Hooked ALASKA
The glacier blue river stretched on back twisting and disappearing into the wooded mountains. The water slaps against the top of my boots where I stand. Alert, I am calm, centered; my mind clear, grounded. I am present. My eye catches the movement of wind slipping through the branches of trees. No one speaks, we are all breathing in our own rhythms. I am connected to the motion of the leader and line, the cast, the rod in my hand, the pursuit. Hundreds of grey shadows churn past in the water heading upriver driven to spawn. Tis the season of silvers, dollys and reds/sockeye, humpys/pinks, chum; the salmon run. My focus is the silvers. Through the line I feel the weight slide past their heads bumping against their lateral lines, dorsal fins, and tail. With a smooth quick motion, I set the hook snagging it cleanly into a fish’s mouth. It shoots from the water with a burst of energy. I break the sacred silence.
“Fish on!” I announce to my buddy and the three other fishermen across the river. They back their lines away from mine and cast elsewhere. The battle begins till either the fish is on the shore or struggles off the hook to swim another day.
“Fish on!” Cries one of the fishermen jerking his rod back in excitement. The water explodes around us as more salmon hit.
I am reminded of the time I hooked into my first big fish with a fly rod. I had neither the skills nor the prowess to know what I was doing—I often still do not! Wading out into the water with the immediate quiet solitude of the river, I was working on getting the cast to present on the water. My dog was lazily napping in the tall grass occasionally grunting and rolling over in the summer sun. I flicked the line back and cast it out to lightly kiss the top of the water. No sooner had the fly landed than, BAM! A big trout hit it. I was caught completely by surprise as the water churned. The strength of the fish was humbling, and for sure I thought the line was going to snap. But the line held, and I pulled that beautifully speckled creature onto shore.
The silver I had on my line was different. Fly fishing for salmon was very different than trout. Trout are way more visual and tricking the trout into hitting a fly is all about presenting it as a worthwhile meal for the fish. For salmon it’s snagging, also known as drag fishing, in which the line is cast upstream and drifts down through the run till a fish is snagged on the hook.
“Fish on!” Shouts my fishing buddy.
The fish pulls aggressively but I can feel it tiring. I have been hooking salmon all morning but had to throw back any that catch in the belly or tail. I do a quick sweep of my surroundings alert for the smell and sound of bears. They are out in full force, especially, thirteen miles up the river we are fishing. Flowing northward the water drains directly through the Kenai Mountains and into the great Kenai River. Notorious for salmon and, well, black and brown bears (grizzly and coastal). My fishing buddy and I are well off the beaten path, we chose it just for that purpose, to get away from the crowds and discovered a score of silvers. Signs were posted at the trail head that a brown sow and her cubs were recently spotted in the area, proceed with caution, it read. On our hike up the river we passed two pats of bear scat, one more fresh than the other. We shared a wordless moment between the two of us, a very real sense of mortality. Neither of us wanted to be confronted with eight hundred pounds of muscle, thick fur, bone snapping jaws, teeth and claws, least of all a mother brown bear. On this river there is nowhere to go really, both sides of the water are flanked with cliff, mountain, and dense woods. Humans and wildlife are all funneled into its single corridor and so the chances of running into each other are much higher. A lot of elite fishing guide outfits have a bear lookout who gets paid to walk around with a pump-action shotgun loaded with slugs—I like to call them bear bouncers. All we have are two cans of bear spray and the dos/donts for brown vs. black bears.
“Fish on!” Another fisherman yells.
The day before, we were in a drift boat on the Kenai proper. We pulled to the side of a bank to do a little fishing. Not having much luck, we jumped back into the boat to continue on downriver. Pushing off the bank, as my buddy’s boot left the water, a juvenile black bear stepped out of the wood line behind us. He snorted and lumbered around the edge of the water checking out what we had been up to…nothing today, sorry little one. Not two hundred meters down river, a juvenile brown bear made his way up towards a group of fishermen.
The silver is tired out now, a good size. I heave it up on to the shore, flip it over and gasp. The fish has a long gash, a bear claw swipe running down its lateral line. This is not the first time this salmon has been caught. His luck has run out, I string it up as my second catch of a three catch a day limit. An eagle screams in the tree above us eyeing our bounty.
“Ya’ll gotta stop doing that!” My buddy hollers at the group across the stream. “It’s going to draw the bears!”
One of the fishermen is cleaning a fish right there on the bank, guts and blood spilling out onto the rocks. A big no no. Bears can smell within a radius of twenty miles, and they love the quick easy scraps lazy fishermen who do not want to pack the whole fish out leave on the shore. This not only makes it dangerous for the fisherman but anyone else who comes to fish the area later. This fisherman shrugs his shoulders, mutters something in Russian, and tosses the guts and skeleton into the water. A couple of seagulls and an eagle fly over the remains.
“Fish on!” My buddy pulls in the last of his limit for the day.
“Fish on!” It takes me a little bit longer to get mine. As soon as we both hook three, we get out of there as soon as possible and leave the other fishermen to their flippant fish gutting fate.
“Fish on!” We hear behind us as we hike out.
My buddy and I check over our shoulders and along the woods. A hiker with a rifle stops us and we swap information.
“There is a black bear across the river just down the way. Careful.”
“There are a couple guys upriver cleaning fish on the bank. Careful.”
We take a moment to chat about fishing information and big catch stories. We thank the hiker and pick our way down stream back to camp. My buddy begins to sing/rap and whistle a tune, intermittently interrupting his rap with a “HEY BEAR!” call. I’m laughing hard at the slap stick rhymes as we battle playing with words. We hear the snap of branches but keep up the sing song banter, eyes alert and searching. I unhook the bear spray keeping it at the ready. Around the bend we run into a pair of fishermen.
“Seen any bears?” Is the first thing they ask. We are intentionally loud.
“Not yet, but we are told there’s a black bear down here somewhere.”
“Ok, thanks.” They notice the big silvers on our chain. “How’s the fishing upriver?”
“Pretty good. Worth the hike…”
We keep going this time and do not stop to chat. It takes a while hiking in and around the river, slipping across rocks and navigating the banks. Somewhere behind us a person screams; we freeze to listen. More voices join in hollering. I wonder if the bear made an appearance. The shouts die away, nothing that sounded life threatening or like an attack. So, we continue on making it safely back to camp. Exhausted, we are both sporting big goofy grins. We had made it out of the wild with a prime haul. Dinner was going to be excellent as long as the bears stayed away.
***AUTHOR’s NOTE 10/2024: In my heart I know this place is HOME. Though I love fishing, I can’t in good conscious display this essay any longer without mentioning that salmon got it rough! Algal blooms, jellyfish, pollution, shifts in water temperatures and currents impact salmon availability and health. What we know is that salmon populations are suffering and the one thing that WE can do is change our devastating impact from commercial, local and fishing tourism. For the sake of conservation several commercial fisheries are starting their seasons later and later, however Alaska has become increasingly popular for folks from around the world to come and fish. If you are planning a trip to Alaska, by all means do it! But refrain from fishing the salmon run a couple years, let their numbers come back first.
