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Originally published October 2007
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Editor's Creel
Fly Fishing the Stronghold
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One year ago, near the middle of October in the Susitna Valley, and I'm fishing dry flies, and not just any dry but a Pale Olive Sparkle Dun. I took no small amount of pleasure in tying the fly, as I'd grown sick of banging out the same old flesh and flash by at least mid-July. And this was a genuine hatch-matching opportunity to boot, not an everyday occurrence in the Far North and certainly not anything I'd normally associate with the last gasps of autumn. With the various salmon spawns complete, the majority of anglers I knew continued with l'affaire bead. A good number of others were heavy into the flesh, while an enterprising handful might have been tossing the occasional sculpin or depending on the water, articulated leech pattern. Needless to say, most were working on a serious case of tendonitis as well, since it isn't easy to huck all that lead. But that's Alaska, or so everyone says.
The bad news is they're probably right, for this time of year at least.
It's no secret the state fishes differently than just about any other angling destination in the world, even those few that also favor deep drifts and dreadful flies, and yet, every year I run into folks who are alternately dismayed, discouraged or just plain dumbfounded by the parts and particulars of fishing in the Great Land. This is never more prevalent than when the days turn short, the peaks white, the leaves various shades of Klondike gold. Sometimes spectacular, typically laborious and never pretty: that's both the how and the to of autumn angling in Alaska. Unless, of course, one looks away from the trendier species that are in season-the Dollies and steelhead and rainbow trout-and looks instead to something a little more egalitarian in its tastes. Like maybe the Arctic grayling.
That's exactly where I found myself last fall, and while no one will ever nominate me as a great defender of the species, I was quite pleased to be making any casts that didn't end with a terrible plop. Actually catching fish at the end of those casts was a nuisance I could live with. They weren't Alaska's flagship rainbows by any stretch of the imagination, nor well-fed Dollies all done up for Halloween, nor within a thousand miles of steelhead, but as I reminded myself again and again at the time, they were (and are) pretty cool fish. For one thing, the 49th state represents one of the last real strongholds for Thymallus arcticus, a species that has historically been limited in its distribution because of a low tolerance for saltwater. There's a small, strictly-regulated population that roams the headwaters of the Missouri River in Montana, but from there nothing until one nears central Alberta. After that the wild grayling's range runs uninterrupted through northernmost Alaska.
Then there's that sail-shaped dorsal fin, as unique to freshwater sport fish as a mayfly imitation is to October in the Last Frontier. Their coloring can be relatively chic, too, as in some fish a close look might reveal the gamut of earthly hues in one or two square inches near the gill plates. In a single run I caught fish that looked more lavender than anything else, and then fish heavily flecked with gold. And they're not dumb, I told myself, just eager, consumed with a zeal to feast that shouldn't surprise anyone who's lived through winter in Alaska. At their pickiest, with the short-lived afternoon hatch on the wane, I had to dip beneath the surface with the kind of barely competent midge impression that I'd be embarrassed to fish in most Rocky Mountain streams. Even without split shot, I caught fish.
Okay, maybe they are a little reckless, especially in the fall, and I guess I can also admit that the skirmishes on offer feel like something a damp dishrag might put up. Still, for an Alaskan, it's nice to be reminded that three-weights aren't mere novelty items and that a less-than-turbo tapered floating line is good for more than the casting ponds at the Sportsman Show. It's also good to be alone every now and then, and if you're fishing for grayling in October, you're almost certainly alone. That's why this fall I'm thinking about dry flies again . . . well, I'm actually thinking about swinging ridiculously large flesh patterns for middle-river rainbows on the Kenai, and about trying for an eight-pound Dolly in the canyon or nymphing for Anchor River steelhead or running way up the Su with a two-hander and dozens of black articulated leeches. But right after all that, I'm hoping to hit it big with those mayflies again.
Because different is always good.
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