Alaska Diary: Fishing Lake Creek

First a word about salmon.  Anadromous.  The fact the term sounds faintly testicular is not too far off the mark.  Anadromous refers to the reproductive habit of some ocean dwelling fish to swim up freshwater rivers and streams to spawn.

Because salmon spend part of their lives in salt water and part in fresh water, they have split personalities.  All of the five major salmon species in Alaska (king, chum, sockeye, silver and pink) look pretty similar in the ocean, size differences aside.  Their ocean-going silver appearance no doubt offers some evolutionary advantage -- perhaps allowing them to blend into the kaleidoscope of refracted light on the sea surface and thus make them less susceptible to predators.

Once they enter the rivers to spawn, however, males turn from silver to brilliant red (sockeye and king), a calico green (chums and pinks), or a rainbow red (silvers).  Theses bad boys develop imposing toothy hooked jaws, the better to ward off competitors and attract females, who like their sperm donors ugly.  Actually I have no more idea than fish biologists why they turn from Jekyl to Hyde.

To add to their identity issues, every species goes by a variety of names (not counting latin classifications).  Kings are commonly known as chinook salmon.  Silvers are coho.  Sockeyes deserve their common name, reds.  Chum are referred to variously as dog, keta, or calico salmon.  As for pinks . . .


We take positions in a long slower run where the river is divided by a narrow island.  Casey sets us up for spincasting to fish he says he sees "rolling."  We flick gaudy dyed-hair streamers -- patterns called clousers and egg sucking leeches in pink and chartreuse -- into the current and let them drift downstream.  My brother, Dale, hooks the first fish, a female pink salmon, a sleek silver fish with light green sides.  "Where's the pink?" I ask Casey.  In the ocean, he says, they are bright silver and display a pink stripe the length of both sides, similar to a rainbow trout.  He returns the fish to the river.

I land and release another within a few minutes, a dark green male with a hump back.  Hence another name for pink salmon: humpies.  I begin to think of these fish, who battle miles of upstream impediments and predators, as superheroes who leave behind their everyday identities and morph into their powerful alter egos to procreate.

We switch to flycasting and at the end of an hour have landed 8-10 fish apiece, the pinks all in the 3-4 pound range, and a couple of chum salmon pushing 10 pounds.  Dale is grinning so broadly he is in danger of swallowing his ears.  We still have not brought in a silver, the real target of our fishing trip and the only ones we will keep and freeze for the flight home.  They, along with sockeyes (or reds -- remember?), are considered best eating.  Before we head back, Dale finally foul hooks a silver, but regulations forbid keeping fish hooked anywhere besides the mouth.  At least we know a few have made it this far upriver.

In a normal fishing year, the silver salmon would be stacked in the creeks and rivers like fleets of shiny battleships.  And among them would be a flotilla of rainbow trout feeding on the roe deposited by all the spawners.  This, we discover, is not a normal year.  Record winter snowfalls and a cool wet summer have pushed everything back a week or two.  Planning a trip like this a crap shoot, and we've come up double sixes.  But, Casey assures us there's always hope that the silvers will appear within the span of our 3 day stay, so we head back to the lodge happy and optimistic.

Along the way, he points out a large track in the sandy bar about the size of a dinner plate, probably a black bear.  I'm voting for a day in the boat tomorrow.  We agree to head out at 6 a.m. in the morning.

Dale has another rough night, still recovering from our halibut poisoning.  My alarm jars me out of an uneasy dream (bears involved), and I dress quickly in the morning cold to head for the lodge and a cup of coffee before we get in the boat.  The rain has returned and dimpled puddles on the pathways indicate more to come.  Casey meets me and asks if I have seen the river.

I mosey down with him and where we were able to walk on dry ground yesterday is now flooded.  The water has risen over a foot overnight.  It carries silt and debris, a roiling dirty chocolate deluge that promises difficult fishing.  We decided to let Dale sleep in and recover and try later after lunch, hoping for no more storms upstream.

We meet after lunch and head upstream on one of the lodge's "jet boats" -- a flat bottom aluminum skiff with an outboard motor that Casey pilots like he's playing a video game with the river.  Full throttle.  Weaving through a roadmap of channels and speeding close to fallen trees and riverbanks.

Anchoring in a side channel, I cast from the back of the boat while Dale gets out and fishes from waist-deep water a bit upstream.  On about the tenth cast of a chartreuse clouser into the seam of water where our side channel meets the flow of the main river, I hook a silver.  It stays down at first but then surfaces and dances across the current as coho salmon are known to do.  Casey mans the net for this fish and we boat a five pound beauty, which will find its way to the grill when I get home.

After a hour or so of many pinks, we speed to another spot, a small side backwater that looks unlikely but turns out to be packed with fish avoiding the turgid swollen river.  In the time we spend there, we both catch and release a dozen pinks.  I land a stunning male rainbow trout and fight a lunker chum for five minutes, as does my brother with another even bigger.  Things are looking bright, despite the lousy water conditions.

After dinner we head out once more for another couple of hours on the river.  The sun is finally shining.  Daylight lingers until close to 11 p.m. this time of year in Alaska.  Despite an even higher and roilier river the next two days, we continue to fly fish with streamers and catch and release dozens of pinks and a chum or two, and keep another nice silver which Dale my brother lands in the same channel where I caught mine.  Our arms and shoulders ache from casting and pulling in hooked fish.  But, we are the ones who are really hooked.  Hooked on Alaska.  Hooked on salmon fishing.  Hooked on the hospitality of the Wilderness Place Lodge.