It's no secret that the Cordova area is the epicenter for some seriously good silver salmon fishing every fall, some of the best in the entire state in fact. What may surprise people, however, is that a lot of the really hot action takes place right along the road system, mere minutes from downtown.
Sure, chasing coho on the fabled and remote streams of the Lost Coast like the Tsiu and Tsivat rivers represents perhaps the pinnacle of the sport, but the area's road fishing offers budget-conscious anglers a shot at spectacular action without spending a fortune. All you need is a set of wheels, some good waders and sense of adventure.
When Tim Reilly and I got the dispatch from Fish Alaska headquarters to investigate what the Cordova fishing scene was all about last September, we had big plans to explore a little of everything-we'd fish the road for a couple days and then do some saltwater prospecting and hit a couple fly-out spots as well. As always in Alaska, though, you have to be prepared with a backup plan. A day into our trip, a huge storm pounded the area, keeping us from flying or boating anywhere. We hadn't really planned on fishing the road for seven straight days, but you do what you have to do when Mother Nature rears back and throws you a nasty knuckle-curve.
By having so much time to spend exploring the car-accessible waters around Cordova-dealing with water conditions that ranged from low and clear to raging mud and back again-we got a good, in-depth look at what the area has to offer and how to fish it. Here's our report:
Eyak River
Only six miles up the Copper River Highway from downtown is the Eyak River, one of Cordova's most prolific and close-to-home silver fisheries. The coho start showing up here in early August and the run continues to build towards its peak in mid-September.
The river immediately below the highway bridge (which is located just downstream of the outlet of Eyak Lake) is sluggish and slow and doesn't fish all that well in low water. The best action occurs in the deeper holes about a mile and a half downstream. Access to that area is via boat (there's a public boat launch at mile 6.5 on the highway) or by hiking the trail that begins at the bridge. The trail is a well-worn affair that begins on the downstream side of the bridge and follows the western bank of the river.
When we arrived in Cordova on September 7, we got the ol' "Do you want the bad news or the bad news first?" speech from one of the locals. Apparently, the region had been, along with much of the state, experiencing its worst silver season in recent memory. To top it off, there had been no significant rainfall all summer, so the rivers were all extremely low. The only place there were any salmon was the lower end of the Eyak-and every last tourist and local in town knew about it.
After stowing our gear at the hotel, we rented a junk heap of a Honda and paid more for it for the week than the car was actually worth-seriously. The moldy, fogged-up vermin of a car had no shocks and didn't always start immediately, but she got us where we wanted to go (mostly) and we grew to affectionately refer to it as "The Wrat."
The Wrat's first destination was the trailhead at mile 6. Under misty skies, we began the hour-long hike downstream to, what we had been told, were the honey holes. The trail started off along the river but then made a turn to the right, climbed a hill and disappeared into a meadow. In our infinite wisdom, we figured we'd missed something and decided to buck the brush along the riverbank. Not only did we ford a swamp and scale two cliffs, we also nearly got lost in an area with lots of brown bear sign. Moral of the story: stay on the trail, no matter how wrong it feels. Eventually, we got back to the path and down to the river where we found a couple holes loaded with rolling silvers-and lots of people.
Most folks were in boats, but there were quite a few tossing spinners from the bank as well. We joined the masses and caught a few fish, but quickly realized that the salmon had a pretty good case of lockjaw going thanks to the heavy pressure. We hiked upstream to a quiet flat away from the horde and found a bunch of willing biters, but had to switch from spinners to purple marabou jigs to get them to go. We had as many silvers as we wanted in that spot but had to contend with a steady stream of rental and local boats ripping at Mach II across our water. Every time a boat would plow over the silvers, they'd shut off and we'd have to quit fishing for about 10 minutes before they'd go on the snap again.
After a banner morning we hiked out, hopped into the Wrat and went off to check out other waters. Though it started to rain fairly heavily late that afternoon, most streams besides the Eyak were still too low and had very few fish in them. After quick stops at Ibeck Creek and the Elsner River, we headed down to the Copper River Delta and Alaganik Slough.
Alaganik Slough
In late August and early September, waves of fresh silvers push through the lower reaches of Alaganik Slough, bound for spawning tributaries farther up the system. At first glance, the slough looks more like a place you'd find catfish-tidal, sluggish and murky-but the silver fishing there can be outstanding.
You can gain access to the slough off Alaganik Slough Road at mile 17 of the Copper Highway. The road dead-ends at a nature center and boat ramp and, about a quarter-mile before that, there's a boardwalk trail that runs through the wetlands down to the water's edge. Chest waders are a must here as the trail is often partially underwater and to access some of the best spots along the slough, you'll have to cross the mouths of several tributary channels and creeks. Just be sure to pay attention to the tide book-you can get stranded on islands when the tide comes in if you're not careful.
Alaganik Slough is glacial and off-colored, so the best places to fish it, we found, were the inlets of clear tributaries. After wandering around and trying to figure out how to approach the fishing, we settled on No. 4 pink Super Vibrax spinners and concentrated on those clean-water edges. In a driving rain, Reilly and I put a serious thumping on some big silvers to 15 pounds and called it quits just in time to get out of there before dark. Some of the other anglers we talked to in the parking lot said that they'd had good luck drifting roe as well.
Seven inches of rain!
Over the next two days, the weather slammed us and over seven inches of rain fell in Cordova. The Eyak, to our surprise, completely blew out. We figured that the river would be protected by Eyak Lake, but a massive wall of dark water washing out of the hills caused the lake level to jump three feet almost overnight. During the deluge, Ibeck Creek went from a trickle to a muddy monster and so did everything else. While most of the out-of-town visitors resigned themselves to the fact that there was no fishing to be done and were hunkered down in hotel rooms, we kept searching for somewhere to wet a line.
High-Water Hot Spots
We returned to Alaganik Slough only to find it the size of the Mississippi. With the water so high and chocolate brown, we still managed to catch a few fish by slow-cranking spinners right along the bank in a small pocket of cleaner tributary water. But a short, 50-foot section of bank was all we could access because the trail was under 10 feet of water in places. It was the type of spot you may have more motivation to grind on all day in the Lower 48, but we quickly tired of it and moved on.
As we drove around and looked at rising muddy water everywhere, we started to get mentally prepared for the very real prospect of perhaps fishing that same small spot on the slough the rest of our trip. But then we stumbled onto a gold mine.
In general, anadromous fish like salmon and steelhead get into Go-Mode when rivers are on the rise. Increased flow makes their upstream trip over gravel bars and rapids easier and they take the opportunity to make a break for it-to a point. The volume of water raging down Cordova's drainages during the deluge was so huge that the fish actually pulled out of the main channels and into backwaters, sloughs and eddies.
The trick again was finding one of these types of spots that had a little bit of clear water. Once we figured that all out, we pretty much hooked as many fish as we wanted, while most of the anglers were still either watching Sportscenter in their hotels or driving aimlessly around.
We found one tea-colored slough off the Elsner River near Mudhole Smith Airport (about mile 11) that was particularly stacked with coho. It was an odd feeling pulling chrome, sea-liced silvers out of what looked for all the world like a bass pond. In fact, everything seemed so "bassy" that I was inspired to put on a hot pink Zara Spook topwater plug that was promptly eaten by a salmon on the first cast.
That unnamed slough was our go-to spot for about a day and a half while the rain continued to pound the region. Overnight, however, the storm abruptly ended and, much to our amazement, the rivers started to fish the very next morning. We had guessed that it would take several days to a week for things to drop out and clear, but we were way wrong.
Ibeck Creek
While the Eyak River was still blown out when we crossed it, we found Ibeck Creek-locally known as "7 Mile"-to be just on the verge of perfect shape. It was still a little pushy with a twinge of glacial gray, but definitely workable. Apparently, we weren't the first ones to notice-the turnouts near the bridge were packed with cars and there was an army of anglers crawling all over the joint.
A quick look off the bridge told the story. Fresh, almost translucent silvers were rolling two and three at a time in the hole below and we could see a steady stream of wakes pushing through the riffle downstream. We sprinted back to the Wrat to grab our gear and in short order, were into salmon on nearly every cast. All day.
By the next morning, the creek had dropped enough that the bridge pool was barely fishable and the water had a good couple feet of visibility. Again, it felt as if the entire town was down on the gravel bar fishing, so we decided to try to hike up above the masses on the well-used trail on the creek's west bank. There were anglers at every turn for four solid miles so we just concentrated on some of the less obvious pockets and seams that everybody else had overlooked-and had an absolute field day with pink spinners. Neither of us counted, but Reilly and I agreed that we collectively hooked over 60 silvers in the 8- to 16-pound class that day.
The trail we hiked was easy with very little elevation change. We had to cross the river in a spot or two, which can be a bit dicey at higher flows. It's a good idea to make plenty of noise up the trail since there are quite a few big brownies in the area. We saw tracks, scat and half-eaten fish carcasses everywhere. The bears lay pretty low during the day because of all the human traffic, but it makes sense to get back to the road well before dark.
Seven Mile hasn't always been a hotspot. It wasn't too many years ago that the glacial flows of the Scott River would swallow up the clear waters of Ibeck Creek. While the salmon have always been there, it wasn't until the Scott's channel shifted eastward that the creek cleared up and anglers could see all the fish that they had been missing.
Haystack Trail
Our last day, we visited a small creek off the Haystack Trail (mile 19). It was about a mile hike in over a well-maintained boardwalk trail (be on the lookout for bears!) and then we fished both up and downstream from the entry point. We asked several locals about the name of the place but nobody seemed to know so we ended up calling it "Culvert Creek," for the big pipe that the stream flows through as it passes under the highway.
Culvert Creek is one of those spots you have to hit perfectly. When there's too much water, you can't hike down it and the fish are tough to get to. But if you wait two days after a rain, you may find the creek to be too low and the fishing difficult. After trying three different times, we got the timing down and had a great final day there before heading for the airport.
The creek isn't for everyone. The tight quarters required precision casting under overhanging tree limbs and behind logs. The fish were there, though not in numbers like the Eyak River and Ibeck Creek had. Still, being small stream junkies, we gladly traded numbers for some challenging sport, nice scenery and no competition. Flipping spinners and jigs into salad bowl sized gaps in the cover resulted in about 20 hookups.
McKinley Lake
Just north of the Copper River Highway at mile 21.6, there's a 2.2-mile trail that leads to McKinley Lake, where you can sometimes find good action on silvers in the outlet channels. We didn't check this one out but heard that there's about a I-mile cross-country hike from the trail to the good fishing. Some of the local folks will also float through the area in rafts or canoes by launching at mile 24 and drifting down to the boat ramp at mile 22.
Power Creek
At the head of Eyak Lake, past the municipal airport, is Power Creek. Though the stream's closed to salmon fishing, we made a quick stop to check on the Dolly fishing, which is said to be outstanding in mid- to late September. There's only one really good access point to the stream at a culvert crossing and we found some willing biters sitting behind spawning red salmon while tossing small spoons and egg imitations. Local biologists that we ran into later in the trip told us that creek gets stacked with Dollies when the silvers are in there spawning heavily-right about the time we had to head home.
The "Hippy Hole"
While it wasn't really the style of fishing we're into, we did stop, for research purposes, at Hippy Cove (Fleming Spit) on Orca Inlet, which is just north of downtown on aptly named Orca Road. A small run of broodstock coho return to the cove, and then at high tide, the fish run through a culvert into a pond on the other side of the road.
While some fresh silvers can be caught here on spinners or herring under floats, it's often a circus and not really what comes to mind when you picture Alaska fishing. The upside is it gives the local kids something to do within bicycle range of home.
In the End
Though we hit Cordova on a year when everybody said the fish numbers were way down, Reilly and I had some of the best silver fishing we'd ever experienced, which made our minds reel at the thought of what it must be like on a good year. The roadside systems had plenty of fish and enough variety to keep things very interesting. The average size of the coho was outstanding and while we didn't get any of the area's legendary 20-pounders, we caught lots of fish in the mid-teens.
As fish junkies on a mission, we didn't spend much time seeing what the town of Cordova was all about, but I can say that all the local folks we talked to were among the most friendly we've ever met . . . anywhere. We had nice accommodations everywhere and the food was good.
Sometimes the best way to evaluate a trip like this is to ask yourself a few simple questions. Would we go back? Would we recommend a trip to Cordova to friends? Without hesitation, the answer to both is an enthusiastic yes! We had a fabulous time, caught more salmon in a week than most people do in several seasons-and found the trip to be quite affordable (except for the Wrat, but that's another story).
J.D. Richey is a contributing editor for Fish Alaska. In an upcoming issue he'll detail some of the possibilities for conquering Alaska's rockfish on light tackle.
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