General Reflections

I'm not a cruel person despite what PETA might say, so I will not force people to read through all my blogification to see all the pictures of fish and landscapes from my trip. As soon as humanly possible for a guy who needs to get used to staring at screens all over again, I'll put all those in an album and post the link here.

First, though, some general reflections on Alaska fishing: Finding the Fish film clip.

That is a fairly typical horde of ripe oncorhynchus nerka (or sockeye, or red salmon), taken on a small stream emptying into the eponymous lake. There is no shortage of sockeyes in Lake Nerka, though experienced anglers will know that it is ironically very hard to get them to strike a fly or lure. Fortunately in any horde of anything there are a few oddballs that break the rules. This one in the photo below took a small fly and then even landed for a special beach shot, perhaps to show off her beautiful crimson swimsuit:



To get sockeyes on the line dependably, you generally have to do something vaguely unethical and "line" them -- instead of letting them strike the fly, strike them with the fly, preferably near the mouth. That's how I got this next one on actual spinning gear (unheard of) and transformed him quickly into an edifying snack at the end of a 24 mile paddling day.





In the Little Togiak River and Lynx Creek, both tributaries to Lake Nerka, I put in some lining time and got sockeyes bright enough to eat. They are great fighters and very tasty, so I have no problem justifying the ethical stretch. Throw in a little hunger plus a dearth of protein in the bear can, and a Liner is born from an Angler every time.

Next post up I'll reflect on some real angling, in a world-class stream that emtpies into Lake Nerka. For now, here are some more long-winded reflections on film, this time regarding Alaska paddling: Kayak Cam film clip.

(I really did paddle around listening to my mp3 player, just like Paul Theroux with his walkman. Scary to think, I may be turning into that guy . . . .)

Negatively Positive

I went ahead and did it -- exercised my positive freedom negatively by cancelling the third movement of my kayak sonata. Doing so went unusually smoothly, with a polite man in Bangalore easily changing my return flight to tomorrow with no charges or changes. I'd barely hung up before the giant sinking feeling arrived and made me my skin flush with an ominous near-panic: "did I just make a giant mistake?"

But no, it's a decision that will hold. I'll keep the maps and charts and dreams and look for another sucka or two who likes to paddle and fish. There are some likely suspects out there (Jim I think you are probably reading this, right?) and I will hunt them down for next time. Or, on the other hand, I now know that three weeks alone in the bush is about my limit. Must plan accordingly.

In the meantime, I've had some really nice fishing and paddling in the smaller way that the road system allows. After wading through a few million turistas and dodging bobbing flotillas of guided kayak tours, I put in twelve miles on Resurrection Bay and got some nice silvery pinks and cohos trolling. Stopped by Ptarmigan Creek and found beautiful little rainbows aggressive to dries on a very pretty stream, and later that night found the trip's biggest coho while fishing alone (very rare for the area) on Willow Creek.

However, fishing on the road system is not really the way to rest. It's too much of a letdown after being in the real backcountry, fishing storied waters full of fat trout. I did my trip in the reverse of what it should have been -- I mean, when the plane left me on Tikchik lake a month ago, it left me OUT there. After finding a good tent site I looked around for a likely food cache, and walked over to check it out . . . "what's this, a big pile of recently chewed caribou bones, with the joints still red with blood? Maybe I won't cache my food just exactly here after all . . . ." I went five days down that river without seeing a human form, and it was a good thing to do. The big grayling were all mine, the lake trout could only chase my flies, and the world was my oyster.

Next time online I should have some photos ready of grayling, lakers, and oysters. However, I have decided to exercise my positive freedom in another small way and post about the trip in completely unchronological order. Maybe.

AK Update: 'Gak, 'Wak, 'Pak and Back

I just flew in from Dillingham, and boy are my arms tired. It's not so much the flight as the 20 mile paddle against headwind squalls that did it. But you know, you get halfway across the lake, and you pick your suffering: a rainy night in the tent with no fishing nearby, or a few more hours of slogging it out. I slogged.

The rewards were worth it, in the form of a sockeye sandwich: fishing a great sockeye stream (the Little Togiak) bracketed by two days each on the incredible Agulukpak and Agulowak rivers. Without really intending to, I happened to hit a short window between smolting and egging where the trout are willing to look up to dry flies. So, if you like sight-fishing dries to two foot long rainbows, it was a good time to be out there. By the time I got to the 'Wak they were starting to key on pink egg patterns too. All of it was great fishing.

I feel a little odd blogging without any of the pictures I took, but those will come later. I hope I'll also get some mental energy to spin out some of the memorable images from the two trips I've just finished -- like, for example, the rainy night I popped my head out of the tent to scare the crap out of a grizzly who had just captured a nice salmon. I swear, he looked more surprised than me! He took the fish by the head and ran off into the woods, cruising right into the area where I had put my food cache. Hm. The way he took hold of the fish made a sudden image flash through my mind: a griz taking hold of the dry bag I was using with my bear can and running off the same way. Good lesson. From that night on I kept the top of the bag open so that the can would be sure to slip out under any pilfering attempts.

I saw at least one bear a day on that 14-day, 168 mile deal. Only one on the week-long, 65 mile lakes paddle. Go figure.

Ah, this is good, writing with a lower 48 audience in mind reminds me how special all this is, with the grizzlies and the riotous fishing and the long days of midnight sun. Amazing how quickly you get used to it and start taking it for granted. By the end of the two week trip, the most special thing in my world was a joyous reunion with hot water and soap. Oh lordy that was nice. And then last night, I found a bit of 7th heaven watching the Houston Dynamo beat Club America at a Mexican restaurant with very excellent seafood and Tecate on tap.

Next move is to some clear water streams just north of Anchorage and then over to Valdez to chase cohos and pinks (the remaining salmon species to be ticked off) in the salt. I'm also busy trying to decide on the third leg of my trip; the truth is, I've had enough solo camping in the rain to last most of a lifetime, and I'm considering cancelling the ten-day paddle in Prince William Sound until I can get some foolish buddy of mine to come along and share the fun and misery. But that's still TBD. Long paddles and camping out has made me lean and clean, and I bet I'll be missing it after a week of roadside fishing . . . .

Bad Barb Karma

The writer I sit next to at work, a Bhuddist vegetarian, has been chiding me about my karma lately. Fishing in general does not sit well with his ideas. But when I told him about snacking on shad roe -- eating literally thousands of unhatched little herring souls at a sitting -- he shook his head and said, "it's your karma."

So thoughts of my karma arose almost immediately yesterday when a writhing striper impaled the soft underbelly of my forearm with a nice, sharp, barbed treble hook. "That's what I get for using these freakin treble-hooked plugs," was my first thought. Usually I remove the front hooks on a two-hooked plug, not only because six hooks is overkill, but because I think it decreases the frequency of snags. But yesterday I was fishing the thick water around the Sisters with a new deep-diving rapala and I hadn't gotten around to removing the front hook. "You lazy bastard," is the follow-on thought to that.


At first it actually was a very lovely scene, with a seal swimming around in the growing tidal eddies and some deep bends in my spinning rod. The attacker was actually my second fish, and I was thinking greedily about the last hour or so on the outgoing, when the wind goes down and the fly rod comes out. But it was not to be. I brought the fish in too fast and he stabbed me! God save my karma, but I quickly realized that if I were to avoid further arm carnage, I had to immobilize the fish completely using just one hand -- no free hand to let go of the fish lip to grab a club or knife -- so I gave this 18 inch fish my hardest death grip around his gills and neck. Whoah. So much for the pretty scene.

OK, so now I'm bobbing in the current with a bug-eyed dead striper attached to my arm by a barbed treble hook. I fumble around with the nippers and finally get the line cut and the fish lip unhooked. A larger wave hits me this instant, and the strangled mangled fish plops into the current to feed the seal. "I must have done something really, really bad to deserve all this" is my growing conclusion.

But what to do now? A moment of fumbling around with the split rings that attach the hooks to the plug proves that there's no way I'm going to separate those from the plug with one free hand. Paddle two miles back home with five hooks swinging around wildly with each stroke? Not wise. Perhaps I could push the barb all the way out and crimp it down (though in fact I had no pliers nor hook file handy). I try to push the hook up through upward through the skin, but the angle's not right and the bends of the other two hooks press up on my arm. Ain't comin out that way.

And this is where a memory flashes through my mind and I realize what I did wrong, where all the bad karma really comes from: I have allowed myself to be amused, not once but many times, including in writing, by the misfortune of a fishing buddy with a barb in his flesh:

A half-dozen casts into the morning I heard a plaintive call for help coming over the wind. Upstream, my friend had waded out of the stream and was headed downstream in my direction. What could the problem be, I wondered? ‘I am not going to tie his knots for him,’ I thought. When he got close enough, I saw the problem clear as day, and winced: with the barbed hook of a medium-sized rubberlegs pattern driven deep into the upper part of his chin, he had very nearly fair-hooked himself with a wind-contorted backcast. Regarding the painful process of going back to the hotel and extracting this fly with a pair of pliers, I will spare the reader as well as the subject. My buddy forbade me to ever show a picture of him with the fly in his face, and I am probably not even supposed to write about it here.

Oh, how evil of me to enjoy that story so much. I had to pay at some point. And now here I am floating around a couple of stinky guano islands with a grand opportunity to punish myself even more by pulling this horrible hook backwards out of my arm. So it must be, and I give it a go. No pain, but no success either -- and there is something extremely unpleasant about pulling a barb so hard on your very own flesh and blood, notwithstanding the lack of pain. I give it another, harder, pull and it budges. Boy this is unpleasant. Could I pass out and drown because of this? No, I don't feel nauseous or light-headed, just very, very nonplussed. So I give an animal howl and pull the horrid thing all the way out.

If you're not already cringing at this tale of silly groserie, here are the remaining details. A vein must have been involved, because a lump the size of a golf ball immediately raised on my arm and spewed blood like a tiny volcano. I held my arm out over the water and tried to keep the bright red blood off my boat, which is flying with me to Alaskan grizzly country in a couple weeks. For a moment I was just kind of mesmerized by what was happening to my arm, and I considered taking a photo which would probably have ended up here on this page.

I didn't take the photo, and it occurred to me that I finally made a good decision after quite a string of questionable ones.

To end this long story, I'll report that with teeth and one free hand I got some gauze and big band aids out of my first aid kit, which always travels in my cockpit dry bag, and stanched the flow. The arm still worked fine for paddling, and after a bit I tested it on trolling and retrieving. No big deal. But getting back to the launch and really cleaning it and dressing it seemed the right move, so there went my evening tide.

At this point, I'm crossing my fingers and hoping against infections. That might take karma payback too far and mess with my Alaska activities. A doctor friend gives me two weeks to feel right again, but I think that's a bit drastic for a little karmic pin prick. I mean, it's not like I had to saw the dang arm off with a knife, after all! We shall see. Keep posted.

Spring BS

Ha! The Spring bullshit is all about mating and fishing, with the fish doing one and me doing the other. I didn't mention in my last post, but Verona got very good. With my heaviest tungsten line hung straight downstream, I was into 'em even when I couldn't bogart the best spot.



But who likes a lineup? Rd. 48 has come on, and the quiet of the runs upstream from the launch there makes shadding so much sweeter. Rushing back from Maine on Friday, I went up there Saturday and got into double digits of some very nice fish. Sunday wasn't as good, but it wasn't bad either. Ah, mating and fishing . . .

Speaking of Maine, the smallmouth were very much on the mate back there. Conventional wisdom, which Mainers love more than anything, was saying that the water was still too cold. It took a Californian sneaking up quietly in a yellow kayak to go out and prove them wrong on two beautiful lakes on Mt. Desert Isle. Here's one of two nice fish one lake



and the largest of a very good number of active bass on another pond



Many thanks to my high school bud Brian, who pointed me to the right spots as only a real fisher can do when talking about his home water (Brian grew up in a camp on the pond's shores. Now he runs a beer pub called Sierra Grill that everyone must visit when in Northampton MA).

This June bullshit is just killin me. Shad on the sweet old Sacramento. Smallmouth on the spawning beds at dusk while the loons sing. And I am now counting the days until Alaska: 21.

Both And

West and East, Fly fishing and Spin, Dry and Nymph, Bass and Trout, Shad and Stripers, Sea Kayaks and River Kayaks, Road Bikes and Mountain Bikes, Wine and Beer -- every thing that anyone ever turned into a pernicious dichotomy of This Good, That Bad -- to them I say, Both And!

Truly, I am up to my nostrils with the negative attitude that people too often bring to things when they want to play one-up, other down. Why disdain spin fishing to feel good about fly fishing, if you already feel good about it? Why complain and sneer at indicator nymphing and pretend you only ever cast dries in order to feel like a worthwhile individual, when you already ARE one, who does BOTH! AND!

I for one do not want to waste my time listening to the BS and hot air issuing from the Either-Or'ers, either. Maybe in that one respect I am a little bit of a snob.

Alright, with that rant now completed, I will go ahead and admit that the motto Both And is also a wonderful way to avoid making decisions. If you can't decide whether to go whitewater kayaking or shad fishing -- well, then go Both And! That's what I did last weekend, heading out to Cache Creek for a morning run on the Mother and then moseying over to Verona for a few more hours, considerably more stationary hours, fishing from my inflatable kayak (hardshells vs. duckies? Forget it -- Both And!). In another way, Both And is what I did with my fishin sabbatical plan. So far, it looks like I can both work a job, and get in a pretty good amount of fishing, too. Just about four weeks to Alaska from today . . . .

Right now I'm out in Maine, busily both/anding bass and trout and kayaking and canoeing and friends and family. Last night was a hoot, out on my favorite old eutrophic Cambrian shield pond with an old buddy catching pickerel on bass poppers. This morning, sea kayaking with the dolphins in Frenchman's Bay. I am a bit tired from the schedule, and I'm sure it shows in my writing. Need more both and sleeping and awake. But later on there will be plenty of sleeping, underground. I made a point of arranging to fly back this Friday night so that Saturday can be devoted to the shad; bass and shad, East and West! Hooray for Both And!

Trifecta Two-fer

There are a few things wrong about Berkeley, but its distance from good trout water is the worst of all. I do what I can to deal with the freeway time: buy books on tape, keep a lunchbox of gourmet goodies in the cab, and make sure my air con is in good working order. I laugh to think of my last trout bum truck, which came completely without air conditioning. Driving up and down the 5 or across to the sierras I kept the windows wide open, and arrived wherever I was going with highly unmoist skin and hair like overused steel wool.

One extra motivation for facing those five-hour hauls to Pit 5 is the old two-fer. Doing a Pit River Trifecta is itself kind of a three-fer, but what if you add on a stop in Verona or Willows to wade or float for shad? You got two fer one! Or really, if you are into mathematics, it really adds up to five distinct fishing sojourns:

1) Friday afternoon shad
2) Saturday morning Pit 5 bliss
3) Saturday evening hatch sweetness on Pit 4 plus a dose of canyon wildness
4) Pit 3 closing ceremonies in Sunday morning sun
5) One more new evening of shadding before retiring

Thinking of this scheme ahead of me fairly gets me breaking out the door and roaring down the road . . . though sometimes things don't work out as planned. There are a few shad to be picked out in Willows right now, but I'd say with fair confidence -- after getting skunked there Friday -- that the fish are not quite in yet. In some years, they'd be swarming up there by Mother's Day. Not this year. OK, I accept that, and so on Sunday I make the special effort to leave Pit 3 early enough to get all the way to Verona by the meat of the afternoon. Verona has more fish, but even there they are not really, really IN the way they are when the run is ON, you know? I got several plucks and boated one fish anchored on the seam there, and as such was the second happiest boat in a five-boat lineup, but the first happiest boat was quite a bit happier, like maybe a dozen fish happier. It's like that when the fish are not really in: they stick to only the very best holding water and don't spread out.

That happier boat left the water around 7:45 last night, and no sooner were they hauling up anchor than I reeled up and started working on my own anchor with ideas to plunk it back down right in their happy spot. And there began the latest fishing comedy: that 35 pound, four-pronged monstrosity was STUCK in the sand and mud. I've done this drill a dozen times before, and I've got fairly good at paddling up against current, dropping the paddle, and hauling frantically at the anchor line so as to bring upward pressure on it before floating back over. But it's different when the thing is really, truly stuck. I wanted that boat's happy spot bad, readers, so I pushed the envelope and hauled hard many times, bringing the upstream tube of my IK fearfully low under the current and really testing the capsize horizon. After fifteen minutes, sweating and very other than happy, I said "%^#*& it!" and paddled for shore. I had put a float on the very end of my anchor rope, so maybe someone else with a real boat could help me get it back . . .

The first few guys I asked were still busy fishing -- as I surely would have been -- and didn't have much time for my story. I couldn't blame them, but it deepened my sense of %^#*& it to have to ask for help and be refused. Back on the beach where I landed, there was one last power boat to check with, one manned by a guy who I'm afraid I immediately noticed was both figurative and literally quite red in the neck area. He was poking around somewhat abstractly in an open livewell full of small and large catfish while I explained my problem to him.

"One a them four-pronged ones? Shit, you'll never git that out."

"Yeah, you're right. Hell with it." (I start unloading my boat, ready to leave).

"Git in, let's go git it."

He didn't have to ask twice! I was suddenly full of solicitude again.

"No, I don't need no push, just get on there. Step on my sunglasses? Don't worry on them, worry on that rod! Nearly cost 80 bucks."

I hope I don't sound judging or insulting -- I'm just trying to reproduce this friendly fisher's rural dialect. He was a man of few words and was a strong, stoic help to me in getting that anchor back. We zipped out past the boats of the guys who wouldn't help me doing about 75 I think, found the float, laboriously hauled the anchor up calling it a %^#*& (or at least I did) and then zipped back doing 75 to where his girlfriend was watching my stuff, stuff including a Sage XP with a Ross Canyon reel which cost a tad more than 80 bucks. I said something about gas money and slipped a 20 under his pack of Pall Malls, which he stoically did nor said not a thing to acknowledge. Nonetheless, I felt I had made a friend and experienced some unexpected, amusing things, which is a big part of why I like to go around the world and Colusa county fishing in the first place.

The bigger part of why is actually catching fish. Since you've read this far in my blog I'll go ahead and tell you what I am quite cagey about advertising online: the Pit River fished utterly beautifully this weekend, on all three reaches. You couldn't keep the hordes of 14-16 inchers off of a tan bird's nest, and the multi-bug evening hatch was a glorious act of god: PMDs, drakes, caddis, stonefly adults . . . if I'd stuck a few of the real 20" pigs I'd have called it my best Trifecta ever, but those fellas kept hid for now. They are still waiting.



And so am I! For the shad, who are still coming. Some will swim past my new, sliding-catch anchor, but some will not. More on that later.