This past February, my son came home from his kindergarten class and informed me that we had six more weeks of winter to look forward to. He was born in Alaska, thus he naturally said it with some amount of excitement: “Just six more weeks, Dad!” I hadn’t the heart to spoil his Groundhog’s Day.

Not a full five days after the second of February, it was snowing like crazy in the Mat-Su Valley and the notion of spring seemed as remote as philanthropy at a Get Rich Quick seminar. In the middle of that forty-eight-hour storm, my friend Greg Thomas sent me a photo of a beautiful rainbow trout he’d caught the evening before on the Madison River. He lives in the mountains of western Montana, not a place known for balmy winters, so I didn’t mind his good cheer. There are friends I flat refuse to speak to after early November, when the last of the Kenai Peninsula steelhead fishing dries up (or as the case may be, ices over). One is Captain Bruce Chard, a Florida Keys flats guide who thinks 65 degrees Fahrenheit warrants wool socks and a beanie. The other is Jake Jordan, a man entirely too sedulous when it comes to keeping in touch.

Cut to Super Bowl Sunday: My wife and I stayed home to watch the Patriots win again, primarily because it was too damn cold to travel anywhere else. The next day Greg called with what he thought to be an interesting story. It seems he and his wife had journeyed to Missoula to watch the game with friends and to show off their new baby girl. On the way, he had to stop at a highway turnout so little Tate could be fed, and rather than conduct himself with even a shred of dignity during the delay, Greg strung up the four-weight he had along and slunk down to the river that paralleled the road. In two casts, he caught a pair of nice westslope cutts. I begged him not to send photographs.

He did anyway. And in the following weeks the photos began to pile up like the winter white outside my door. First a pair of solid browns taken on Greg’s Incredible Egg and a promise that he’d broken off the really big one. Next was another rainbow, this time accompanied by a hint to check out his apparel in the picture—no gloves, no jacket, no stocking hat. What I noticed first, however, was the lack of ice.

I tried to take solace in reading, paging through back issues of Fish Alaska and planning a season’s worth of fishing. At night, I forced myself to only think sunny thoughts, and only about fish that could be caught in Alaska. Then I grabbed the spring copy of Gray’s Sporting Journal and found a four-page photo spread of Bruce railing a giant tarpon in the Keys. Literally that very day I opened my inbox to find an e-mail from Jake, now in Guatemala chasing sailfish. By the time I went to pick up my boy from school that afternoon, I had serious issues with the quality of education he was receiving.

Somehow, I made it through the shortest month with no overt complications and have now traversed the length of March sans the need for a major overhaul to the personal conduct department. It’s April and for the first time since I stood in an October downpour on the Anchor River, I’m thinking seriously about fishing in the Last Frontier.

Still, as I look outside my window or peer hopefully through the extended weather forecast, I’m not convinced we’ve reached anything that my out-of-state friends might regard as good fishing weather. Maybe that’s why Alaskans traditionally refer to breakup and not spring. For up here, if it’s sunshine and seventy degrees you’re waiting on, the time you get to spend streamside is going to be severely limited. Heck, July is enough of a crapshoot weather-wise; against that, April is downright forbidding. Instead, we figure if the ice is out and the steelhead have begun to arrive, well, then, fishing is at least possible, if not particularly comfortable. And after a winter in the Far North, possible is good enough.

To tell the truth, I kind of admire the weather-impervious traits of the Alaska angling fraternity, and since he’s now six, I suppose it’s time I begin to teach my son these things, before he starts to believe in anything Punxsutawney Phil has to say. To fish in Alaska, all he really needs to know is this: Frozen fingers—like frozen toes—can be thawed. Wet bodies can be warmed and dried. But despite all manner of wind, rain, or snow, fish can’t be caught without leaving the house.

—Troy Letherman

Editor