INSIDE ALASKA Story by Amy Armstrong Photos courtesy Logan Ricketts   ...for more articles about Alaska fishing subscribe to Fish Alaska Magazine!

Often relegated to the status of red-haired stepchild of Alaska sport fishing, interior Alaska actually offers a bounty of species for an angler wishing to diversify his or her fishing experience. You won’t haul in a monster halibut and most fishing trips into the Interior are not freezer-filling adventures, but trophy-sized northern pike and world-class grayling inhabit many of the area’s drainages. According to area guides, these fish put up enough fight to satisfy any angling ego. And the sheefish, a member of the whitefish family, is found in plentiful numbers in the northern rivers where they dance across the water’s top edge once hooked.

Interior Alaska is an expansive place. According to the boundary definition used by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game for management purposes, interior Alaska is 526,000 square miles. Yep, it’s bigger than Texas.

An Alaska atlas, if you have one, might be a handy reference tool for learning the Interior’s boundaries. In general terms, the Interior is what’s north of Fairbanks, the area’s main population base and air transportation hub. But it is also the mass expanse of western lands stretching to Kotzebue Sound, where the Bering Strait forms the international boundary with Russia, and Norton Sound, which Iditarod mushers cross in their wintertime quest for the famed burled arch of Nome. For fish management purposes, interior Alaska also dips below Fairbanks into the Tanana Valley just above Denali National Park and west to Bethel and Kuskokim Bay just north of Bristol Bay. To the east, interior Alaska cuts along the eastern edge of the Talkeetna Mountains, dipping down to the town of Glennallen and the Copper and Gulkana Rivers.

According to ADF&G officials, there is plenty fish-laden water around. They chuckle when asked how many river and lakes there are in the Interior. “Too many to count,” said Cal Skaugstad, regional stocking coordinator. “Thousands of lakes, thousands of miles of coastline, and thousands of miles of rivers. I don’t think anybody has actually counted it all. We just have so much.”

In fact, there are areas of the Interior that still are not completely mapped. It adds to the mystique of the area and validity to the claims of the area’s guides, whom collectively promote trips into the Interior as trips into the true Alaska. “You just don’t have to go far out of Fairbanks to be in the wilderness,” said Logan Ricketts, who, as the owner of Alaska Fishing and Raft Adventures, has been guiding raft trips down the Gulkana and Chena Rivers for seven years.

As Fairbanks is the jumping off spot for most trips into the Interior, it is also an appropriate place to begin examining fishing opportunities in the Far North. Fairbanks lies in the Tanana River Drainage and is part of ADF&G’s Lower Tanana River Drainage Management Area, one of the Interior’s five management areas.

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The Lower Tanana Drainage

The Tanana River is a 570-mile-long glacial-fed stream with its headwaters at the confluence of the Chisana and Nabesna Rivers near Tok and the Alaskan border with Canada. While it may not be known for its sport fishing, its numerous tributaries and sloughs are.

Perhaps the most accessible of its tributaries is the Chena River, which flows through the center of urban development in Fairbanks. It is a 160-mile- long river and is the home to a world-class catch-and-release Arctic grayling fishery. The Chena has three forks: the North Fork, the East Fork—more affectionately dubbed the Middle Fork by locals—and the South Fork. Powerboat navigation is limited to the area downstream from where the North and East Forks join, but floating is quite popular as the river offers various classes of water and lots of deep holes where grayling bunch up. Al Miller, a float trip guide with Chena Hot Springs Resort, spent last summer exploring the Middle Fork in preparation for a new two to three-day float trip being offered next season by the resort. “When the wild roses along shore start blooming in June, the fish start hitting,” he said. “I don’t quite know why that is, but there is just something about that.” According to Miller, the Middle Fork of the Chena River is nearly untouched and perfect for fly or spin fishing.

ADF&G officials use a counting tower on the Chena Flood Control Dam to closely watch a run of king and chum salmon. Harvest is allowed, but most of the guides operating in the area discourage it. After a more than 900-mile trek from the Bering Sea, salmon in the Chena River are already in full spawning color. “I personally encourage people to practice catch-and-release on any salmon they hook into anywhere in the Interior,” said Ricketts. “It is something very special to see those salmon spawning all the way up here, and we ought to leave them in the stream.”

The Salcha River, supporting a world-class grayling fishery, is another of the notable Tanana River tributaries. It flows 120 miles from its beginning in the Tanana hills to where it flows into the Tanana River near Harding Lake. Access to the Salcha is available via the Richardson Highway about three miles upstream from where the Salcha joins the Tanana. The state campground there offers camping and boat launch access to the numerous privately owned cabins along the lower 70-mile stretch of the Salcha.

The Salcha River Guest Camp, owned by John and Kathy Nussbaumer of Fairbanks, is located 30 miles up the Salcha. The camp consists of three sleeping cabins, a rustic lodge, and an art studio. The Nussbaumers limit guest count to six at a time. John practices catch-and-release for grayling all but one day a week when he allows guests to keep enough of the catch for that night’s dinner, which he then prepares himself in the lodge’s gourmet-style kitchen.

Again, salmon fishing opportunities do exist on the Salcha River, but the story here is the same as on the Chena. These fish have traveled a lot of miles since saltwater—about 950—and their flesh is beginning to deteriorate.

There are also a number of fishable lakes in the Tanana management area that host a variety of species. Harding Lake, located on the Richardson Highway 45 miles south of Fairbanks, formerly boasted an incredible northern pike fishery, but a steady drop in water levels in recent years on the 2,500-acre lake uncovered the reeds along the perimeter, which served as nursery grounds for northern pike. ADF&G officials are now cautiously watching the pike population in the lake. “It is currently illegal to target northern pike in Harding Lake,” said Don Roach, ADF&G regional supervisor. “That probably isn’t going to change for quite some time.” It’s an unusual concept for Alaskan anglers, especially those more familiar with southern fishing destinations, where northern pike are vehemently despised for their easy decimation of rainbow trout populations. But in interior Alaska, where the northern pike is a native species, the fish is highly prized for its fighting characteristics and culinary appeal, especially deep-fried. Winning the fight with a northern pike is almost a rite of passage in the Interior.

Skaugstad of ADF&G thinks there is another record of sorts awaiting anglers in Harding Lake. This past summer while stocking nearly 5,500 Arctic char as part of a long-standing program, Skaugstad caught several large fish in nets while sampling. “Some of these were more than 18 pounds,” he said. “The state record Arctic char has got to be somewhere in that lake.” Harding Lake also supports a popular burbot fishery, especially in the winter when the lake is dotted with ice-fishing shanties. ADF&G currently stocks the lake with Arctic char and used to stock it with lake trout, which are now reproducing without the agency’s help.

There are several other notable lakes in the Tanana management area. Birch Lake, accessible at mile 306 on the Richardson Highway, is heavily stocked by ADF&G. During the summer and early fall, officials let nearly 9,000 chinook salmon and 40,000 coho salmon loose in the 800-acre lake. A little more than 8,000 rainbow trout and 5,000 grayling were also stocked. The Chena Lakes Recreation Area is a man-made 260-acre lake operated by the Fairbanks North Star Borough. Road access is gained by the Richardson Highway, and ADF&G stocks it with several species. During this past season, approximately 55,000 fish of various species—rainbow trout, Arctic char, chinook and coho salmon, and grayling—were stocked in the area. That’s more fish than people who live in the Fairbanks North Star Borough.

And if an even more remote setting is to your liking, there are numerous fly-out charter operators in the Fairbanks area that can get you out to lakes full of northern pike. Will Johnson, former owner of Yute Air, has more than 30 years experience flying interior Alaska and is now operating a charter service from the Chena Hot Springs Resort. “The numbers of lakes we can quickly get to is incredible,” he said. “The pike just hit and hit in these lakes. It is never a disappointment.

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The Upper Tanana Drainage

As its name would indicate, this management area covers the upper section of the Tanana River. In more general terms, it’s the part of Alaska butted up against Canada, east of the Fairbanks North Star Borough. Its southern boundary runs between the towns of Paxson and Tok, represented on most maps of Alaska by large dots, which are due to their location on major highways and not necessarily relative to the population base in those communities. And while this area is often considered only as a place to pass on the way to somewhere else, the region has several strong rivers—the Delta, Delta Clearwater, Chisana, Nabesna, Tok, and Goodpastor.

The Delta and Delta Clearwater rivers support healthy runs of silver salmon, even though the fish have swum 1,000 miles from the mouth of the Yukon River just to get there. This is a late run featuring coho coming into the stream in late-September and spawning until mid-to- late October. It’s an attractive sport fishery, with fall colors usually in full spectrum and the numbers of mosquitoes and other pesky flying critters on the decline.

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The Arctic, Yukon and Kuskokwim Drainage

For brevity’s sake, ADF&G officials and anglers alike refer to this area as the A-Y-K. If you have to ask what it stands for, you have given away the fact that you have never been there.

The K stands for the Kuskokwim River, Alaska’s second largest. Its 900 miles start in the Kuskokwim Mountains near the Alaska Range and flow southwest to the Bering Sea. Much of the land this river cuts through belongs to one of two national wildlife refuges: the Yukon Delta or the Togiak. This means much of the water is under federal jurisdiction with rules much different than what you will read in the state’s fishing regulations. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Office of Subsistence Management has the federal regulations.
There are 23 species of fish that are native to the Kuskokwim drainage. Fourteen sport angling species—king, silver, pink, red, and chum salmon, Arctic grayling, rainbow, steelhead and lake trout, Arctic char, Dolly Varden, sheefish, northern pike, and burbot—are prevalent enough to make this area a popular float trip destination. Seven major tributaries of the lower Kuskokwim—the Aniak, Kisaralik, Kwethluk, Eek, Kanektok, Arolik and Goodnews rivers—are diverse enough to satisfy the anticipation of a seasoned floater and calm the questions of the novice. ADF&G’s website on the Lower Kuskokwim offers a complete section on float trips on this river.

Further north in this region above the upper Tanana, you’ll quickly discover a long and mighty river named the Yukon. Just hearing its name conjures up images of the gold rush steamboats of a bygone era. Today’s precious commodity on the river is trophy-size northern pike frequently weighing in between 20 and 30-plus pounds. Some guides claim they’ve hooked into 40-pound pike on the Yukon. Whatever the case, the northern pike on the Yukon River are worth their weight in gold to the dozens of guides specializing in the pursuit of them.

The Yukon actually begins in Canada, enters Alaska near the village of Eagle, and meanders 2,000 miles across the state until it empties into the Bering Sea near Alakanuk. There are road connections to various parts of the Yukon River, but for the majority of its stretch, the Yukon represents wild country. That’s exactly why the pike are so big in the Yukon, said Bill O’Halloran, 10-year owner and operator of North Country River Charters in Fairbanks, which specializes in weeklong float trips targeting northerns on the Yukon River. Last July, O’Halloran and his group of highly experienced guides led the “Quest For The Record” with eight anglers. “Fishing for giant pike on this river is as good as it gets anywhere on the planet,” O’Halloran said. “The fish are explosive. There is nothing like a giant pike in shallow water. You just toss a fly out there and hang on. The pike will run with it for 30 yards and it takes guts just to hold on.”

The story is the same for sheefish on the Yukon. For some anglers, hooking into a sheefish is the pinnacle of their fishing lifetime, said Skaugstad. He caught his first sheefish on the Yukon River and has been hooked on the species ever since. “The first time I e ver caught one, I didn’t see it until after it was hooked and it came leaping out of the water and there was just this beautiful bright silver fish dancing across the water. I was astounded,” he explained. “It fought so hard. Every chance I get to go after sheefish, I take.”

The sheefish, prized for its delicate, flaky texture, averages 15 pounds with some longer-living females weighing in around 30 pounds. On the Yukon River, last season’s bag limit was ten per day with no size limitations. While angling for sheefish on the Yukon can be spectacular, perhaps the best sheefish river in the state, the Kobuk River, is actually located in another of ADF&G’s management areas called Northwestern Alaska.

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Northwestern Alaska Management Area

This area located north of the Yukon River and south of Point Hope, where Native Alaskans still practice traditional whale hunting, is 68,000 square miles big. Its most recognizable city is Nome, a town the gold rush first put on the map. It has stayed there in part thanks to the Iditarod.

The Nome area itself has a well-maintained road system providing reasonable access to 11 area rivers where the top species are Arctic grayling and Dolly Varden. Although runs of chum salmon do exist, they have been pretty weak and closed to sport fishing most seasons. To get into other parts of the Northwestern Management Area, you need a boat or a plane or a good guide with one or the other.

Most of the streams of the northern Seward Peninsula (Nome is located on the peninsula’s southern tip) have not been visited by state management officials. This area is part of the Bering Land Bridge National Park and Preserve and the streams have low flow volumes. But as one moves inland, three strong rivers—the Noatak, Kobuk, and Selawik—make up for what isn’t found on the Seward Peninsula. All three rivers have been classified as National Wild and Scenic Rivers.

The Noatak and the Kobuk rivers are 400 and 360 miles long, respectfully. They drain approximately 12,000 square miles of the western Brooks Mountain range. The Noatak produces enough chum salmon to support a commercial fishery in Kotzebue. Thousands of Dolly Varden spawn in this river as well, especially in its upper reaches. The current state Dolly Varden/Arctic char of 19.75 pounds was taken from this river in 1991. The Kobuk River is home to the state’s record sheefish of 53 pounds, taken in 1986 from the river’s upper section. The sheefish in this system do grow at a slower rate than their counterparts in other parts of the state, but they also tend to get a lot bigger.

Sport fish activity in the Northwestern Management Area is much less than compared to other parts of the state and even the Interior. But for those anglers who desire to get off the path entirely, this region has abundant populations of sheefish, northern pike, lake trout, Dolly Varden, Arctic char, and burbot. Officials with ADF&G like to remind sport fisherman that subsistence fishing is a way of life for most Native Alaskans in the area. ADF&G thought enough of the subject to dedicate a portion of the agency’s website to education on the matter. While blanket social statements are never good, it is true that most Natives in this area have a very different view on catch-and-release. They believe all fish taken should be used and that catch-and-release, commonly used as a conservation method in other parts of Alaska, is essentially the same thing as playing with the fish or showing disrespect to the resource.

Upper Copper/Upper Susitna Management Area

Four of Alaska’s state highways combine with well-kept secondary roads to provide unrivaled access to this area’s rich sport fisheries. The area is only 189 miles northwest of Anchorage, accessed via the Glenn Highway, and 250 miles south of Fairbanks on the Richardson Highway. The Edgerton and Denali highways provide some east-west travel in the area. The Denali Highway cuts east from Cantwell, just south of Denali National Park, to join up with the Richardson Highway at the town aptly named Denali.

The region’s best-known fishery is the Wild and Scenic Gulkana River. It is where Ricketts likes to take his clients for king and sockeye salmon as well as rainbow trout, Arctic grayling, and lake trout. “The upper stretches of the river are very conducive for catching kings on the fly,” Ricketts said. “To hook a king on the fly is a nearly religious experience. They are so powerful. It is a lot of muscle on the end of your line. You can see it in the faces of the guests as their eyes are getting three times their normal size and their arms are tired and their knuckles are getting smacked around from the action.”

Several well-developed communities—Glennallen, Nelchina, Gulkana, Gakona, Chitina, McCarthy, Kenny Lake, Paxson, and Sourdough—offer a variety of services and accommodations, making a trip to this part of Alaska easier on the family members who aren’t sport anglers.

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Bringing It All Together

Folks who know the Interior all agree on at least one thing: the weather changes quickly and travel plans should be flexible enough to allow for last-second changes. Trying to catch a commercial plane from Fairbanks to Anchorage on the same day one arrives back in Fairbanks from remote areas is a bad idea. “It is the biggest mistake I see people making,” said O’Halloran. “If they can’t get back to Fairbanks because of weather elsewhere, it really causes trouble if they miss their commercial flight.”

That is why he and other guides recommend at least one to two days between flights. Besides, he said, Fairbanks offers plenty of day-fishing opportunities and other sights to see. The Fairbanks Convention and Visitor’s Bureau operates a log cabin information booth adjacent to the downtown Golden Heart Plaza near the banks of the Chena River. The city has several museums dealing with Native culture and the world ice art championships, and a musk ox farm is within driving distance from the city. See their website at www.explorefairbanks.com for more information.

As the Interior is in the heart of Alaska, it is also the home to numerous Native Alaskan groups. Various Native corporations own large portions of land in the Interior, and each organization uses different rules regarding access for sport angling. Most guides are well aware of Native boundaries and many have special permits to use Native-owned lands. If choosing to go it alone, you may want to contact the Bureau of Land Management or the federal Fish and Wildlife Service for land ownership maps.

But because it isn’t the first destination of choice for many, there is plenty of room for those who do choose to fish its drainages. If combat fishing isn’t on your to-do list, then interior Alaska is the place for you. “Here you can truly escape the crowds,” said Bill O’Halloran. “You can literally spend a week out on the river and the only other people you will see are those in your party and the people in the villages we visit.”

It’s a sentiment echoed by Logan Ricketts. “The Interior is not stomped down like the Mat-Su Valley or the Kenai Peninsula,” he said. “Our philosophy is that there is much more to fishing than standing elbow to elbow with other people.”

Amy Armstrong is a contributing editor for Fish Alaska. Her next goal is to land an Interior Sheefish.
 

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