting to explore new places.  There's something quite exciting about setting out for a spot on a map unsure of what might lie ahead.  Even if the trip's a bust, it's still pretty cool.  And, when your planning and execution combine with a little luck, it's possible to end up with a truly exceptional trip, which is exactly what happened here.

Still relatively new to the area and unfamiliar with many of the local floats, I had been eying a route that required putting in on a lake, traveling roughly 1.5 miles across the lake to the outlet, then floating an additional 11 miles downstream to the next easily-accessible take out.  It's a fairly popular route, but since the lake is rather large and frequently has unpredictable weather that can wreck havoc on small boats, most people run this stretch with a motor and either a skiff or drift boat.

Of course, we had a small raft.  And no motor.

We set out for the lake on Wednesday morning of last week with the wind howling in the wrong direction and visible whitecaps.  Our plan in the event of foul weather like this was to walk the raft along the lake shore to the outlet.  It seemed very doable even though I'd never heard of anyone else doing anything like this.  With such an awesome stretch of river right nearby and only a mile and a half of lake between road and river, there only seemed two possible reasons why the legions of motorless floaters don't bother doing this stretch: (1) we were severely underestimating things, or (2) the world is full of morons.  I was banking on option two.

After an uneventful 45 minute slog along the lake shore, which certainly wasn't difficult, we found ourselves at the outlet.  After a little experimentation with the beads we were fishing, it was on:

Russ landed multiple nice dollies and several big rainbow early on.  He also managed hooking the first of many pink on the trip:

After landing a long spawned-out Chinook that fought more like an anchor than a salmon, Russ followed it up with something even better and a bit fresher.

We were floating down a long nondescript run--the sort that most of the motored boats were simply powering through on their way to the next obvious hole--when Russ hooked into something huge that instantly corked his rod and ripped into his backing.  For the next half hour or so, I gave the oars a workout trying to slow our progress downriver as the fish alternately ran upstream and held in place.  Rowing back and forth between the river banks, I attempted to keep the passing powerboats away from Russ' line, which at this point still extended far into his backing.  I won't venture a guess as to how much backing was in the river, but it was well past the point where reasonable people expect to land the fish.

Eventually, Russ got the upper hand and got the fish within view, exposing a huge Chinook.  After beaching the raft at the head of an island, Russ kept up the fight and worked the fish toward shore:

Moving a fish into shallow water is always exciting and presents many opportunities for failure.  You generally only get one try with a fish like this:

After reveling in the moment for a while and listening to Russ whine about how sore his arm was, it was back to the raft and on downstream.  Sensing her title was at stake, The Wife almost immediately stepped up her game and got into what probably was our best rainbow of the trip, a certifiable toad:

Over the course of the day, we all caught fish.  Rainbows, dollies and pink out the wazoo, two Chinook and even a whitefish.  Everyone hooked lip and, as the day progressed, the weather only got better.

After taking a day off from fishing, we (sans The Wife because, for once, my job was better than hers) were back on it Friday.  This time, the weather was beautiful and I was able to get in on the action a bit more:

Russ, back where he landed the large Chinook the day before:

However, Kelly probably had the best day on the water, grabbing onto one of the largest coho I've ever seen in person:

As the final day for Russ and Kelly fishing up here wound down, Kelly had yet to hook into a truly large rainbow.  She had hooked into a few and had mentioned wanting a large rainbow a couple times, but things just hadn't worked out.  Then, within sight of the take out:

When it was all said and done, we managed to get some damn good fishing in and had a great time with Russ and Kelly.  There's something magical about a large fish pulling on your line, and its all the better when you have good friends cheering you on.  Oh, and only a moron would let 1.5 miles of lake get between them and great fishing.

Put this in the "The Wife's job is better than mine" category

While I was slaving away this past week behind a desk, The Wife was posing as a client for the Bristol Bay Fly Fishing Academy.

She calls this "work."  And while that's debatable, the Academy is a pretty cool program that helps young locals learn the tools of the guiding trade and (hopefully) find work with local lodges and outfitters.  They needed someone to act as a client for the guides-in-training, which is where The Wife comes in.

From the Bristol Bay Fly Fishing Academy website:

Most people who visit Bristol Bay want to fish. And most of them want to fish with a local, home-grown guide who knows the waters, the wildlife, the people and the way of life here. That’s why we’re training the region’s young people to explore careers as guides – so they might stay in the region, earn a prosperous living, advocate for the health of the watershed and offer visitors an authentic experience of one of our country’s most special natural places.

Of course, if they're gainfully employed in the sport fishing industry, they're less likely to advocate for the development of a huge copper mine that would destroy local sport fishing.

Not too shabby for a quick jaunt after work

Waiting

Dad got into town on Friday.  I had hoped that the rivers would be full of pinks and chum by now, but things seems to be running a bit late this year.  We've been flogging the water, but its been dollies, rainbow and grayling thus far.  Not quite the easy pickings I had in mind, but it'll do.  Karta doesn't seem to mind the late runs:

Evan went out with us yesterday and, while he out-fished the rest of us, my camera didn't seem to keep up so this was the only shot I got of him in action:

Then the weather turned:

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 . . .

A developing theme

Since arriving in Alaska, few things have been as predictable as me getting out-fished by The Wife. After yesterday's evening foray, she's up 3-2. However, if you dig a little deeper into the record books, you'd realize I had to go fishing twice by myself to keep the score as close as it is. Otherwise, I'd be staring down a 3 point deficit trying to decide if it's time to throw in the towel. Perhaps I will win out yet, and persistent once again will triumph over skill. Or, maybe not.

Yesterday was an exploratory mission. We didn't even leave the house until nearly 5:00, so, looking back, yesterday's trip would totally be doable after work. We drove for about 1 1/2 hours, wasting about a third of that looking for a good spot to access the river. There were spawned-out pinks out the wazoo, but expectations raised a bit when we ran into another couple holding fly rods and hiking out with a few silvers. As a totally anecdotal aside, it seemed that all the hardware chuckers were snagging pinks while the fly angers were managed to hook into mostly coho.

After a few minutes of hiking, we found a suitable spot without too much competition from other anglers and geared up. The Wife moved downstream just a bit and, before too long, was screaming and hollering in her typical "I got a fish" manner.
The bank-side brush was overgrown and the shore was really rocky so I lent a hand in landing the first of her three silvers.
Who says you can't look good with a big ol' flower on your fly vest?
After I helped land the first fish, The Wife wanted to run the show solo from there on out. She hooked and landed another smaller coho before eventually grabbing onto another biggin.
With The Wife having run a clinic up to this point, it finally was my turn to get in on the action. It must have been the new-school low-rider waders that finally did the trick...
With The Wife wrecking havoc with the silvers, I hooked lip with a nice chum, somewhat making up for the chum I lost a while back.
They sure are crazy-looking fish. Where coho are more apt to make a few strong runs, chums prefer bulling you around the depths for most of a fight. They're a very different fish, that's for sure.
Understandably, The Wife has been pretty proud of herself and her fishing conquests. However, in order to fully understand the irony of yesterday's tally, a little background information is in order. You see, The Wife went to Juneau a week or so ago and had plans to go fishing. Although unable to put line to water, she did manage to wrestle a number of flies out of my box and into hers. One of which was this hotrod, the only fly of its kind in either of our boxes yesterday. Fish weren't interested in black and pink, red and purple, purple and black, or pink and pink . . . just pink and purple. Time to hit up the tying bench . . .

"I'm getting a beer, I think it'll help"

-- Jan August 8, 2009

So The Wife's sister and mom are visiting for a couple weeks. In anticipation of our upcoming halibut fishing trip out of homer, they've purchased team-colored T-shirts for all of us. Jan and I are taking on the Ash and The Wife. Somehow (?), my team T-shirt is pink--or, as they put it, salmon colored. As I write, Ash, Jan and The Wife are decorating their team shirts but, despite the fact that I'd look like a piss-poor Elton John imitation if I took part, they are a little disappointed in my lack of enthusiasm for the shirts. I'll just have to out fish them this weekend.

Turning the page back a few days, we headed up Turnagain Arm last weekend for a little exploring. Not to fear, I managed to take the fly rod along and, with The Wife largely abstaining from fishing, I finally managed to out fish the competition.
We tromped around the tidal flats, throwing sticks for the pooch and playing in the mud.
We also managed to see a number of sockeye. These fish sure are sweet.
And a couple chum.
I'm going to have to hook into one of those hogs this weekend. Trip report to follow.