8/20 - 8/28 Alaska Journal: In the Pinks

By the third day I was starting to have doubts. I had been drenched waiting for a ferry in Ketchikan, spent the first night sleeping in a car & fished in waters that progressed from bog tea, to something that looked more like espresso& finally after another downpour, watched a creek turn into what I can only liken to a thin mole sauce. I had also slogged through over a half mile of Alaskan muskeg carrying my 50 pounds or so of baggage to our cabin & broken my fly rod after struggling to unhook my 7th dorsal snagged salmon. Was this really what I had signed on for? The good news was that salmon were present in such abundance in the streams of Prince of Wales Island that you actually could snag them with a fly line about as easily as get them to take a fly. Our challenge was figuring out which fish were the desirable cohos (silver salmon) & where they were running.

Prince of Wales is America's third largest island, over 100 miles long & 30 - 40 miles wide, blessed with bountiful salmon streams & good roads. It is accessible by bush plane or a 3 hour ferry trip from Ketchikan. Unfortunately the island has been rather severely clear cut over the last 25 years, so that it has lost much of its original natural beauty. There are still portions of old growth rain forest where cedar, spruce, hemlock & fir, draped with mosses, give it a very primeval look.

Paul, Dave, Rhett & I had rented a Forest Service cabin on Control Lake, centrally located to several good salmon streams. And we had rented 2 vehicles. The plan was to drive in pairs to 1 or 2 different streams each day & report back on our success at catching silvers. As the cabin was accessible only by leaky boat or a half mile hike through the muskeg (the obvious choice) this entailed slogging through the bogs in our waders twice daily. By the end of our rainy stay the trail had become a running bog.

Nice weather finally arrived on my 4th day there. Rhett & I had a banner day fishing the Klawock River, each notching personal bests for numbers of fish caught. The Klawock like most of the other streams was choked with fish, virtually all pink salmon as we later confirmed. They were present in such vast numbers that the normally brown-bottomed rivers often appeared black. As we waded into the water, waves were generated by the action of so many fish swimming away together. These fish were just about all in the 3 - 4 pound range & most provided a lot of action. A few of the males that I reeled in had already transformed themselves into their spawning configuration: grotesquely humped (why the locals call them humpies) & with an exaggerated beak ending in dog-like teeth. The change seemed to make them stronger.

After another day or so it became clear that Prince of Wales was experiencing a pink salmon run of epic proportions & that catching anything else in the creeks & rivers was going to be more luck than skill. Since pink salmon flesh is not as firm as coho or chinook, it is less commercially valuable, though you do see it in cans at the grocery. But we weren't going to be able to have any smoked or frozen to bring home, so we decided to just relax & enjoy the fun of fishing.

Dave & Paul spent 3 afternoons fishing in the tidewaters on a small rented boat; they brought in a couple of silvers each. I went out with them once, but lost my leader to the only silver I hooked. Soon thereafter a squall came in, so Captain Paul had us pull up the crab pots & head back. As the rookie, I got the "privilege" of piloting the boat, which had no windshield, through the driving rain.

As we were checking so many streams for salmon, we saw a lot of the sights of the island. There is still a strong Native American presence, with both Haida & Tlingit people represented. I missed the totem pole raising on Saturday that the rest of the group attended, but I did get a couple of pictures.

Dinners at Control Lake cabin were not elegant, but with salmon, crab & steak on successive nights, we ate well. For our last night on the island, we went to Ruth Anne's in Craig to celebrate our adventure with a wonderful seafood meal.

The last leg of the trip was the ferry back to Ketchikan, this time on a warm sunny day. The cruise provided some great scenery with spectacular cloud formations. I returned home satisfied & with a tired arm. What more can a fisherman ask for?