December 15, 2019

Five Out of Six

“Splat”, all but one of the six eggs I had were totaled. The one good egg was quickly offered as a sacrifice to the fish gods and hurled at the nearest cedar. Breakfast would be a granola bar and three sausages that had fallen off the unsteady cooking stove. It was enough to make me wonder if the five seconds restarted after every fall or not.

I’d spent the night in my second hand CRV next to the creek so I could take advantage of the ever-diminishing daylight we get during the Alaskan Fall. Recently the accessibility on Revillagigado Island has more than tripled with the opening of new sections of road, connecting the town with a massive expanse of former logging and four-wheeler trails. This has granted access to new forest service-maintained fishing and hunting grounds that up until now have only been accessible by either boat or floatplane. I was going to make sure I would fish these new waters before they became both well-known and overfished.

The Idea of catch and release is often laughed at in a town known for its large salmon runs and halibut fishery. Alaska is a place where people will stock the fridge with as much wild game as they can legally get their hands on, and the idea of letting that hard-earned trout slip back into the water and swim away is often looked at as foolish. Because of the lack of a catch and release culture the two main trout streams are often fished for keepers and the fish typically don’t grow beyond twelve inches. Of course, that has never stopped me from displaying my hard-earned pocket trout, but I have never been able to catch the large rainbows that make Alaska such a destination. But with little human intervention on these new waters the trout should be able to grow fat, happy, and dumb—or at least that was my notion.

After countless hours of staring at topographic maps, satellite images, and a pre-trip recon mission with my girlfriend, I loaded up the car and went straight from work down the road in search of big rainbows and my own version of “The Good Old Days”.

After a long drive on an old dirt track, a few sketchy bridges, and a small rockslide, I had reached my campsite. Now, if you’re going to visit a rainforest, dry wood is something you should bring with you, but in my excitement, I had forgotten that while packing my rig. After a visit to an old cedar snag and the sacrifice of a hoodie sleeve and some toilet paper, I had a fire large enough to entertain me for the night. With a cigar saved for a rainy day and the latest Colter Wall album, I had all I needed to conjure adventurous dreams of massive fish.

I was too excited to wait for the sun to come up, so I slid down the embankment on the side of the road through the devil’s club, holding my flashlight in one hand and my five weight in the other. Next time I’ll bring a headlamp. After shambling over multiple downed trees and a few beaver dams I had begun to worry if there were any trout in here at all. After casting a few times, I didn’t get so much as a nibble, nor had I seen anything rising. There was more than enough bear shit, and one suspiciously friendly beaver, but not a fin or ripple in sight. Most of the waters around this part of Alaska have salmon runs that keep the fish fed all winter, but with no sign of spawning, or even zombies, my hopes dwindled. I started to lament that all this anticipation and planning was going to go down as just another stream nobody knew anything about because there was nothing worth knowing.

Just as I contemplated returning to the car and trying a different stream, I noticed I was not far from a waterfall with more fast water below it. Another half mile or so of no fish, as well as an interesting round of “please don’t let there be a bear on this bear trail”, led me to the base of the falls. Thinking this trip had turned into a sightseeing adventure, I scrambled up onto a large boulder and had a seat before lazily casting.

“WHAM”! I had my first fish on, but then realized that there was no way to land it! I ended up losing this prodigal fish while sliding down the side of the moss-covered rock.

The disappointment was short lived, however, because after that the day went on to becoming the best day of fishing I ever had. Each new hole would produce the biggest rainbow I had ever caught, and I followed the river feverishly all the way down to the saltwater. In all my excitement I had lost track of exactly how far I had come  down stream, and realized it was going to be a long rest of the day trudging back to the Honda

Next time I’ll bring more eggs.