King Fisherman

Bill had set me up with a fishing charter through Rust’s to go salmon and trout fishing. I met up with my float plane at 7am and took a half hour flight to Riversong Lodge on the Yentna River.

The lodge was in the middle of nowhere and was only accessible by float plane. It looked pretty rough on the outside but had been renovated to be 5-star on the inside.

After signing some paperwork I hopped on a John boat with a father and his son visiting from Colorado and two guides. They dropped me off with my guide, Maddy, and we hiked up river in a waders for about a mile before we hit a fork in the river. On the way we saw some bear paw prints in the mud banks. When we got to our fishing spot, Maddy pointed out some red spots in the water that were King Salmon. Unfortunately, King season was over and we were after Silvers.

I had been taking casting lessons at the San Francisco Anglers Casting Club, but I was mainly using a 5 weight rod. For salmon fishing, I needed to use a 10 weight which is much heavier. The nice thing about salmon fishing is you’re using a sinking fly and don’t have to worry about presenting it correctly on the water. According to Maddy, the salmon aren’t even hungry. You’re just trying to piss them off so that they attack the fly out of anger and frustration.

Maddy was super excited to try out a new fly she had tied that morning that she described as a princess fly. It was pink and purple with some streamers in it. We later dubbed it “Jasmine,” and Maddy may have found a whole new business making disney themed flies.

It only took about 20 minutes before I had my first bite. As it got closer to the surface we could see that it was a King Salmon and I’m pretty sure Maddy was more excited than I was. I was happy just to have a fish on the line, but Maddy would later tell me that people come to Alaska just to catch Kings. To do it on a fly made it that much more impressive.

As I was backing up onto the bank, the salmon swam under some logs and got the line caught, but I was able to maneuver the tip of my rod around them and get it untangled.

I didn’t catch anything the rest of the morning despite seeing silvers right in front of me. Nonetheless, it was still a great morning. The weather was perfect, there were no mosquitos, and I saw some bald eagles fly overhead. Other than a few rafts coming down the river, we were alone and the environment was peaceful.

After a quick lunch at the lodge we were back in the boat and headed for the same spot to look for trout. This time we got dropped off at the head of the river and didn’t have to make the hike. I was excited to trout fish, despite it being less of a fight, because I’d get to use my own rod. Up until this point, I had only used it to practice casting.

Instead of staying in the same spot, we walked down river and casted at different logs sitting on the banks. If nothing hit after a few casts, we moved on. My first catch was only a few inches but I was happy to finally have caught something on my rod.

Then we hit a log where I got back to back 18” trout.

There were some hungry Greyling too, but they were tiny.

I started to get a bit ballsy and casted at a heavly wooded hole and got my fly caught. Maddy was pretty good at getting my fly unstuck earlier and I wanted to learn her technique. Pretty much she would do a roll cast to get the line behind the fly and then give it a quick pull. I gave it a few tries but I think I made things worse. I handed the rod to Maddy and she ended up catching it on just about ever knob and made a spider web with my line. I thought it was hilarious, but I could tell Maddy was not happy.

I was totally fine with cutting the line and respooling it later, but Maddy was determined to get my line back. She hiked around the river, climbed on top of a beaver dam, and used a long stick to unhook my line. There were a few times where the dam started to break and I thought for sure she was going head first into the water.