Monday evening Dave Friez and Paul Glinski arrived in Anchorage without problem or delay anticipating a week of fast and furious fishing in Cooper Landing. We were mostly slated to fish the mighty Kenai River whose aquamarine waters flow from a glacial lake of the same name and supposedly are home to rainbow trout and Dolly Vardens of significant size…. Tuesday afternoon we headed out for our first of three guided fishing trips with John and Heather Pearson, the proprietors of Kenai-Fish-N-Float . John, a lanky and laconic guy, hails from Colorado. Right after high school, he followed his dream to Alaska with his best buddy. Shortly after arriving he got a job guiding out of Gwin’s Lodge where he was to meet his future wife, Heather. She’s a stream ecologist, with a brilliant smile (and, guys, let your imagination do the rest), from North Carolina where she chased stripers and brook trout with her dad. Anyway, by that point, Dave and Paul had recovered enough to drag themselves to the boat. As John rigged, up three spinning rods, we began to develop side bets on first-fish, biggest-fish, most-fish, a bet that would endure through the week. Starting from the bridge at Kenai Lake the fishing was solid, though not spectacular. We landed some nice dollies and a few ‘bows. As a bonus, we had an eagle fly within ten or so feet of our boat three times as it unsuccessfully tried to pick up a flailing bait fish from the water just below us. A perfect photo opportunity was missed as we fumbled for our cameras. As the drift to the Russian River haul out continued, the pace was to pick up a bit with the rainbows becoming more numerous than the dollies, a trend we were to note throughout the week. We finished the afternoon satisfied with several fish in the twenty inch, and above, range. Due either to failing memory or to inflated egos, the debate over who won what category continued into the evening. As we “refined” the rules, we agreed Dave had caught the first, Paul the largest, and the most-fish category was too difficult to determine….. Early Wednesday found us back for an all-day float but using fly rods this time. From the start, the fishing was spectacular. Carl began the day with stunning brilliance, but soon the fish-gods frowned on him for throwing a butt in the glorious Kenai. Meanwhile, the fishing for Dave and Paul was to pick up and continue throughout the trip and reach the point of superlatives. We caught a number of dollies and rainbows above twenty inches all accounted for by others than yours truly. Dave managed to capture a 24 1/2 inch dolly and contended with a huge sockeye. It was fishing about as good as you’re gonna get. Even Carl recovered just before the haul out, nailing a nice rainbow in front of a gathered crowd….. Thursday found us up at 4:30 for a combination silver salmon/halibut trip out of Seward. We steamed SSE out of Resurrection Bay for a bit over an hour on the Pro-Fish-N-Sea with Cap’n Kevin, a biology major and football player at Idaho with an eye to graduating next May, at the helm. Also aboard were fellow Texans’s and friends, Jim And Wilbuh (pronunciation their’s). At a point the sonar indicated water fecund with silvers, we began drifting bait in about 70 feet of water at a depth of forty feet. The salmon ranged roughly from five to ten pounds, and most of us soon had our limit of three, though one of our group snagged two of his and anther had to be reminded by the Captain that the Captain could already be home with his girlfriend if said angler would catch his first!…. We then began another sail of over two hours south into the Gulf of Alaska to the halibut grounds. We may have all been turning a bit green at the gills except the day developed into a bright sunny affair with absolutely no wind. I would approximate wave height at one inch! This is particularly remarkable in that I’ve spent six days in Seward previously and it rained every one of them! Additionally, it’s been pretty much raining consistently all week… Kevin warned us as we motored out that we would be targeting halibut for “quality, not quantity” and therefore we might not catch our limits of two per person. He was to prove prophetic. After about two hours of angling only Paul had landed a fish, a nice halibut of over twenty pounds. At this point we’re going to fast forward to the last hour and a half of the trip when the pace picked up and the Texans earned themselves the sobriquet “fish hogs.” Paul caught a second halibut along with a lingcod and Dave caught a lingcod and finally a halibut. At some point the Captain indicated we had a lot of poundage on board and suggested we switch to releasing fish or just call it a day. As each successive fish was caught though, Jim would yell up to Wilbuh, “Do we want to keep it?” Wilbuh would unfailingly answer in the affirmative, thereby alienating the Captain. Final totals looked something like this: Six halibut caught, one released (much to Wilbuh’s dismay) and two lingcod, one retained….. It was, all in all a great day of fishing and we returned home wearied but content…. Friday we recuperated, but Saturday 7:00 AM we were back on the Kenai with John. This time we got off to a splendid start catching a dozen of nice dollies in no time at all. Maybe it was the rain that had persisted throughout the week (excepting Thursday) and tainted the water brown, but the rainbows had mostly disappeared. We did catch a few, but mostly of smaller size. Still, on balance, we finished the week as happy and successful anglers….. Oh yeah, the bets. After much negotiation we arrived at the final tally: Paul 7, Dave 5, and Carl 3. There will be plenty of time for revision as we head into Shetucket salmon season!… All the fishing left us little time for sightseeing, though most of the gang headed to Soldotna on a shopping trip and made a drive to Skilak Lake yesterday afternoon. Dave and Dave hiked the trail to the bear observation platform at Russian River Falls. Tomorrow Paul heads back to Connecticut to share his exploits in person, while Dave continues on with us to Skagway an another angling opportunity. A great time was had by all!!! Pictures to follow….
August 20, 2006