Alaskan Combat Fishing by Peter Francis

  • Destinations, International

During my travels to North America last year I was fortunate enough to fulfil a life long ambition of fly fishing for the legendary king salmon, or chinook of Alaska. I also spent many wonderful hours casting to elusive steelhead in British Columbia, and had a ball presenting dries to the abundant petite trout of some fine rivers in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and Utah. But it has always been the Kings that really held my fascination and whilst staying with friends in Homer, at the bottom of the Kenai Peninsula, I was able to turn my dreams into reality.

Lisa and I were staying with friends she had met while trekking in Nepal a year earlier. Even though she was pregnant, Mindy spoilt us rotten. We unfortunately didn't get to meet Alan, who spends weeks away at sea working on a crab boat.

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My alarm went off at 3.00am and I pulled back the caravan curtains to be greeted by another glorious Alaskan sunrise. It was mid-June, halfway through a mild summer, with upwards of 20 hours of daylight - and at this hour of the day I was determined not to waste any of the incoming tide. Surely I'd be the only fool out there, which would make a nice change!

I opened the caravan door, still half asleep, to be greeted by big mama moose and her calf standing close enough to touch - and both looking as surprised as I was. There was no way I was going to try and make a dash for the car with her staring me down so I conceded that I was trapped until they decided to move on to the neighbour's veges. Mindy, who had witnessed the whole scene from the kitchen window came wobbling out and was relieved that I'd stayed put. Not that moving had ever been an option!

Moose are a very common sight throughout the state. It is nothing to see these huge gangly creatures grazing in the middle of a town, but their occasionally aggressive behaviour demands that they are treated with the utmost respect, especially during calving. They are apparently the biggest dog killers in the state. They object at the tied up pets yapping insistantly as they wander nonchalantly through their territory. They can make a hell of a mess of a car as well once they start stomping on the hood, so it's best to give them lots of space.

I certainly didn't need to be told any more 'when moose get mad' stories, as I had spoked one and had it charge at me a few days earlier while walking through a campground at 4 in the morning, on the way down to the river. Fortunately for me, a car coming around the corner had scared it off, but I remained frozen in my boots in the middle of the road, amazed at how fast it had covered the short distance between us. My fly rod has never felt so useless!

The Homer Spit is a natural sandbar that juts approximately five miles out into Kachemak Bay. It has been commercially built up with shops, restaurants and bars to cater for the summer influx of tourists, and there's a large marina that houses the town's lifeblood commercial fishing industry. In particular, it is the main port for the king crab boats that fish in the notorious waters of the Aleutian Chain and the Bering Sea. Homer is also considered the halibut capital of the world, so it's the base for a large number of charter operators who take punters out in the hope of hooking a 400lb 'flounder'.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game's enhancement program has created a completely artificial fishery on the Spit and it is one of the easiest places in the world to catch a king.

In 1984 a lagoon the size of a rugby field was dug into the spit with one small opening into the sheltered waters of Kachemak Bay. With dramatic tidal movement of some 30-feet, the lagoon was designed so that in the hour around high tide, the ocean spills into it replenishing it with fresh king salmon that are returning to spawn after being released in these waters two to four years earlier. When the tide drops, you are left with a big pool full of fish and hundreds of people from all over the world doing their best to catch them. The majority of people concentrate their efforts on these pool-bound fish, but I was intrigued by the obvious schools you could see cruising along in the shallow water just off the beach searching for a way in. It looked less crowded and a lot more natural so this is where I decided to dedicate my efforts.

When I arrived, there were a couple of die-hards gathered around the lagoon, but I could see the beach was empty and the only companions I had this morning were a couple of majestic bald eagles that were scouring the area for food. As this beach faces the sheltered waters of the bay, there are no swells or waves to disturb it, and this morning looked spectacular with the sun rising over the peaks of the Kenai Range and reflecting a purple hue onto the glassy waters.

The beach runs straight along the spit, indented by just the one very small, shallow bay formed by the tidal flow at the entrance to the lagoon. The schools were swimming right up this indent trying to find a way in, only to discover that they would run out of water. This was the obvious place to wait.

I tied a weighted chartreuse minnow to a 25lb tippet and 12lb leader, then waited for the fish to arrive. I was using a floating line in the shallow water and a 9-weight Loomis fly rod. It didn't take long, and as I watched a big school moving up the beach towards me in arrowhead formation, I knew I was in my 'Happy Place'. They rounded the corner and came straight at me. I stripped off some line and flicked the fly out to intercept the leaders, then started retrieving. No touches on the first cast and before I knew it the fish were swarming around my feet, realising that there was nowhere left to go. With no time for delicate presentation, I flicked the fly back into the middle of them. This time, after a couple of strips, I felt resistance and set the hook into solid fish that immediately took to the air. I got a good look at the impressive silver flanks of a solid king with my minnow firmly embedded in the corner of its mouth. The rod loaded up as the fish bolted for open water, taking up the slack line at a speed I was unaccustomed to.

It then continued to porpoise repeatedly as it ran off a good 200 metres of line and backing in its first amazing run. The power and fight in these fish is really impressive, especially on relatively light tackle.

With a sandy bottom offshore I was confident that it wasn't going to bust me off on anything, and sure enough I started to turn the tables and began regaining line. When the moment finally presented itself, I was stoked to flick 25lbs of prime chinook onto the beach. It was with a great feeling of accomplishment as I looked down on the fish that I'd been so eagerly anticipating for so long.

Now, I'm a big advocate of 'catch and release', but it's easy to get carried away with the political correctness of doing the 'right thing' and losing touch with our more primal instincts; this one was destined for the table - and it was absolutely delicious! The vast majority of people here fished with half-herring baits suspended about a foot under a bobber and fished on relatively heavy 30lb line. It's pretty exciting watching the water boil with huge fish around your bobber and I enjoyed just as much success using this method.

This was the general pattern for me over the days we spent in Homer. I would comfortably catch and release several fish before taking my limit of one a day. With a maximum of seven fish allowed per angler, per year, it is conceivable that you could only fish for a week. As a by-catch, I also took a beautifully conditioned dolly varden, or sea-run rainbow, of about 4lb. She gave a wonderful fight on the heavy gear and it was great to watch her swim away strongly. Although it's a very attractive fish, I didn't find her as sexy as the name suggests!

The Kenai Peninsula has plenty of excellent river fishing opportunities for kings, with all bar the Kenai River itself being stocked with hatchery-bred smolt. The anglers keep coming back and Fish and Game ensure the resource is in healthy shape when they arrive.

When the time came for us to move on, we headed north towards Anchorage. Along the way I decided to charter a guide on the famous Kenai in the hope a hooking into a really big king, and although I didn't catch anything, one of our crew caught her first fish, a lovely 25lber, and we witnessed some other superb fish taken.

The Kenai is the Mecca for those wanting to have a go at a really big wild chinook, as attested by the number of World Records that have come from it. The returning five-year-old fish regularly weigh in excess of 50lb, and every year numerous fish in the 70lb-plus class are taken. The usual method adopted by the guides is back-trolling. The lure is fed out the back and a small paravane carries it to the bottom. The boat moves along at a speed slightly slower than the river's flow, so in effect you motor forward while actually drifting back, bouncing the lure along the bottom of the holes.

I also stopped to have a go at 'combat fishing' for the silver salmon that spawn up the Russian River in June. This famous tributary of the Kenai provides great spawning water for the silvers and sockeye salmon that pour up it in enormous numbers. The term 'combat fishing' refers to the crowds and competition for space. You get your first realisation of what you're in for when you have to queue for a car park! Watching the anglers prepare by throwing shotguns over their shoulders and clipping the .44 into a belt, one could start to question how seriously these people will protect their favourite holes! Upon questioning someone's motives for being so heavily armed, I was informed that it is strictly for bear defence. Bad news for me either way, I thought!

The river is probably about the size of the Waitahanui, but here the anglers are consistently spaced just two or three yards apart along both banks of the river for the majority of its length.

On the day I was there, the fish were stacked up in the lies and only a few anglers in the know were consistently catching any. They used so much splitshot to get down, that casting became very dodgy. In fact, I was surprised I didn't see anyone wearing a full-face helmet! Pretty ugly stuff on fly rods.

I caught a lovely brown trout that had been feasting on eggs, but got slaughtered by the three silvers I eventually managed to hook. At 8 to 15lb in a small river covered with people, they had a tendency to dominate early on! Hooking them is one thing, landing them is quite another.

With the high density of bears in the area, the burying of carcasses is banned, so anglers have to dump them into the river. I found myself constantly kicking these leftovers off my waders as they were everywhere, and decided that I would leave the Russian River for those who really needed it. 'It was fishing Jim, but not as we know it!'

Combat Fishing, phase two, took place in Anchorage at Ship Creek and it proved a lot more enjoyable. This small river runs right through the middle of Anchorage and has a big run of XOS kings with every tide to cater for the masses of anglers that arrive to intercept them. The river only runs for about 2km before there's a dam that prevents fish from going any further, and at high tide the creek completely disappears and the place looks more like an estuary. You can track the progress of the runs by the number of bent rods along the bank and the hysterical sounds that this generates. Again it was shoulder to shoulder stuff, and when the fish did run up the river, the mayhem that followed them needed to be seen to be believed. Multiple hook-ups were commonplace in very short sections of the river, and with no one prepared to sacrifice their positions, chaos ensued.

Etiquette went completely out the window. With 30lb-plus fish running in all directions, there were people trying to step over lines, rods and nylon snapping, people falling in, and others getting stuck in the mud. This wasn't what I had expected Alaskan fishing to be, but it sure was entertaining and I was perfectly happy just to sit and watch.

The rig generally employed is to tie a lure onto a short 30lb leader and then fix just enough weight above it for the lure to get to the bottom. You strip off a short amount of line and slap the whole rig upstream. The sinker carries the lure to the bottom and slowly drags downstream through the strike zone. This drift may only be four or five metres, as the crowds prevent any more freedom by forming picket fences on both sides of the run. I witnessed a couple of guys attempting to use fly fishing gear and they ended up getting absolutely smoked. A 50lb fish can easily run you all the way back out to the ocean if it chooses to, and along the way it would probably knit you in and out of hundreds of anglers, while laughing all the way. I set up my Calcutta 700 outfit loaded with 10kg line and did my best to find some space - and then got right in the thick of the action. It was easy fishing and first class entertainment.

The international flavour of the crowds made for interesting conversations, and most were surprised to meet a Kiwi so far from home, especially with the reputation that New Zealand has as a world class fly fishing destination. There were a lot of anglers attracted to these waters, and as a general rule, we found that if you could drive to good fishing water in Alaska, it would be crowded. But consider this: Alaska is huge, the roads only cover 5% of the state, and its coastline is bigger than the other 49 states put together. The vast majority of its rivers have spectacular salmon runs and all species are present, so you're not going to run out of opportunities.

Unfortunately, you don't get the true pristine wilderness experience in Alaska unless you have a big budget and are prepared to fly into somewhere where the bears are your only competition, and a 12-gauge is your best friend. The potential in this place is obviously enormous and I'm sure that flying into the backcountry wild fishery would be the absolute pinnacle of flyfishing. That's good enough reason for me to return.

Lisa and I found Alaska to be everything we hoped it would be. Stunning scenery, friendly people, great hospitality and prolific wildlife. Next time round I'll make plans to fly into some river hundreds of miles from civilisation where the kings are lining up to hit my lure and a 50lber has my name on it. If you're interested in fishing Alaska and contemplating a trip then I would be more than happy for you to contact me through the site and discuss it.

 

 

 

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