Quite a Stream

As a lot of people know, there is a very good trout stream flowing into Lake Nerka. If I intentionally fail to name that stream while blogging about it, my reticence doesn't come from a deliberate, logical attempt to keep it a secret -- because it is already far, far from one -- but from a deep sense that it's wrong to 'hype up' any particular piece of water publicly and thereby have the guilty feeling that you have raised the amount of pressure on the fish there without even getting to directly enjoy it. I mean, if fish are going to be relentlessly harrassed, I want to be in on it! And if you figure the name out from all the hundred clues I have typed, then it's your own fault.

If you camped on this stream, as I did, you could wake up at 5:00 a. m. (top of the Alaskan summer morning) and pretend that it really is a secret spot. You might have to share the water with a couple of nice guys from Seattle who have been flying in there and camping out for many years just during the late July dry fly window, but they would be quiet, respectful guys just like you and wouldn't think of crowding you in any way. You could enjoy huge stretches of world-class trout water in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness.

But instead, let's say you sleep in to 8:30 or 9:00 a.m. This is as late as you are ever going to sleep on this stream during the trout season, unless you are deaf. Float planes landing 100 feet away are LOUD. One, two . . . three or maybe four planes come in all with a twenty minute window or so. They roar away, and then you hear the jet boat motors starting up and whining. You smell the burning oil, too, because the boats all come by your beachside camp on their way to the outlet. And from this hour until 5:00 or 6:00 p. m., all of these guided fishers will be jetting hither and thither in their boats, or getting pushed from slot to slot by guides who jump down into the water and work the boats like rickshaws. The state park has placed a limit on the number of guided rods that can fish the river during a day, but their limit is a good deal more generous than yours.

So if you're not a morning person nor a particulary gregarious one, your fishing day starts at the cocktail hour. And this ain't such a bad thing. By that time the fish are keying onto bugs on the surface, and there are few things more engrossing than a two-foot long rainbow trout rising on a reliable rhythm one long cast away from where you stand. I found that these hard-fished fellas would only take on a downstream, stack-mended presentation, but when the drift went right and the fish took, oh boy, hold on to the rod! They are hot ones. Whether it's the good food or the cold oxygenated water, these trout are champion runners. Very inconveniently for me, a solo guy, they would not sit still for a picture even after twenty minutes or so of fighting. Witness the angler's exasperated tone in this film clip, almost as though he were angry at the fish for fighting so long and hard.

I had a great time there. Fishing with Bob and Rick and occasionally talking to the friendly park ranger helped pass the time very pleasantly. I had a flask of Isle of Jura single malt whisky, and they had Laphroig and Macallan. And really, a bit of daytime fishing among the lords and their menservants wasn't so bad. I got the pleasant feeling of a showoff by casting dries while they did "technical nymphing" -- it seems that in Alaska, if you use a hook smaller than 6 and a leader less than 1X, you get to call it "technical." There were so many trout following the sockeyes into that river that we had plenty, plenty of fish for one and all. Apparently, just by accident, I hit it between the streamer-heavy smolt outmigration and the egg-heavy sockeye spawn, just when these big fat trout were most likely to feed on caddis and mayflies on the surface. I won't make that mistake again! I'll do it very deliberately.