From Modest Report to Epic Epistle.......

[DocSpotty]

After a less than auspicious trip down the Kenai River a few weeks ago I headed back down on Friday to fish the Kenai Canyon. Unlike the previous trip the sockeye were now laying eggs and I fully expected a wide open feeding session with the rivers’ trout and charr. The weather forecast was foreboding (I think that is one too many “fore….” somethings in a single sentence) predicting lots of rain and blowy weather (not sure “blowy” is a real word). Left at 0415, which if memory serves me correct from my military days is really freakin early in the morning. Got to the landing at Jim Creek a little early so I could do a little prospecting before meeting my friend and guide, Dennis for the float. There were reds frickin everywhere along the banks….it was like some unseemly, disgusting salmon sex orgy. After chucking my bead around for awhile I was flabbergasted (what exactly is a “flabbergast”?) at not even getting a strike…..not a good portent of things to come (man, I am on a roll with the big wordage today).

Dennis finally arrived, we launched the drift boat, and is rarely the case nowadays we were actually the first ones on this stretch of the river for the day. This is very important as the first corner is a big spot that is generally the best fishing area on this length of the Kenai. We hopped of the boat and started anxiously slinging our little egg imitations around. It took us more than 40 minutes to get our first strike (well, that is excepting Dennis’s first fish which was a little whitefish….they don’t really count as a real fish….heck, I didn’t even know we had them in the rivers). I popped a decent rainbow in some quick water…..after 3 spectacular leaps and some heavy current bull dogging he was beached, pic taken and back in the water:



It was at least another half hour before Dennis tagged a really nice rainbow….had to get a long telephoto shot of the fish:



Another fruitless 20 minutes or so and we headed back to the boat, not exactly enthralled with our modest start. On the way back I stumbled onto our first dolly:



Nearly 2 hours into the float and we had only tallied 3 fish (that’s, of course, still not counting the negligible whitefish). Most trips if we are the first to the island it usually results in anywhere from a dozen to 30 or more fish. One positive note it was a bit drizzily off and on but not any hard rain. (My 15 yr. old daughter asked me if fishing was bad when it was rainy….I informed her the fish really don’t give a rats’ fanny as they were already wet…..I believe she saw the logic behind that brilliant observation…..but not sure.) One miserable note was there were literally clouds of white sox gnats buzzing all over us…..they look like innocuous little gnats unless you let one of the miniscule devils bite you…really itches, hurts, swells up, itches worse the next three days and may pus up (we call that yellow stuff, “purulent exudate” in polite dental society). They are just one of the nastiest little pests around….give me several squadrons of mosquitos instead of these insidious beasts. We got a ways more down the river when I buttoned into a very nice bow…..a skinny, recently spawned hen.



After that it was another long dearth with absolutely nothing. The reds were doing their part as they were everywhere:



We got to one of our favorite spots…..the 3rd gate of the Kenai Canyon and parked the boat to give this a good run. We changed bead colors (heck I would have changed my underwear if it would have helped), Dennis tried stripping sculpin patterns…..an hour and nothing. Well not completely nothing, Dennis did scare up a nice, fuzzy, disgusting decaying red carcass….impressive as he hooked it right in the lips….the very cold, nasty dead lips (couldn’t talk about lips if it was chickens). I managed to break off 3 times and land some nice pieces of lumber from a sunken tree in front of us. Finally went to a really light weight (to keep my bead hopefully out of the timber) and several casts in saw a tiny little dink dink on my bobber…uh…I mean strike indicator (I’m such an uncouth fly fisherman) so I set the hook just to remember what is was like and it was off to the races. Had wandered into a massive bow…..who wanted her own way but I finally managed to persuade her to boatside where Dennis slipped the net under her….what a toad (and I mean that in only the best way):



What a beautiful fish but then we floated many more miles with absolutely nuttin….it was uncanny (so what does that make it…..like a milk carton…..that would be very much unlike a can). But, at least, the weather wasn’t pouring rain like predicted; although the wildlife started eyeing us very closely:



As we drew near these two baldy Alaskan fishpeckers one of them was not happy (heck WE weren’t happy with the fishing either) with us intruding on her stretch of the river and she let us know about it:



We kept moving down through the Steelhead Mile, which is normally loaded with dollies, but, alas, there were absolutely none. This put us near 1 pm and we were had not only been limited to 5 fish but we only had about ½ mile river left to float and we’d be in Skilak Lake. To this point we had had the river pretty much to ourselves but down near Skilak there were several campsites and quite a few people molesting the fish. Dennis decided to park for lunch and rustled up some great coho salmon he’d caught the day before….very yummy.

Of course, I was thrashing the water right before lunch with absolutely zero results….was generally fishing around the edges and behind the large gaggles of sockeye. Then for the only time in the day the sun broke through for a few minutes and eternal fish wisdom flowed into my tiny, four-lobed brain like the brilliant radiance of Sol (okay, it was kinda fuzzy sunlight but, hey, this sounded better). I was standing in 12 inches of water with herds of sockeye around but in the sunlight I could see 3 dollies within 5 feet of me in the shallow water right in amongst the throng of sex crazed salmon. Trying to figure out how to cast to them I removed all but one weight and shortened my leader to only 4 feet to the indicator instead of the normal 11 feet. The light weight and float, in my curious realm of reality, would allow me to float amongst the reds without hooking them….hopefully. And on my first cast…..not a dang thing. But second cast and I was on to a 20” dolly hooked in 8 inches of water in the middle of a dozen tightly packed salmon (to be perfectly honest I first thought I had snagged one of the reds):



By now the sun was gone so I couldn’t pick out the dollies well….but some nondescript casting through more shallow reds and in another 10 minutes I was onto a carbon copy of the last one:



At this point Dennis flagged me to eat lunch. Immediately after horking said lunch I was back up to my massive herd of spawning reds. I worked up and latched into my shortest fish of the day….a 12 inch bow hooked in 3 inches of water. Right after that I was mortified when my perpetual ineptitude and chaotic flycasting style caught the wing of my glasses on a backcast and away they flew into the Kenai…..what a klutz. Dennis and I (although everything was really fuzzy) looked for half an hour but they were not to be found. So I went to the backpack for my prescription sunglasses….then remembered they were still in the front seat of my car. Very fuzzy fishing was to be the rest of my day.

Did manage another 20” dolly, then not long after one more 21-22 inches:





We moved down to within a few hundred yards of the lake to try and find a few more fish….so far it was not a great numbers day but very nice quality size. We stopped on a little island as there were boats and camps on both sides of us fishing the bank. An hour here and I managed to catch two very nice, even larger dollies:





We kept fishing there another hour or so with nothing then the guys toward the mouth of the river started yelling….we looked up and understood why…about 20 yards in front of them big mama had started fishing up in their grilles without asking politely:



The big sow absolutely ignored them (who wouldn’t when fine dining on delicious, mold covered decaying salmon?) then a few minutes later we knew why as a cute fuzzy, wuzzy wandered out of the bushes:



Several minutes later they reappeared right across from us:





The cub reappeared too….but he was just interested in goofing off:



I decided to try a video with my camera (I wasn’t trying to copy the Blair Witch Project photography…it’s just not easy from a bobbing drift boat):



The bear excitement died down and it was nearly time for us to head across the lake to the take out….a wonderful hour plus in a drift boat with a 10 hp motor. Dennis thought we’d try the middle of the river as we floated out. We did two short areas with nothing then he had a slot right where the river dives into the lake. He decided to anchor for a few minutes. Then all sorts of absolute epicness kicked into gear and we were nearly epiced (not a real word) to death. My first drift through the slot was a zero but I striped some line at the end to extend the cast and thought I had hooked up on a branch….until it took off for the lake. Turned out to be a very nice dolly:



We were sitting in some significant current and working a nice fish to the boat was no easy task and killing my sucky wrist…but it was a good pain…..kind of. Next cast and “bam”…..extreme epicnicity (yes, I made that one up too) and a larger dolly:



Meanwhile Dennis, who ALWAYS kicks my butt couldn’t buy into any epicness of his own. A couple of casts after the last one and it was onto another:



You gotta understand what kind of pain this had my wrist in as each fish was taking 5-10 minutes to net….always was a bit of the masochist….the fishing gets hot and ya just can’t stop…..it’s just not right. Dennis finally banged one but then was getting “the fin” from the dollies. My very next cast and bang a big, porky male (notice the nice little kype on his lower jaw):



Dennis……..nothin. By this time Dennis was sick of taking pictures of me but suffice it to say nearly every other cast and I was onto another dolly just like the others….weren’t no mini-dollies to be had. Several more came and went and before we knew it, 6 pm came and went. I figured one last fish would be good but Dennis got tangled up with me but managed to flip his line off right under the boat as my fish came unbuttoned. When he pulled up his line there was a monster on the end of it. Naturally I cast out and hooked another which Dennis managed to net and snap a picture of me while still playing the monster. At this point I put my rod down (VERY RELUCTANTLY) and manned the net for Dennis…..what a fiasco that was. Dennis was using a very flexible 10.5 foot flyrod and with the current he couldn’t lift high enough and I couldn’t reach well enough with my stubby arms to get the fish in the night….a video would have been priceless. After chasing the fish back and forth under the boat I finally managed to get the net around it….what a beautiful male dolly….this fish was just fabulous to look at:





Southern dolly varden this large are not real common…..ten pounders like this are rare indeed (the northern subspecies gets to nearly 30 lbs but is anadramous). As Dennis was releasing this magnificent specimen of charrdom I made one more cast and hooked up immediately…..it ran out to the lake so we just pulled anchor and floated out to the lake to hopefully land this one and head in. After 10 minutes of chasing her around another 10 lbs toad hit the net…..a very porky hen:



Even though the fishing was still in extreme epic form we needed to head in….besides by this time my lousy shoulders and bad wrist were barely functioning….I would have had a tough time raising my hands to blow my nose at this point. The weather guys had predicted bad weather with big winds on the lake late in the day…..oh….so wrong:



We were making our nice cruise to the boat ramp when Dennis pointed out a large black bear…..yeah, right….like I could focus more than 12 inches in front of my nose without ocular correction. So I grabbed the camera and brought up the telephoto just in time to catch the blackie going over the nearest ridge:



We found the boat ramp….loaded up and I headed home driving in my sunglasses through the darkness and rain….interesting experience. Anyway it was a day which went from being pretty good to the absolute apex of epicness (can I get a patent on that phrase?). Now it’s the next day and man am I one sore puppy…..

Brian

[smokehound]

Sweet, you caught BOTH species of bear on photos, and one of them was radio collared!

Any USA reports on their way in the future? Your weakfish reports were pretty neat!

[IncredibleHuck]

Awesome report once again! I need to do another trip up to Soldotna again to fish the Kenai and then down to Homer for some big Halibut.

[Hog Caller]

A truly epically told story of epicness at its finest.
Great post as usual Doc. Keep them coming.

[LuckyBasser]

Jeeez everytime I tell someone I want to move to Alaska within the next 4 years says I'm crazy, but you just renewed my ambition to go back. Anybody know where I can find a job in the last frontier? LOL ;-)

[DockRat]

Awsome Pics. THNX
DR

[Reellady46]

Amazing pics!!