Recently, due to circumstances completely beyond my control—called children and their grandparents—I was forced to vacate the Great Land for what I’m sure was two consecutive weeks of lovely August weather . There are worse places to visit than Montana, I fully admit, but leaving Alaska in the summer is never an easy thing to do; the season is short enough without interjecting a two-week hiatus right into the middle of the coho run.

However, spending any amount of time at all outside our state usually means one thing: You get to talk a lot about it. My trip was no different. At a family barbecue on our day of arrival, I was immediately thrust into the role of Alaska travel agent by a bunch of drought-riddled Montanans with the 7X blues. "So," nearly every conversation began, "where should I go in Alaska? "

Three hours into my first dissertation on the subject, wishing for a slide projector and a box full of Fish Alaska back issues, I realized again that it’s a question a lot easier asked than answered.

In Walden, Henry David Thoreau famously wrote, "Our life is frittered away by detail ... Simplify, simplify." Needless to say, he wasn’t writing about planning a first or even a fifteenth Alaska fishing adventure, for as veterans of the 49th state already know, it’s all in the details up here. There is just too much space, with too much good water available; the angling possibilities are too numerous—and often, the timing too variable—to allow anyone to play Pin the Tail on the Map (or the calendar , as the case may be) and consistently create a gratifying itinerary. Plus, and this takes on even more significance when a planned journey includes time to be spent in some of the state’s endless wilderness, ill preparedness isn’t something that’s often forgiven in Alaska. Thus, the three hours, and I still wasn’t done talking.

From Dixon Entrance near Ketchikan to Point Hope, which lies just north of Kotzebue Sound, five species of Pacific salmon stream back to Alaska waters to spawn, presenting angling opportunities at one time or another in just about every run, riffle, and pool along the way. Each can also be intercepted in the salt (yes, even sockeye, though occasions are rare), while feeding, migrating, or staging for their first big freshwater push. While tooling about Alaska’s inshore waters, anglers are also prone to favor the region’s plentiful bottomfish, which include the ever-popular barndoor halibut, lingcod, and an assortment of crowd-pleasing rockfish like yelloweye snapper and the black sea bass. However, in case you haven’t noticed, we’re talking quite a few miles of coastline. Throw in some of the planet’s most extreme tides and a few other Last Frontier idiosyncrasies, and you should readily see the reasoning that lies behind the state’s large charter fleet.

Still, even a chartered trip requires some planning, especially if a person wants to mix in some freshwater angling as well. And that’s where it can get really tricky.

Besides the salmon, Alaska’s lakes, rivers, and streams are home to Arctic char, Dolly Varden in both sea-run and resident forms, rainbow trout, steelhead, cutthroat trout (found only in southeast Alaska, the cutthroat also occurs as both a sea-run and freshwater resident gamefish), lake trout, grayling, northern pike, sheefish, and more. Like anywhere else, anglers will find the fishing for a particular species better in some places than in others. Steelhead? The lower Alaska Peninsula, virtually anywhere in Southeast. Big pike? Try the lower Yukon area. Trophy trout? How about the Naknek, the Kvichak, the Kenai? Lots of trout? Katmai, the lower Kuskokwim River tributaries, the upper Nushagak, the Mat-Su Valley. The sheer breadth of the angling opportunity is bewildering.

By this time during my impromptu little talk, I realized that unless I’d set out to thoroughly confuse my hopeful Alaska travelers, and maybe myself , I wasn’t getting very far. So, like a fly angler flummoxed by a finicky pod of char, I changed tactics.

"Well, what do you hope to see while in Alaska? " I began asking. Soon thereafter I found myself describing the majestic temperate rainforests of Southeast, where innumerable coastal streams run tea-colored through the thick, twisted timber that begins at water’s edge. Glaciers came up early and often, as did mountains with five thousand feet of vertical face. I talked about the sprawling muskeg of the Bristol Bay region, the volcanic splendor of the Alaska Peninsula, the emerald carpet of Kodiak, and miles upon miles of unadulterated wilderness in the northernmost reaches of the state. And, exactly like a tactic-changing fly angler, I was getting nowhere, again.

Then it dawned on me: November.

With this issue we inaugurate a series of four straight special travel editions of Fish Alaska, with each providing features on different destinations around the state, as well as more than a few articles geared towards booking trips, selecting gear , and otherwise preparing for a great Alaska adventure. That’s all I had to say.

Simple enough, Mr. Thoreau?