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Any hope of earning a fishing reputation disappeared after the first four casts from the sandbar into the clear, fast flowing Aniak River. I got rocketing silver on each time.
It’s a pretty easy decision when your wife says you need an Alaskan adventure with some buddies. I'd been turning friends down for years. Too busy, too expensive, too inexperienced and not too interested.
As kids in Iowa, we went after 6-inch bluegills, plump flathead catfish and an occasional largemouth bass. One of my biggest thrills was to join an aunt, uncle and cousins on a vacation to northern Minnesota, where we had a chance to nail a lunker northern pike or a choice walleye. The outdoor experiences on Leech Lake were the most wild and exciting an outdoors guy could ever sample. When the fishing nuts around here talked about their Alaskan escapades I wondered if there was more firewater than fishing. Certainly the trips to the tundra couldn’t top the Land of 10,000 Lakes.
I certainly missed on that opinion.
On Aug. 16, I joined Neil Amondson, Rob Fuller and Elee Fairhart at a fishing camp just outside Aniak, Alaska, for a few days. They said the Hook-M-Up fishing camp was a little rough, but offered promising fishing for silvers. Good, I thought, silvers are good fighters.
It may sound as though I know my salmon, but where I come from, the salmon species are water-packed, chunky, lox or smoked. Chum, silvers, kings, coho and sockeye — what's the difference? And what exactly is a steelhead — a trout or a salmon? They are reportedly one thing in the ocean and then another in fresh water. We never had trouble identifying an Iowa bullhead.
Amondson, former logger and state senator from Centralia, and now part of the Kirkbride Group and Sovran Development, put the trip together. Fuller, well-known local Chehalis grocer and mountain climber, was joined by Morton physical therapist Elee Fairhart and this Chronicle publisher, who always provides a good conversation target around the wood stove. I've clashed over various news issues with Amondson, and Fuller is always ragging on the local paper, but I thought Fairhart might be a good companion. He was, except for the chain-saw snoring that sent me back into my own bush cabin after one night.
I expected rugged, so the electric toothbrush, cologne and hair blower stayed home. With no lights, water or mirrors in the cabins, I had a hard time putting on my eye creme and counting out the meds and supplements, which I'd secreted in my jammed duffle bag. I planned for a new sporting outfit every day.
When adhering to the 50-pound bag limit on an airline, fishermen leave behind the extra undies and socks in favor of rain gear and tackle. I have no tackle, but at least I’d look good with Sunbird’s form-fitting waders, a rainproof hat, hiking shirts and wrap-around sunglasses. You know, the Eddie Bauer look. That ended when Fairhart began making fun of my hat before our lines were even wet.
Any hope of earning a fishing reputation disappeared after the first four casts from the sandbar into the clear, fast flowing Aniak River. I got rocketing silver on each time. On three of those, my determination to set the hook firmly cost the camp three nice lures. I didn’t feel too guilty about this, because quick, mid-river math justified this at about $700 per lure. That 10-pound test line sure snapped easily, even with fish running even at about 10 pounds. It crossed my mind that perhaps my fishing companions would reason that I just didn’t know my own strength. On the fourth cast the fish spit out the spoon. (That's a type of lure to you non-outdoors-types). I was 0-for-4, and glad The Chronicle sports page didn’t have an Overbay-type fishing watch on my performance today.
Meanwhile, the others were laughing and hollering at the spunk of these rip-and-run salmon, fresh from the ocean and, as guide Woody said, "looking for sex." So we were getting in the way of these youngsters on a mission and they didn't give up the quest easily. (Remember, I'm talking about the salmon.)
Alan Chlarson, camp co-owner and owner of Western Livestock Hauling in Moses Lake, sidled up to me after the first four failures and asked calmly: "Have you ever heard of buck fever?" Ever the gentleman, he then explained that I only had to lightly wrist-snap the tip of my rod, and the fish and hook would take care of the rest.
I was a bit overzealous in my approach, but jeez, these babies were bigger and faster than Midwest pan fish. I finally got the hang of it and the fishing was an absolute thrill. These silvers reminded me of very fast mini-submarines. One tail-walked six times between line-strippings before I landed him. I was so impressed I thought he ought to have a name, but then Woody bashed the fighter’s brains with a rock.
Fairhart took the week's fishing honors and for a guy not too interested in fishing, he spent a lot of time on the water. He hauled in a pair of 12-pounders, the biggest of the excursion. It was Amondson who put together this fishing trip for four guys who really didn't consider themselves fishermen. The other three are actually hunters, while I must be a gatherer. Fairhart came along for a possible shot at migrating caribou, which wander through the camp from the nearby tundra.
Woody, the camp guide and co-owner, has nailed plenty of moose and caribou in his quarter century in Alaska wilds. He also killed an 8›-foot grizzly standing on his front porch a couple of years ago. An impressive black bear cape — or is that a rug — hangs in the cook tent beneath an array of antlers and horns.
It's all pretty basic — not quite primitive because they have a generator during certain hours. Still, when I lay there in my hand-hewn log cabin, I could hear all sorts of threatening critters in the woods outside and on the roof. They were digging, clawing, scratching and chewing in the magnified noise of the Alaskan bush. Oh, for the comforting, reassuring hum of I-5. Thankfully, the earplugs that didn’t drown out Elee worked on the varmint sounds. A folding chair in front of the door would at least announce a grizzly’s entrance.
Nearby, Aniak is an interesting place where I’d liked to have spent more time gathering biographies. The village is made up of about 600 intermixed Eskimos, American Indians and Caucasians from all over the planet. The nickname for the school athletics? The Aniak Half-Breeds.
The NCAA would have a fit.
There are three churches, including a weathered, historical Russian Orthodox church with attached graveyard. The decorated crosses outside the yard were for suicide victims — an ongoing and tragic story among the original Alaskan inhabitants. But that’s another tale, and the editor suggested this one be light.
When the river is frozen, snow machines go anywhere except the thick underbrush and timber. In summer, when the flow is low, residents can travel to visit neighbors via four-wheelers as the Aniak River is a temporary highway. Just follow the traffic from sandbar to sandbar. Otherwise, travel is by boat or float plane. All travel was grounded for three days while a 70,000-acre wildfire burned nearby. If you like the whiff of wood smoke, you could overdose here. There are so many Alaskan fires they don't bother to battle most of them. However, it didn't keep us from the mighty silvers.
We came home with 200 pounds of fresh-frozen filets and left 100 pounds with the camp. All females (we fishermen call them "hens") were released because they were full of eggs, and we also returned older, darker male fish to the water. They deserved one more chance to spawn themselves to death.
On the final day, I knew I could redeem myself in the eyes of my fishing pals. Watching Fuller struggle with a fly rod and not landing any fish, I took over. After all, I had landed many a big bass on the lakes and gravel ponds of Iowa. In short order, I snapped the expensive fly rod in half. The two guides simply smiled, but said nothing. As usual, the others had plenty to say. I’m wondering if they’ll invite me on one of their hunting trips anytime soon.
Imagine what I could do with a rifle.
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