Paternity Leave

It's been a hectic few weeks around here, which really should come as no surprise given recent developments.  My fishing still outpaces my blogging--but not by much.  And both have taken a back seat to home and work obligations.  I've logged a handful of days on the water over the past couple weeks, but I'm significantly behind last year's pace.

With my family in town over the past couple weeks to visit the little munchkin we all managed a quick roadtrip and scored a few days on the river.  Although I generally hate "look at all the big fish I caught" posts, the fishing was on and the pictures are piling up.

Sometimes the side channels are more productive.

One of many cookie cutter Dollies.

Sockeye!

It doesn't get much better than watching Dad tied into a good one.

Here's your ad placement.

Rainbows are starting to move up.

One of the better Dolly Varden.

Underrated.

As a new grandmother, it took quite a bit of convincing to get my mom to leave Mason and go fishing, even for just a few hours.  But for the brief time she held a fly rod, she put on one hell of a clinic.

Sockeye!

About the time she realized it was a really big fish.

Toad!

How you doing?

The release.

Karta is not a small dog.

At a safe distance.

High sticking the switch rod.

Strike Three

I remember being especially impressed with Obama's inaugural address when he vowed to "restore science to its rightful place."  Hearing this was a breath of fresh air following an unprecedented eight years of manipulation, suppression and misrepresentation of science during the Bush era.

Unfortunately, I also recall Obama's vow falling by the wayside when his administration failed to make meaningful changes in its management of Columbia River Basin dams to ensure they did not jeopardize the continued existence of endangered and threatened Pacific salmon.

Lower Granite Dam

I take it as a given that our elected officials and high-level bureaucrats want cover when making difficult or controversial decisions.  Our leaders are paralyzed unless they feel protected by sufficient cover--whether in the form of an outspoken mass of voters, impending economic doom, or a judge forcing the issue.  As it turns out, our leaders too often would rather follow than take the lead. 

So, it was with great joy that I sat down this evening to read Judge Redden's opinion (PDF), issued yesterday, rebuking for the third time NOAA Fisheries' 2010 biological opinion for the Columbia River Basin salmon.  For those that don't have the time, the footnotes are where it's at:

FN2 - The history of the Federal Defendant's lack of, or at best, marginal compliance with the procedural and substantive requirements of the [Endangered Species Act] as to [Federal Columbia River Power System] operations has been laid out in prior Opinions and Orders in this case and is repeated here only where relevant.

Translation: Quit with this crap already; it's getting old.

FN3 - Because I find that the [biological opinion] impermissibly relies on mitigation measures that are not reasonably certain to occur, I need not address Plaintiffs' remaining arguments.  I continue to have serious concerns about the specific, numerical survival benefits NOAA Fisheries attributes to habitat mitigation.  Habitat improvement is a vital component of recovery and may lead to increased survival.  Nevertheless, the lack of scientific support for specific survival predictions is troubling.  Indeed, NOAA Fisheries acknowledges that the benefits associated with habitat improvement may not accrue for many years, if ever.  Although the court may be required to defer to NOAA Fisheries' technical and scientific "expertise" in predicting the benefits of habitat mitigation, the court is not required to defer to uncertain survival predictions that are based upon unidentified mitigation plans.

Translation: You're so full of shit I have to put quotes around "expertise."

So, hide behind Judge Redden if you must, Mr. Obama, but it's well past time to make the right decision.

Kelly and Russ come to visit, Part 2 (and some gear wonkery)

After floating for a couple days, we decided to give the boat a break and fish another nearby stream from shore for an afternoon.  The river was full of sockeye and fishing with egg imitations was effective for rainbows.  An impressive stonefly hatch also had the fish looking up so those of us who put away the beads were treated to some decent dry fly fishing, which is nice.

One of the downsides of the day, however, was the increasingly sad state of my fly reel collection.  As of late, I primarily fish with either my six- or eight-weight fly rod.  My eight is an older St. Croix Legend Ultra 908.3 that I've had at least ten years mated to a Ross Momentum LT 4 that I bought last year.  I occasionally consider replacing the rod with a newer model but can never find a replacement I consider markedly improved over my old standby.  The rod is every bit as good today as it was back when I bought it.  The Momentum LT on the other hand has been giving me troubles.  About two months ago I noticed water leaking into the drag system--or so it seems since every time it's dunked the drag becomes less reliable and the clicking noise becomes erratic.  As far as I'm concerned this should never happen to a reel that lists for $445.  It works, so long as you don't get it wet. . .

My six is a Sage SP 690-3 that I've had roughly 8 years with a Ross Vexsis 3 that I've had for two.  The rod is a little slow for what I consider a heavier trout weight, but was the first high-end rod I purchased and has caught tons of good fish--including a respectable number of coho after being called up to the big leagues when I broke my eight a few years ago in southeast.  It does its job.  The Vexis, however, is not a favorite reel of mine.  It's largest problems are that it has a ton of play in the spool before the drag engages, which is a pet peeve of mine, and the mechanism for changing from right- to left-hand drag is weak and can cause the drag to act irregularly.  The right-to-left mechanism isn't as big a problem as it might sound once you recognize the deficiency and check it from time to time, but still. . .  Despite these design flaws, it's most pressing issue is that it's currently held together with a nylon strap:

Not two hours into the day I slipped on the wet rocks and fell only to catch myself with the hand that was holding the rod and reel, which stripped the screws that hold the reel foot from the reel frame.  It's not the reel's fault I fell, and the reel managed to catch fish even post-MacGyver, but it's still a bummer to have two reels on the fritz and not be able to lean on the six while I send the eight in for warranty, or vice versa.  I guess it's time to dust off the old reliable Scientific Anglers System 2.

Part 3 will be big, I promise, but might not get posted for a day or two.  Here's a teaser in the meantime:

Kelly and Russ come to visit, Part 1

One of the great things about living in Alaska is that friends and family come visit on a regular basis.  This past week brought us our good friends Russ and Kelly who made the trek up from Wyoming.  With a shared love of rivers and fishing, we hit the local waters pretty hard.  I simply have too many pictures and days on the water since my last post so I'm going to break the past week's adventures up into a few posts over the next couple days.  Here's labor day weekend:

Kelly and Russ arrived early Friday morning, and with The Wife in Juneau through Friday afternoon, we weren't able to get on the water until Saturday.  

Because of the weather, it was the sort of day where if you aren't catching fish you might as well stay home and tie flies.  Fortunately, we all caught lots of fish so it's hard to remember the sideways rain and piercing wind.  Of course, as has been typical for this season, The Wife seemed particularly effective with her fly rod:

Of all the salmon, coho might be the best for targeting with a fly rod.  They take flies with aggression, fight like hell, and taste as a salmon should.  I found this female in a small side channel while targeting dolly varden:

Since we didn't get off the river until nearly 9:00pm and the rain was showing no signs of letting up, our original plan to camp had little appeal.  After grabbing a late burger and beer it was back to Anchorage in search of a warm bed and a roof overhead.

We fished again on Sunday but didn't break the camera out in earnest until Monday, at which point the rain and wind had given way to sun.  Here's Russ with the day's first dolly:

. . . and Kelly minutes later with her first Alaskan Sockeye.

The side channels were particularly productive.

This might have been my best dolly of the week:

After three consecutive days on the water, two of which were in a raft, Karta started to tire and seemed perfectly content to eat dinner lying down in the bed of the truck.  She leads a rough life.

The Wife turns "old"

**updated with biggun dolly pictures**

I turned 30 last year and, ever since my 22nd birthday (which was an unmitigated disaster I don't care to relive), no birthday has given me pause.  I think I aged a bit going from 18 to 24, but have stayed about the same ever since--give or take a few gray hairs, of course.

Yesterday was The Wife's birthday.  She insists that it wasn't a big deal; I think it got to her a bit.  She had been anxious all week.  After changing our birthday celebration plans a few too many times, we finally settled on a float trip with our good friends Megan and Doug.  What better way to turn 30 than on the river?

After a lazy morning and a beluga-filled drive down the Peninsula, we finally rigged up and started down the river.  The Wife quickly set the day's pace:

I spent the majority of the day behind the oars with The Wife and Megan at the front of the boat and Doug and Karta at the back.  About two-thirds of the way through fighting this first fish Karta worked her way onto the edge of the boat and, in the excitement of it all, slithered into the water.  It was quite the shit show.  After dragging her back into the boat we were sure to keep a closer eye on her for the rest of the day.

There were sockeye everywhere.  Any half-decent riffle was covered in spawning salmon, and in between the thousands of red monsters were hundreds of rainbow and dolly varden.  Here's Doug with one of the many rainbows caught on the day:

Among the crew, we fished an FMF, flesh patterns, and a few different beads.  If you could get a decent dead drift through a riffle with the right bead, your odds of hooking up were quite good.  Here's Megan getting schooled by a sockeye:

Dolly varden were the most commonly-caught fish (for me at least), with rainbow in a close second.  However, we also caught a fair number of sockeye and one coho, which was nice and bright:

Me playing guide for The Wife:

The rain was more or less constant throughout the day, which came at no real surprise and only briefly escalated above a mere annoyance.  People in Alaska like to complain about the weather, but if the fish are biting the weather can do whatever it wants, I figure.

There were a number of very good fish caught on the day, with rainbows over 20 inches and some very large dollies.  Of course, the best two non-salmon--a dolly varden I caught that was upward of 26 inches and one that The Wife caught that wasn't quite as long but was even heavier--came to net long after our camera gave the "change battery pack" signal.  Fortunately, Megan and Doug had a working camera so they were able to capture the rest of the day:

 And the birthday girl:

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 . . .