We’re trying something new this year, devoting one of our four consecutive travel issues to a single river system—the Nushagak. Certainly not every river in Alaska could stand up to this sort of scrutiny. A good many are much smaller, of course, and proportionately more fragile; quite a few are also exemplary only for a short period of the year or for but one or two species of gamefish. Not the Nushagak.

What makes the Nushagak River one of the world’s great angling destinations is not necessarily its size, though it is big by any definition—one of the United States’ ten largest rivers by volume—but its nearly unrivaled fecundity. The Nushagak produces fish—Chinook, chum, sockeye, pink, or coho salmon, resident trout, sea-run Dolly Varden, grayling, or pike, it almost doesn’t matter. Whatever the quarry, they can be found in abundance somewhere in the system. Just having the fish isn’t enough, though. In the case of king salmon, for example, the Yukon or Kuskokwim rivers to the north can receive more numerous returns some years, but neither mainstem river is as fishable. The Nushagak, on the other hand, is conducive to sport fishing in nearly every foot of its 275 or so miles.

That brings up another extraordinary feature of the Nushagak system—the diversity of river characteristics one can encounter in the drainage, as well as the variety of terrain the waters pass through. As ADF&G biologist Jason Dye notes in a feature appearing later in this issue, the Nushagak will accommodate virtually any type of user. Anglers headed for the drainage can fly in to a headwater tributary and enjoy some of Alaska’s wildest and most scenic float trips. Some of these floats are highly technical, challenges even for advanced river-runners. Others are agreeable enough that boaters with intermediate skills will have no problem negotiating the trip. Over thirty camps on the lower river provide another option, as travelers can spend a week at a fully-guided retreat, chasing Chinook in jet boats during the day, wading the banks in the evening, and finding dinner and a hot shower waiting when it’s finally time to put the rods down. A few of these operations have also established spike camps along the upper Nushagak River or in the Mulchatna system, which patrons can utilize to access a host of different species. In the fall, the region’s plentiful hunting opportunities add an aspect to the standard Nushagak adventure. In fact, during my September 2004 trip to the upper river, where Mike Addiego’s Bristol Bay Adventures offers combination trips from a remote camp, every other person I saw was concentrating completely on the caribou and not at all on the fish. And, not to be forgotten, anglers with the requisite permits from the local Native corporation (if along the lower river, where most of the adjacent land is Native owned), can charter flights from Dillingham and be dropped off at a single location along the river, there to fish or hunt to their heart’s content.

We’ve tried to bring a taste of all this and more in the issue that follows. An article by Les Gara of Anchorage focuses on the float-trip experience, and though his journey takes place on the Chilikadrotna River, a National Wild and Scenic tributary of the Mulchatna, it can be viewed as fairly representative of the system’s headwaters as a whole, give or take a fish here, a migrating herd of caribou there. Fish Alaska publisher Marcus Weiner dissects the coho fishing found on the lower Nushagak during August, after most of the river’s camps have long been pulled out, and J.D. Richey explores all that Nushagak fishing that doesn’t begin with the words king salmon.

However, the kings are undeniably the most significant draw when it comes to the Nushagak. Consequently, we’ve devoted a pair of features to the subject. E. Donnall Thomas, Jr., who has spent more years chasing salmon with a fly rod than he likes to admit, introduces us to fly-fishing for the species in the lower Nushagak, while Terry Sheely relates his experiences from this past Fourth of July, when he and a group of anglers boon-dogged their way to some truly explosive fishing.

In the end, we hope to have provided a broad view of Bristol Bay’s most significant clearwater river system, a view that will not only help you plan a Nushagak trip of your own, but a view worthy of such a place.

—Troy Letherman, Editor