I first attempted this in 2013, arriving in Aniak five years younger and stronger than I am now, full of piss, vinegar, and eagerness to float down from the lake. "Can't take you up there," said the pilot. "Too dangerous this year, too many log jams. You won't make it." Of course I argued the point, but mine was not a strong negotiating position, as I had no idea how to fly a plane. I let myself be flown to Salmon Creek instead and had a great trip. When I returned in 2015 I had a little more of the pilot's confidence, but still not enough good luck: high winds at the lake turned us back, and I had to settle for a starting point some 10 miles down the Aniak mainstem, just above the timberline.
Guess what? Persistence pays off! The third time is the charm. August 26, 2017 was a gloriously calm day in the general area of Aniak Lake, and by 5:00 p.m. I was standing on its shores, alone on a scruffy tundra landing strip surrounded by dry bags full of gear and two big bear cans full of food and coffee and scotch whisky.
Aniak Lake is beautiful. Nishlik Lake used to be my gold standard of gorgeous headwaters lakes, but it has been supplanted by Aniak. It's just too stinking pretty, with fragrant rolling tundra backed by incredible ice-carved mountains. On my first night, I woke up to the sound of a talus field readjusting itself with a thunderous roll that bounced off the mountains across the lake, and then back again. Good weather held; at times it got breezy for a spell, but then it got calm and glassy again, and I could hear the waterfalls on the mountainsides again.
Sitting quietly in a chair sipping scotch after feasting on the world's tastiest, freshest lake trout, I watched the caribou slowly graze their way closer and closer to my tent.
It would have been easy to sit there for a week peace-ing out, "lost/
in miles of land without people, without/one fear of being found," but there was a river to float and fish to catch. Typical of the upper parts of Southwest Alaskan rivers, the Aniak was slowish and shallow up top, with ridiculous fish-a-cast grayling fishing in any hole or run of reasonable depth.
The first 10-11 miles were entirely new to me, which was very cool. I camped on new ground, a wide-open gravel bar, and was awoken in the wee hours by the splashing and thrashing of a bunch of caribou trying to cross the river via my camp. Quite a commotion! The next morning I floated into a known grayling pool, marked "greymax" on my GPS, and found the water higher and the population mix a bit different, with some "fish of color" moving into the eddy at the top:
This trip brought me the most consistent topwater wogging for cohos that I have ever seen. Almost every likely hole had a taker on the wog; every really good hole had several. I marked one spot "upperNS" for "Upper Nonstop," and there was a lower nonstop as well, both of them spots where the wogging just wouldn't stop until my casting arm was quite worn out anyway. I spent a rest day at the Kipchuk confluence (where I saw my first jet-boaters go by after eight pure sweet days without having to look at a single human being), on a gravel bar whose north end abutted Middle Nonstop. I got a nice trout and some grayling from that bar too; but I am a pragmatic man, and when I got bored with resting, I sauntered down to the pool, wogged it up for 15-20 minutes, and then sauntered back to my chair under the tarp. I don't ask much, really. Especially when there is a Whole Fucking Lotta.
There was a lotta topwater fishing for cohos and grayling, but it's my duty to report that there was zero topwater for me on rainbows, though I certainly dragged a mouse around in likely spots, and, worse yet, zero topwater pike action on the Dahlberg diver! Either someone had been down the river earlier in the summer and really punished the fish on those flies, or possibly it was just unlucky light conditions or water turbidity, both of which turned against me as I got into the middle reaches. Whatever; I didn't cry. More the opposite.
Rainbows are great, but I try not to get too wrapped up in targeting them in Alaska. They're the main stream fishing target right here in California! But good luck in the golden state finding these other species that filled my docket on on the Aniak: lake trout, arctic grayling, arctic char, coho salmon, sockeye salmon, pike, and -- just one, but a real treat -- sheefish! In a shameful act of waste, I cut a pan-sized fillet out of this 34-inch fish, and tossed the rest into the current. It was my last-night shore dinner, and oh boy it was delicious tasting and feeling a lot like California halibut.
On the topic of shore dining, let us speak of one of nature's most perfect foods: the salmon egg. It is delicious, nutritious, and warming, and it seems to retail for $5-10 a spoonful down here in the lower 48. Hell with that; how about completely free of charge for as much as you can eat?
There's a slightly false ring in it if I type, "Of course, it's not all about the fishing;" so I'll amend that to, "Of course, it's not ALL about the fishing." Right? It's also about being outdoors for two weeks at a stretch, watching eagles swoop and listening to wolves howl. It's about breathing pure air while you listen to the river and wind and rain day after day, and shrugging off the cold and wet for as long as you can before crashing out under a tarp with a dead-tired old body. It's about chasing off the morning frost with hot coffee and enriching a sweet sunset deepening over the soulful spruce tops with sips of fine scotch.
And it also is, quite centrally, about boating. On Alaska fishing streams that's generally fairly simple for anyone with basic paddling or rowing skills, but the Aniak is kind of special. It doesn't have major rapids (like the Kisaralik and Kukaklek do), but it does have major obstacles in the form of lots and lots of downed trees. In the worst cases, this means total blockages of the river where "log jams" force you to portage your stuff over land. I did plenty of that in 2015, and it gets old. But this year, for my charmed third run down the Aniak, it was actually possible to get through the notoriously jammed-up section of the river known to locals as "Deliverance," without once getting out of the boat! And with only a few minor near-crashes and scratch-ups . . .
As I probably mentioned elsewhere in this blog, I've lived over 35 years on earth, ever since I started canoeing back in high school, with a vague dream of paddling a canoe through a bleak tundra landscape with wolves running along the shore. My Alaska floats, now 12 in number (eight solo, four social) haven't exactly brought that dream to reality. What they have been, instead, is one of those few things in a lifetime that end up being more rich and wonderful than your imagination was even able to conjure. I'm going to put this Aniak float right up at the top of the bucketed list with standing on top of Huascaran Norte and making it down Rio San Juan to the Caribbean.
I am so glad it finally happened, and completely grateful.
