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I have a friend who just returned from a
two-week flyfishing adventure in Ireland. Really, he says adventure, but
perhaps just flyfishing is a more apt modifier, for he has little else to
report from his journey.
There was no talk of a pilgrimage to Croagh Patrick while
in County Mayo, or even a description of what St. Patrick’s legendary summit
may have looked like from the distance. He said nothing of the Celtic ruins
of Glendalough, of dolmens or the Drombeg Stone Circle, of Blarney Castle or
its famous stone. He had not a single story involving the haunting of
banshees or the magic of a leprechaun.
It was a fishing trip first and foremost, so I would have
completely understood not doing or seeing all of those things, but some?
As I listened to him drone on about feisty brown trout and
Atlantic salmon on the surface, with only occasional references to either
the rivers Moy or Erriff, I began to wonder why he’d bothered to make the
trip at all. The fishing was spectacular, to be sure, but he could have had
similar action in a few places a lot closer to home.
In fact, since the surroundings seemed to matter so
little, why not just find a concrete tank in the middle of downtown Denver
and start hammering the fish there? Such artifice may not be much for
impressing the patron saint of ecology, but then, a person could catch a
whole lot of fish, and as I was quickly beginning to learn, that’s all some
folks are after.
Now, I already knew my friend was anything but a follower
of St. Francis of Assisi. I often think he’d rather part with a limb before
abandoning just one of his cavalcade of graphite fly rods, a question that
might be put to the test one of these years on some bear-infested Alaska
stream. But being an angler, one who is frequently in a position to travel
much of the world in pursuit of his passion, I had at least thought he’d
long since embraced a love for that part of the natural world extending
beyond finned creatures with a taste for palmered saddle hackle.
Discovering that he held no such appreciation didn’t
bother me much. What did was the thought that there might be more just like
him out there.
As we near the height of the summer and the number of
tourists completing their Great Land pilgrimages reaches its zenith, I’m
finding myself wondering how many of them could possibly be here just for
the fish. After all, Alaska is just as renowned for its fishing as Ireland,
and even more so once you move beyond the tweed and clay pipe crowd. But as
every resident of the 49th state well knows, beefy ’bows, slab-sided barn
doors, and salmon by the millions are but a small part of the state’s
allure.
The raw power of the landscape in remote Southwest, both
the beauty and bounty of the waters of Southeast, the Interior’s lonely
stretches of the still unspoiled, the mountains, forests, and impressive
array of Southcentral streams—each is but a beginning description of the
state. Who isn’t mesmerized by the sheer majesty of Denali on a clear,
sunlit morning? Who would want to fish Kodiak with a blindfold on? It would
be an undeniable shame to travel all this way and stare at a rod tip the
whole time, missing the chance to see whales breach, brown bears forage, and
eagles glide above.
From Anchorage’s lovely inlet-view restaurants to glaciers
the size of Connecticut, from that immense life-support system called the
Yukon to the Ring of Fire volcanoes of the Alaska Peninsula, there is plenty
to see. Enough to make any fishing trip only part of the outing. After all,
rivers aren’t designated Wild & Scenic because the fish are pretty.
In the end, fishing for sport or recreation has to be
about more than just the fish. Otherwise, why not just stay home and toss
bait at that concrete tub? No, the real attraction of Alaska shouldn’t be in
the size of a trophy or the numbers in a run, but in the chance to chase
wild fish in wild surroundings. Unfortunately today, that’s an increasingly
rare opportunity, though one Alaska affords in an abundance not matched
anywhere, including Ireland.
In fact, almost every other acquaintance of mine that’s
made a first fishing trip to Alaska has always left with one complaint—after
seeing just some of the state, they wished more time for sightseeing had
been scheduled. I think there’s a lesson for my angling-obsessed friend in
there. Perhaps by taking a minute to enjoy and maybe even embrace the
cornucopia of life rivers flow through, by bringing, yes, a little more
Franciscan outlook to his fishing, he might get even more in return. And
he’d probably be able to tell better stories, too.
—Troy Letherman
Editor
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