Transcendent Epicness....An Alaskan Horkfest....

[DocSpotty]

Headed back down to the Kenai River for the third Friday in a row not knowing whether last week’s high water debacle or the previous Friday’s great fishing would be the order of the day. The water was still high but not off color. Having absolutely every major organ system infected with fishaholicism (yes….I just made up that word….but it is used correctly), I decided to leave a bit early and try and fish Quartz Creek for maybe an hour before meeting Dennis at the Jim’s Landing boat launch. As it turned out it was still a bit too dark at Quartz and the chance of running into an unfriendly bruin during the wee hours of darkness this time of year would be very high…..so I just continued onto Jims. As I turned onto the little dirt road to Jims my headlights froze a very large kitty directly in front of me. It took me a second to realize I was getting my first glance of the very secretive lynx. But the tufted ears and long legs are unmistakeable…..they are rarely seen though so I felt this was a good omen (is that sexist??? Could their be an “owomen”? Maybe it should just be “operson”….political correctness is so taxing on the brain) for the day.

We were first to hit the water going down the Kenai Canyon…..assuring first crack at the initial prime spot. After pulling into the island just below Jims we were again disappointed by lack of fish of any size. I caught a half dozen dollies and bows but none were over 15 inches. But they are fat little piggies right now….they are just stuffed to overflow with sockeye eggs. I did see one decent dolly but she was delusionally (real word?) thinking she was hiding under this overhanging branch:



Not a very good stealth tactic….but hey, the brain is not real large. As I was walking back up to the boat the sun made one of its very few appearances on the day making a very nice picture moment:



We hopped back into the boat and headed down to the the first gate on the canyon trip. Having caught a very nice rainbow at the very head of this spot a few weeks ago we tried to get in the same place but the water was just too swift…..we had to settle for 30 yards below that area. The current was moving good and on the first drift through I was fast onto a large fish…..unfortunately my ineptitude, or the gods displeasure with me, surfaced and it became unbuttoned after 20 seconds….boy, was I bummed big time. In a given trip this time of year you may hook up with 1 to 3 of these big guys……maybe none…..but landing them is the difficult part and I felt my big shot might have come and gone. I was definitively wrong (don’t tell me wife….she thinks I’m perfect…or at least infers that I think I am perfect) and a few casts later hooked into another big fish. This time despite the bad wrist, sore shoulders, and premature dementia (what was I talking about????) I managed to get this bow in the net. What a horker…..as I lined her up for a pic she was regurgitating (yes….that means barfing in polite fish circles) oodles of fresh sockeye roe she had just horked down (yes…I will be using various versions of the nebulous word “hork” in this write up). Very dark colored fish, as ones who stay in this deep water section tend to be:



So now, despite throbbing shoulders and wrist, I am feeling pretty on top of the world……lost one big fish but was lucky to get right back into another one. Certainly life cannot get better than this…….wrong!! About 5 casts later, same spot, and another horkster slams my bead (BTW…I used a new color…..can’t tell you which or I would have to kill you….well, maybe just wound or maim you a little bit) and we were off to the races. After 10 minutes it too, was in the net and smiling for a picture:



Dennis and I both were commenting how we have never seen any dollies come out of this deep hole when, bang, the flyrod doubles over and in a few minutes a nice 3-4 lbs dolly comes to boatside….to excited about the rainbows to even take a picture before release. This is just incredible….but not over. Several casts later the bobber, ur….strike indicator…..sinks and an even fatter horker hits the air and takes off downstream. This one is much more active then the previous horksters and takes quite a while to get to net….what a pig (you thought I was going to say “horker” again weren’t you?)….it’s girth is nearly as much as its length. These darn things are so fat they are beginning to look like triploids:



At this point I’m shakin’ from the adrenaline rush and just can’t believe all these big bows in the same area. As soon as my wrist allows I’m back in the water and the very next cast stick into another giant rainbow. This one runs downstream well into my backing and I was working her up the back eddy slowly when I felt her dragging across a big rock shelf and the leader seperates…….ahhhhhh…..guess we can’t hold on to all of them. Dennis is just sitting there smoking a cigar (to keep the white sox away….miserable little gnats spawned by demons in the gates of hell….their bites are absolutely viscious and always get infected…itch for days) for insect repellent and keeping me in the strike zone….what a great friend.

Not too much later and I nail a modest, by comparison to the others, rainbow of 3 or so pounds and release it. Just starting to think about moving downstream and I am into another horkster….another of the dark variety…..fortunately this one jumps several times using a lot of energy and after several minutes is netted for its photo op:



What do you say at this point? I have never caught this many large trout in a trip in my entire time in Alaska….it’s one of those special days that if you fish enough you are blessed with every once in awhile. At this point it would have been okay to pack it in and go home…..I was content, very content. The horkers weren’t. Five minutes later I’m onto another one which is taking line like a stripper (cute anecdote, huh) then halfway through the backing the hook pulls…..hard to be too disappointed as well as the day has gone and you’re always lucky if you get even half of these big fish in, especially in the high and heavy water. So we’ve been in the back eddy for an 1 1/2 or two hours and we decide to move down….as Dennis moves us out a bit in the water my indicator descends quickly one more time. After setting the hook with my now swollen wrist this creature comes to the surface and wallows, Dennis and I both have goo goo eyes…..it is the supreme queen of the horksters. Even with my inordinate amount of time spent fishing (“wasted fishing” if you are to believe my wife) when I see a fish like this I have to tell myself to treat her like any others and don’t get excited…..easy to think….much harder to do. After several minutes of playing time Dennis and I realize that with 11 feet of leader and our backs up against a cliff wall the logistics of getting her royal horksterness into the net is going to be prodigious (that means really hard). Finally I crawl up onto the bow of the drift boat (making me feel really tall…..a hard thing to do) with the flyrod in one hand and manage to get enough height to get the fish close enough to the boat so Dennis can net it. She barely fits into the rubber net and twice jumps out but finally she is into the net to stay….what a ….. well, yes…..HORKER!!! She poses for a few pics:



A quick length and girth…..30+inches and 16 in girth…..and she is back in the water heading for the bottom. My wrist and shoulders are on fire but what a sweet pain it is. At this point we do pull anchor and head downstream….there are several miles to go to get to Skilak Lake. There are two other guide boats with us, won’t mention the guide service’s name, who immediately pull up and race ahead of us down to the 3rd gate of the canyon….the next obvious great hole on the river. Fortunately Dennis knows the Kenai intimately and doesn’t let others dictate how we fish……we drift for awhile picking up the occasional modest rainbow and dolly….then pull into shore at a less obvious spot we call the Lunch Hole (not because we eat lunch there but because the bears do…there are leftover pieces of munched salmon everywhere). The other boats have just drifted by without even casting a line into this area. First cast and I am on to my first good horker dolly of the day:




Beautiful, porked out fish. A few minutes later I hook into a real nice dolly who makes it to the heavy current and I am forced to break her off when the line is most of the way through my backing…..score another one for the horkers. I retie my terminal set-up and am into another big dolly…this is just nuts:



Not much later and bang another dolly of fatso proportions (thus making it a…yep, you guessed it….a horker) is landed:



For the next hour it was one dolly after another….did manage to squeak in one toady rainbow of about 22 inches. Here’s another dolly…..look at all the “scratches” on her body…..those are teeth marks from the sockeye chasing them off their redds (BTW don’t look at the special colored bead in the picture….don’t….just don’t).



I rolled this one over just so you could see how fat well these fish have been dining….those are not eggs and this is not a spawner….just horky:



By this time we had eaten up a good portion of the day and we were starving so Dennis was looking for someplace to set up for shore lunch. We drifted quite a ways and after one of the other boats took the main channel we decided to head down a smaller braid of the river which is sometimes very good. As we cut off into the braid their were herds of spawning sockeye and I whipped my bead into the first riffle below them….it was immediately inhaled and my line started ripping off upstream. Well by now my wrist was nearly numb and I had been playing most of the fish with my left hand….constantly moving the rod back between the two hands. I was tempted at this point to just leave the flyrod in my lefthand, put the reel on top and reel backwards (you’ve all seen people using spinning rods this way…..hmmmm) but even my low moral and ethical standards would not let me prostitute a Sage flyrod in this manner. This fish must have been eating eggs inundated with PCP or crack cocaine because it was just ballistic. Nearly 15 minutes later it was near the boat and although not as long as the monster Queen Horkerness it was even horkier than she was…the dang thing was nearly spherical in the middle:



About this time the 2nd guide from the previously unmentioned guide service comes floating down our little braid….lots of river…..very rude of them…..I told Dennis he had a bigger gun (his 50 caliber) and should just take them out…the bears would remove, rather consume, the evidence before morning the next day…..but being a peaceful sort he wouldn’t. So we set up shore lunch and while Dennis was cooking some excellent sockeye salmon I did a little sight fishing. It was shallow and looking into the water you could see dolly varden all around the spawning reds…unfortunately, not many were actively feeding as they were undoubtedly stuffed to their horking fullest. But after casting for a bit I was able to get 4 of these dollies to take the egg….they all looked the same:



About this time Dennis whistled me up for lunch, which was excellent, although I wish the bears would pick up their leftovers:



We were only ½ mile from the lake and decided to just keep floating….as we rounded one corner I popped another great horkster dolly:



Dennis anchored up and between us we nailed another dozen dollies….just too tired to take anymore pics though….they were getting redundant. As we slowly drifted out the last 500 yards we got close up and personal with a few Alaskan Whiteheaded Fishpeckers…the first is a juvenile…..they don’t get the white head and tail until their 2nd or 3rd year:





Then it was off motoring across Skilak Lake to the take out. On the lakeshore I caught this baldy trying to blend into the rocks:



The boat ramp finally came into view and we loaded the boat….there was some furor with the campers right there who were studying something on the trail…..when we closed in we found it to be some very interesting bear scat (yes….that is poop). Extremely colorful…not sure what he was eating:



After the bear do do excitement everything else was anticlimactic. But as I was driving past Quartz Creek home…..yes, sore, achy and possessed I had to stop and catch one last dolly. On the drive back to Eagle River my ’97 Explorer rolled over this magic number of miles:



In the future I will endeavor to use the word “hork” and variations thereof, less frequently. Have a good one……

Brian

[Wingnut]

Epicness in the highest degree Doc.
I think the bear was eating berries... I was enjoying a mixed berries yogurt until I read your report.

[DocSpotty]

LOL Wingnut......don't feel like finishing my blueberries, either....

[ZipperWurm]

wow what an awesome read and even more awesome were the pictures! i dream of trout like those

[bassjedi]

Fantastic report as always. Like you said, if you put in enough time you get some days like that. Beautiful fish.