Silver and Salt

Though it seems a lifetime ago now, I did indeed spend all of July in Alaska, with some bookending by both June and August, and I am logging on now to record that is was Bliss. I long ago blew it on true Eternal Recurrence, but how about a somewhat less ambitious Annual Eternal Recurrence? By which I mean, you can take from your life one instance of each month of the year, January through December, and assemble a hand-picked 12 months to re-live, eternally. I now have my July.

All of my own pictures are on Picasaweb, and I await some Alagnak pictures from my first mate Mike. Mike, if you are reading this, I hereby threaten you with the Sockeye Toss story -- the longer it takes you to send me some photos, the more I will embellish that story at your expense! Be forewarned!

What I'll do here, in the scanty hours I can steal from NEW JOB (the job plus a wedding and a visit with the nuclear family have kept me ever so busy since I got back) is upload a video or two to help me describe parts of the trip. And what better place to start than at the end? My lovely Kayak Sonata #2 concluded with a lovely third movement on Prince William Sound, a trip whose scenic values and excellent fishing fairly blew my mind. I mean, I have caught a decent number of cohos, those most strikey and acrobatic of the Pacific salmon; but what are you gonna do if you paddle under a crowd of diving seagulls, paddling through visible slicks of half-chewed herring, and start hooking up at all depths, on all lures and flies, on nearly every cast?

You're gonna take a lot of films! In this first one, I am punch drunk on catching them on flies. I used a goofy method where I chucked out a heavy integrated sinking line and then furiously paddled backwards, letting out the whole line up to the backing while the tip sank; then, still with the backward momentum going, I dropped the paddle and started stripping in the line as quick as I could. They say your fly needs to be going fast to interest the cohos . . . but actually, several times I had a fish on as soon as I picked up the rod, suggesting that they were snapping it on the drop. Anyway:




In fresh water, coho generally make really lovely, vertical, all-the-way-out jumps. My PWS cohos thrashed a lot on the surface, but rarely made the classic aerials I was expecting. Here's an exception to that rule:




Splashing fish and unending drizzle eventually crippled my camera to where I could still take pictures, but couldn't use the controls to view them afterward. I didn't mind, though; it seemed a miracle that the camera and I weren't, at some point, by some halibut or salmon, completely up-ended and doused. Here's a case where I hooked a nice fish, got him close to the boat and decided to film him, and then watched him take a second wind and run like crazy straight to my stern:




Right around the point you can see in this last film was my little beach camp where I spent two blissful evenings, including a full rest day. There was a little more coho activity on the four-mile crossing of Port Nellie Juan and in Culross Passage, but it never got quite that hot and heavy again. Which, in the end, was probably a very good thing for my beaten wrists, arms and shoulders. Every one of those silvers was a struggle, a joy, and a treasure.