It's nearly 9 p.m. in western Alaska and the sky refuses to hint that there might come a time when the day should be considered complete. The river moves leisurely and the air is heavy with quiet, the only noises coming from rolling salmon or the intermittent peel of fly line from the surface. In every direction the land rolls away like a carpet, endless and flat, dotted here or there by small bursts of a color other than green-bog rosemary, purple monkshood, reindeer moss. I'm not in search of clichˇs, but we've already seen half a dozen brown bears. Earlier that morning, I peered through a mist soon to burn off and watched a moose sipping calmly from the water. Eventually the big bull spooked at the sound of the outboard and rumbled off into the fortress of willow and alder that abutted the river.
Equally unique to Alaska, I've yet to go more than a handful of drifts without touching a fish.
This is my first trip to that "other" Alaska, the one that exists away from the roads, far from any strip malls or latte stands, the one most anglers are thinking of when they think 'Last Frontier.' The iconography is invariably similar: floatplanes, grizzly bears, streams choked with sockeye gone fire-engine red, ten-pound rainbows parked in behind. There's good reason for the resemblance in imagination-Brooks, Kulik, Moraine and Funnel; Battle Creek, Big and Little Ku; the Naknek, Alagnak, Copper and Kvichak rivers; both Talariks, the labyrinth of water within the Wood-Tikchiks and more: a great deal of the angler's image of the freshwater scene in Alaska comes to us from a comparatively small corner of Bristol Bay.
However, while as the wall calendars and the endless literature suggests, one could certainly mark these waters down as the pinnacle of stream-fishing in the state, and probably the continent, Alaska is in truth a complicated mosaic. There is more, then, than this pink bunny leech I'm fishing on the swing, more than the endless procession of mint-bright chum salmon that have torn into my reel drift after drift, more even than the rainbows that were targeted earlier while fishing in the braids.
But like I said, it's my first trip, and as long as the fishing's like this, I don't really care about much else. The chum onslaught would continue, perhaps indefinitely.
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| Three members of the National Geographic Society expedition to the Katmai area with their catch of trout. The original photos says "A real catch of rainbow trout. The one Wallace has measured 32-inches. About 15 minutes of sport." June 27, 1919, Kodiak Island. © University of Alaska Anchorage Archives and Special Collections, National Geographic Katmai Expeditions photographs. |
A cataclysmic volcanic eruption in 1912 first brought the Katmai region to the interest of outsiders, and although the eruption displaced more than twice the volcanic matter as Krakatoa, which killed 35,000 people, wildly isolated Novarupta killed no one. The scientists who led the National Geographic Society expeditions to study the eruption were probably the first to sport-fish the area. Clearly, the fecundity of the region's streams would be hard to hide, as the Society's published account attests: "The only trouble our fishermen experienced came from the great size and weight of the fish. They were so big that they soon broke all our tackle."
In 1940 the National Park Service got into the act and sent the biologist Victor Cahalane and Frank T. Been, the superintendent of Mount McKinley National Park, to perform the first extensive NPS investigation. Over the short term, they decided Katmai's isolation, so starkly illustrated by the lack of human damage caused by Novarupta, would preclude it from becoming a tourist destination, though they also noted that "when the beauty of the Naknek, Brooks, Grosvenor and Coville lakes becomes known and the splendid trout fishing becomes recognized, sportsmen may go to the lakes."
Remoteness, in Alaska, has always been relative. This case was no different.
During World War II the US Army Air Corps established Naknek Air Base (renamed King Salmon Air Station in the 1950s), and both the base's construction and military personnel soon discovered the fishing potential in the nearby waters. Two R&R camps were quickly constructed-Rapids Camp (Air Force Annex No. 1) and Lake Camp (Annex No. 2). The river and the lake received heavy pressure for the remainder of the war, though many servicemen also flew into other now well-known fishing spots, such as the Brooks River and the Bay of Islands, for their recreation. It nearly reminds one of another freshwater military action, when the men under General George Crook's command were bivouacked in the Bighorn country during summer, 1876, and found the cutthroat angling so good the general had to issue an edict limiting his soldiers' catch. In this case, the National Park Service reports of the time claim the Naknek contingent pulled "thousands upon thousands of trout" from the water. By then, the word was definitely out.
As early as 1942, the Ray Petersen Flying Service had begun taking superintendents from Bristol Bay canneries into the Brooks Camp area on recreational fishing trips. Bud Branham, a professional hunting guide and fisherman who flew out of Kodiak and Fairbanks during the war, was another who visited the monument. These and other pilots and clients passed the word along to others in southwestern Alaska, and by the end of the war a smattering of fishermen throughout the territory had heard of Katmai's large, plentiful rainbow trout. The rest, as they say, is history-sport-fishing in southwest Alaska had come to stay.
In 1949 Bud Branham, using the interest in sport angling to augment his hunting business, built the first permanent lodge building in Bristol Bay at Kakhonak Falls. The next spring Ray Petersen was at work on his Angler's Paradise Camps. By May 3, Coville Camp (now Grosvenor Lodge) was ready for its first guests. The following year, with the Kulik, Brooks and Battle camps also having initial construction completed, Angler's Paradise became the first Alaska sport-fishing business to exhibit at a major sport show.
On February 20, 1999, the Twentieth Alaska Legislature officially declared Ray Petersen the Father of Alaska's Sportfishing Lodges. Noticeably, today, both families remain active leaders of the Alaska lodge business-Chris Branham with his Royal Wolf Lodge and Sonny Petersen with the Angler's Paradise Lodges his father started. Many more have followed, and today, fifty years after Alaska was granted statehood, anglers can find guiding and access to virtually any water in the state.
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Why the lodges are there: a prime Kvichak rainbow. Photo courtesy Alaska Sportsman's Lodge
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One of the most famous salmon and trout rivers in the world, southcentral Alaska's Kenai River hardly needs further illumination on the angling stage. It is home to the largest sport fishery in Alaska, and it's responsible for more current IGFA world records than any other river in the world. The reigning all-tackle Chinook was taken here, and while they won't make the record books (due to joint classification with the ocean-roaming steelhead), every year anglers manage to land several resident Kenai rainbows that would tip the scales at fifteen pounds or better. This is all modern, sport-fishing-centric history, though. Clearly, the Kenai has always been a star, and no conversation of Alaska fishing can be complete without it.
Throughout the majority of the millennium that just ended, Dena'ina Athabascans called the area home and relied upon its noted productivity to sustain their way of life, establishing a permanent village named Skitok, from the Dena'ina Shk'ituk't ("where we slide down"), at the present site of Kenai. For the two thousand years prior to the Dena'ina, Kachemak Riverine culture flourished along the river.
The kind of natural abundance necessary to support such long-termed subsistence wasn't likely to be overlooked by the earliest Europeans visitors to Alaska, and by the 1790s the Kenai area had become the Russian center for Cook Inlet fish and furs. Nikolaevsk Redoubt (Fort St. Nicholas) was built on the bluffs to accommodate the growing trade. As the salmon runs increased in economic importance, the population of the region swelled, as it did again when Russian mining engineer Peter Doroshin first reported the discovery of gold along the river's banks. By World War I ships were sailing into Kenai Bay every spring with supplies for the community. At the end of the season, these same ships would haul out the catch gathered at the three processors that were up and running by then. In July of 1957 oil was discovered near the neighboring Swanson River, prompting another period of growth.
Today the Kenai River remains the center of life on a diverse and magnificently endowed peninsula, its appeal as potent as ever before. A commercial fishing presence still looms large, though the communities' growth in recent decades has been boosted by burgeoning tourism and sport-fishing industries, leaving no doubt as to the continuing importance of the characteristics that have made the Kenai precious for at least the past three thousand years.
The river itself rises from runoff streams and creeks in the Kenai Mountains and flows some eighty miles west to its eventual terminus in Cook Inlet. To most observers, it's easily broken down into three unique sections, each with a completely different character and habitat makeup. The upper river, designated a trophy trout area, issues from the outlet of Kenai Lake and courses through a panorama of scenic mountains and forests until it meets giant Skilak Lake. At the bottom end of Skilak begins the middle river, the longest and least utilized section. For its final twenty-one miles the river meanders lazily from the Sterling Highway Bridge in Soldotna to its rendezvous with the inlet. The last twelve of these miles are intertidal in nature, and it is on the incoming tides that the majority of the king salmon fishing takes place. Across it's entire length, one can find the picture postcard of Alaska experiences: towering, blue-faced mountains, valley-gouging glaciers, thick spruce and cottonwood forests, moose, bears, bald eagles, and of course, salmon galore. Plus, it's road accessible, and while the big-fish phenomenon rightfully draws the lion's share of the acclaim, to me it's the presence of the Sterling Highway that makes the Kenai River so impressive.
Amidst piles of anglers stepping all over each other, the Kenai River continues to produce fish, and big fish at that. It's astounding to consider, and really, it is a testament to this river's remarkable natural blessings, as well as to the work of the guides, residents, and visiting sport anglers who bear the brunt of most conservation efforts.
"When I began guiding on the Upper Kenai, I would seldom see more than a half-dozen fishing boats a day," said Fred Telleen, an owner and operator of Mystic Waters Fly Fishing. Telleen, who first used a college-internship graduation requirement to come to Cooper Landing, has been guiding on the Kenai since 1989 and he's seen some significant changes in that time. "Often, I would float from above the Russian River confluence all the way to Skilak and not see another boat. In those days, I typically had morning departures between 7 and 9 a.m. Now, you can start before 5 a.m., likely see between 8 and 20 boats, and know that 20 to 50 or more will be floating behind you."
Another change he notes is the increased skill of the Alaskan trout angler. "The average anglers have a lot more knowledge these days than they did 10 to 15 years ago, and the intelligent fishing pressure has an even larger impact on the fishery than the increase in the number of anglers. Catching a 10-pound rainbow on a fat, orange Glo-bug is not a good bet today."
Also according to Telleen, despite increasing fishing pressure, a key reason for the amazing fishery anglers encounter today is a series of sound management decisions made to help increase the trout population. "The one real disappointment," he continues, talking about the future of Alaska's most famous fishery, especially as it relates to its past, "is the condition of some of our fish. They are getting very beat up from mishandled releases. We've got to take care of that."
Another person working both at the guiding and the conservation end is Brian Kraft, managing partner of the Alaska Sportsman's Lodge on the Kvichak River. Kraft, like many in the industry in Alaska, is a guide, pilot, lodge builder, lodge owner, and now fisheries-conservation activist, and as such, he is among those most in tune with the state of sport-fishing in Alaska.
Having completed a career in hockey in 1992, he began running float trips on the Talachulitna River and Lake Creek, eventually expanding out to cover more southwesterly destinations. In 1994 he took over Big Mountain Lodge on the Kvichak and ran it for two years, before venturing out to secure his own property. In 1997, with partner David Sandlin, he founded the Alaska Sportsman's Lodge.
"The logistics of building a lodge there-or anywhere in western Alaska, really-were pretty daunting," he explained. Building materials were purchased in Seattle and barged to Anchorage. From there they were flown to Igiugig and then, piece-by-piece, put onto 18-foot skiffs for the four-mile run to the lodge site. Every single board had to be unloaded and carried up the bluff to the site. There were 500,000 pounds of material in all.
"We used up a lot of manpower," Kraft laughs. He also says it was worth it.
"Probably my best fishing memory comes from the Kvichak. Last September, I guided my wife on the river all day, fishing from morning until night and basically not leaving a single 200-yard stretch of water. We'd drift down, go back to the top and do it again, and we didn't go one drift all day without fish. And we're talking 23-, 24-, 25-inch trout here, and some to 26 and 27 inches.
"It was just one of those great days, however rare. The water was crystal clear, the sun burned the fog off and we had bright skies for most of the day. Then the storm clouds rolled in and we fished right through the rain, still catching at the same rate.
"It reminds me of the compliments we get from people who've fished all over the world," he continued, noting that list includes some of the most exotic hotspots-the Seychelles, Christmas Island, Belize. "They'll say that hands-down we have the best fishery they've ever encountered, and that's when a light bulb has to go off and you realize we've got something pretty special out here."
As a destination, Alaska has always been of supreme interest, and not only for tourists. Furs, fish, or timber, gold or oil: You name it, this state has it, probably in abundance. And it's certainly one of the world's premier angling destinations, as powerful a draw at 50 as it was in 1959. But that alone cannot explain the vast allure of the state. There is something else to Alaska, a mystique perhaps, a dose of the unknown. I've had many great days on the water, encountering fishing even better than in the scenario that began this essay, and I've had plenty worse. I've gone whole weeks, typically when in the company of my friend Greg Thomas, without ever seeing a fish.
After either, I tend to remind myself that it's still fishing-there will always be good days and bad. Then I string the rod and head back out.
Troy Letherman is the editor of Fish Alaska magazine.
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