I'm rarely objective when picking favorites, which, to me, kind of belabors the point. Instead I'm impetuous, arbitrary and more than a little idiosyncratic. I like James Joyce's Ulysses, "Arrested Development," dark beer, white chocolate and watching Cesc Fabregas with a soccer ball at his feet. Predictably for one given to impulse, I'll countenance little disagreement.
Contrarily, I can-and will, entirely without prompting-articulate my reasons for liking any of the above, and endlessly at that. This does not necessarily make me a popular dinner guest.
Things get worse when it comes to fishing. Already heavy with opinion, most anglers I know tend towards caution when in the company of new ideas. In an activity where so much of one's knowledge is derived from personal experience, the thoughts, suggestions and outright decrees of others are about as welcome as a snowstorm in July. I've seen men of ostensibly adult age go red in the face over matters as small as determining the proper knot for attaching shock tippet to tarpon fly (a Homer Rhodes loop is the correct answer, by the way). Similarly, a WWF-style cage match might be the only way to truly determine whether or not the use of strike indicators constitutes a crime against humanity. I even have one friend who remains on constant duel-alert in case someone has the temerity to suggest steelhead will rise for skated flies in water that dips below forty-five degrees. Naturally, he doesn't live within three hundred miles of an anadromous fish.
These are all minor controversies, though, mere coffeehouse chitchat that's barely worth crossing someone off your Christmas-card list. Things usually don't turn ugly until someone brings up the word 'best' in conjunction with the words 'fish' or 'river.' Being a proper dogmatic, I'm typically that guy. The months of August and September are when I'm at my worst.
For certain, part of the appeal of angling lies within the overwhelmingly diverse ways one can go about it, just about anywhere, for just about anything. Even if you take one state-Alaska-and one month-August-you could fill a book with lists of places to fish, and types of fish to catch, and with the methods and tackle that will bring success. Whittling things down even further, to just freshwater, one is still left with a host of unenviable decisions to make, assuming, of course, that choosing one species to pursue or one river to fish will necessarily cut into opportunities for variety. In a macro-sense, for those who love to fish, I suppose you could say there are no wrong answers. But for pragmatists, who should realize that the existence of multiple possibilities means they'll eventually have to make a choice, it makes sense to have a favorite.
For me this is easy stuff. Standing at my grandmother's side, the first fish I caught was a rainbow; thus they're the best fish in the world. This was on Montana's Yellowstone River, which is then the obvious choice for the best river in the world. Now that I live in Alaska, however, I make do with rivers like the Kenai, the Alagnak and all its headwater streams, the Naknek, Kvichak and Kanektok. I make do with trout that have a propensity for attaining world-class sizes, trout that come in ridiculous abundance, trout that eat like crazy. I pretend the Yellowstone compares, but my rational side also determines that more research is warranted, research that must be conducted with scientific rigor, so important is the question at hand.
However, to fish the species properly during the months of August and September-and by properly I mean obsessively-many things are sacrificed, including my health, my fiscal well-being, my last chance to accomplish the tasks set aside for summer completion and eventually, whatever amount of goodwill I've stored up with my family. Still, what really grates is the fact I must also part with the idea of giving suitable attention to the season's anadromous arrivals-Alaska's coho salmon.
The coho's natural ferocity is well known, as is the fact that they're tailor-made for fly-fishing-willing biters, able and in a lot of cases, spectacular fighters, with migrating congregations tending to favor the more lithe coastal streams. And if all that wasn't enough, coho fresh from the sea are also the most prone of the Pacific salmon to rise and explode on a surface presentation. Additionally, they are an extremely adaptable fish and occur in nearly every accessible body of freshwater from the far southern panhandle to Norton Sound and from there sporadically to Point Hope on the Chukchi Sea. In southeast Alaska alone, spawning populations are known to exist in at least 2,500 streams. Near my home in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley north of Anchorage, I can also find coho in fishable numbers in at least a dozen streams within two hour's drive.
They're popular, too. In fact, according to the total-catch numbers returned by ADF&G sport-fishing surveys, coho are nearly a third more popular than rainbows. Last summer, after two casts on the Kanektok ended with two fish hooked and both brought to the net, I was reminded why. Then, after three more casts yielded three more hookups, each complete with a trip back to the boat for the net, I recalled my love affair with rainbows. Each of those silvers was a near copy of the others; each ate a fuschia fly; each jumped; each cartwheeled. Having prodded our guide into immediately moving upriver, I probably left another dozen clones behind.
None of the next five fish I caught stretched past eighteen inches. The sixth weighed eight pounds and featured a crimson stripe over an inch wide. The seventh ate a dry fly.
It was probably the best fish in the world.
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